Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1892-01-20
At the Tabernacle

At last | have found it. The Bible has
III il a recognition of all phases of the
natural world from the aurora of the
midnight Heavens to the phosphorescence
OF tho tumbing sea. But the we'll known
sound that we call the Echo | found not
nntii q few days ago | discovered it in
my text, 1.-THE sounding again of the
mountains" That is the Echo. Ezekiel
of the text heard it again and again.
Born among mountains and in his
journey to distant exile. he had passed
among mountains, and it was natural
that all through his writings there should
loom Up the mountains. Among them he
had heard the sound Of Cataracts and of
tempests in wrestle with oak and cedar,
and the voices of the wild beasts, but a
man OF SO poetic nature as Ezekiel
could not allow another sound, VIZ. the
Echo, to be disregarded, and so ne gives
us in our text 1.-The sounding again of
the mountains"
Greek mythology represented the Echo
As nymph, the daughter OF Earth and
Air, following Narcissus through forests
and into grOttOeS and every whittier, and
SO strange and weird and startling is the
Echo [ do not wonder that the Supersti-
tious have lifted it into the supernatural.
OA sUl1O D III DON bOOu VI CADC
mented with this responsiveness of sound.
Standing half way between the house
and barn, we shouted many time to
hear the reverberationS. or cut among
the mountains back OF our home on some
long tramp, we stopped and made eN-
Clamation with full lungs Just to hear
what Ezekiel calls THE sounding again
of the mountains
The Echo has frightened many a child
and many d man. 1t is no tame thing
after you have spoken to hear the same
words repeated by the invisible. All the
silences are filled with voices ready to
answer. Yet it would not be- so startling
if they said something else. but why do
those lips of the air say just what you
say? Do they mean to mock or mean to
please? Who are you and where are
YOU, thou wOndrous Echo? Sometimes
its response is reiteration. The shot
of d gun, the clappine of the hands, the
beating Of u drum, the voice of u violin
are sometimes repeated many times by
the Echo.
Near Coblentz-that which is said has
seventeen EchoS. In 1906, a writer says
that near Milan, Italy, there were
seventy such reflections Of sound to one
snap OF pistol. Play a bugle near a
lake Of Killarney and the tune is played
back to you as distinctly as when you
played it. There is a well 30 feet deep
at Carlsbrooke Castle, in the Isle of
Wight. Drop q pm into that we'll and
the sound of it's fall comes to the top of
the well distinctly A blast of an Alpine
horn comes back from the rocks of
Jungfrau in surge after surge of reflected
sound, until it seems as if every peak had
lifted and blown an Alpine horn.
But have you noticed-and this is the
reason for the present diScourSe-that
this Echo in the natural world has it's
analogy in the moral aud religious world?
Have you noticed the tremendous fact
that what we say and do comes back in
recoiIed gladnesS or disaster? About
this resonance [ preach this sermon.
I FirSt-Parental teaching and example
have their Echo in the character of de-
scendants Exceptions? OH, yes. So
in the natural world there may be no
Echo. or a distorted Echo, by reason of
peculiar proXimiJieS, but the general
rule is that the character of the children
is the Echo of the character of parents.
The general rule Is that good parents
have good children and bad parents have
bad children. If the old man is crank,
his son is apt TO be a crank and the
grandchild a crank. The tendency is so
mighty in that direction that it will get
worse and worse until some hero or hero
inc in that line shall rise and say:
Here! BY the nelp of God, | will stand
this no longer. Against this hereditary
tendency to queerneSS | protest. And
he or she will set Up an altar and mag
nffcent life that will reverse things, and
there will be no more cranks among that
kindred.
In another family the father and
mother are cOnsecrated people. What
they d. is right What they teach is
right. The boys may for some time be
wild and the daughters worldly, but
watch! Years pass on, perhaps ten years,
twenty years, and you go back to the
church where the father and mother
used to be consistent members.
You have heard nothing about the
family for twenty years, and at the door
of the church you see the sexton and you
ask aim, ''Where is old Mr.. Webster?''
"Oh, he has been dead many years.
ssWhere is Mrs WebSter2' 'iOh, she
died fifteen years ago." II suppose their
son Joe went to the dogs?" ''Oh, no, =
saws the sexton, '.he is up there in the
elders seat. He is one of our best and
most important members. You ought to
bear him pray and sing. He IS not Joe
any longer, he is Elder Webster" well,
where IS the daughter, Mary? / sup
pose she is the same thoughtless butter
fly she used to be?'' ''Oh, no" says the
sexton, "sshe is the President of our mis-
sionary society and the directress in the
orphan asylum, and when she goes down
the street all the ragamuffins take hold
Of her dress and cry. 'Auntie, when are
you going - bring us some more books
and shoes and things" And when
in times of revival, there is some
hard case back in church pew that no
one else can touch, she goes where he is,
and in one minute she has him a-crying,
and the first thing we know she is fetch
ing the hardened man up to The front to
be prayed for. and says, Here IS a
brother who wants to find the way into
the kingdom Of God And if nobody
seems ready to pray, she kneels down in
the aisle beside him and says, % Lord
with pathoS and a power and a tri-
umph that seem instantly to emancipate
the hardened sinner. Oh. no! you must
not call her thoughtless butterfly in