The Bossier banner., 1892-03-24

There was young woman picked out
of the East river and put in the morgue,
| and some thought it was her, but l can
not say" ''Is it possible?" you cry
out "Yes, it is possible. The family
is complete wreck" My hearers,
that is just what might have been ex-
pected. All this is only the echo, the
dismal echo. the awful echo, the
! dreadful echo of parental obliquity and
unfaithfulness. The old folks heaped
up a mountain OF wrong influences, and
this is only what my text calls the
soundings of the mountains" Indeed,
our entire behavior in this world will
have a resound. While opportunities
fly in a straight line, and just touch us
once and are gone never to return, the
wrongs we practice upon others fly in
a circle, and they come back to the
place from which they started DR..
Guillotine thought it smart to introduce
the instrument of death named after
him, but did not like it so we'll when
his own head was chopped off with the
guillotine.
So, also, the Judgment day will be an
echo OF all our other days. The uni
verse needs such a day, for there are
many things in the world that need to
be fixed up and explained. If God had
not appointed such day all nations
would cry out: 80, give us u Judgment
day" But we are apt to think of it
and speak about 1t as a day away out
in the future, having no special con-
nection with this day or any other day.
The fact is that we are now making up
its voices. Its trumpets will only sound
| back again to us what we now say and
do That is the meaning of all that
| Scripture which says that Christ will
on that day address the soul, saying:
Il was naked and we clothed me, | was
sick and in prison and we visited me-"
All the footsteps in that prison corridor
as the Christian Reformer walks to
the wicket of the incarcerated; yea.
all the whispers of coincidence in the
ear of that poor soul dying in that gar
ret; yea, all the kindnesses are being
caught up and rolled on until they dash
against the Judgment throne, and then
they will be struck back into the ears
of these sons and daughters of mercy.
Louder than the crash of Mount Wash
ington falling on its face in the world
wide catastrophe, and the boiling of
the sea over the furnaces of universal
confiagration, will be the echo and re-
echo of the good deeds done and the
sympathetic words uttered and the
mighty benefactions wrought. On that
day all the charities, all the self-sacri-
fees. all the philanthropies. all the
beneficent last wills and testaments,
all the Christian work of all ages, will
be piled up into mountains, and those
who have served God and served the
suffering human race will hear what
my text styles 1.-The sounding of the
mountains
My subject advances to tell you that
eternity itself is only an echo of time.
Mind you, the analogy warrants my
saying this. The echo is not always
exactly in kind like the sound original
ly projected. Lord Raleigh SAYS that a
woman's voice sounding from grove
was returned an octave higher. A sci
enlist playing flute in Fairfax coun-
ty, Va, found that all the notes were
returned, although some of them came
in raised pitch. A trumpet sounded ten
times near Glasgow, Scotland, ard the
ten notes were all repeated, but a third
lower. And the spiritual law cOrre-
spends with the natural world. What
we do of good or bad may not come
back to us in just the proportion we
expect it, but come back it will; it
may be from a higher gladness
than we thought or from a
deeper woe, from a mightier con-
querer or from worse captive,
from higher throne or deeper dun
geon. Our prayer or our blasphemy,
our kindness or our cruelty, our faith
or our unbelief, our holy life or our dis
solute behavior, will come back some
how. Suppose the boss of factory or
the head of a commercial firm some
day comes out among his clerks or en-
ployes, and, putting his thumbs in the
armholes of his vest, says, with an air
of swagger and iocosity: "Well, / don't
believe in the Bible or the church. The
one is an imposition and the other is
full of hypocrites. I declare | would
not trust one of those very pious.
people further than 1. could see
him." That is all he says, but
he has said enough. The young men
go back to their counters or their
shuttles, and say within themselves;
well, he is successful man. and has
probably studied up the whole subject
and is probably right" That one w.
ing utterance against Bibles and
churches has put five young men on the
wrong track, and though the influential
man had spoken only in half jest, the
echo shall come back to him in five
ruined lifetimes and five DESTROYED
eternities. You see, the echoes are an
octave lower than he anticipated. On
the other hand, some rainy day, when
there are hardly any customers, lthe
Christian merchant comes out from his
counting-room and stands among the
young men, who have nothing to do.
and says: 'Well, boys, this is a dull
day, but it will clear off after awhile.
There are good many ups and downs
in business, but there is an overruling
| Providence. Years ago | made ND nv