Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1892-01-28


parents are a gOdless pair. They let their
children do ~ they please. No example
NJ TO follow. No lessons Of morality or
religion. Sunday no better than any other
day. The Bible no better than any other
book. The house is n sort Of inn where the
older and younger people OF the household
Stop for awhile. The theory acted on,
though perhaps not announced, is: The
children will have TO do rs did and take
their chances. Life is n lottery anyhow.
and some draw prizes and some draw
blanks, and wewill trust TO luck"
Skip twenty years and come hack TO the
neighborhoOd where that family used to
live You meet on the street or on the
road an old iuhabitant of that neighbor
hoOd and you say. Can you tell me any
thing about the Petersons who used to live
here?" "Yes," says the old inhabtant; IL
remember them very well The father
and mother have been dead for years"
We'll, how about the children? What
hiis become OF thems" The old inhabitant
replies: "Tbey turned out badly. You
know the old man was about half an in.
fidel and the boys were all iniidels. The
oldest son married, hut got into drinking
habits, and in few years his wife was not
able to live with him any longer and his
children were taken by relatives, and he
died of delirium tremens on Blackwell's
island. His other son forged the name of
his employer and fed to Canada
Zone of the daughters of the old folks
married an 'nebriate with the idea of re-
forming him, and you know how that
always ends-in the ruin of both the ex-
perimenter and the one experimental with
The other daughter disappeared mysteri
ously and has not been heard Of There
WAS a young woman picked out of the
East river and put in the morgue and
some thought it was her, but cannot say"
"ls it possibleg" you cry out. "Yes, it is
possible The family is II complete wreck"
My hearers. that is inst what might have
been expected. All this is only the Echo,
the dismal Echo the awful Echo, the
dreadful Echo of parental ohliquity ami
unfaithfulness The old folks heaped upa
mountain of wrong influences, and this is
only what my text calls The sounding of
the mountains"
Indeed our entire behavior in this
world will have II resound While oppor
tunities fly in II straight line and just
touch us once and are gone never TO return.
the wrongs we practice upon others fly
CIRCLE and they come back to the place
from which they started. Doctor Guillo
tine thought it smart to introduce the in
strument of death named after him, but
did not like it so we'll when his own head
was chopped of with the guillotine.
THE DAY or ALL DAYS.
So also the Judgment Day will be an
Echo of all our other days The universe
needs such day, for there are SO many
things in the world that need to be fixed
up and explained. If God had not ap-
pointed such II day all the nations would
cry out, "0h, God, give us a Judgment
Day" But we are apt to think Of it and
speak about il us II day away off in the fu-
ture, having no special connection with this
day or any other day. The fact is that we
are now making up its voices; it's trumpet1
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. II was
naked and ye clothed me; was sick and in
prison and ye 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 garret, 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
Washington falling on its face in the
world wide catastrophe, and the boiling of
the sea over the furnaces OF universal con-
flagaltiOn 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
sacrifices, all the philanthropies, all the
beneficent last wills and testaments, all the
Christian work of all the 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 "The
sounding of the mountains"
Ny 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 originally projected
Lord Raleigh says that woman's voice
sounding from grove WIS returned an
octave higher. A scientist playing u flute
in Fairfax county, Va, found that all the
notes were returned, although some OF
them came in raised pitch.
A trumpet sounded ten times near Glas-
gov, Scotland, and the ten notes were all
repeated, but third lower. And the
spiritual law corresponds 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 higher gladness than we thought
or from deeper woe, from mightier
conqueror or from worse captive, from u
higher throne or deeper dungeon. Our
prayer or cur blasphemy. our kindness or
our cruelty, our faith or our unbelief, our
holy life or our dissolute behavior, will
come buck somehow.
Suppose the boss Of a factory or the head
of commercial firm some day comes out
among his clerks or employees, and putting
his thumbs in the armholea Of his vest
says, with an mir OF swagger and jocosity:
well. don't believe in the Bible or the
church. The one In IN imposition and the
other is full Of hypocrites. | declare l
would not trust one Of those very pious peo
pie further than could see him." That IN
all he Says, but he has said enough. The
young men go back to their counters or
their shuttles and say within themselves,
"WeN, he Is successful man and has
probably studied up the whole subject and
is probably right"
That one lying utterance against Bibles
and churches has put five young men on
the wrong track. and though the infiuen-
tial man hsd spoken only in half jest. the
scho shall come back to him in Ave ruined
ifetimes 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 Gus
toners, the 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 u dull day,