The Caucasian. (Clinton, N.C.) 188?-1913, 1892-01-21
NATURE TEACHES.
DR.. TALMkoE FINDS AN IMPRESSIVE
LESSON IN THE ECHO.

Every Act and Word Has Eternal Con-
sequences-The Redemption Of Chill
dren Through the Memory Of Their
Pious Parents.
BROOKLYN, Jan. 17.-Dr. Talnags
gave Il new illustration in his sermon
this morning Of his mastery of the
art Of drawing spiritual lessons from
common natural phenomena. His
subject was Echoes" and his text
Ezekial vii, 7, THE sounding again
of the mountains"
At last have found it. The Bible
has it In a recognition of all phases Of
the natural world from the aurora
OF the midnight heavens to the phos-
phorescence of the tumbled sea. But
the well known sound that we call
the Echo found not until few days
ago discovered it in my text. THE
sounding again of the mountains"
That Is the Echo. Ezekiel of the text
had 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 wild beasts. but man of
so poetic a nature rs Ezekiel could
not allow another sound, viz, the
Echo, to be disregarded, and so he
gives us in our text THE sounding
again of the mountains"
ANALOGY OF MORAL AND MATERIAL.
Greek mythology represents the
Echo as a nymph, the daughter of
Earth and Air, following Narcissus
through forests and into grottoes and
every whittier, and 80 strange and
weird and startling is the Echo l do
not wonder that the superstitious
have lifted it into the supernatural.
You and in boyhood OF girlhood ex-
perlmented with this responsiveness
of sound. Standing half way between
the house and barn, we shouted
many time to hear the reyerbera-
tons; or out among the mountains
back of our home, on some long
tramp, we stopped and made excla-
nations with full lungs just to hear
what Ezekiel calls 1.-THE sounding
again of the mountains"
The Echo has frightened MANY a
child and many man. 1t is no tame
thing after you have spoken to hear
the same words repeated by the in
visible. All the silences are filed
with voices ready to answer. Yet it |
would not be so startling If they said |
something else, but why do those
ups OF the air say just what you saw |
DO they mean to mock or mean to |
please2 Who are you and where are
you, thou wondrous Echo9 Some
times Its response Is a reiteration. |
Inc shot OF gun, the clapping of the
hands, the beating of a drum, the
voice of a violin are sometimes re-
peated many times by the Echo.
Near Coblentz-that which is said
has seventeen Echoesl In 1865 a
writer says that near Milan, Italy.
there were seventy such reflections
or sound to one snap of a pistol. Play
a bugle near lake of Killarney and
the tune is played back to you as dis
tlnctly as when you played it. There
Is well two hundred and ten feet
deep at Carisbrooke castle in the Isle
or Wight. Drop pin into that well
and the sound of its fall comes to the
top of the well distinctly.
A blast from an Alpine horn comes
back from the rocks of Jungfrau in
surge after surge of reflected sound.
until 1t seems as if every peak had
lifted and blown an Alpine horn.
But have you noticed-and this is
he reason for the present discourse
that this Echo in the natural world
las its analogy in the moral and re-
lg1ous world2 Have you noticed the
tremendous fact that what we saw
IND do comes back in recoiled glad
less or disaster2 About this reso-
lance preach this sermon.
tlrst-Parental teaching and ex-
nipple have their Echo in the charac-
er OF descendants. Exceptions9 Oh.
res. SO In the natural world there
nay be no Echo or distorted Echo. {
y reason of peculiar proximities but
ne general rule is that the character ,
It the children is the Echo of the
haracter Of parents. The general | I
ule Is that good parents have good
hlldren and bad parents have bad | I
hndren. 1t the old man is a crank.
Is son IS apt to be crank and the
randchild a crank.
The tendency is so mighty in that
lrechon that it will get worse and ,
'orse unless some hero or heroine in
nat line shall rise and say: Here!
y the help of God, I will stand this &
o longer. Against this hereditary
to queerness I protest" 6
nd he or she will set up an altar ,
nd a magnificent life that will re- {
erse things, and there will be no t
lore cranks among that kindred.
In another family the father and 6
lother are consecrated people. What | 6
ley do is right; what they teach
right. The boys may for some t
me be wild and the daughters i
orldly, but watch! Years pass on. '
erhaps ten years, twenty years, and /
gu go back to the church where the q
'ther and mother used to be consist
1T members.
You have heard nothing about the o
'mlly for twenty years. and at the "
Dor OF the church you see the sex v
N and you ask him, Where is old n
r. Webster3'' ''Oh, he has been | G
sau many years." Where Is Mrs. v
'eoster" "Oh, she died fifteen e
ears agor' Il suppose their son Joe l.
ent to the dog'a" "Oh, NO, saws il
le sexton, he is up there in the n
dels seat. He is one of our best O.
III most important members. You n
'sht to hear him pray and sing. 81
e Is not Joe any longer; he is &c
der Webster" 'WeU where 10