Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1892-01-18
NATURE TEACHES.
BIZ. TALMAGE FINDS AN IMPRESSIVE
LESSON IN THE ECHO.


dren Through the Memory of Their
Pious Parents.
BROOKLYN, Jan. II. DR. Talmage
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. Z. The sounding again
of the mountains.
At last have found it. The Bible
has it in recognition Of all phases of
the natural world from the aurora
of the midnight heavens to the phOs
phOreScence " the tIIm bled sea- But
the we'll 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 a man of
SO poetic a nature as 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 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 l do
not wonder that the superstitious
have lifted it into the supernatural
You and in boyhOOd or girlhood .eX-
perimented with this responsiveness
of sound. Standing half way between
the house and barn, we shouted
many time to hear the reverbera-
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 The sounding
again Of the mountains
The Echo has frightened many
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 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? Some
times its response is a reiteration.
The shot of Il gun. the clapping of the
hands, the beating of a drum. the
voice of violin are sometimes re-
peated many times by the Echo.
Near Coblentz-that which is said
has seventeen Echoes In 1866 a
writer says that near Milan. Italy.
there We're seventy such reflections
of sound to one snap Of a pistol. Play
a bugle near a lake of Killarney and
the tune is played back to you as dis
tinctly us when you played it. There
Is we'll two hundred and ten feet
deep at Carisbrooke castle III the Isle
of Wight. Drop a 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 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 its analogy in the moral and re-
ligious world? Have you noticed the
tremendous fact that what we say
and do comes back in recoiled glad
ness or disaster: About this reso-
nance preach this sermon.
First-Parental teaching and ex-
ample have their Echo in the charac-
ter of descendants Exceptions? Oh,
yes. So III the natural world there
may be no Echo or Il distorted Echo,
by reason of peculiar proXilnities, 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 a crank,
his son is apt to be crank and the
grandchild crank
The tendency is so mighty in that
direction that it will get worse and
worse unless some hero or heroine in
that line shall rise and say: Here
By the help of God, | will stand this
no longer Against this hereditary
tendency to queerness | protest"
And he or she will set up an altar