The Dickinson press., 1892-01-30
LIST TO Il ECHO.
The Life of Parents Finds Its Echo
In the characteristics of
Children.

children.
. Sip-Shod Home Results in Goddess
. sching and the Young People
Go to the Bad.
Brooklyn, N. Y. Especial. DIR. Tai.
mage gave a new illustration in his
sermon of hismastery of the art of
drawing spiritual lessons from COM
monnatural phenomena. His subject
was "Echoes," and his text: Ezekiel
Vii, z: "The sounding again of the
At last I have found it. The Bible
has in it a recognition Of all phases OF
the world, fromthe aurora Of the mid
night heavens to the phosphorescence
Of the tumbled sea. But the well-known
sound that we call the echo I found
not until a few days ago. discover
Cd in my text: "The sounding again
of tho mountains" That ia 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 ced-
ar, and the voices OF the wild beasts,
but a man of SO poetic q nature as
Ezekial could not allow another
sound, viz, the echo, to be disregard
Cd, and so he gives us in our text "ths
sounding again of the mountains"
Greek mythology represented the
echo as a nympth, the daughter of
Earth and Air. following Narcissus
through forests and into grottos and
every whittier, 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 experimental
with its responsiveness of sound.
Standing halfway between the house
and barn, we shouted many a time to
hear the reverberation, or out among
the mountains back of our home, on
some long tramp, we stopped and
made exclamation with full lungs Just
to hear what Ezekiel calls "the sound
ing again of the mountains" The
echo has
FRIGHTENED MANY A CHILD
and many a 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 some
thing else, but why do those lips
Of the air say just what you say? Do
they mean to mock ormeanto pleased
Who are you and where areyou, thou
wondrous echo? Sometimes it's re-
spouse is a reiteration. The shot OF
. gun, the clapping Of the hands, the
beating of adrum, the voice of a violin
r sometimes repeated many times by
the echo. Near Coblentz-that whichis
said has II echoes. In 1766, a writer
saysthat near Milan, Italy, there we're
70 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 distinctly as
when you played it. There is a we'll
Flo feet deep at Carisbrooke Castle in
the Isle of Wight. Drop a pin into
that well, and the sound OF it's fall
comes to thetop of the we'll 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 forths
present discourse-that this echo in
the natural world has its analogy in
the moral and religious world? Have
you noticed the tremendous fact that
what we say and do comes back in re-
coiled gladness or disaster? About
this resonance I preach this sermon.
First: Parental teaching and ex-
ample have their echo in the character
OF descendants. Exceptions? Oh, YES.
30 in the natural world there may be
no echo, or a distorted echo, by rea-
son of
PECULIAR P~RoX1NfTTIES,
but the general rule is that the char
acter of the children is the echo of the
character Of the 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 q crank. Theten
dency is SO mighty in that direction
that it will get worse and
worse unless some hero or heroine
IN that line shall rise up and say:
"Here! By the help of God, l will
stand this no longer. Against this
hereditary tendency to q%ueerness 1
protest" And he or she will set I'D
an altar and 8 magnificent life that
will reverse things and there will beno
more cranks among that kindred. In
another family the father and moth
or are consecrated people. What they
do 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 10
years, 20 years, and you go back to
the church where the father and
mother used to be consistent men,
bers, You have heard nothing about
thetamily for 2Oyears, and at thedoor
OF the church you see the sexton, and
you ask him: "Where is old Mr..
Webster" ooh! he has been dead
many years." "Where is Mrs. Web
ster?" "Oh! she died Is years ago"
II suppose their son Joe vent tc the
dogs?" "Oh! no." saws the sexton.
"He is up there in the elders seat.
He is OF our best and most i'm.
portant members. You ought to
hear him pray and sing. He is not
Joe any longer; he is Elder Webster"
"Well, where is the daughter, Mary?
suppose she is the same thoughtless
butterfly she used to be?" "Oh! no.
says the sexton, "she is the president
q our Missionary Society and the
Airsctress in the Orphan Asylum, and