The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1892-01-28
LIST TO THE ECHO.
The life Of Parents Finds Its Echo
in the characteristics Of
Children.
A Slip-Shod Home Results in Goddess
Teaching and the Young People
GOfO the Bad.

Brooklyn, N. Y. Especial. DIR. Tai
mage gave a new illustration in his
sermonof his mastery Of the art OF
drawing spiritual lessons from COM
mon natural phenomena. His subject
was Echoes and his text: Ezekiel
VII, g: ''The sounding again Of the
mountains"
At last have found it. The Bible
has in it q recognition OF all phases OF
heworld, from the aurora OF the mid
night heavens to the phosphorescence
of the tumbled sea. But the Unknown
sound that we call the echo L. found
not until a few days ago. I discover
ed 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 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
ed, and SO he gives us in our text "'the
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 I do not wonder
that the superstitious have lifted it
into the supernatural. You and I in
boyhood or girlhood experimental
with it's responsiveness of sound.
Standing halfway between the house
and barn, we shouted many 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 lust
to hear what Ezekiel calls ''the sound
ing again of the mountains" The
echo has ~. 49,
p 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 ormean to please?
Who are you and where are you, thou
wondrous echo? Sometimes it's re-
spouse is a reiteration The shot OF
a gun, the clapping Of the hands, the
beating of a drum, thevoice of violin
are sometimes repeated many times by
the echo. Near Coblentz-that which is
said has IT echoes. In 1866, a writer
says that near Milan, Italy, there were
70 such reflections OF sound to one
snap OF pistol. Play bugle near d
Lake of Killarney and the tune is
played back to you as distinctly as
when you played it. There is q we'll
21O feet deep ut Carisbrooke Castle in
the Isle of Wight. Drop pin into
that we'll, and the sound OF it's fall
comes to the top 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 for the
present discourse-that this echo in
the natural world has it's 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 preach this sermon
First: Parental teaching and ex-
ample have their echo in the character
OF descendants. Exceptions? Oh, yes.
So in the natural world there may be
no echo, OF distorted echo, by rea-
son of -r ~-
us PECULIAR PROXINIITIEs,
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. The ten
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, 1 will
stand this no. longer. Against this
hereditary tendency to queerness /
protest" And he or she will set up
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
er 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
watchl Years pass on, perhaps 10
years, 20 years, and you so back to
the church where the father and
mother used to be consistent mem
bers. You have heard nothing about
the family for 20 years, and at the door
OF the church you see the sections and
you ask him: "Where is old Mr..
Webster?" "Oh! he has been dead
many years" s.Where is Mrs. Web
ster?' "Ohl she died 1 5 years ago"
y suppose their son Joe went to the