Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1892-01-23
REV. DIR. TALMAGH.
The Eminent Brooklyn Divine's Sun.
day Sermon.


At last | have it. The Bible has in it
recognition of all phrases OF the natural
world from the aurora of the midnight
heavens to the phosphorescencs Of the tum-
bling sea. But the well known soun1 that
we call the Ecno 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 heard it
again and again.
Born among mountains. AMI in his jour
ney 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 AMI Of tsmpests in
wrestle with oak and lar and the voices
| of wild beast but man of so poetic a ma
ture as Ezekiel could not allow another
sound, viz, the Echo, to be disregaried
and SO he gives us in our text "rhe sound
4 ing again or the mountains"
Greek mythology represented the Echo as
nymph, the daughter OF Earth and Air,
following Narcissus through forests and into
| grottoes and every whittier, and 50 strange
| and weird and startling is the Echo do not
wonder that the superstitious have lifted it
into the supernatural. You ami In boy
hood or girlhood experimental with this re-.
| sponsveneSs of sound. Standing half way
between the house and barn, we shouted
many times to hear the reyerberations or
out among the mountains back of our home
]
exclamation with full lungs Just to hear
| what Ezekiel calls "fhe 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 invisible. All the silences are filled
with voices ready to answer. Yet it would
not be SO startling il 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? VINO are you and where
are YOU, thou wo1drous Echog Sometimes
/ its response is a Federation. The shot of a
gun the clapping of the hands, the beating
/ OF drum, the voice of violin are some
times repeated many times by the Echo.
Near Coblentz-that which is said has
seventeen Echoes. In l776, a writer says
that near Milan, Italy, there were seventy
such reflections of sound to one snap of a
/ pisto'. Play bugle near a lake Of Killar-
ney and the tune is played back to you as
distinctly as when you played it. There is
well two hundred and ten feet deep at
arlsbrooke castle, in the Isle of Wight.
Drop pin into that well and the sound of
its fall comes to the top of the well distinct
| ly. blast of an Alpine horn comes back
from the rocks Of Jungfrau in surge after
surge of reflected sound, until it seems as il
every peak had lifted and blown an Alpine
horn.
But have you noticed-and this is the rea-
] bCu LOf tDo present ulsCOuTs6-UldJ GniS EcnO
in the natural world has its analogy in the
moral and religious worlds Have you noticed
the tremendous fact that what we say and
do comes back in reeoiled gladness or dis
asterS About this resonance / preach this
sermon.
First-Parental teaching and example
have their Echo in the character of descend
ants. Exceptions? Oh, yes. So in the
natural world there may be no Echo, or
distorted Echo, by reason OF peculiar prox-
imitles but the general rule is that the char
acter of the children is the Echo of the char
acter of the parents. The general rule is
that good parents have cool children aud
bad parents have bad children. If the old
| man is crank, his son is apt to be crank
| and the graudchild 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; "Herel BY
the help of God, | will stand this no longer
Against this hereditary tendency to queer
ness protest. And he or she will set up an
altar and magnificent life that will reverse
things, and there will be no more cranks
among that kindred.
In another family the father and mother
are consecrated people. What they do is
right. What they teach isrght. The boys
may for some time be wild and the daugh3
ter worldly, but watch! Years pass on per
haps ten years twenty years. and you go
back to the cdurch where the father and
mother used to be consistent members.
You have heard nothing about the family
for twenty years. and at the door of the
church you see the sexton AMI you ask him.
where is old Mr. Webster "Oh, he mas
been dea I many yearSp Where is Mrs
Webstert' Oh she died fifteen years agon'
II suppose Their son Joe went to the do3s?'
'Oh, nc, says the sexton, me is up there ia
the elders scat. He is one of our best and
most important member. You ought to
hear him pray and sing. He is not Joe any,
longer, he is EiGer Webster" swell where
is the aughter Maryf ! suppose she is the
same thou5htess butterfly she used to
be? "Ob, no." says the sexton,
''she is the president OF cur missionary
society and tho directress i'll the
orphan asylum. AMI when she goes down
tie street all the ragamuffins take hol | of her
dress and cry, 'AuntiP, when are you goingi
to bring us some more books ami shoes and
thingsT And when, in times Of revival,
there IS some bard case back in church
rev that no one else can touch, she goes where
he is, and IL one minute she has him
e-crying, and the first thing we know she is
fetching the hardened man up to the front
to be prayed for, and says, Here is a brother
who wants to find the way into the kingdom
of Cod And if noto1y seems ready to
pray she knees down in the aisle beside him
and says, o Lord" with pathos and a
power AMI triumph that seem instantly to
emancipate the hardened sinner. Oh, mol
you must not call her thoughtless butter
fly in our presence, You see we would not
stand it" The fact is that the son AMI
daughter Of that family did not promise
much at the start, but they are now an
Echo, glorious Echo, a prolonged Echo of
parental teaching and example.
A Vermont mother, as her boy was about
TO start for life on the sea, said; ed
ward, | have never seen the ocean, but UNI
derstand the great temptation is strong
] drink prOmiga m will tdNch
it." Many years after that, telling of this
in a meeting, Edward said: II gave that
promise to mother, aud have been around
the world and at Calcutta, the ports Of
the Mediterranean, San Francisco, Cape
of Good Hope and north and south poles,
and never saw a glass OF liquor in all those
years that my mothers form did not appear
before me, and | do not know how liquor
tastes. l never have tasted it and all be-
cause of the promise | made to my mother"
I his was the result of that conversation at
the gate of the Vermont farmhouse. Th9
statuary of Thorwaldsen was sent from
Italy to Germany, aud the straw i'll which
the statues had been packed was thrown
uJon the ground. The next spring beaut:-
full Italian flowers spraug up where this
straw had been cast, for in it had been some
of the seeds of Italian flowers, and, whether
conscious OF it or not we are all the time
planting for ourselves and planting for
others roses or thurns. You thought it
only straw, yet among it were anemones.
But here is siipshod home. the parents
are go iless pair. They let their children
do as they plelsa. No ex ample fit TO follow
No lessons of morality or religion. Sunday
no better than any other day. The Bible no
better than any other book. rhe house is
sort of inn where the older and youu ger
people of the household stop,for awhile TIE
theory acted on, though perhaps not an
nounced. is: The children will nave to do
4 -. a
lottery anyhow, and some draw prizes and
some draw blanks, and we win trust to
luck"
Skip twenty years and come back to the
neighoorhood where that family used to live.
You meet on the street or on tho road an
old inhabitant of that neighborhood, AMI
you say. Can you tell me anything about
the Petersons who used to live here9n YES"
says the old inhabitant; 81 remember them
very well. The father and mother have
been dead for years" well how about
the children What has become of themen
The old inhabitant replies: They turned
out badly. You know the old man was
about half an infidel and the boys were all
inddelS The oldest son married but got
into drinking habits, and in few years his
wife was not able to live with him any long
er, and his children were taken by relatives
ana he died of delirium tremens on Black
wells Island. His other son forged the name
OF his employer and fed to Canada
"One of the daughters OF the oil folks
married an inebriate with the idea of reform
ing him, and you know how that always
ends-in the ruin of both the experimeuter