Evening capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1888-1893, 1892-01-18


in this battle with temptation and
mn.
The successful merchant who ut
tered the kind words did not know
how much good he was doing. but
the Echo viii come back in five life
times of virtue aud usefulness and
/ five Christian deathbeds and Eve
heavens From all the mountains Of
rapture and all the mountains Of
glory and all the mountains Of eter-
Z nifty he will catch what E: kiel in
my text styles The sounding again
/ Ot the mountains.
Yea. tako "a step further in this
+ subject and say that our own eternity
will be reverberation of our own
earthly lifetime What we are here
we will be there. only on larger
scale. Dissolution will tear down the
body and embank it, but our faculties
of mind aud soul will go right on
without the hesitancy of a moment
and without any change except en-
largement and intensification. There
will be no more difference than be-
tween lion behind the iron bars and
a lion escaped into the field. between
an eagle in the cage and an eagle in
the sky. Good here. good there; bad
here. bad there. Time is only a be
dwarfed eternity. Eternity is only
an enlarged time. In this life our
soul is in dry dock
The moment we leave this life we
are launched for our great voyage,
and we sail on for centuries qeintil.
lion, but the ship does not change its
fundamental structure after it gets
out Of the dry dock; it does not pass
from brig to schooner or from
schooner to man-of-war. What we
are when launched from this world
we will be in the world TO come Oh,
God by thy converting and sancti-
flying spirit make US right here and
now, that we may he right foreverl
'Weil, says some one. this idea
Of moral. spiritual and eternal Echo
is new to me. IL there not some way
of stopping this Echo2" My answer
is. God can, and he only" If it is
a cheerful Echo we do not want it
stopped; if baleful Echo we would
like to have it stopped. The hardest
thing in this world TO do is to stop
an Echo. Many an Grafton has been
spoiled and many an orator con
founded by an Echo. Costly churches,
cathedrals. theaters and music halls
have been ruined by an Echo Archi
tects have strung wires across audi
toriums to arrest the Echo and hung
upholstery against the walls, hoping
to entrap it, and hundreds of thou
sands of dollars have been expended
in pubic buildings of this country TO
keep the air from answering when it
ought to be quiet.
Aristotle and Pythagoras and Isaac
Newton and La Place and our own
Joseph Henry tried to hunt down the
Echo, but still the uueXplored realms
of acoustics are larger than the ex-
plored. When our first Brooklyn
tabernacle was being constructed we
were told by architects that it was of
such shape that the human voice
could not he heard in it, or, if heard.
it would be tangled in Echoes,
In state of worriment | went to
Joseph Henry, the president of the
Smithsonian institution at Washing
ton. and told him of this evil proph-
ecy, and he replied II have proba
bly, experimental more with the laws
of sound than any other man, and /
got as far az this, Two buildings may
seem To be exactly alike and yet in
one the acoustics may be good and
in the other bad Go on with your
church building and trust that all
will be well And all was well
Oh, this mighty law OF soundl Oh
this subtle Echo! There is only one
Being in the universe who thorough
ly understands it The sounding
again of the mountains.
AWFUL NATURE OF THE IMMORTAL.
And it is so hard to destroy nat
ural Echo, how much harder to stop
moral Echo. Il spiritual Echo, an
immortal Echo You kuow that the
Echoes are effected by the surfaces,
and tine shape of rocks, and the depth
of ravineS. and the relative position
of buildingsl Aud once in heaven,
God will so arrange the relative po-
sition of mansions and temples and
thrones that one of thS everlasting
charms of heaven will bo the roll
ing. bursting ascending descending,
chanting Echoes. An the songs we
ever sang devoutly, all tAe prayers
we have ever uttered earnestly, all
the Christian deeds we lulVo ever
done, viii DO waiting 10 spring upon
us in Echo.
The scientists tell us that in this
world the roar of artillery and the
boom of the thunder are 50 loud, be
cause they are combination of
Echoes 4-all the hillsides, and the
cayerns, and the walls furnishing a
share of the resonance, And never
viii we understand the full power
and music of an Echo until with su-
pernatural faculties, able to endure
them, we hear all the conjoined
sounds of heavenly Echoes harps
and tumpets, orrnCSuNS and ora
tOrios, hosannahs and hallelujahs
east side of heaven answering to the
west side, north side ca south side,
and all the heights. 0ui all the
depths, and all tho mmensities, and
all the eternities joining in Echo upon
Echo. Echo in the wake OF Eoho.
In the future state, whe, her Of rap
tur0 or ruin, we will hstou tnr rever-
berations of earthly thiagS and do
noss Noltaire standing amid the