The morning times., 1897-03-01
ECHO ANSWERS EVERY ACT
DIR. Talmage on Analogy Between
the Moral and Physical.
OF HERKDITY'S INFLUENCE
Harmonious Effects Follow Every
Word or Action Inevitably-Ete
nifty Reverberation of Time.
Time a Bedwarfed Eternity-Fu-
ture Statean Echo of z Present Life.

Time a Bedwarfed Eternity-Fu-
ture Statean Echo of z resent Life.
Rev. DR.. Talmage preached on Echoes
at the First Presbyterian Church yesterday
morning, and on a text from Ezekiel,
vii, 1.-THE sounding again of the mount
aims" He spoke. in part, as follows:
The Bible has in it a recognition of
all phases Of the natural world. but the
weIl-known sound that we call the echo l
found not until 1 discovered it in my
text.
Greek mythology represented Echo as
a nymph. the daughter of Earth and Air
following Narcissus through forests and
into grottoeS and every whittier. AMI SO
strange and wierd and startling is the
echo | do not wonder that the supersti-
tious 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 reverberations. or out among
the mountains back of our home, on some
long tramp, we stopped and made eXCla-
nation with full lungs just to hear what
Ezekiel calls 1.-The sounding again OF the
mountains The echo has frightened
many a child and many a man.
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 religious world? Have
| you noticed the tremendous fact that what
we say and do comes back in recoiled
| gladness or disaster? About this re-
| sOnanCe L preach this sermon.
| Parental teaching and example have
their echo IN the character OF the de
scendants. The general rule is that good
parents have good children. If the old
man is a crank, the son is apt to be u
crank, and the grandchild a crank. The
| tendency is so mighty in that direction
that it VIII get worse and worse unless
| some hero or heroine in that line shall
rise and say: 'Herei BY the help of God,
l will stand this no longer. Against this
1
test And he or she Will set up an
| altar and a ma agnificent life that will re-
verse things and there VIII he no more
cranks among that kindred. In another
family the father and mother are conse-
Grated people What they do is right;
what they teach is right. The boys may
| for some time be wild and the daughters
worldly, but watchi Years pass on-per-
| bap rau nd
and daughter of that family, who did not
| promise much at the start, are now II
glorious echo OF parental teaching and
| example.
While opportunities fly in straight
| line and just touch US once and are
gone the wrongs we practice upon others
fly n circle, and they come back to
the place from which they started So.
also, the Judgment day Will he an echo
of all our other days The universe needs
such a day. for there are so many things
in the world that need to be fixed up and
explained. If God had not app pointed
such day all the nations would cry
out: Oh. God, give us a Judgment day
But we are apt to think of it and speak
about it as a day away off in the future
having no special connection with this day
|
now making up its voices, and its trumpets
will only sound hack again to us what we
now say and do. That is the meaning OF
all that Scripture which says that Christ
will on that day address the soul, saying:
Il was naked and ye clothed me; l was
sick and in prison and We visited me- >
| Louder than the crash of Mount Wash
ington falling on its face in the world
| n 81 M a Of ba
sea over the furnaces of universal con-
flagration, will he the echo and the re-
echo of the good deeds done, and the
sympathetic words uttered, and the mighty
benefactiOns wrought.
Eternity itself Is only an echo of time
Mind you, the analogy warrants my saying
this The echo is not always exactly in
kind like the sound originally pro ojected.
Lord Raleigh says that a woman's voice
sounding from grove was returned an
octave higher A scientist playing a flute
in Fairfax county, Va, found that all the
notes were returned although some of
them came in raised pitch. A trumpet
sounded ten times near Glasgow, Scot
land, and the ten notes We're all repeated,
but a third lower. And the spiritual law
corresponds with the natural world.
t-Cpu
come back TO us in Just the proportion we
expect il, but come back it will.
"Our own eternity will be reverberation
of our own earthly lifetime. Dissolution
Will tear down the body and embank it
but our faculties of mind and soul will
go right on without the hesitancy of
moment and without any change, except
enlargement and intensification. Good
here, good there; bad here, bad there
Time is only bedwarfed eternity. Eter
nifty 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 quintiian, but the ship does
not change it's fundamental structure
after it gets out of the dry dock.
THE hardest thing in TINS world to do
is to stop an echo Costly churches,
cathedrals theaters and music halls have
| been ruined by an echo.
"And, if it is o hard to destroy a natural
echo, how much harder to stop q moral
echo, spiritual echo. You know that
| echoes are affected by the surfaces, and
the shape of the rocks, and the depth of