ALL ETERNITY IS AN ECHO Spiritual Lessons Drawn From the Law of Sounds i Thu Rfnoiwiire of flood Iteod* and the Echo or Kell Done Will Fill the Kara of the Assembled Mil lion* the I.a*t Day, Brooki.tx, N. Y., Jan. 17.—Dr. Tnlmnge gave a netv llluatrntion in hi* sermon this morning of hi* mastery of the art of drawing spirited lesson* from common na tural phenomenon. HI* subject vra* “Kchocs,"aml his text: Ezekiel vli ;7,"The sounding again of the mountain*.'' At last 1 havo found it The biblo has in it a recognition of all phases of tho natural world from the aurora of the midnight heavens to the phosphor escence of the tumbled sea. llut the well-known sound that we call the echo I found not until a few days ago I discovered it in my text: "The sound ing again of the mountains.'' That is the echo Ezlkiel of the text had beard it again and again. Horn among mountains and in his journey to dis tant exile ho had passed amoug moun tains, and it was natural that all through his writings there should loom up the mountains. Among them ho lad heard tho sound of cataracts and of tempests in wrestle with oak and cedar,and the voices of the wild beasts, but a man of so poetic a nature as Eze kiel could not allow another sound, viz., tho echo, to be disregarded, and so he gives us in our text "the sound ing again of ihe mountains” ureeK mymoiogy represcm.cn me , echo as a nymph, the daughter of , Earth and Air, following Narcissus : through forests and into grottoes and ' every whither, and so 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 and girlhood expert- 1 men ted with this responsiveness of sound. Standing half way between the house and barn, we shouted many a time to hear the reverberations, 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 sounding again of the mountains” The echo has frightened many a child and many a man. It 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 something else, but why do those lips of the uir say just what you say? Do they npean to mock or mean to please? Who are you and where are you, thou wondrous echo? Sometimes its response is a re iteration. The shot of a gun, tho clap ping of the hands, the beating of a drum, the voice of a violin are some times repeated many times by the echo. Near Coblent/., that which is said has seventeen echoes. In 1770, a writer says that near Milan, Italy, there were seventy 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 well 310 feet deep at Carisbrooke cas tle, in the Isle of Wight Drop a pin into that Well, and the sound of its fall comes to the top of the well distinctly. A blast of an Alpine horn comes back from the rocks of Jung frau in purge 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 its analogy in the moral und religious world? Have you noticed the tre mendous fact that what we say or do comes back in recoiled gladness or dis aster? About this resonance I preach this sermon. j. rareuiai veacning unu exuiupie J, have their e cho in the character of descendants. Exceptions? Oh, yes. So in the natural world there may be no echo, or a distorted echo, by reason of peculiar proximities, but the general rule is that the character of the children is the echo of the charac V ter of 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 a crank and the grandchild a 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: "Here! By the help of God, I will stand this . ' no longer. Against this hereditary tendency to queerness I protest.” And he or she will set up an altar and a magnificent life that will reverse things and there will be no more cranks among that kindred. In another family the H' ‘ father and mother are consecrated peo ple. 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 ten years, twenty years, and i you go back to the church where the father and mother used to be consist ent members You have heard noth ing about the family for twenty years, », : and at the door of the church you see v the sexton, and you ask him: "Where ‘ - is old Mr. Webster?" "Oh! he has f been dead many years.” “Where is Mrs Webster?” “Oh! she died fifteen years ago.” “I suppose their son Joe went to the dogs?" "Oh! no,” says the sexton. "He is up there in the elders' seat He is one of our best and most important 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? I suppose she is the same thoughtless butterfly she used to be?” "Oh! no,” says the sexton, “she is the president of our missionary society and the di ti-- • rectrcss in the orphan asy!um, and •*when she goes down the street all the ragamuffins take hold of her dress and cry. ‘Auutie. when are you going to ■ bring us some more books and shoes and things?' And. when, in times of revival, there is some hard case back in u church pew that no one else ^ ■ can touch, she goes where he is, and in ■ one minute she has him a-crying, and tho 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 ;v .... nto tho kingdom of God.’ And tf no* boov seems ready to pray, she kneels town in the aisle beside him and says: Oh! Lord!' with a pathos and a power and a triumph that seem in ttnntly to emancipate the hardened tinner. Oh! no, you must not call her v thoughtless butterfly in our presence. Vou see we would not stand it” The Fnct is that the son and daughter of Lliut family did not promise much at ilic start, but they are now an echo, a rlorious echo, a prolonged echo, of < ourental teaching and example. A Vermont mother, as her boy was j ibout to start for a life on the sea, j mid, “Edward, 1 have never seen the | >cenn, but I understand tho great ' temptation is strong drink. Promise ne you will never touch it” Many rears after that, telling of this in a neeting, Edward said, "I gave that iromise to mother, and have been iround the world and at Calcutta, the ' jorts of the Mediteranean, San Fran- 1 dsco, Cape of Good Hope, and north ind south poles, and never saw a glass >f liquor in all those years that my ; nother's form did not appear before ne, and I do not know how liquor .astes. I have never tasted it and all localise of the promise I made to my nothcr.” This was the result ofl, .hat conversation at the gate >f the Vermont farm house. The itatunry of Thorwaldsen was sent from taly to Germany, and the straw in vhich the statues had been packed vas thrown upon the ground. The text spring beautiful Italian flowers .prang up where this straw had been :ast, for in it had been some of the eeds of Italian flowers, and, whether lonscious of it or not, we are all the .line planting for ourselves and plant ng for others roses or thorns. You bought it only straw, yet among it vere anemones nut, hero is a slip-shod home. The larents are a (lodless pair. They let .heir children do as they please. No ixample fit to follow. No lessons of norality or religion. Sunday no better han any other day. The bible no letter than any o'ther book. The icuse is a sort of inn where the older ind younger people of the houshold •top for awhile. The theory acted on, though not announced, is: “The chil Iren will have to do as I did, and take heir chances. Life is a lottery any iow, and some draw prizes and some slanks, and we will trust to luck.’’ ikip twenty years and come back to ■he neighborhood where that family ised to live. You meet on the street >r on the road an old inhabitant of :liat neighborhood, and you Bay: “Can pou tell me anything about the Peter ions who used to live hero?” “Yes,” lays the old inhabitant, “I remember them very well. The father and mother have been dead for years.” •Well, how about the children? What lias become of them?” The old inhabitant replies: “They turnod nut badly. You know the sld man was about half an in fidel and the boys were all infidels, rhe oldest son married, but got into lrinktng habits, and in a few years his wife was not able to live with him any longer and his children were taken by relatives, and he died of delirium tre mens on Iilack well’s island. HU other son forged the name of his employer and fled to Canada. One of the daugh ters of the old folks married an inebri ate with the idea of reforming him. ! and you know how that always ends— in the ruin of both the experimenter and the one experimented with. The other daughter disappeared mysteri ously, and has not been heard of. There was ayoung woman picked out of the Hast river and put in the morgue, and some thought it was her, but I cannot say.” "Is it possiblo?” you cry out. “Yes. it is possible. The family is a complete wreck. ” My hearers, that is just what might have been ex pected. A11 this is only the echo, the awful echo, the dreadful echo of pa rental obliquity and unfaithfulness. The old folks heaped up a mountain of wrong influences, and this is what my text calls “The sounding of the moun tains" Indeed our entire behavior in in this world will have a resound. While opportunities fly in a straight line and just touch us once and are gone never to return, the wrongs we practice upon others fly m a circle, and they come back to the place from which they started. Doctor Guillotine thought it smart to introduce the instrument of death, named after him; but did not like it so well when his own head was chopped off with the guillotine. no, aiso, mo judgment nay will oe an eclio 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 appointed such a 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 or any other day. The fact is that we are now making up its voices, its trumpets will only sound back again to us what we now say and da That is the mean ing of all that scripture which says that Christ will on that day address the soul, saying, "I was naked and ye clothed me, I was sick and in prison and ye visited me. ” All the footsteps in that prison corridor as the Christian reformer walks to the wicket of the in carcerated, yea all the whispers of con dolence in the ear of that poor soul dying in that garret, yea all the kind nesses are being caught up and rolled on until they dash against the judg ment throne and then they will be struck back into the ears of these sons and daughters of mercy. Louder than the crash of Mount Wash ington falling on its face in the world-wide catastrophe, and the boiling of the sea over the fur naces of universal conflagration will | be the echo and re-echcu of the good j deeds done and the sympathetic words uttered and the mighty benefactions ! wrought On that day all the char | ities, all the self-sacrifices, all the ; philanthropies, all the beneficent last wills and testaments, all the Christian work of all the ages, will be piled up into mountains, and those who have served God and served the suffering human race will hear what my text styles "the sounding of the mount ains" My subject advances to tell you that 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 origin ally projected. Lord Rafeigh says that a woman's voice sounding from a grove was returned an octave higher. A scientist playing a flute in Fairfax county, Virginia, found that alt the notes were returned, although some of them came in raised pitch. A truiupet tonnded ten times near Glasgow, Scot land, and the ten notes were all re turned, but a third lower. And the tpiritual law corresponds with the natural world. What we do of good nr bad may not come back to us in just die proportion we expect it, but come ttack it will; it may be from a higher gladness than we thought or from i deeper woe, from a mightier tonqueror or from a wor*e cap tive, from a higher throne or deeper lungeon. Our prayer or our bias-' nhemy, our kindness or our cruelty, mr faith or our unbelief, our holy life >r our dissolute behavior, will come iack somehow. Suppose the boss of a factory or the head of a commercial irm, some day comes out among his :lerks or employes, and putting his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, tays, with an air of swagger and jo :osity: “Well, I don't believe in the nible or the church. The one is an imposition and the other is full of lypocrites. I declare I would not rust one of those very pious people 'urther than I could see him. ” That s all ho says, but he has said enough, l'he young men go back to their coun ters or their shuttles, and say within themselves: “Well, he is a successful nan and has probably studied up the .vhole subject and is probably right.” 1'hat one lying utterance against aibles and churches has put five young nen on the wrong track, and though the influential man had spoken only in half jest, the echo shall come back to nim in the five ruined lifetimes, and 3ve destroyed eternities. You see the schoes are an octave lower than he an ticipated. On the other hand, some rainy day, when there are hardly any zustomers, the Christian merchant :ome> out from his counting room and itands among the young men, who have nothing to do, and says: “Well, boys, this is a dull day, but it will dear oil after a while. There are- a ifuuu uiuii'V ups uuu uuwns in ousmess, but there is au over-ruling providen e. Years ago I made up my mind to trust God and he has always seen me through. 1 remem ber when I was your age, I had just come to town and the tempi ations of city life gathered around me, but 1 resisted. The fact is there were two old folks out on the old farm praying for me. and I knew it, and somehow I could not do as some of the clerks did or go where some of the clerks went. I tell you, boys, it is best always to do right, and there is nothing to keep one right like the old-fashioned religion of Jesus Christ. John, where did you go to church last Sunday? Henry,"how is the Young Men's Christian association prospering?” About noon the rain ceases and the sun comes out und the clerks go to their places, and they say within thnmselyes: ‘‘Well, he is a suc cessful merchant, and I guess he knows what he is talking about, and the Christian religion must be a good thing. God knows I want some help in this battle with temptation and sin.” The successful merchant who uttered the kind words did not know how much good he was doing, but the echo will come bnck in five lifetimes of virtue and usefulness, and five Christ ian death-beds, and five heavens From all the mountains of rapture and all the mountains of glory and all the mountains of eternity, he will catch what Ezekiel in ray text styles “the sounding again of the moun tains.” Yea, I take a step further in this sub ject,and say that our own eternity will be a reverberation of our own earthly lifetime. What we are here we will bo there, ouly on a larger scale. Dis solution will tear down the body and embank it, but our faculties of mind and soul will go right on without the hesitancy of a moment and without any change except enlargement and intensification. There will be no more difference than between a lion behind iren bars and a lion escaped into the field, between an eagle in a cage and an eagle in the sky. Good here, good there; bad here, bad there. Time only a bedarfed eternity. Eter nity 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 quintillian, but the ship does not change its fundamen tal structure after it gets out of the l dry dock, it does not pass from brig to schooner, or from schooner to man-of | war. What we aro when launched I from this world, wo will be in the | world to come. Oh! God! by thy con i verting and sanctifying spirit make us j right here and now, that we may be i right forever! j “Well, says someone, “this idea of moral, spiritual and eternal echo is new to me. Is there not some way of stopping' this echo?" My answer is: “God can and he only.’’ If it is a I cheerful echo, wo do not want it | stopped; if a baleful echo, we would ! like to have it stopped. The hardest thing in this world to do is to stop an echo. Many an oration has been spoiled and many an orator con founded by an echo. Costly churches, cathe drals, theaters and music halls have been ruined by an echo. Architects have strung wires across auditoriums to arrest the echo and hung uphol stery against the walls, hoping to en trap it, and hundreds of thousands of dollars have been expended in public 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 unexplored realms of acoustics are larger than the explored When our first ltrooklyn tabernacle was being- constructed, we were told by architects that it %vas of such a shape that the human voice could not be heard in it, or, if heard, it would be jangled into echoes. In state of worri ment I went to Joseph Henry, tho president of the Smithsonian institute at Washington, and told him of this evil prophecy, and he replied: “I have probably experimented more with the I laws of sound than any other man. and I have got as fur as this; two | buildings may seem to be exactly alike . and yet in one the acoustics may be I good and in the other bad Goon with I your church building and trust that all I will be well. ” And all was well. Oh | this mighty law of sornd! Oh, this | subtle echo! There is only one beiug j in the universe who thoroughly under I stands it—“the sounding again of the mountains ” Oskaloosa proposes to build many new buildings in 189J. INVESTMENTS IN LAND A Retrospective View by an Intelli gent Observer. Northwestern Iowa Ten Tears Ago the Same as Sonth Dakota and Ne braska Now—The Prospects Hopeful for All. Mr. Joseph Sampson, of Sioux City, i a la rye investor in western lands and a most competent observer and judge of values, has recently published the, following interesting sketch: In the month of June, 188J, accompanied by n friend. I drove across the country northwest from Storm Lake to Sheldon, in O'Brien county, to attend a land con vention being held under the auspices of Geo. D. Perkins, the newly appointed j commissioner of immigration for the state of Iowa. The distance between Storm Lake and Sheldon in a straight Hue ; across the county is about sixty miles. ; On this drive we passed over many solid sections of vacant prairie. After leav ing Buena Vista county and getting into the corner of Clay and O’Brien coun- i ties we began to note vacated houses and abandoned farms, the number growing quite large as wc came near the county seat town of Primghar. where we stopped for refreshments. While we were eating lunch the proprietor of the restaurant begged us to buy his farm, which we had passed on the way. It lay two miles east of town and was mortgaged for about 1000. He wanted $i00 for his equity, hut we felt that we would not be safe in offer ing him $100 for his homestead subject to the mortgage for fear he would take us up. This would have made the farm co*t us less than $5 per acre. It had a com fortable little house and a nice grove of trees, and about eighty acres under culti vation. We had noted the farm on our way along with especial interest on account of the over-supply of dilapidated machinery that we saw scattered around the house and in the grove adjoining. Hundreds of farms we found could be bought on as favorable terms in several of the counties of northwestern Iowa at this time, and the burning questions that were discussed at the land convention were how to attract settlers to our prairies and how to best promote the prosperity of those already settled. We discussed flax grow ing, dairy business, blue grass, timothy. I-IUYCI, CYI2. UUiillf, iuv l-MUYKir tion we .heard from Alexander Peddle, representing Scotch colon ists, and Close Bros., representing English colonists. L. S. Coffin, of Fort Dodge, made a stirring address, pointing out the necessity of keeping these lauds for American farmers who would yet come in by the thousands and appreciate the magnificent opportunities our prairies af forded of founding fine homes. Willis Drummond, jr., of Chicago, was on hand with his lieutenants representing the Chi cago, Milwaukee and St. Paul land grant, and other men were on band representing the land grant departments of other rail road companies. these gentlemen were all perfectly willing to let the land be in vaded by the peasant farmers of Europe, or India for that matter, provided the lands were sold at fair prices and a good first, cash payment made on the purchase. Looking back acrostf only the brief pe riod of eleven years and thinking of the really desolate character of northwestern Iowa in that year when we were all so anxious to promote immlgratibn, one is lost in wonder and surprise at the swift fhauges that have taken place in this por tion of Iowa. Since that day in Juue the railway system of northwestern Iowa has been perfected to a wonderful extent, so that it is impossible for a farmer to get more than ten miles from a railway sta tion. The Northwestern line has been built through from Eagle Grove to Hawardcu and beyond; the Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northern line through from Grundy Center to Watertown and Sioux Falls: the Illinois Central branches from Cherokee to Onawaand Sioux Falls; and last but not least, the Sioux City and Northern, with its great lake outlet forth© produets of the soil. If someone had pre dicted at our land convention in 1883 the things that would come to pass during these eleven years, indicating the com pact settlement of the prairies, the enorm ous rise in the price of lands and the in dustrial and agricultural changes inci dent to improved methods of farming, all who were present at the convention would have voted the man a “visionary” or per haps insane. Taking up the cue from what we have all seen of northwestern Iowa since 1881, may not we who live here in Sioux City be entirely justified in glancing to the west and northwest of us to find the conditions that surrouud the people of Dakota and Nebraska in a certain sense just the same as surrounded the people of northwestern Iowa ten yearn ago? May we not also be entirely justified in looking for much greater progress and development during the next ten years in the section referred to than has been made by us in Iowa be tween the years 1880 and 1892? The soil of the prairies west of us is as fertile as is that of Iowa, perhaps more so, having a larger quantity of lime in the soil, thus making sure a better quality and yield of small grain. The climate is the same. The one drawback that has been menacing the people of portions of South Dakota— namely, the lack of moisture—is now in a fair way to- be overcome by irrigation. It is clearly shown that the irrigation of immense areas of South Dakota is purely a mechanical question, that is to say, a question of reaching the underground flow of water, and then, when it is found, distributing it properly in t ie right season over the land in crop. Millions of acres, however, that are yet to be brought into cultivation will yield profitable crops without irrigation, so that whether irriga tion becomes the commercial success that is hoped for or not, still the state of South Dakota is capable of sustaining an agri cultural population ten times greater than it has at present and still not have its first-class lands as compactly settled as are the lands of some of the eastern states. To give more than a mere hint at the fillin'’ up of Dakota a id Nebraska that is sure to come within the next ten years would seem to be unnecessary, for our most thoughtful people fully concur in the idea of the rapid settlement of the cheap lands west of us. There is no such body of cheap lands to be found on the globe today having the same dim itic conditions and railway facilities. No other section of the country today presents such a field for land investment or speculation. East of us very little unimproved land is left to sell and the improved lands are ranging from $.30 to (45. while to the west of us the same quality of land with as good market facilities can be bought at from $10 to $20 per acre. With the inrush of new settlers and the stir and enterprise that wUJ be in the air during the next fow years no doubt the smaller towns and v 1 ages will be built up. The building ui of the towns and villages wiu in turn affect business in our city and give to our people the opportunity of aiding and fostering further enterprises that will re-act uyon and itr prove the general industrial and commercial development of the country surrounding. We have ertered into a period of good average pri< cs for farm prod* cfc*. This condition will continue ft r a uumber of years without any question. In other words, we will not see the same depression of agricultural products that has kept our farmers behind for the past six or seven year* Aside from the European d ;mand for our breadst^JCs we are getting nearer to the point where the domestic consump tion equals the domestic supply. For the nest tour years, as Krastus Wlman has put it. “the’farmer will bo on top '• t hat we will all rejoice in the prosperity of the farmer goes without sayinjr, and that this prosperity will incidentally affect us all, and improve our condition on every hand, may serve to fill us with hope as we cntei upon the year 1892. A FEW THOUSAND BUSHELS SHORT. A Splurge In Wheat an“w on ornamental fountains. Beecham’ . P12.LS enjoy the larpest of any proprietary medicine in ttie Made only in St Helens, England. —A parasite which kills forty pers an hour is to bo imported numbers from Australia. Out of Sorts Describes s fee ins peenUsr to persons of ■** or tendency, or c.used iy cbsnxe of cum. ■ Ml>— life. The stomach Is out ot order. t““ “ er does not fsel rlsbt The Nerves sesm stained to their utmost, the ®ln 11 ^ Hood'S PIIIS care liver l^s. pric®3