Milford chronicle., 1888-03-02

not Unreasonable to suppose that it may
stand 1000 years after his arrival -Four
thousand years the world swung of in sin,
1900 years it may be swinging back into
Righteousness. By the ordinary rate Of null
duplication, Of the worlds population in a
century your descendants will be over 600,
and by two centuries at least over 100000,
perhaps 100000, and upon every one Of them
you, the mother Of today, win have an inilu-
ence for good or evil And If in
two centuries your descendants shall
have with their names filed a scroll
Of hundreds Of thousands, will some angel
from heaven to whom is given the capacity
to calculate the number Of the stars Of
heaven and the sands Of the seashore, step
down and tell US how many descendants you
will have in the 4,O00th year Of the worlds
possible continuance Do not let the grand
mothers any longer think that they are re-
tired, and sit clear back out of sight from the
world, feeling that they have no relation to
it. The mothers Of the last century are to-
day in the senates, tho parliamonts, tho pal
aces, the pulpits, the banking houses, the
professional chairs, the prisons, the aims
houses. tho company OF midnight brigands,
the cellars, the bitches Of this century. You
have been thinking about tho importance Of
having the right influence upon one nursery.
You have been thinking of the importance Of
getting those two little feet on the right path.
You have been thinking of your child's dos-
tiny for the next eighty years, if it should
pass on to be an OctOgenarian. That
is well; but my subject sweeps thousand
years, q million years. q quadrillion Of
years. cannot stop at one cradle, am
looking at the cradles that reach all round
the world and across all time. am not
talking of Mother Eunice; am talking Of
Grandmother Lois. The only way you can
tell tho force of q current is by sailing up
stream; or the force of an ocean wave, by
running the ship against it. Running along
with it we cannot appreciate the force. In
estimating maternal influence We generally
run along with it down tho stream Of time,
and so We don't understand the full force
Let us come up to it from the eternity side,
after it has been working on for centuries,
and see all the good it has done and all the
evil it has accomplished multiplied in mag
niicent or appalling compound interest The
difference between that mothers influence
on her children now and tho influence when
it has been multiplied in hundreds Of
thousands Of lives is tho difference be
tween the Mississippi river way up at
the top of the continent, starting
from tho little Lake Itasca, seven miles long
and one wide, and its mouth at the Gulf Of
Mexico, wherc na7ies might ride Between
the birth of that river and its burial in the
sea the Missouri pours in, and the Ohio pours
in, and the Arkansas pours in, and the Red
and White and Yazoo rivers pour in, and all
the states and territories between the Ale
ghany and Rocky mountains make contribu-
ton. Now, in order to test the power Of q
mothers influence, we need to come in off Of
the ocean of eternity and sail up toward the
one cradle, and we will find 10000 tributaries
of influence pouring in and pouring down
But it is, after all, one great river Of power
rolling On and rolling forever. Who can
fathom it! Who can bridge it! Who can
stop it? Had not mothers better be intensi-
flying their prayers? Had they not better be
elevating their example9 Had they not
better be rousing themselves with the
consideration that by their faithfulness or
neglect they are starting an influence which
will be stupendous after the last mountain Of
earth is fiat, and the last sea has been dried
up, and the last flake of the ashes Of con-
sumed world shall have been blown away,
and all the telescopes Of other worlds directed
to the track around which our world once
swung shall discover not so much as a cinder
of the burned-down and swept-off planet.
Ia Ceylon there is a granite column of thirty
six square feet in size, which is thought ly
the natives to decide the worlds continuance.
An angel with robe spun from zephyrs is
once century to descend and sweep the hem
of that robe across the granite, and when by
that attrition the column is worn away they
say time will end But by that process that
Of
ence before mothers influence will begin to
give away.
If mother tell a child he is not good,
some bugaboo will come and catch him, the
fear excited may make the child a coward,
and the fact that he finds that there is TO
bugaboo may make him liar and the echo
of that false alarm may be heard after fifteen
generations have been born and have ex-
pired If a mother promise a child a reward
for good behavior and after the good be-
havior forgets to give the reward, the cheat
may crop out in some faithlessness 500 years
further on. If a mother culture a child's
vanity and eulogize his curls and extol the
night black or sky blue or nut brown of the
child's eyes, and call out in his presence the
admiration or spectators, pride and arrogance
may be prolonged after half a dozen family
records have been obliterated. If a mother
express doubt about some statement of the
Holy Bible in a child's presence, long after
the gates of this historical era have closed
and the gates of another era have opened,
the result may be seen in q champion bias
phemer. But, on the other hand, if
mother walking with child see a suffering
one by the wayside, and says, "My child,
give that tea cent piece to that lame boy"
the result may be seen on the other side Of
the following century in some George Muller
building a whole village Of orphanages. u
a mother sit almost every evening by the
trundle bed of a child and teach it lessons o.
a Saviour's love and a Saviour's example, of
Tire importance Of truth and the horror Of
lie, and the virtues of industry and kindness
and sympathy and seh-sacrifice, long after
the mother has gone and the child has gone
and the lettering on both the tombstones
shall have been washed out by the storms Of
innumerable winters, there may be standing,
as a result of those trundle bed lessons, fam
ing evangels, world moving reformers, circu-
lating Summerfelds, weeping Paysons, thun-
dering Whitefields, emancipating Washing
tons.
Good or bad influence may skip one gener-
tion or two generations, but it will be sure to
land in the third or fourth generation, just
as the Ten Commandments, speaking Of the
visitation of God on families, says nothing
about the second generation, but entirely
skips the second and speaks Of the third and
and fourth generation; ''Visiting tie iDi1s1
ties of the fathers upon the third and fourth
generations of them that hate me. Parental
influence, right and wrong, may jump over
a generation, but it will come down further
on as sure as you sit there and stand here.
Timothy's ministry was projected by his
Grandmother Lois. There are women here,
the sons and daughters Of the Christian
church, who are such as a result Of the
censecration of their great-great-grand-
n-others. Why, who do you think the Lord
Isl You talk as though his memory was
weak. He can no easier remember a prayer
five minutes than be can five centuries.
This explains what we often see-sOme
man or woman distinguished for be
uevolence when the father and mother were
distinguished for penuriousness; or you see
some young man or woman with bad father
and hard mother come out gloriously for
Christ and mako the church sob and shout