Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1888-03-07

y
sters of the household by too great leniency
These old folks are the resort when grea
troubles come, and there is calming au'
soothing power in the touch of an aged ham
that is almost supernatural. They feel the,
are almost through with the journey o
life, and read the old book more than the.
used to, hardly knowing which most the,
enjoy, the Old Testament or the New, ant
often stop and dwell tearfully over tn
family record halfway between. We hal
them to. day, whether in the House of Coz
or at the homestead. Blessed is that house
hold that has in it grandmother Lois
Where she is angels are lowering round ant
God is in the room. May her last days b.
like those lovely autumnal days that W,
call Indian Summer. l never knew the JOY
of having grandmother that is the disad
vantage of being the youngest child of til,
family. The elder members only have tina
benediction But though she went up ou
of this life before I began it, have heart
of her faith in God, that brought all he
children into the kingdom and two of then
into the ministry, and then brought all tn,
grandchildren into the kingdom, myself thu
last and least worthy. Is it not time tha
YOU and I do two things, swing open pic
ed shoulders of the past, and call dowr
from their heavenly thrones the godly
grandmothers, to give them our thanks, anc
then persuade the mothers of to-day thai
they are living for all time, and that against
the sides of every cradle in which child is
rocked beat the two eternitiess
: Here we have an untried, undiscussed
and unexplored subject, You often heal
about your influence upon your own chill.
dren-I am not talking about that. What
about your influence upon the twentieth
century, upon the thirtieth century, upon
the fortieth century, upon the year two
thousand, upon the year four thousand, il
the world lasts so long? The world stood
four thousand years before Christ came; ii
is not unreasonable to suppose that it may
stand four thousand years after his arrival.
Four thousand years the world swung of
in sin, four thousand years it may be swing
ing back into righteousness. By the ordi-
nary rate Of multiplication of the world s
population in century your descendants
will be over six hundred, and by two GEN.
turies at least over hundred thousand,
perhaps two hundred thousand, and upon
every one of them you, the mother of to-
day. will have an influence for good or evil.
And if in two centuries your descendants
shall have with their names filled q scroll of
hundreds of thousands, will some angel
from Heaven to whom is given the capacity
to calculate the number of the stars of hsav-
en- and the sands of the seashore, step down
and tell us how many descendants you will
have in the four thousandth year of the
worlds possible continuance? Do not let
the grandmothers any longer think that
they are retired, 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, the
parliaments, the palaces, the pulpits, the
banking houses, the professional chair, the
prisons, the almshouses, the company of
midnight brigands, the cellars, the bitches
of this century. You have been thinking
about the 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 destiny
for the next eighty years, if it should pass
on to be an octogenarian. That is we'll,
but my subject sweeps thousand years, a
million years, quadrillion of yeats. can
not stop at one cradle, am looking at the
cradles that reach all round the world and
across all time. am not talking of moth.
er Eunice, am talking of Grandmother
Lois. The only way you can tell the force
of current is by sailing up stream; or the
force of an ocean wave, by running the ship
against it. Running along with it we can
not appreciate the force. In estimating
maternal influence We generally run along
with it down the stream of time, and so
we don't understand the 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 magni-
ficeut or appalling compound interest. The
difference between that mothers influence
on her children now and the influence when
it has been multiplied in hundreds of thou
sands of lives, is the difference between the
Mississippi river way up at the top OF the
continent starting from the little lake Itas.
ca. seven miles long and one wide, and its
mouth at the Gulf of Mexico, where navies
might ride Between the birth of that rivel
and it's burial in the sea the Missouri pours
in. and the Ohio pours in, and the Arkansas
pours in, and the Red and White and Yazoc
rivers pour in, and all the States and Terri
tories between the Allegheny and Rocky
mountains make contribution. Now, il
order to test the power of mothers in
fluence, we need to come in off of the ocear
of eternity and sail up toward the ont
cradle and we will find ten thousand tribu
taries of influence pouring in and pouring
down, But it is after all one great river o.
mower rolling on and rolling forever. WHO
can fathom it? Who can bridge it? Who
can stop it? Had not mothers better be in
tensifying their prayers? Had they mo-
better be elevating their example? Hat
thew not better be rousing themselves with
the consideration that by their faithfulnes'
or neglect they are starting an influence
which will be stupendous after the last
mountain of earth is fiat, and the last ses
has been dried up, and the last flake of ths
ashes of q consumed world shall have beer
blown away, and all the telescopes of othel
worlds directed to the track around which
our world once swung shall discover not sc
much as cinder of the burned down anG
swept-off planet? In Ceylon there is 6
granite column thirty-six square feet ir
size. which is thought by the natives to de
eide the worlds continuance. An ange
with robe spun from zephyrs is once a cen
tury to descend aud sweep the hem of tina
robe across the granite, and when by thai
attritiOn the column is worn away they say
time will end But by that process thai
granite column would be worn out of exis
tence before mothers influence will begir
to give away.
If mother tells child he is not good
some bugaboo will come and cal ch him, the
fear excited may make the child coward
and the fact that he finds that thers is nj
bugaboo may make him liar, and the echo
of that false alarm may be heard after fif
teen generations have been born and have
expired. If a mother promise child re
ward for good behavior and after the good
behavior forgets to give the reward, the
cheat may crop out in some faithlessnes;
half thousand years further on. If q
mother culture child's vanity and eulogist
his curls and extol the night-black or sky
blue or nut brown of the child's eyes, anC
call out in his presence the admiration O
spectators, pride and arrogance may bt
prolonged after half dozen family records
have been obliterated. Ii mother express
doubt about some statement of the Holy
Bible in a childs presence, long after the
gates of this historical era have closed anC
the gates of another era have opened, the
result may be seen in champion bias
phemer But on the other hand, if a moth
er walking with child see suffering ont
by the wayside and says: "My child, give
that ten-cent piece to that lame boy" thu
result may be seen on the other side of thu
following century In some George Mule
building a whole village of orphanages
If mother sit almost every evening by tn,
trundle bed of child and teach it lesson
Of n SaviOur's love and Saviour's exam