The Russellville Democrat., 1888-03-08

Inc Worto's pOpulation, IN century youf
descendants will be over six hundred, and
by two centuries at least over one hun-
cred thousand, perhaps two hundred thou
sand, and upon every one OF them you,
the mother Of to-day, will have an infu-
ence for good or evil. And If In two
centuries your descendants shall have
with their names filled a scroll Of hun
dreds 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 seas hore. step down and tell us how
many descendants you viii have in the
four thousandth year OF the worlds pos
sible continuances Do not let the grand.
mothers any longer think that they are
retired, and sit clear back out OF sight
from the world, feeling that they have no
relation TO Il. The mothers of the last
century are to-day in the senates, the
parIiaments, the palaces, the pulpits, the
banking houses, the professional chairs,
tbs 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 inf uence upon one nursery. You
have been thinking Of the Importance OF
getting these two little feet OF the
right path. You have been thinking of
your child's destiny for the next eighty
years, if il should pass on to be an octo-
genarian. That is we'll, but my subject
sweeps a thousand years, a million years,
q quadrillion of years. / can not stop at
one cradle, / am looking at the cradles
that reach all round the world and across
all time. I am not talking of Mother
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 gem
orally run along with it down the stream
of time, and so we don't understand the
full force. Let us come up to it from the
eternity side, after il has been working
on for centuries, and see all the good
it has done and ell the evil it
has accomplished, multiplied in mag
nifieent or appalling compound
interest. The difference between that
mothers influence on her children now
and the influence when ii has been multi
piled in hundreds of thousands of lives IL
the difference between the Mississippi
river way up at the top of the con tinent,
starting from the little Lake ltasca, seven
miles long and one wide, and its mouth at
the Gulf of Mexico, where nayies might
ride. Betwee n 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
Allegheny and Rocky mountains make
contribution. Now, in order to test the
power Of a mothers influence, we need to
como in Off the ocean of eternity and sail
up towards the one cradle, and we Will
find 10000 tributaries of influence pour
ing 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 tf
Who can stop it? Had not mothers better
be intensifying their prayers2 Had they
not better be eleyating their example?
Had they not better hs rousing them
selves with consideration that by their
faithfulness or neglect they are starting
an influence which will be stupendous
after the last mountain of earth is fat
and the last sea has been dried
up, and the last fake of the ashes
of consumed 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 rs a cinder of the
burned-dewu and swept-off planet. In
Ceylon there is a granite column thirty
six square feet in size, which il thought
by the natives to d eide the worlds con-
tinuance. 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 sttritiOn the
column is worn away they say time win
end. But by that process that granite
col umn woul d be worn out of existence
before mothers influence viii begin to
g i've away.
II mother tell a child he is not good,
some bugaboo will come and catch him,
the fear excited may make the child
coward, and the fact that he finds that
there is no bugaboo may make him a liar, |
and the echo of that false alarm may be |
heard after fifteen generations have been |
born and have expired. 1t a mother prom. |
Use child a reward for good behavior, |
and after the good behavior forgets to |
give the reward, the cheat may crop out |
m some faithlessness half thousand |
years further on. If a mother culture |
,hild's vanity, and eulogize his curls, and |
sxtol the night black, or sky blue, or nut |
brown of the child's eyes, and call out in |
his presence the admiration of spectators, |
pride and arrogance may be prolonged |
after half a dozen family records have |
been elaborated. If mother express |
doubt about some statement of the Holy |
Bible in child's prese long after the |
gates of this historical era have closed and |
the gates of another era have opened, |
the result may be seen in a champion |
But on the other hand, il |
mother walking with child see a suffer- |
ing one by the wayside and says: "My |
child, give that ten-cen piece to that |
lame boy" the result may be seen on the |
other side of the following century in |
some George Mullen building whole |
village of orphanages If mother sit al |
most every evening by the trundle bed of |
a child and teach II lessons,of a Saviour's |
example, of the Importance OF truth and |
he horror of a lie, and the virtues of in. |
iustry and kindness and sympathy aud |
long after the mother has |
gone and the child has gone and the let |
tering on both the tombstones shall have |
been washed out by the storms of innu- |
W winters, there may DO standing, |
as Il result OF those trundle-bed lessons, |
evangels, woodworking reform |
srs, circulating Summerfields, weeping |
Paysons, laundering Whitefields, enamel
pating Washingtons.
Good or bad influence may skip one |
en- GRAFTON or two generations, but il win |
be- sure to land in the third or fourth |
generation, just as the Ten Command
ments, speaking Of the visitation of God |
On families, says nothing about the Sec
,nd generation, but entirely skips the |
second and speaks OF the third and fourth |