Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1888-03-07
I'G..s!#a.Aass .sa Grandchildren. >
''GfaaaM.eAess asa Gsasataaas'eaa. On. !"
GOOD WOMEN WHOSE TOMBSTONES
WERE PLANTED IN THE EIGH-
TENTH CENTURY ARE MORE
ALIVE FOR GOOD IN THE
NINETEENTH.
OLD WOMEN SUSPICOUSLY 81
LENT ABOUT OLD TIMES.
THOSE TIMES WERE WORSE THAN
OURS.
AMONG OUR FIRST Q QUESTIONSI IN
HEA AVEN-"WHEREI Is GRAND
MOTHER."
DIR. TALMAGE's SERMON, SUNDAY, FEB. 26.
DR.. TALMAGE's SERMON, SUNDAY, FEB. 2e.

DIR. TALMAGE's SERMON, SUNDAY, FEB. 26.
BROOKLYN, February 26.-The Rev. T.
Dewitt Talmage, ID, preached in the
Brooklyn Tabernacle to-day the eighth of
his series of "Sermons TO the Women of
America, with Important Hints to Men,
The subject was: 1.-THE Grandmother and
Her Grandchildren" A vast congregation
was present. The opening hymn begins:
"Give to the wind thy fears,
Hope, and be undismayed;
God hears thy signs and counts thy tears.
God shall lift up thy head"
DR.. Talmage's text was from II. Timothy,
l., 5: '"The unfeigned faith that is in thee,
which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois.
The eloquent preacher said:
In this love letter which Paul. the old
minister, is writing to Timothy, the young
minister, the family record is brought out.
Paul practically says: "Timothy, what a
good grandmother you had. You ought to
be better than most folks, because not only
was your mother good, but your grand
mother. Two preceding generations ofpiety
ought to give you mighty push in the
right direction The fact was that Timo.
thy needed encouragement. He was in
poor health, having a weak stomach, and
was dyspeptic, and Paul prescribed for him
tonic-"a little wine for thy stomsch's
sake''-not much wine, but little wine,
and only as a medicine. And If the wine
then had been as much adulterated with
logwood and strychnine as our modern
wines, he would not have prescribed any.
But Timothy, not strong physically, is
encouraged spiritually by the recital of
grandmotherly excellence, Paul limiting to
| him, as I hint this day to you, that God
sometimes gathers up as in reservoir away
| back of the active generations of to-day a
podly influence, and then in response to
prayer lets down the power upon children
and grandchildren and great grandchildren.
The world is woefully in want of table OF
statistics in regard to what is the protract-
edness and immensity of influence OF one
good woman in the Church and world. We
have accounts of how much evil has been
wrought by Margaret, the mother of crimi-
nails, who lived near hundred years ago,
and of how many hundreds of criminals her
descendants furnished for the penitentiary
and the gallows, and how many hundreds
of thousands of dollars they cost this coun-
try in their arraignment and prison support
as well as in the property they burglarlsed
or DESTROYED. But will not some one come
out with brain comprehensive enough and
heart warm enough and pen keen euOugh
to give us the facts in regard to some good
woman of hundred years ago, and let US
know how many Christian men and women
and reformers and useful people have been
found among her descendants, and how
many asylums and colleges and churches
they built, and how many millions of dol
lars they contributed for humanitarian and
Christian purposes?
| The good women whose tOmbstones were
planted in the eighteenth ceutury are more
alive for good in the nineteenth century
than they were before, as the good women
of this nineteenth century will be more
alive for good in the twentieth century thar
now. Mark you, l have no idea that the
grandmothers were any better than thell
granddaughters. You cannot get very old
people to talk much about how things were
when they we're boys and girls. They have
a reticence and a non on-committalism which
makes me think they feel themselves to be
the custodians of the reputation of theil
eorly comrades. While our dear old folks
are rehearsing the follies of the present, il
you put them on the witness-stand and
cross-examine them as to how things were
seventy years ago the silence becomes Op
pressive.
A celebrated Frenchman by the name OF
Volney visited this country in 1896, and he
says of woman's diet in those times: "If a
premium was offered for regimen most de
structive to health, none could be devised
more efficacious for these ends than that in
use among these people," That eclipses
our lobster salad at midnight. Everybody
talks about the dissipations of modern So
ciety and how womanly health goes down
under it, but it was worse hundred years
ago, for the chaplain of French regiment
in our revolutionary war wrote in 17o2, IN
his book of American women, saying
"The are tall and well proportioned, thei1
features are generally regular, their com
plexions are generally fair and without
color. At twenty years of age the women
have no longer the freshness OF youth. Al
thirty or forty years they are decrepit.. In
1912 foreign consul wrote book entitled
ga sketch of the United States at the Com.
mencement of the Present Century" and
he says of the women of those times: AT
the age of thirty all their charms have dis
appeared" One glance at the portraits OF
the women hundred years ago aud theil
style of dress makes US wonder how they
ever got their breath. All this makes me
think that the express rail train is no more
an Improvement on the canal boat, or the
telegraph no more an improvement on the
4 old-time saddlebags, than the women o.
our day are an improvement on the women
of the last century.
But still, Notwithstanding that those
times were so much worse than ours, there
was glorious race of godly women, sew
enty and hundred years ago, who held the
world back from sin and lifted it toward
: virtue, and without their exalted and
sanctified influence before this the last gooC
influence would have. perished from the
! earth. Iudeed all over this land there are
seated to-day-no5 so much in churches
for many of them are too feeble to come;
great many aged grandmother. They some
times feel that the world has gone pas
them, and they have an idea they are of lit
tie account. Their head sometimes get
> aching from the racket of the grandchildren