The Atlanta constitution. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1885-19??, 1888-02-28

10 not let the GrandmotherS any longer think
mat they are retired, and sit clear back out of
s!Sht from the world, feeling that they have
no relation to it. The mothers of the last
century are today in the senates, the paria-
nents, the palaces, the pulpits, the banking
houses, the professional chairs, the prisons,
ihe almshouses, the company of midnight
brigands, the cellars. the bitches of this CEN
Jury You may 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 distyfor the next eighty years. if
IL should pass on into be an octogenerian. That
Is well, but my subject sweeps a thousand
years, million years. quadrillion of years.
cannot stop at one cradle, am looking at the
cradles that reach all round the world and
across all time. 1 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
cannot appreciate the force. In estimating
maternal influence, we generally run along
with 1t down the stream of time, and so we
don't understand the full force. Let us come
up TO 1t 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 accom-
pilshcd, multiplied in magnificent 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 thousands of lives, is the diff
ference between the Mississippi river way
up at the top of the continent starting
from the little lake ltaSca, seven miles long
and one wide, and its mouth at the gulf of
Mexico, where navies 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 Yagoo rivers pour in, and all
the states and territories between the Allegha-
ny and Rocky mountains make contribution.
Now, in order to test the power of a mothers
influence, we need to come in off the ocean of
eternity and sail up toward the one cradle,
and we will lind ten thousand tributaries of
influence pouring in and pouring down. But
1t 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 intensifying their pray
ers? Had they not better be elevating their
example? 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 a consumed world
shall have been blown away, and all the tele-
scopes of other worlds directed to the track
around which our world once swung shall dis
cover not so much as a cinder of the burned
down and swept off planet. In Ceylon there
size, which is thought by the natives to decide
the worlds continuance. An angel with robe
spun from ZephyrS is once q 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 granite column would be
worn out of existence before mothers infiu-
ence will begin to give away.
If mother tell child he is not good, some
bugaboo will come and catch him, the fear ex-
- Al.
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. If moth
er promise child reward for good behavior
and after the good behavior forgets to give the
reward, the cheat may crop out in some faith
lessness half a thousand years further on. If
a mother culture q child's vanity and eulogize
his curls and eXtol the night-black or sky blue
OF 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 dozen family records have been obliter-
ated. II o mother expresses doubt about
some statement of the Holy Bible in a child 8
presence, long after the gates of this historical
era have closed and the gates of
another era have opened, the result may be
seen i'll a champion blasphemer But, on the
other hand, If a mother walking with child
see a suffering one by the wayside, and SAYS:
my child, give that ten cent piece to that
lame boy" the result may be seen on the
other side of the following century in some
George Muller building whole village of or
phanages. If a mother sit almost every even
ing by the trundle bed of a child and teach it
lessons of Saviours love and Saviours ex-
ample, of the Importance of truth and the
horror of a lie, and the virtues of industry and
kindness and sympathy and self-sacrfce, 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 result of those trundle-bed lessons, fam
ing evangels, woodworking reformers, circu-
lating Summerfelds, weeping Paysons, thun-
dering Whitefelds, emancipating Washing
tons.
Good or bad influence may skip one gener-
elton or two generations, but it will be sure to
land in the third or fourth generation, Just as
the ten commandment, speaking of the visi-
tation of God on families, says nothing about
the second generation but entirely skips the
second and speaks OF the third and fourth gem
alton: ''Visiting the iniquities of the fathers
upon the third and fourth generations of them
that hate me-" Parental influence, right
and wrong, may jump over q generation; but
it will come down further on as sure as you sit
there and stand here: "Timothy's minstrel
was projected by his grandmother Lois. There
are men and women here, the sons and daugh-
tiers of the Christian church, who are such as
result of the conservation of great-great-
grandmothers. Why, who do you think the
Lord is? You talk as though His memory was
weak. He can no easier remember a prayer
five minutes than he can five centuries. This
explains what we often see some man or WO-
man distinguished for benevolence when the
father and mother were distinguished for pen
uriousness, or you see some young man or wo-
man with bad father and hard mother come
out gloriously for Christ and make the church
sob and shout and sing under their exhorta-
tions. We stand in corners of the yestry and
whisper over the matter and say: GLOW is
this, such great piety in sons and daughters OF
snch parental wOrldlincss and sin?'i | will ex-
plain it TO you if you viii fetch me the old
family Bible containing the full record. Let
some septuagenarian look with me clear upon
the page of births and marriages, and tell me
who that woman was with the old fashioned
name of Jemima or Betsy or Mehitabel. All,
there she is the old grandmother or great grand
mother, who had enough religion to saturate a
century.
There she is, the dear old soul, Grandmother
Lois In our beautiful Greenwood we
all sleep there when our work is done, for
when l get up in the resurrection morning /
want my congregation all about me)-in
Greenwood there is the resting place of George
W. Bethune, once a minister Of Brooklyn
Heights, his name never spoken among intelli-
gent Americans without suggesting two
things-eloquence and evangelism In the
same tomb sleeps his grandmother, Isabella
Graham, who was the chief inspiration of his