Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1888-03-09

nhs
onl,o1en INTO the kingdom. mysaIf ~, sla il.
an nd least worthy. Is it not time That tas.
oolia uo Two things, swing open ,,;ot yva
s,Sa.e1y OF the wrinkled faces md . pac.uls
snou'ders of the past, and cali dow n'o e
, nae.t heavenly thrones the godlv ornn oal
tho ou 70 give them our thanks amd
tLe,, persuade the mothers Of today that
.he s; a1e hvlns for all time, and that asain a.
10 ra .,aes OF every cradle in which child
40 l1ckeo beat the two eternities. AA'A
~, aere We have an untried, undscussoa
anu unexplored subject. You often 49,
aoous your influences upon your own ch;1
o uiLeh-l am not talking abeut that. Whot
. aoout your influence ND the twentiath ca,,"
Jury, upon the thirtieth century. nnor tha
aoiietn century, upon the wear two tbo,,S
. sand, upon the year four thonsanJ ;f
e .ne World lasts SO long. The world stood
- Vu. thousand years before Christ came.
49,. 10 :. not unreasonably to suppose that il
arr; AIRY ,l"n4 lou -FOUR thousand yeos after his
swung OFT in sin; four thousand veors T.
p may oe swinging back into righteousness,
~ ~ Tue , Ordinary rate of multiplication of
o Wofla population, in q century yonr
,aecehdants will be over six hundred. and
ny two centuries at least over n hundred
thousand, perhaps two hundred thousand.
any upon every one of them you, the
! hotner OF to-day, will have an influence
LOT good or evil. And if in two centuries
your descendants see shall have with their
ma. names hlled a. scroll of hundreds of
thousands, will some angel from
Heaven, to whom is given the ca
paclty to calculate the number of the
stars of Heaven and the sands of the sea-
shore, 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 grandmoth-
ers any longer think that they are retired,
ana SIT clear back out of sight from the
world, feeling that they have no relation
to it. The mothers of the last century ore
to-day in the Senates, Pariaments, the
palaces. the pulpits, the banking houses,
Hhe professional chairs, the prisons, the
ealmshouses, the company of midnight
brigands, the cellars, the. bitches of this
century. You have been thinking about
the Importance of having the right influ-
ence upon one nursery. You have been
thinking OF the importance of getting those
two little feet on the right path. You have
the next eighty years, if it should pass on
to be an ocosenarian. That is we'll; but
my subject sweeps q thousand
yers, million years, a, quadrill-
ION of years. l cannot stop at one
cradle, l am looking ut the cradles that
reach all round the world and across all
time. am not talking of Mother Eunice.
l am talking of Grandmother Lois.
The only way you can tell the
force OF current is by smiling up stream;
or ire force of an ocean wave, by running
1t we cannot appreciate the force. In esti-
mating maternal influence we generally
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 eter.
nifty side, after it has been working for
centuries, and see all the good it has done
and all the evil it has accomplished multi
piled in magnificent or appalling COM
pound interest The difference between
that mothers influence on her children now
and the influence when,it has been multi
piled in hundreds of thousands of lives, is
the difference between the Mississippi
River way up at the top of the continent,
starting from the little Lake Itasca, 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
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 mothers
influence, We need to come in off of the
ocean of eternity and sail up toward
the one cradle, and we will find
ten thousand tributaries of influence
pouring in and pouring down. But it is
after all one great river of power rolling
on and rollins, forever. Who can fathom
it? Who can bridge it? Who can stop it?
Had not mothers better be intensifyine
their prayers? Had they not better be
al k1asr
better be rousing themselves with the con-
sideration 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 telescopes, of other
worlds directed to the track around which
our world once swung shall discover not so
much as q cinder of the burned down and
swept-off planet. In Ceylon there is a
granite column thirty-six square feet in
size, which is thought by the natives to de-
eide the worlds continuance. An, angel !
with robe spun from zephyrs is once cen.
tury 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 exist
ence before mothers influence will begin /
to give away.
If mother tell a child he is not good,
some bueaboo will come and catch him,
the fear excited may make the child cow
ard. and the fact that he finds that there is
no bugaboo may make him liar, and. the
echo of that false alarm may be, heard |
after fifteen generations have been born
and have expired. If mother promise q
child reward for good behavior and after
the good behavior forgets to give the re-
ward, the cheat may crop out in some
faithlessness half a thousand years further
on. If mother culture 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 of spectators, pride and ig-
may be prolonged after half a
dozen family records have been obliterated.
If q mother express doubt about some
statement of the Holy Bible in child's
presence, long after the gates of this hiss
torical era have closed and the gates of an
other era have opened, the result may be
seen in champion blasphemer. But, on
the other hand. if mother walking