The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1888-03-02

perhaps 2O0, 900, and upon every one Of them
You, the mother Of today, win have an iniu-
ence for good or evil And IL In
two centuries your descendants shall
have with their names filed q scroll
Of hundreds Of thousands, win some angel
from heaven to whom Is given the capacity
to calculate the number of the stars Of
heaven and the sands Of the seashore, step
down and tell MS how many descendants you
win have In the 4, 0O0th year Of the worlds
possible continuance Do not let the grand
mothers any longer think that they are re-
tired, 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 pal
aces, the pulpits, the banking houses, the
professional chairs, the prisons, the aims
houses, 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 fest on the right path.
You have been thinking Of your childis des-
tiny for the next eighty years, II it should
pass on to be an octogenarian. That
Is well; but my subject sweeps thousand
years, million years, q quadrillion Of
years cannot stop at one cradle, ann
looking at the cradles that reach all round
the world and across all time ! 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 IL we cannot appreciate the force. In
estimating maternal influence we generally
II. = - IL
and 20 We don't understand the full force.
Let Us come up to it from the eternity side,
after 1t has been working ON for centuries,
and zee all the good IL has done and all the
evil Il has accomplished multiplied In mag
niflcent or appalling compound interest. The
difference between that mothers influence
on her children now and the influence when
1t has been multiplied In hundreds of
thousands Of lives Il the difference be-
tween the Mississippi river way up at
the top Of the continent, starting
from the little Lake Itasca, seven miles long
and one wide, and It's mouth at the Gulf Of
Mexico, where nayies 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 Ale
ghany and Rocky mountains make contribu-
ton. Now, in order to test the power Of q
mothers influence, we need to come In of Of
the ocean of eternity and sail up toward the
one cradle, and we viii find 10, 900 tributaries
Of influence pouring In and pouring down.
But it Is, after all, one great river of power
rolling on and rolling forever. Who can
fathom 1T Who can bridge it, Who can
stop it, Had not mothers better be intensi-
flying their prayers2 Had they not better be
elevating their example2 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 fat, and the last sea has been dried
up, and the last fake Of the ashes Of q con-
sumed 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 50 much as cinder
of the burned-down and sweptoff planet.
In Ceylon there is a granite column Of thirty
six square feet In size, which Is thought by
the natives to decide the worlds continuance.
An angel with robe spun from sephyrs is
once a century to descend and sweep the hem
Of that robe across the granite, and when by
that attrition the column Is worn away they
Soy I44A4C WAA Cuus ouo ny tAhO pIOCtcS JLlk1U
granite column would be worn out OF exist
ence before mothers influence viii begin to
give away.
If mother tell child he is not good,
some bugaboo will come and catch him, the
fear excited may make the child a coward,
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 ex-
pired. II mother promise child reward
for good behavior and after the good be-
havior forgets to give the reward, the cheat
may crop out in some faithlessness 500 years
further on. If q mother culture q child's
vanity and eulogize his curls and extol the
night black or sky blue or nut brown Of the
childs eyes, and call out in his presence the
admiration or spectators, pride and arrogance
may be prolonged after half dozen family
records have been obliterated. II mother
express doubt about some statement of the
Holy Bible In q child's presence, long after
the gates Of this historical era have closed
and the gates Of another era have opened,
the result may be seen In champion bias
phemer. But, on the other hand, If q
mother walking with child see 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 orphanages II
mother sit almost every evening by the
trundle bed of child and teach it lessons of
Saviour's love and Saviour's example, Of
the Importance Of truth and the horror Of a
lie, and the virtues Of industry and kindness
and sympathy and sek-sacrifice, 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, world moving reformers, circu-
lating Summer6elds, weeping Paysons, thm-
dering Whitefelds, emancipating Washing-
tons
Good or bad influence may skip one gener-
ton or two generations, but it will be sure to
land in the third or fourth generation, just
as the Ten Commandments, speaking Of the
visitation of God on families, says nothing
about the second generation, but entirely
skips the second and speaks Of the third and
and fourth generation: "Visiting the iniquf
ties Of the fathers upon the third and fourth
generations Of them that hate men Parental
influence, right and wrong, may jump over
a generation, but it win come down further
on as sure as you sit there and stand here.
Timothy's ministry was projected by his
Grandmother Lois. There are women here,
the sons and daughters of the Christian
church, who are such as q result Of the
conservation Of their great-great-g
mothers Why, who do you think the Lord
Isl You talk as though his memory was
weak He can no easier remember prayer
five minutes than he can FIVE centuries
This explains what we often see-some
man or woman distinguished for be
nevolence when the father and mother were
distinguished for penuriousness; or you see
some young man or woman with bad father
and hard mother come out gloriously for
Christ and make the church sob and shout
and sing under their exhortations We stand
In corners Of the vestry and whisper over
the matter and say: Chow is this, such great
piety In sons and daughters of such parental
worldliness and sinF ! viii explain IL to you
II you win fetch me the old Family Bible
containing the full record Let some septua-
genarian 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 Betsey or Mehitabel All, there
she IL, the old grandmother or great-grand.
mother, who had enough religion to saturate
century.
There she e, the dear old soul, Grand
mother Lois In our beautiful Greenwood
may we all sleep there when our work is
done, for when ! get up in the resurrection
morning want my congregation all about
me-in Greenwood there Is the resting place
Of George w. Bethune, once minister Of
Brooklyn Heights, his name never spoken
among intelligent Americans without sug-
costing two things eloquence and evangel-
ism In the same tomb sleeps his grand |
mother, Isabella Graham, who was the chief
inspiration Of his ministry. You are not