The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1888-03-09


with their names filed scroll of hun
dreds OF thousands. viii 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 us how
many descendants you will have in the
four thOusandth year of the worlds pos
sible continuance? 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 It. The mothers of the last
century are to-day in the senates, the
pariiaments, the palaces, the pulpits, the
banking houses, the professional chairs,
the 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 influence upon one nursery. You
have been thinking Of the Importance Of
getting these two little feet on the
right path. You have been thinking of
your child's destiny for the next eighty
years, if IL should pass on to be Octo-
genarian. That is well, but my subject
sweeps a thousand years, a million years,
a quadrillion of years. I can not stop at
one cradle, I 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 a current is by sailing up stream: or
the force of an ocean wave, by running
the ship against it. Running along with
il we can not appreciate the force. In
estimating maternal influence we gen.
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 it has been working
on for centuries, and see all the good
it has done and all the evil it
has accomplished, multiplied in mag
nificent or appalling compound
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 con tinent,
starting from the little Lake Itasca, seven
miles long and one vida and its mouth Mt
the Gulf of Mexico, where navies might
ride. Betwee 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
come 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 it2 Who can bridge itH
Who can stop it? Had not mothers better
be intensifying their prayers? Had they
not better be elevating their example,?
Had they not better be rousing them
selves with consideration that by their
faithfulness or neglect they are starting
an influence which will be stupeudous
after the last mountain of earth is fat,
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 a 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 decide the worlds con-
tinuance. An angel, with robe spun from
zephyrs, 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 say time will
end. But by that process that granite
column would be worn out of existence
before mothers influence viii begin to
give away.
II mother tell child he is not good,
some bugaboo win 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 a liar,
and the echo of that false alarm may be
heard after fifteen generations have been
born and have expired. If a mother prom
! Use a child "a reward for good behavior,
and after the good behavior fOrgets to
/ give the reward, the cheat may crop out
/ in some faithlessness half a thousand
years further on. If mother culture a
/ child's vanity, and eulogize his curls, and
! extOl the night-blacl, or sky-blue or nut
brown of the child's eyes, and call out in
/ his presence the admiration of spectators,
4 pride and arrogance may be prolonged
/ after half a dozen family records have
| been obliteratsd. If n mother express
/ doubt about some statement of the Holy
| Bible in a child's presence, long after the
! gates of this histori cal era have closed and
| the gates Of another era have opened,
/ the result may be seen in a champion
blasphemer. But on the other hand il a
mother walking with a child a suffer-
I ing 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 Mullen building a whole
| village of orphauages If a mother sit al
most every evening by the trundle bed of
a child and teach 1t lessons,of a Saviour's
| example, of the Importance of truth and
! the horror of lie, and the virtues of in
/ dustry and kindness and sympathy and
| self-sacrifice, 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-
merable winters, there may DO standing,
Al.
| flaming evangels, world-moving reform
ers, circulating Summerfelds, weeping
| Paysons, laundering Whitefields, enamel
patng Washingtons.
| Good or bad influence may skip one
| gen Grafton or two generations, but it win
| be sure to land in the third or fourth
/ generation, just the Ten Command
| ments, speaking of the visitation of God
on families, says nothing about the sec
ond generation, but entirely skips the
| second and speaks of the third and fourth
| generations; 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 a generation, but it viii come
down further on as sure as you sit there
1 and I stand here. Timothy's ministry
was projected by his grandmother, Lois.
There are men and women here, the sons
ee- etu {, ttAeAH "a JUG III - wan CAtAA u
who are such as result of the cons ecra-
| ton of -great-grandmothers Why,
who do you think the Lord is? 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 seasons
man or woman distinguished for benevo-
lence when the father and mother were
/ distinguished for penuriousness, or you
see some young man or woman with a
bad father and hard mother, come out
| gloriously for Christ and make the
church sob and shout, and sing under