The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1888-03-09
TALMA6E7S SERMON.
Eighth Sermon Of the Series to
the Women Of America,
The Influence of a Good GRANDMOTHER
"a HousehoId-Gcod and Bad
Influences OF Early Train
ing ON Children.

discourse Of his series to the women OF
America took for his subject "The Grand
mother and Her Grandchildren" His
text was:
The unfeigned faith that Is in thee. which
fwelt first in thy grandmother Lois.
The eloquent preacher said:
In this love letter which Paul, the old
minister, is writing to Timothy, the
young minis ter, the family record IL
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 grandmother. Two pre-
ceding generations Of piety ought to give
you a mighty push In the right direc-
tion." The fact was that Timothy needed
encouragement. He was in poor health,
having a weak stomach, and was dys.
peptic, and Paul pres ribed FOR him q
tonic, "a little wine for thy stomach's
Bake"-not much wine, but a little wine,
and only as a medicine. and IL the wine
then had been as much adulterated with
logwood and stry chime as our modern
wines, no would not have prescribed any.
But Timothy, not strong physically, is
encouraged spiritually by the recital OF
grandmotherly excellence, Paul limiting to
him, as hint this day to you, that God
sometimes gathers up as in a reservoir
away back Of the active generations OF
to-day a godly influence, and then in re-
Spouse 20 prayer lets down the power up
on children and grandchildren and great
grandchildren. The world is vvoefuIlv in
want of a table OF statistics in regard to
what is the protractedness and immansity
OF influence OF one good woman in the
church and world. We have accounts Of
how much evil has been wrought by Mar.
garet, the mother of criminals, who
lived near one hundred years ago,
and of how many hundreds
OF criminals her descendants fur
nished for the peniten tiaries and the
Gauows, and how many hundreds of
thousands Of dollars they cost this coun-
try in their arraignment and prison sup
port, as we'll as in the property they burg
lar.zsd or destroyed. But win not some
one come out with brain comprehensive
enough and heart warm enough and pen
Keen enough to give US the facts in regard
TO some good woman of one 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 asvlums
and colleges and churches they built, and
how many millions of dollars they COM
tributed for humanitarian and Christian
purposes?
The good women whose tombstones
we're planted in the eighteenth century
century than they were before, as the
good women OF this nineteenth cent fury
will be more alive for good in the TWEEN
tieth century than now. Mark you, I
have no idea that the grandmothers were
any better than their granddaughter.
You can not get very old people TO talk
much about how things were when they
were boys and girls. They have q reti-
Ccnce and REORGANIZATION that
makes me think they feel themselves to
be the custodiaus of the regulations Of
their eur.v comrades. While our dear
old folks arc reheariiug the follies of the
present, il you put them on the witness
stand and eros s-examjne them as to how
things were seventy years ago, the silence
becomes oppressive.
A celebrated Frenchman by the name
of NolneY visited this country In 1876,
and he SAYS of woman's diet In those
times: "lf a premium was offered for a
regimen most des tructive to health, none
could be devised more eflicaciOus for these
ends than that in us among these peo-
pie" That eclipses our lobster salad at
midnight. Every y talks about the
dissipation of modern society and how
womanly health goes down under it, but
It was worse a hundred years ago, for the
Chaplain Of n French regiment in our
Revolutionary War wrote in 1882, in his
book Of American women, saying; "They
are tall and we'll proportional, their
features are generally regular,
their compilations are general
ly fair and without color. At
twenty years OF age the women have
no longer the freshness Of youth. At
thirty or forty they are decrepit" In 1912
a foreign consul wrote book entitled ~
Sketch Of the United States at the Com
mencement Of the Present Century" and
he says of the women of those timesi eat
the age of thirty all their charms have
disappeared" One glance at the por-
traits of the women a hundred years ago,
and their 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
old canal boat, or the telegraph no more
an Improvement on the old-time saddle
bags than the women of our day are an
Improvement on the women of the last
century.
But still, notwiths landing that those
times were so much worse than ours,
there was a glorious race of godly wom-
en-, seventy aud hundred years ago, who
held the world back from sin and lifted ft
toward virtue, and without their exalted
and sanctified influence before this the
last good influence would have persisted
from the earth. Indeed all over this land
there are seated tO-day-not so much in
churches, for many of them are too feeble
TO come--a great many aged grandmoth.
ers. They sometimes feel that the world
has gone past them, and they have an
idea that thew are Of little account. Their
head sometimes gets aching from the
racket of tho grandchildren down stairs
or in the next room. They steady them
selves by the bauisters as they 20 up and
down. When they get a cold it hangs on
20 them longer the 1t used to. They can
not bear to have lie grandchildren pun
ished even when thoy deserve it, and
have so relaxed their ideas of
family discipline that they would
spoil all the youngsters Of the household
by too great leniencN, These old folks
are the resort when troubles come, and
there is a calming and soothing power
in the touch Of an aged hand that is al
most supernat ural. They feel they are
almost through with the journey of life
and read the old book more than they
used to, hardly knowing which most they
enjoy, the Old Testament or the New, and
often stop aud dwell tearfully over the
family record half way between. We
hail them to-day, whether in the house of
God or at the homestead. Blessed is that
household that has in il grandmother
Lois. Where she is angels are lowering
round and God Is in the room. Nav her
last days be like those lovely autumnal
DAYS that We call Indian summer.
1never knew the joy Of having grand
mother; that Is, the disadvantage of
being the youngest child OF the family.
The elder members only have that bene-
diction. But though she went mp out Of
this life before I began il, have heard OF
her faith I'M God, that brought all OF her
children into the kingdom, and two of
them into the ministry, aud then brought
all her grandchildren into the kingdom,
myself the last and least worthy. Is il
not time that YOU and / do two things,
swing open a picture gallery of the
wrinkled faces and stopped shoulders of