Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1888-02-27

though she went up out Of this life before
began it, have heard of her faith in
God, that brought all her children into
the kingdom and two Of them into the
ministry, and then brought all her grand
children into the kingdom, myself the last
and least worthy. Is it not time that you
and do two things, swing open q picture
gallery Of the wrinkled faces and stopped
shoulders of the past, and call down from
their heavenly thrones the godly Grand
mothers, to give them our thanks, and
then persuade the mothers of to-day that
they are living for all time, and that
against tbs sides Of every cradle in which
q child is rocked beat the two eternities.
Here We have an untried. undiscussed
and unexplored subject. You often hear
about your inhusnce upon your own
children am not talking about that.
What about your influence upon the
twentieth century, upon the thirtieth
century, upon the fortieth century, upon
the year two thousand, upon the year
four thousand, if the world lasts so long.
The world stood four Thousand years
before Christ came; it is not unreasonable
to suppose that it may stand four thou
sand years after his arrival. Four thou
sand years the world swung otfin sin, four
thousand years it may be swinging back
into righteousness. By the extraordinary
ratI OF multiplication, of the worlds pop
ulation in century your descendants
will be over six hundred, and by two cen
turies at least over hundred thousand,
perhaps two hundred thousand, aud upon
every one of them you, the mother Otto
day, will have
AN INFLUENCE FOE GOOD OR EVIL.
And if in two centuries your descendants
shall have with their names filed scroll
of hundreds of thousands, will some angel
from heaven to whom is given the opacity
to calculate the number of the stars OF
heaven and the sands of the seashcre, step
down and tell us how many descendants
You will have in the four thousandth year
of the worlds possible continuance. d.
not let the grandmOthers any longer think
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
parliaments, 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. Iou have been
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 destiny
for the next eighty years, if it should pass
on to be an octogenarian. That is well,
but my subject sweeps thousand years, a
million years, quadrilliOn of years, can
not stop at one cradle, am looking at the
cradles that reach all round the world and
across all time. ain not talking OF
mother EuniCe, ] am talking of grand
mother 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 &c Lerally run along with it down the
stream of time, and so we don't under
stand the iull 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 ac-
complished multiplied in magnificent or
appalling compound interest. The differ
ence between that mothers
INFLUENCE ON HER CHILDREN
now and the influence when it has been
multiplied in hundreds of thousands
of lives, is 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 &ulf 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 Yszoo rivers pour in, and
all the States and Territories between the
the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains make
contribution. Now, in order to test the
power of mothers influence, we need to
come in of 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. Bnt
it is after oil one great river OF
power rolling on and rolling
forever. Who can isthom it? Who can
bridge it2 Who can stop itF Had not
mothers better be intensifyipg their pray
ers? Had they not better he elevatlng
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
stnpendous after the mountain of earth
is Gat, and the last sea has. been dlied up,
and the last fake OF the ashes OF a COL
sumed world shall have heen blown away,
and all the telescopes Of other worlds di-
rected to the track around which our world
once swung shall discover not so much as
q cinder of the buIntd-down Lpd swept
off planet? In Ceylon there is q granite
column thirty-six square feet in size,
which is thought by the natives 70 decide
THE WORLDS CONTINUANCE.
An angel with robe spun from zephyrs is
once in 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 in
fluence will begin togive away.
TIA mother tell a child he Is not good,
some bugaboo will come and catch him,
the fear excited may make the child
coward, and the fact that he finds that
ths,e 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. II a mother prom
ise child reward for good behavior for
gets TO give the reward, the cheat may
crop out in some faithlessness half thou
sand years further on. II famother culture
a child's vanity and eulogize his curls and
extol the night. t.blsck or sky-blue or nut
brown of the cbild's eyes, and call out in
his presence the admiration OF spectators,
pride and arrogance may he prolonged after
half a dozen family records have been
ohliterated. If mother express doubt
about some statement OF the Holy
Bible in 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 a champion bias
pheme. But, on the other hand, II
mother walking with q child see q suffer
ing one by the wayside and says: my
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