The western sentinel. [volume] (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 1887-1926, 1888-03-01

4
| them into the ministry, and then brought
| all her grandchildren into the kingdom,
| myself the last and least worthy. Is it
| not time that you and I do two things
| swing open picture gallery of the
wrinkled faces and stopped shoulders of
| the past, and call down from their heav-
! emily thrones the cody grandmothers, to
| give them our thanks, and then persuade
| the mothers of today that they are living
| for all time, and that against the sides Of
| every cradle in which child is rocked
| beat the two eternities.
Here we have an untried, undiscussed
and unexplored subject. You often hear
about your influences 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 be-
fore Christ came; it is not unreasonable
to suppose that it may stand four thous-
and years after his arrival. Four thou
sand years the world swung off in sin;
four thousand years it may be swinging
back into righteousness. By the ordin-
airy rate of multiplication of the
descendants will be over six hun
dred, and by two centuries at least
over a hundred thousand, perhaps
two hundred thousand and upon every
one of them you, the mother of today,
will have an influence for good or evil.
And if in two centuries your descendants
shall have with their names filled scroll
of hundreds of thousands, will some angel
from heaven, to whom is given the ca
pacity to calculate the number CT 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 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 moth
ers of the last century are today
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. You have been thinking about
the Importance of having the right in
fluence upon one nursery. You have
been thinking of the importance of get
ting 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 octogenariau.
That is well; but my subject sweeps a
thousand years, a million years, a quad
rillion of years. I cannot stop at one
cradle, am looking at the cradles that
reach all round the world and across all
time. I am not talking of mother
Eunice, am talking of grandmother
Lois. The only way you can tell the
force of u current is by sailing up stream;
or the force of an ocean wave,
by running the ship against it. Run
ming along with it we cannot appreciate
the force. In estimating maternal inf1u-
ence 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 eternity side.
after it has been working for centuries,
and see all the good it has done and all
the evil it has accomplished multiplied in
magnificent or appalling compound in
terest. The difference between that
mothers influence on her children now
dphed 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 Arkan-
sas 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 contribu-
ton. Now, in order to test the power of
a 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
aSer all one great river of power rolling
on and rolling forever. Who can fathom
it? Who can bridge it2 Who can
stop it? Had not mothers better be in
tensifying their prayers? Had they not
better be elevating 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 stupendous
after the last mountain of earth is flat,
and the last sea has been dried up, and
the last flake of the ashes of consumed
world shall have been blown away, and
to the track around which our world
once swung shall discover not SO much
as cinder of the burned down and
swept off planet In Ceylon there is a
granite column thErty-six square feet in
size, which is thought by the natives to
decide the worlds continuance. An
angel with robe spun from zephyrs is
once 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 viii end. But
by that process that granite column would
be worn out OF existence Before a,
mothers influence will begin to. give
away.
If mother tell a child he is not good.
some bugaboo viii 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.
liary and the echo of that false alarm
may be heard after fifteen generations
have been born and have expired. If a
mother promises child a reward for
good behavior and after the good be-
navlor forgets to give the reward, the
cheat may crop out in some faithlessness
half Thousand years further on. II
mother culture child's vanity and
euiogize 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 arrogance may be prolonged
after half dozen family records have
been obliterated. If mother express
do1st about some statement of the Holy
Bible III child's presence, long after the
gates of this historical era have closed
and the gates of another era have opened,