The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1893-03-31

| week she met three other Christian
mothers to pray for the salvation of
their families. / think that all the
members of those families were saved
myself, the youngest and the last.
There were twelve of us children. l
trace the whole line of mercy back to
that hour when my Chistian grand
mother sat in her room imploring the
blessing of God upon her children.
Nine of her descendants became preach
ers of the gospel Many of her de-
scendants are in Heaven, many of them
still in the Christian conflict Did it
pay for her to spend the whole evening
in prayer for her household? Ask her
before the throne of God, surrounded
by her children. In the presence of the
| Christian church to-day l make this
record of ancestral piety. Obi there is
beauty and tenderness and sublim-
ity in family religion
There are but four or five pictures in
the old family Bible that 1 inherited,
but Dore never illustrated Bible as
that book is illustrated to my eyes
| Through it can see into marriages and
burials, joys and sorrows, meetings and
partings Thanksgiving days and
Christmas festivals, cradles and death
beds. Old, old book speak out and tell
of the sorrows comforted, and of the
dying hours irradiated. Old, old bool1i
the hands that held thee are ashes, the
eyes that perused thee are closed. What
pillow thou wouldst make for n
dying head! l salute all the memories
of the past, when press it to my heart,
and when press it TO my lips.
Oh, when we see what family re-
| ligion did for your fathers household,
do we not want it to come into the
diningroom to break the bread, into
the nursery to bless the young, into
the parlor to purify the socialitics, into
the library to control the reading, into
the bedroom to hallow the slumber.
into the hall to watch our going out
and our coming in? Aye, there are
hundreds OF voices in this house ready
to cry out: "Yes! Yes! As for me
and my house, we will serve the Lord. "
There are two arms to this subject.
The one arm puts its hands on all the
parents. 1t saws to them: Don't inter-
fere with your children's welfare. Don't
interfere with their eternal happiness.
Don't you by anything you do put out
your foot and trip them into ruin.
Start them under the shelter, the in
surance, the everlasting help OF Chris
tian parentage. Catechisms will not
save them, though catechisms are good.
The rod will not save them, though the
rod may be necessary. Lessons of
virtue will not save them, though they
are very important. Becoming n
through and through, up and down,
out and out Christian yourself Will
make them Christians
The other arm of this subject puts its
hand upon those who had pious bring
ing up, but who as yet have disappoint-
ed the expectations excited in regard to
them. l said that children brought up
in Christian households, though they
might make Il wide curve, were very
apt to come back to the straight path.
Have you not been curviug out long
enough? and is IL not most time for you
to begin to curve in?
Oh" you say, they were toe rigid"
Well, now, my brother, / think you
have Il pretty good character consider
ing what you say Your parents were.
Do not boast too much about the style
in which your parents brought You up
Might it not be possible that you would
be an exception to the general rule laid
down. and that you might spend your
eternity in different world from that
in which your parents are spending
theirs?
BY the memory of the cradle in
which your childhood was rocked with
the foot that long since ceased to move,
by the crib in which your own children
slumber night by night under Gods
protecting care, 10y the two graves IN
which sleep those two old hearts that
beat with love so long for your well
fare, and by the two graves in which
you, now the living father and Iaother,
will find your last repose, urge you to
the discharge of your duty.
Though parents NAV in covenant &c,
And have their Heaven in view,
They are not happy ill they see
Their children happy too.
Oh! YOU departed Christian ancestry,
fathers and mothers in glory, bend from
the skies to-day, and give new empha-
sis, to what you told us on earth with
many tears and anxieties Keep
place for us by your bliasful side, for
to-day, in the presence of earth and
Heaven and hell, and by the help of
the Cross, and amid overwhelming and
gracious memories we resolve, each |
one for himself, ''as for me and my