The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1896-07-29

! LnS way III With SUE IaiheU III LulS
chapter and from the way she man
aged this boy you know she was intel
ligent. There are no persons in
community who need to be s. wise
and we'll informed ss mothers. Oh,
this work of culturing children for
this world and the next! This child
is timid, and it must be reused up and
L1Shed out into activities. This child
is forward, and he must be held back
and tanned down into mod7sty and
politeaess. Rewards for one, punish.
mems for another. That which will
make George will ruin John. The
rod is necessary ia one case, while a
frown OF Iispleasure IS more than
enough in another. Whipping and 4
dark closet do not exhaust all the
rounds of domestic discipline. There
have been children who have grown
I'D and goae to glory without ever
having lad their ears boxed Oh,
how much care and intelligence are
nee assary in the rearing OF children.
But in this day, when there are SO
many books on this subject, no parent
is excusable in being ignorant of the
best mode Of bringing up child. If
parents knew more of dietetics, there
would not be so many dyspeptic
stomachs and weak nerves and inact-
i've livers among children. If parents
knew more OF physiology, there would
not be SO many curved sp!nes and
cramped chests and inaamed throats
and diseased lungs as there are among
children. If parents knew more Of
art. and were in sympathy with all
that is beautiful, there would not be
so many children coming out in the
world with boorish proclivities. II
parents knew more of Christ and prac-
t,ced more of his religion, there would
not be so many little feet already
starting on the wrong road, and all
around us voices Of riot and blasphe-
my would not cone up with sucn &C.
stasy of internal triumph. The eag-
lets in the eyrie have no advantage
over the eag,ets Of 1000 years ago;
the kids have no superior way Of
climbing up the rocks than the old
goats taught them hundreds OF years
ago; the whelps know no more now
than did the whelps OF ages ago-they
are taught no more by the lions OF the
desert, but it is shame that IN this
day, when there are SO many oppor-
tunities of improving oyerselves in the
best manner Of culturing children,
that so often there is no more ad-
vancement in this respect than there
has been among the kids and the eagg-
lets and the whelps.
| Again, Hannah stands before you
today as Christian mother From
her prayers, and from the way she
consecrated her boy to God, I know
she was good. A mother may have
the finest culture, the most brilliant,
surroundings, but she is not fit for her
duties unless she be a Christian moth
er. There may be we'll read libraries
in the house, and exquisite music in
the parlor, and the canvas of the best
artist adorning the walls, and the
wardrobe be crowded with tasteful
apparel, and the children be wonder
ful for their attainments and make the
house ring with laughter and inno-
cent mirth, but there is something
woefully lacking in that house if it be
not also the resident Of Christian
mother. l bless God that there are
not many prayerless mothers. The
weight of responsibility is so great
that they feel the need of a divine
hand to help, and divine voice to
comfort, and a divine heart 10 sympa-
thize. Thousands of mothers have
been led into the kingdom OF God by
the hands of their little children.
There are hundreds of mothers today
who would not have been Christians
had it not been for the prattle Of their
little ones, Standing some day in the
nursery, they bethought themselves:
'HThis child God has given me to raise
for eternity. What is my influence
| upon it? Not being q Christian my
self, how can 1 ever expect him to be-
come a Christian. Lord, help me!
Oh. are there anxious mothers who
know nothing of the infinite help of
religions Then I commend to you
Hannah, the pieus mother of Samuel.
Do not think it is absolutely impossi-
BILE that your children come up iniss
ouitous. Out of just such fair broWs
and bright eyes and soft hands and
innocent hearts crime gets its victims
-extirpating purity from the heart,
and rubbing out the smoothness from
the brow, and quenching the luster
of the eye, and shriveling up and
poisoning and putrefying and scatL-
ing and scalding and blasting and
burning with shame and woe.
Every child is a bundle of tremen-
dous possibilities, and whether that
child shall come forth in life, its
heart attune6 to the eternal harmo-
MES, and after life of usefulness on
earth 90 to life of joy in heaven. or
whetLe er across it sha Il jar eternal dis
cords, and after life of wrongdoing
on earth it shall 60 to a home of I'M
penetrable darkness and an abyss of
immeasurable plunge, is being decided
by nursery song and Sabbath lesson
and evening prayer and walk and
ride and look and frown and smile.
Oh, how many children in glory,
crowding all the battlements and lift
ing a million voiced hosanna-
brought to God through Christian
, parentage. One hundred and twenty
clergymen were together, and they
were telling their experience and their
ancestry, and Of the 120 clergymen,
how many of them do you suppose
assigned as the means Of their conver-
sion the influence of a Christian
mother? One hundred out of the
hundred and twenty. Philip Dodd-
ridge was brought TO God by the
Scripture lesson on the Dutchtile of
the chimney fireplace. The mother
thinks she is only rocking a child,
but at the same time she may be rock
ing the destiny of empires, rocking
the fate of nations, rocking the glo.