The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1898-10-21
THE FAMILY RECORD.
The Effect of Parental influence on
Generations TO Come.
Rev. Dr. TaiEnage Declares that the Seed
Planted in the Child VIII Garminate
and Bear Fruit in Coming
Generations.


fuence and its effect on children's
children. The text is: The unfeigned
faith that is in thee, which dwelt first
in thy grandmother Lois.-II. Tim
9th, l., 5.
In this pastoral letter which Paul,
the old minister, is writing to limo
thy, the young minister, the family
record is brought out. Paul practical
Iy 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 was also good. Two pre-
ceding generations of piety ought to
give you a mighty push in the right
direction The fact was that Timo-
thy needed encouragement. He was
in poor health, having a weak stom-
ach, and was a dyspeptic, and Paul
prescribed for him tonic, ''a little
wine for thy stomach's salze"-not
much wine; but little wine, and only
as medicine. And if the wine then
had been as much adulteratcd with
logwood and strychnine as our modern
wines, he would not have prescribed
any.
But Timothy, not strong physically,
is encouraged spiritually by the re-
cital of grandmotherly excellence,
Paul limiting TO him, as l hint this day
to you, that God sometimes gathers up
as in a reservoir, away back of the
active generations of to-day, q goodly
influence, and then, in response to
prayer, lets down the power upon
children and grandchildren and
great-grandchildren. The world is
woefully in want of a table of statis-
tics in regard to what is the protract-
edness and immensity of influence of
one good woman in the church and
world. We have accounts of how
much evil has been wrought by
woman who lived nearly 100 years ago,
and of how many criminals her de-
scendants furnished the penitentlary
and the gallows, and how many hun
dreds of thousands of dollars they cost
our country in their arraignment and
prison support, as well as in the prop
erty they burglarized and destroyed,
will 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 100 years ago, and let
us know how many Christian men and
women and reformers and useful peo-
pie have been found among her de-
scendants, and how many asylums
and colleges and churches they built,
and how many millions of dollars they
contributed for humanitarian and
Christian purposes?
The good women whose tombstones
were planted in the eighteenth cen
fury are more alive for good in the
nineteenth century than they were be-
fore, as the good women of this nine
teenth century viii be more alive for
good IN the twentieth century than
now. Mark you, l have no idea that
the grandmothers were any better
than their granddaughters. You can
not get very old people to talk much
about how things were when they
were boys and girls. They have re-
ticence and q non-committalism which
makes me think they feel themselves
to De the custodfans of the reputation
of their early comrades. While our
dear old folks are rehearsing the fol-
lies of the present, if we put them on
the witness stand and cross-examine
them as to how things were 20 years
ago, the silence becomes oppressive.
The celebrated Frenchman, Volney,
visited this country in 1896, and he says
of woman's diet in those times: 'lf a
premium was offered for regimen
I -
be devised more efficaciouS for these
ends than that in use among these peo-
pie. "That eclipses our lobster salad at
midnight. Everybody talks about the
dissipation of modern society and how
womanty health goes down under it,
but it was worse 100 years ago, for the
chaplain of French regiment in our
revolutionary war wrote in 1882, in his
Book of American Women" saying:
'They are tall and we'll proportioned,
their features are generally regular,
their complexiohs are generally fair
and without color. At 20 years of age
the women have no longer the fresh
ness of youth. At 80 or 40 theey are
decrepit." In 1912 a foreign consul
wrote book entitled, ga Sketch of the
United States at the Commencement of
the Present Century" and he says of
the women of those times: AT the
age of 80 all their charms have disap-
peared." One glance at the portraits
of the women 100 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 of 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. Notwithstanding that those
times were so much worse than ours,
there was a glorious race of goodIy
women, 20 and 1C0 years ago, who
held the world back from sin and lift
ed it toward virtue, and without their
exalted and sanctified influence before
this the last good influence would
have perished 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 grandmothers.
They sometimes feel that the world
has gone past them, and they have an
idea that they are of little account.
Their heads sometimes get aching
from the racket OF the grandchildren
6aEn stairs er in the next room. They