Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1898-10-13


upon the year 4, 900, II tho world lasts so
long. The world stood 1000 years before
Chrisy came. 1t Is not unreasonable to
suppose that 1t may stand 1000 years aft
err his arrival. Four thousand years the
world swung off in sin, 4, 900 years 1t may
bo swinging back into righteousness. BY
the ordinary ratio of multiplication of the
worlds population In a century your de-
sccndants will DO over 300, and by two
centuries over 80, 900, and upon every one
Of them you, the mother OF today, will
have an influence for good or evil And IL
in four centuries your descendants shall
have with their names filled scroll of
hundreds of thousands will some angel
from heaven, TO whom Is given tho capac-
ity TO calculate tho number of the stars
of heaven and tho sands of tho seashore,
step down and tell us how many descend
ants you will have in the four thousandth
year of the world s possible continuance
Do not let the grandmothers any longer
think that they are retired and sit clear
back out of sight from the world, feeling
TINT they have no relation to It. The
mothers Of the last century are today In
tho person of their descendants, in the SEN
atos, the parliamonts, the palaces, the pull
pits, the banking houses, the professional
CllnlrS, tHt UTlSOHS, tut uliHSnOuSeS, tHO
company of midnight brigands, the cellars,
the bitches of this century. You have
boon thinking about the Importance Of
having tho right influence upon ono nurs-
cry You have zen thinking of the i'm
portancc of getting those two little feet on
the right path You have been thinking
of your child's destiny for tho next so years
if it should pass on to be an octogonarian.
That Is well, but my subject sweeps n
thousand years, n million years, quad
rillion of years. l cannot stop at one
cradle. l am looking Mt the cradles that
reach all around the world and across all
time. l am not talking of Mother Eunicc.
/ am talking of Grandmother Lois. Tho
only way you can tell the force of n cur
rent is by sailing up stream or tho force
of nm ocean wave by running the ship
against it. Running along with it, wo can
not appreciate the force. In estimating
maternal influence we generally run along
with it down the stream of time, and so
we don't understand tho full force. Let
us come up to it from the eternity side,
after IL has been working on for centuries,
and 500 all tho good 1t has done and all tho
evil it has accomplished multiplied in
magnificent or appalling compound inter
est.
LiEe Mighty River.
The difference between that mothor's
influence on her children now and the in
fluence when it has been multiplied In
hundreds of thousands of lives is tho diff
ference between the Mississippi river away
up Mt the top Of the continent starting
from the little Lake Itasca seven miles
long and one wide, and its mouth ut the
gulf OF Mexico, where navies might ride.
Between the birth of that river and its
burial in the seq the Missouri pours in,
and the Ohio pours in, and the Arkansas
pcurs in, and th3 Red and White and the
Ea2oo rivers pour in, and all the states
and territorici between the Allegheny and
Rocky mountains make contribution.
Now, In order to test tho power Of a moth
cr's influence, we need to come in of the
ocean OF eternity and sail up toward tho
ono cradle, and we will find 10, 600 tribu-
tarieS of influence pouring in and pouring
down. But 1t is, after all, one great river
of power rolling on and rolling forever
Who can fathom it" Who con bridge 1t?
Who can stop ~ Had nos mothers better
be intcnsifyir,. their prayers? Had they
not better be elcvating their oxample'
Had tliSy not better be rousing themselves
with the consideration that by their faith
! fluenco which will be stupcndous after tho
last mountain Of earth is fiat, and the last
sea has dried up. and the last fake OF tho
ashes OF "a consumed world shall have been
blown away, and all tho telescopes OF other
worl IS directed to the track around which
our world once swung shall discover not
so mu2a rs n cinder OF the burned down
and sweep of! planet In Ccylon there is
n granite column 30 square feet in sizo
which IL thought by tho natives to decide
the worlds continuance. An angel with
robes min from zcphyrs Is once a century
to descend ard sweep tho hem Of that robe
across the granite, and when by that at
tritio. the column Is worn away they say
time will en1. But by that process that
granite coldmn would be worn out Of ex-
istence befo;e mothers influence will be-
gin to give way
Mothers Influence.
II n mother tell child II he is not good
some bugaboc will come and catch him,
tho fear excited may make the child
coward, and the fact that he finds that
thore is no bugaboo may mako him liar,
and the echo of that false alarm may be
heard after generations have been born
and have expired. II u mother promises a
child a reward for good behavior and after
the good behavior forgets to give tho re-
ward the cheat may crop out in some
faithlessness half thousand years farther
on. If "a mother cultivate u child's vanity
and eulogize his curls and extol tho 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 ar
rogance may bo prolonged after half IA doz-
on family records have been obliterated. II
mother express doubt about some state
hent of the Holy Bible in child's pres
fnce, long after the gates of this historical
era have closed and the gatos of another
era have opened the result may be seen in
a champion blasphemer. But, on tho other
hand, II mother walking with child
see a suffering one by the waysido and
says, "My child, give that 10 cent piece to
that lame boy" the result may be seen on
Che other side of the following century In
some George Muller building n whole viii
lago Of orphanages. If mother sit almost
every evening by the trundle bed Of a
child and teach IL lessons of q Saviour's
love and Saviour's example, of the inn
portance of>Truth and the horror OF a lie
and the virtues of industry and kindness
and sympathy and self sacrifice, long after
the mother has gone and the child has
gone and the lettering on both the tomb
stones shall have been washed out by tho
storms of innumerable winters there may
be standing as result of those trundle
bed lessons flaming evangels, world NOV
ing reformers seraDhic Summerfelds.
weeping Paysons, laundering Whiteields,
smancipating Washingtons.