The Yale expositor., 1898-10-14

NiS aiuhOSl luIOuBu Win tue journey VI
life and read the old Book more than
they used to, hardly knowing which
most they enjoy, the Old Testament or
the New, and often stop and dwell
tearfully over the family record half
way between. We hail them to-day,
whether in the house of God or at the
homestead. Blessed is that household
that has in it grandmother Lois.
Where she Is, angels are lowering
round and God is in the room. May
her last days be like those lovely days
that We call Indian summer!
is 1t not time that you and | do two
things-swing open picture gallery OF
the wrinkled faces and stopped shout
ders OF the past, and call down from
their heavenly thrones the godly
grandmothers, to give them our thanks
and then to persuade the mothers or
today that they are living for all time,
and that against the sides Of every
cradle in which a child is rocked beat
the two eternities?
Here We have an untried, undis-
cussed, and unexplored subject You
often hear about your influence upon
your own children, l 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 before Christ
came; it is not unreasonable to sup
pose that it may stand four thousand
years after His arrival. Four thousand
years the world swung off in sin, four
thousand years it may be swinging
back into righteousness. BY the ordi-
nary rate of multiplication of the
worlds population in century, your
descendants will be over three hun
dred, and by two centuries over fifty
thousand, and upon every one of them,
you. the mother OF today, will have an
influence for good or evil. And If in
four centuries your descendants shall
have with their names filed q scroll
Of hundreds Of thousands, will some
angel from heaven, to whom is given
the capacity to calculate the number
of the stars of heaven and the sands
Of the seashore, 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 grandmothers 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
mothers of the last century are today
in the person of their descendants, in
the Senates, the Parliaments, the pal
aces, the pulpits, the banking houses,
the professional chairs, the prisons, the
almshouses, the company of midnight
brigands, the cellars, the bitches OF
this century. Your have been thinking
about the importance Of having the
right influence upon our nursery. You
have been thinking of the Importance
of getting those two little feet on the
right path. You have been thinking OF
your child's destiny for the next eighty
years, IL it should pass on to be an oc-
togenarian. That is we'll, but my sub
ject sweeps a thousand years, a mil
lion years, quadrillion of years. l
cannot stop at one cradle, am look
ing at the cradles that reach all around
the world and across all time. l am not
thinking of mother Eunice. / am talk
ing of grandmother Lois. The only
way you can tell the force of current
is by sailing up stream or the force
Of an ocean wave, by running the ship
against it. Running along with it we
cannot appreciate the force. In esti-
mating maternal influence we general
ly run along with it down the stream
of time, and so We don't understand
the full force. Let us come up to 1t
from the eternity side, after it has
been working on for centuries, and see
all the good it has done and all the evil
ii has accomplished multiplied in mag
niGcent or appalling compound inter-
est. The difference between that moth
er's influence on her children now and
the influence when it has been multi
piled in hundreds of thousands of lives,
is the difference between the Mississip-
pi river away up at the top of the con-
tinent 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 Arkansas pours in,
and the Red and White and the Yazoo
rivers pour in, and all the States and
Territories between the Allegheny and
Rocky mountains make contributions.
Now, in order to test the power of
mothers influence, we need to come in
off the ocean of eternity and sail up
toward the one cradle, and we find ten
thousand tributaries Of influence pour
ing in and pouring down. But it is aft
er all one great river of power rolling
on and rolling for ever Who can faith
ON it? Who can bridge It? Who can
stop it? Had not mothers better be
intensifying their prayers? Had they
| not better be elevating their example?
Had they not better be rousing them>
selves with the consideration that by
their faithfulness or neglect they are
starting an influence which will be stu
pendous after the last mountain OF
earth Is fiat, and the last sea has dried