p. 12 | The Mother’s Power

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 7, 1903

The Mother’s Power

Know you what especially impels me to industry?—My mother. I shall endeavor to sweeten a part of her life that otherwise has been so unfortunate, and lessen by my help and sympathy the great sorrows she has suffered. To her alone I owe the foundation of my mind and heart.—Jean Paul Richter.

George Herbert said: “One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters. In the home she is a lodestone to all hearts and lodestar to all eyes.

De Maistre, in his writings, speaks of his mother with immense love and reverence. He described her as his “sublime mother,” “an angel, to whom God had lent a body for a brief season.” To her he attributed the bent of his character.

One charming feature in the character of Samuel Johnson (notwithstanding his rough exterior) was the tenderness with which he invariably spoke of his mother, who implanted in his mind his first impressions of religion. In the time of his greatest difficulties he contributed out of his slender means to her comfort.

Cromwell’s mother was a woman of spirit and energy equal to her mildness and patience, whose pride was honesty, and whose passion was love, and whose only care, amid all her splendor, was for the safety of her son in his dangerous eminence.

Curran speaks with great affection of his mother, to whose counsel, piety, and ambition he attributed his success in life. He used to say, “If I possess anything more valuable than face or person or wealth, it is that a dear parent gave her child a portion from the treasure of her mind.”

It was Ary Scheffer’s mother, whose beautiful features the painter so loved to reproduce in his pictures, that by great self-denial provided him with the means of pursuing the study of art.

Michelet writes: “I lost my mother thirty years ago; nevertheless she follows me from age to age. She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share my better fortune.”

Goethe owed the bias of his mind and character to his mother, who possessed in a high degree the art of stimulating young and active minds. “She was worthy of life,” once said Goethe; and when he visited Frankfort, he sought out every individual who had been kind to her, and thanked them all.

John Randolph said: “I should have been an atheist if it had not been for one recollection, and that was the memory of the time when my mother used to take my little hand in hers and cause me on my knees to say, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’”—Selected.