Old-Fashioned Mothers

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 16, 1883

Old-Fashioned Mothers.

THANK God some of us have had old-fashioned mothers. Not a woman of the period, enameled and painted, with her great chignon, her curls and bustle, whose white jeweled hands never felt the clasp of baby fingers; but a dear old-fashioned, sweet-voiced mother, with eyes in whose clear depth the love light shone, and brown hair just threaded with silver, lying smooth upon her faded cheek. Those dear hands, worn with toil, gently guided our tottering steps in childhood, and smoothed our pillow in sickness, ever reaching out to us in yearning tenderness. Blessed is the memory of an old-fashioned mother. It floats to us now, like the beautiful perfume from some wooded blossoms. The music of other voices may be lost, but the entrancing memory of hers will echo in our souls forever. Other faces may fade away, and be forgotten, but hers will shine on. When in the fitful pauses of business life our feet wander back to the old homestead, and, crossing the well-worn threshold, stand once more in the room so hallowed by her presence, how the feeling of childhood, innocence, and dependence, comes over us, and we kneel down in the molten sunshine, streaming through the open window—just where long years ago we knelt by our mother's knee, lisping, "Our Father." How many times, when the tempter lured us on, has the memory of those sacred hours, that mother's words, her faith and prayers, saved us from plunging into the deep abyss of sin. Years have filled great drifts between her and us, but they have not hidden from our sight the glory of her pure, unselfish love.—Sel.