PARENTAL AFFECTION AND INFLUENCE.
WHEN mothers are mentioned in the brief record of early life of some distinguished character in God's word, we have reason to think that they had a great influence in forming the character of their children. Joseph had the counsel and training of his mother twelve or fifteen years. In the remarkable events in the infancy of Moses, he was sent to his mother to have her shaping influence in the formation of a character that has been admired by God's people from his day down to the present time. The power of the mother in the case of Samuel and of Timothy, is distinctly related in the Bible. Throughout the history of the Christian church there are beautiful examples of the faithfulness of mothers in training their children for God. Nonna, mother of Gregory of Nazianzen; Anthusa, mother of Chrysostom; and Monica, mother of Augustine, have secured a prominent place in ecclesiastical history, mainly because of their devotion to their children. Indeed, we have no instances of godly mothers neglecting the religious training of their children. The church in all its branches holds that to be important, and enjoins attention to it. Baxter gave it as his opinion, that if every parent would faithfully perform his duty in bringing up his children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, it would almost render unnecessary the living ministry. Sharp says: "College learning is good, but all the learning of all the universities of Europe cannot compensate for the loss of that which the youth, reared in a religious home, has learned in childhood at his mother's knee." Since the power of the Christian mother is recognized to be so great, it is a wonder that more mothers do not use it with greater effect. We fancy that Rev. Dr. Payson, in writing to his mother when a young man, found one defect, when he says, "Why cannot other parents learn your art of mixing the friend with the parent." A little more of the unrestrained fellowship of the friend, with the authority of the parent, would add immensely to the power of the parent. The reading of the letters532of his mother to President Adams, led a stranger to say to him one day, "I have found out what made you the man you are." Those letters revealed the anxiety and the tenderness of the mother's heart, which desired that her son should be a good man. John Ashworth at early dawn heard the voice of his mother, as she prayed "Lord bless John! Keep him from bad company, and make him a good and useful man." "Her words went to my young heart," said he, "and they are ringing in my ears to this hour." "Home influences, directed by a pious mother," Washington declared was the source of his success. When his mother heard of his success, she said, "It was nothing more than I expected, as George was always a good boy." When well advanced in life, Thomas Benton said: "My mother asked me never to use tobacco, and I never touched it from that time to the present day. She asked me not to game, and I have not. When I was seven years of age, she asked me not to drink, and then I made a resolution of total abstinence." President Lincoln's mother died when he was ten years of age, and even at that early age he was well instructed in the Bible, and he said of his mother, "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my mother." Said Rev. Dr. Bushnell of his mother: "Long years ago she vanished; but God stays by me still, embracing me in my gray hairs, as tenderly and as carefully as she did in my infancy." When the parents' training and solicitude are appreciated and acknowledged before their removal from the world, then their care must come with great satisfaction to their remembrance. Guizot once wrote to his mother in the following words: "If I ever do any real good, the consolation it may afford you will be my sweetest recompense." To please his father was one great thought in the early life of Dr. Thomas Guthrie, and he wrote at his death, "I was anxious to please him by success in my studies, and when he died, I felt as if one great motive to exertion was gone." Dr. Payson wrote to his parents: "Thanks be to God, that you are loved and blessed by many who never saw you, on account of your children." When the praises of the people were many, just after the writing of the missionary hymn, "From Greenland's icy mountain," Heber was found "on his knees thanking God, not so much for the talents which brought him so much honor, as for the happiness which they had enabled him to give his parents." On the other hand, how keen are the reproaches of memory, when a man is led to cry out, as did Charles Lamb, when he said, "What would I give to call my dear mother back to earth for a single day, to ask her pardon upon my knees for all those acts by which I grieved her gentle spirit." How the memories of parental affection and influence come to us as the end of life approaches. It is said of Senator Hill, that when too feeble to walk into the parlor to view his mother's portrait, he would have himself carried in, and after gazing for a time, would say, "I shall soon be with her again." When on his death bed, Rev. Dr. Adams, of New York, remarked: "I owe everything to the judicious training of my parents. Serious, earnest in their own religious life, they never made religion repulsive. My mother's influence was specially gentle and wise." After referring to his attention to his mother's grave, Thaddeus Stevens remarked in his will: "I do this out of respect to the memory of my mother, to whom I owe whatever little of prosperity I have had on earth, which, small as it is, I desire emphatically to acknowledge." John B. Gough said in reference to his mother, before a large audience, "I stand before you to-night, to declare that if I have ever accomplished anything in the world, if I have ever done aught of good, what I am and what I have done by the grace of God, has been through the influence of that mother."—Rev. Robert H. Williams, in N. Y. Evangelist.