p. 294 | A Beautiful Picture

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 3, 1878

A Beautiful Picture.

A MOTHER teaching her children to pray, is an object at once the most sublime and tender that the imagination can conceive. Elevated above earthly things, she seems like one of those guardian angels, the companions of our earthly pilgrimage, through whose ministrations we are incited to good and restrained from evil. The image of the mother becomes associated in his mind with the invocation she taught him to his "Father who is in heaven." When the seductions of the world assail his youthful mind, that well remembered prayer to his "Father who is in heaven," will strengthen him to resist evil.

When in riper years he mingles with mankind, and encounters fraud under the mask of honesty, when he sees confiding goodness betrayed, generosity ridiculed as weakness, unbridled hatred, and the coolness of interested friendship, he may indeed be tempted to despise his fellow men; but he will remember his "Father who is in heaven."

Should he, on the contrary, abandon himself to the world, and allow the seed of self-love to spring up and flourish in his heart, he will, notwithstanding, sometimes hear a warning voice in the depths of his soul, severely tender as those maternal lips which instructed him to his "Father who is in heaven." But when the trials of life are over, and he may be extended on the bed of death, with no other consolation but the peace of an approving conscience, he will recall the scenes of his infancy, the image of his mother, and with tranquil confidence will resign his soul to Him who died that he might live—the Redeemer of the world.—Sel.