| Home Making |
Chapter 4 |
Page 18 |
O mothers of young children, I bow before you in reverence. Your work is most holy. You are fashioning the destinies of immortal souls. The powers folded up in the little ones that you hushed to sleep in your bosoms last night are powers that shall exist forever. You are preparing them for their immortal destiny and influence. Be faithful. Take up your sacred burden reverently. Be sure that your heart is pure and that your life is sweet and clean. The Persian apologue says that the lump of clay was fragrant because it had lain on a rose. Let your life be as the rose, and then your child as it lies upon your bosom will absorb the fragrance. If there is no sweetness in the rose the clay will not be perfumed.
History is full is illustrations of the power of parental influence. It either brightens or darkens the child’s life to the close. It is either a benediction which makes every day better and happier, or it is a curse which leaves blight and sorrow on every hour. Thousands have been saved from drifting away by the holy memories of happy, godly homes, or, when they have drifted away, have been drawn back by the same charm of power. There are no chains as strong as the cords that a true home throws about the heart. John Randolph said, “I used to be called a Frenchman, because I took the French side in politics. But though this is false, I should have been a French atheist, had it not been for one recollection, and that was the memory of the time when my departed mother used to take my little hands in hers, and, causing me to bow at her knee, taught me to pray ‘Our Father who art in heaven.’” Is it not worth while for parents to seek to have such abiding, strong and blessed influence over their children’s lives? Just as far reaching and as powerful is the evil influence if parents are unholy. When the morning sun rises the shadow of Mount Etna is cast far across the lovely island of Sicily, resting on gardens and fields and the people’s homes, a shadow always of gloom a shadow as of an ever imminent terror. So over the life of a child to its close hangs the shadow of an ungodly parental influence. What parent wants to project such fatal gloom over the future years of the child he loves so well?
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