CHAPTER V.

THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER.

WE are at a loss to know how to treat the subject of this chapter, so rich is it in holy remembrances. Let every reader who has or remembers a mother give us his heart. Let him go back and dwell with that mother, to receive again her blessings. Mother! We pity the man who can speak it without emotion, without a thousand kindling feelings of tenderness. To the great mass of men there is no word so sacred as mother. It carries them back to the fresh, warm fountains of being, to the rosy hours of childhood, the season of sweet innocence, when their mother was their guardian and priestess, when they went to her with every want and trial, and found in her their only changeless friend. They live over those seasons in memory. They see their mother in the bloom of life, giving her time and energies, mind and heart, to them. They see her in her delight as she presses upon them the caresses of maternal affection; as she rejoices in their health and joy, and developing charms and powers; as she watches them in sickness, sympathizes with them in sorrow, pities them in distress, wipes off their tears, and bids them be happy. They see her

in her trials, when life was dark and dreary; when want's grim face stared on her and her little ones; when poverty racked her frame with toil, or neglect chilled her soul, or vice invaded her home, or disappointment blighted her hopes, or sickness paralyzed her being, or dark intemperance cast its palsying cloud over her prospects; and with these awful hours come afresh her tears and toils, her doubts and prayers, and all the burden of woe that lay on her soul; and in them all they see the depth, and strength, and beauty, of a mother's love. As they look back in this retrospect of life, they learn what it is to be a mother; how great the energy of love necessary to bear her up under the toils and trials of maternity.

Not in childhood do we read a mother's soul; not in that joyous, careless season do we see the great picture of affection that is unrolling itself for us in a mother's heart. If we did, we should be better children. Had we known our mothers in childhood as we now know them, should we not have lived different lives? Should we not have sought to be what our mothers wished to have us, and have avoided a thousand evil things we have said and done?

An incident or two in the life of Rev. Mr. Soule illustrates well what we mean. His mother had been left a widow with several children, of which he was the eldest. He necessarily had many duties to perform, and less time to waste than boys who had a father to guide and support them. Some rude, idle boys took

advantage of his naturally confiding disposition, and, for a little while, succeeded in poisoning his mind with cruel and wicked thoughts against his mother, as though she was requiring too much at his hands. He tells the story himself. He says, "One day I saw my mother, after she had been seriously conversing with me about my waywardness and ingratitude, and pointing out to me the painful consequences of such a course of life, in a room alone weeping like a child. I knew it was on my account. She thought no one but God saw her. I gazed at her a few minutes, but the scene was too much for my heart; my eyes swam in tears; I turned and went away. But I was converted; I saw and felt that I had been shamefully abused by my companions; and my mother appeared to me again the angel she had been in my younger years. The history of those boys who thus seduced me into the paths of disobedience, has, in every case but one, been so bad that I can see no reason why I should not attribute my escape from ruin to the tears of my mother, shed in a secret place." So it is. Childhood does not know its mother. It was so in this case. A mother's tears, accidentally seen, revealed the secret of her love. That love saved the boy to become an honored and useful man. "Another incident," he says, "occurred either this or the following winter, that well-nigh blasted all the hopes my mother reposed in me. I went, as company, with a young man about two miles through the woods, to get some liquor

for his employer. When we went, there was a good, firm crust on the snow, which was deep, and the walking was firm; but, before we were in readiness to return, the weather had moderated very much, and the rain descended like a shower, which soon dissolved the incrusted surface of the snow, and this destroyed our highway. The labor of getting home was exhaustive in the extreme. We were completely saturated with rain before we proceeded far. My companion loved the intoxicating cup, and indulged his appetite pretty freely whenever the opportunity occurred. On this occasion he drank from the large stone jug, in which the liquor was contained, very frequently, at each time urging upon me the necessity of doing the same, if I would reach home without carrying with me the elements of a fatal sickness. He pressed me so hard that I finally consented. He held up the jug; I drank, strangled and swallowed, how much I don't know. My head soon grew dizzy; I got home somehow. I remember my mother's helping me into the door; but the dose was too much, and for several hours my life was despaired of. A few days afterwards I found some liquor in the house; my mother excited a burning

was absent; my drunken fit had

thirst for something that would intoxicate; and, as soon as I discovered the bottle of brandy, I felt unequal to the temptation, and drank of it freely. My mother returned and found me drunk again. She now thought my fate was sealed, my ruin inevitable. Her

feelings may be imagined. But she cured me of the folly, the sin. When I awoke the next morning, she was sitting at my bedside, with a candle still burning, reading from the Bible. Upon inquiry, I found she had spent the long night in watching over me. She reproached me never a word. She said she found me sick on her return; that I was not in my right mind, and she did not wish to leave me alone till I should be better. It was enough; I said nothing in reply, though I could scarcely control my feelings; but I resolved to drink no more. I never expressed this resolution to her. I ought to have done so, for it might have saved her from much pain; for I remember that she observed my conduct during several months with most anxious solicitude. But I drank no more, which, in time, gave her relief.”

Thus was he again saved by the revealment of his mother's love, and saved to love and reverence that mother in the prime of his manhood. How many would be saved in a similar way, could they learn, as did he, the purity and strength of their mother's love! The most of us had to grow up before we learned what great love was in a mother's heart. O, that we could have learned it sooner! From how many evils it would have saved us! Profanity! We did not learn this irreverent and wicked habit from our mothers. Vulgarity! This came from another than a mother's lips. Irreverence for religion! This we learned in other than the maternal school.

The mother's heart