THE MOTHER

“CAN a mother’s love be supplied? No! a thousand times no! By the deep, earnest yearning of my spirit for a mother’s love ; by the weary, aching void in my heart; by the restless, unsatisfied wanderings of my affections, ever seeking an object on which to rest; by my instinctive discernment of the true maternal love from the false as I would discern between a lifeless statue and a breathing man; by the hallowed emotions with which I cherish in the depths of my heart the vision of a grass-grown mound in a quiet graveyard among the mountains ; by the reverence, the holy love, the feeling akin to idolatry try with which my thoughts hover about an angel form among the seraphs of Heaven—by all these, I answer, no

Dear reader, have you a mother? Then on your knees remember the Giver of this greatest earthly good, and as you offer to him the incense of a grateful heart, oh! mingle with the oblation a prayer for those to whose quivering lips is pressed the orphan’s hitter chalice.’’

A mother mourning at her first horn’s grave, or closing the dying eye of child after child, displays a grief whose very sacredness is sublime. But bitterer, heavier than the death-stroke is the desperation of a son who rushes over a crushed heart into vices which he would hide even from the abandoned and the vile.

In what Christian country can we deny the influence which a mother exerts over the whole life of her children.  The roughest and hardest wanderer, while lie is tossed on the ocean, or while he scorches his feet on the desert sands, recurs in his loneliness and suffering to the smiles which maternal affection shed over his infancy; the reckless sinner, even in his hardened career, occasionally hears the whisperings of those holy precepts instilled by a virtuous mother, and, although they may, in the fullness of guilt, be neglected, there are many instances of their having so stung the conscience, that they have led to a deep and lasting repentance; the erring child of either sex will then if a mother yet exists, turn to her for that consolation which the laws of society deny, and in the lasting purity of a mother’s love will find the way to Heaven. How cheerfully does a virtuous son labor for a poverty-stricken mother!  How alive is he to her honor and high standing in the world! And should that mother be deserted— he left in “worse than widowhood,” how proudly does he stand forth her comfort and protector I Indeed, the more we reflect upon the subject, the more entirely are we convinced, that no influence is so lasting, or of such wide extent, and the more extensively we do feel the necessity of guiding this sacred affection, and perfecting that being from whom it emanates.

“The future character of a child,” said Napoleon, “is always the work of its mother, and he delights in recollecting that to his parent did he owe much of the greatness of a mind, which probably grasped at too much, but which afterwards enabled him to bear years of privation and exile with fortitude and dignity. General Scott in the opening paragraph of his autobiography pays this beautiful tribute to his mother: In my sixth year I lost my father, a gallant lieutenant, captain in the Revolutionary army, and a successful farmer. Happily, my dear mother was spared to me eleven years longer, and if, in my now protracted career, I have achieved anything that my countrymen are likely to honor in the next century, it is from the lessons of that admirable parent that I derived the inspiration. John Randolph never ceased, till his dying day, to remember with unutterable affection the pious care of his mother, in teaching him to kneel at her side, and, with his little hands pressed together, and raised upwards, to repeat, in slow and measured accents, the pattern prayer.

It is said that John Quincy Adams remarked, when fourscore years old, that he had no recollection of ever retiring for the night without repeating the simple lines which his mother taught him when he was a very little child, and which so many mothers besides her, have taught their children.

“Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

At home and abroad, on the sea and on the land, in the presidential mansion and in his own private dwelling, where ever he laid himself down for rest, he closed not his eyes in sleep till he had repeated these lines. This fact reveals to us the character of the man. He never hesitated to acknowledge his belief in a Supreme Being, and to own his dependence upon Him for guidance and protection. He commenced the day with reading the Scriptures, and closed it with the words of prayer. And he did this through all the scenes of his varied and protracted life.

This fact also reveals to us the greatness of a mother’s influence and the permanency of her early instructions. He was favored with one of the best of mothers, and she spared no pains in teaching him his duties both to God and man, and his firm adherence to what he believed to be right, and the fearless advocacy of it, were the fruits of his instruction. And the offering up of that simple prayer at night, for so many years, he traced to the same source. She taught him to pray, taught him this little prayer, and he ceased not to offer it until his life closed.

“My mother,” said Mr. Benton, not long before he died, “asked me not to drink liquor, and I never did. She desired me at another time to avoid gaming, and I never knew a card. She hoped I would not use tobacco, and it never passed my lips.”

I was told today the story of a mother on the hills of Vermont, holding by the right hand a son of sixteen years old, mad with the love of the sea. And as she stood by the garden gate one sunny morning, she said: “Edward, they tell me that the great temptation of a seaman’s life is drink.” Promise me, before you quit your mother’s hand, that you will never drink.” “And,” said he, for he told me the story, “I gave her the promise, and 1 went the broad globe over—Calcutta, the Mediterranean, San Francisco, the Cape of Good Hope, the North Pole and the South—I saw them all in forty years, and I never saw a glass filled with sparkling liquor that my mother’s form, by the garden gate, on the green hill-side of Vermont, did not rise before me; and today, at sixty, my lips are innocent of liquor.”  Yet that was not half. “For,” said he, “yesterday there came into my counting-room a young man of forty, and asked, ‘Do you know me?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well.’ said he, ‘I was once brought drunk into our presence on shipboard; you were a passenger; the captain kicked me aside; you took me to your berth and kept me there until I had slept the sleep of intoxication; you then asked me if I had a mother. I said I never knew a word from her lips! You told me of yours at the garden gate and today I am master of one of the finest packets in New York, and I came to ask you to call and see me.’” How far that little candle throws its beams! That mother’s word on the green hill-side of Vermont!

Not long ago the Rev. Dr. Mills, in one of his powerful appeals to mothers to consecrate their children to the ministry of the Gospel, said: “A youth, after great deliberation, and with the knowledge that his mother desired him to be a clergyman, decided at last to become a lawyer; and soon after his mother inquired of him in a tone of deep and tender interest, ‘my son, what have you decided to do?’ ‘to study law, mother.’ She only replied, ‘I had hoped otherwise;’ and her convulsive sobbing told the depth of her disappointment. ‘Do you think,’ said he, ‘I could go into the law over my mother’s tears?’” He reconsidered the case, and has long been an able and efficient clergyman.

Rev. Dr. Leland, of South Carolina, stated recently in the prayer meeting at Saratoga Springs, that of one hundred students in the Theological Seminary at Columbia, he had ascertained, by personal inquiry, that ninety-nine received their first religious impression from pious mothers. All that Leigh Richmond was, he attributed to the simplicity and propriety with which his mother endeavored to win his attention, and store his memory with religious truths, when yet al most an infant. Oh! if Christian mothers would but wake up to the use of their powers and their influences, a Samuel might arise out of every family, and Leigh Richmond be numbered by thousands.

Who can look coldly upon a mother? Who, after the unspeakable tenderness and care with which she has fostered him through infancy, guided him through childhood, and deliberated with him through the perplexities of opening manhood, can speak irreverently of a mother? Her claims to the affection of her offspring are founded in nature; and cold must be the heart that can deny them. “Oh!” says Irving, “there is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to her son that transcends all other affections of the heart. It is neither to be chilled by selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by ingratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience; she will surrender every pleasure to his enjoyment; she will glory in his fame, and exult in his prosperity; and if misfortune overtake him, he will be the dearer to her from misfortune; and if disgrace settle upon his name, she will still love arid cherish him in spite of his disgrace; and if all the world beside cast him off she will be all the world to him.”

Alas! how little do we appreciate a mother’s tenderness while living. How heedless are we in youth of all her anxieties and kindness? But when she is dead and gone, when the cares and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts, when we experience how hard it is to find true sympathy, how few to love us for ourselves, how few will befriend us in misfortune; then it is, that we think of the mother we have lost.

Over the grave of a friend, of a brother, or a sister, I would plant the primrose, emblematical of youth; but over that of a mother, I would let the green grass shoot up unmolested, for there is something in the simple covering which nature spreads upon the grave, that well becomes the abiding place of decaying age. O, a mother’s grave! Earth has some sacred spots, where we feel like loosing shoes from our feet, and treading with reverence; where common words of social converse seem rude, and friendship’s hands have lingered in each other; where vows have been plighted, prayers offered, and tears of parting shed. Oh! how thoughts hover around such places, and travel back through unmeasured space to visit them! But of all spots on this green earth none is so sacred as that where rests, waiting the resurrection, those we have once loved and cherished—our brothers, or our children.  Hence, in all ages, the better part of mankind have chosen and loved spots of the dead, and on these spots they have loved to wander at eventide. But of all places, even among the charnel-houses of the dead, none is so sacred as a mother’s grave. There sleeps the nurse of infancy, the guide of our youth, the counselor of our riper years—our friend when others deserted us; she whose heart was a stranger to every other feeling but love—there she sleeps and we love the very earth for her sake.