A MESSAGE TO MODERN MOTHERHOOD

White Ribbon, Volume 26, Issue 12, 1 May 1955, Page 2

A MESSAGE TO MODERN MOTHERHOOD

No matter how old we grow to be, or howdistant our wanderings, the influence of mother still reaches us from afar. Mothers (and fathers too), we are to remember that we will live again in the future of our children. There is an old saying: “You have no right to ask anyone to be better than you are yourself. “What a mockery, what a foolish thing, for socalled Christian parents to be teaching, advising, exhorting, young people and others to live up to a certain standard, when the one who preaches falls helow r that standard. If we put the challenge to ourselves as parents, we must paraphrase it and say, ‘You hardly need to expect vour children to be better than yourself.” A certain mother who was troubled, by her misbehaving son, asked her minister, “Isn’t there something you can do about our Johnnie?” The minister replied: ‘My dear friend, fifty hours at home pulling one way or all ways, and one hour at Sunday School; are not the odds somewhat unequal ?” We make the list one hour a week at Sunday School, forty hours a week at day school, fifty or sixty hours at home. And add holiday time! It is easy to see how the influence, which the home environment may exert, is easily superior to all the rest. “A house is built of bricks and stone, Of sills and posts and piers; Rut a HOME is built of loving deeds That stand a thousand years. . . . The men of earth build houses. Halls and chambers, roofs and domes— But the women of earth, God knows, The women build the homes!”

There is no “Home, sweet Home” in the world, so sweet as one, that is presided over by a gentle woman, whose heart is moved by the love of God, in Christ. And let us remember always, the influence of the home, the touch of mother love, reaches the child, now become a man or a woman all through life, anywhere and everywhere in the world, and out into eternity for ever. —By Dr. Ralph Walker (in “National Voice”) Baptist Church, New York.