"Twenty-five years ago to-night my mother went to heaven, my
beautiful, blessed mother, and I have been alone, tossed up and down
upon the billows of life's tempestuous ocean. Shall I ever go to
heaven? She told me I must meet her in heaven. When she took her boy's
hand in hers and turned her gentle, loving eyes on me, and gazed
earnestly and long into my face, and then lifted them to heaven in
that last prayer, she prayed that I might meet her in heaven. I wonder
if I ever shall.
"My mother's prayers! Oh, my sweet, blessed mother's prayers! Did ever
boy have such a mother as I had? For twenty-five years I have not
heard her pray until to-night. I have heard all her prayers over
again. They have had, in fact, a terrible resurrection. Oh, how she
was wont to pray! She prayed as they prayed to-night, so earnest, so
importunate, so believing. Shall I ever be a Christian? She was a
Christian. Oh, how bright and pure and happy was her life! She was a
cheerful and happy Christian. There is
"MY MOTHER'S BIBLE.
"I have not opened it for years. Did she believe I could ever neglect
her precious Bible? She surely thought I would read it much and often.
How often has she read it to me. Blessed mother, did you pray in vain
for your boy? It shall not be in vain. Ah! no, no, it shall not be in
vain. I will pray for myself. Who has sinned against so much
instruction as I have? against so many precious prayers put up to
heaven for me by one of the most lovely, tender, pious, confiding,
trusting of mothers in her heavenly Father's care and grace? She never
doubted. She believed. She always prayed as if she did. My Bible, my
mother's Bible and my conscience teach what I am and what I have made
myself. Oh, the bitter pangs of an accusing conscience! I need a
Saviour mighty to save. I must seek Him. I will. I am on the sea of
existence, and I can never get off from it. I am afloat. No anchor, no
rudder, no compass, no book of instructions, for I have put them all
away from me. Saviour of the perishing, save or I perish."
Do you wonder that the next day he arose in a prayer-meeting and said:
"My brethren, I stand before you a monument of God's amazing mercy and
goodness, forever blessed be His holy name; all I have and all I am I
consecrate to Jesus, my Saviour and my God?" Oh, the power of
ancestral prayer. Hear it! Hear it!