“The biggest place in the world is that which is being filled by the people who are in close touch with youth. Being a king, an emperor or a president is mighty small business compared to being a mother, or the teacher of children, whether in a public school or in a Sunday school, and they fill places so great that there isn’t an angel in heaven that wouldn’t be glad to give a bushel of diamonds to boot to come down here and take their place. Commanding an army is little more than sweeping a street or pounding an anvil compared with the training of a boy or girl.”
SAYS MEN ARE WHAT MOTHERS MAKE THEM.
“Emerson said: ‘Men are what their mothers make them.’ They are what their mothers make them, and if the mothers of today were true to their trust, then they could send their boys to college and need not be afraid of them coming back infidels, like many of them do. There is no power on earth that can lift to heaven or shove to hell like the touch of a mother’s hand. Everywhere men have been brought back from the valley of the shadow of death simply by the touch of mother’s hand.”
SONGS OF MOTHER SWEETEST TO HEAR.
“There is power in a mother’s song, too. It’s the best music the world ever heard. There is no brass band or pipe organ that can hold a candle to mother’s song, the kind she sings gets tangled up in your heart strings. There would be a disappointment in the music of heaven to me if there were no mothers there to sing. The song of an angel or a seraph would not have much charm for me. What would you care for an angel’s song if there is no mother’s song? The song of a mother is sweeter than that ever sung by minstrel or written by poet. Talk about sonnets! You ought to hear the mother sing when her babe is on her breast, when her heart is filled with emotion. Her voice may not please an artist, but it will please any one who has a heart in him. The songs that have moved the world are not the songs written by the great masters. I think when we reach heaven it will be found that some of the best songs we will sing there will be those we learned at mother’s knee.”
“There is power in a mother’s love. A mother’s love must be like God’s love. How God could ever tell the world that He loved it without a mother’s help has often puzzled me. If the devils in hell ever turned pale, it was the day when mother’s love flamed up for the first time in a woman’s heart. If the devil ever got ‘cold feet,’ it was that day, in my judgment.”
“To teach a child to love the truth and hate a lie, to love purity and hate vice, is greater than inventing a flying machine that will take you to the moon, or to the North pole. Unconsciously, you set in motion influences that will damn or bless the old universe and bring new worlds out of chaos and transform them for God.”
GATHERING UP THE SUNBEAMS.
“If we knew the baby fingers pressed against the window pane,