Nor should mothers be soon or easily discouraged! True, they may not live to see their prayers answered—but a covenant-keeping God will remember them, and in his own good time and chosen way give them an answer.
Though seed lie buried long in dust,
It shan't deceive our hope;
The precious grain can ne'er be lost,
For grace insures the crop.
The writer, perhaps, cannot better conclude this article than by another extract from the work alluded to, much to the same purpose as the one already cited.
"In conversing with the captain of a certain boat, I found him a very amiable and companionable man, although he acknowledged, that he had no reason to hope that he was a Christian. Said he, 'I ought to have been a Christian, long ago,' without giving his reasons for such an assertion. When the hour for prayer arrived, (I staid on his boat all night,) I asked him for a Bible. He seemed to be affected, and I did not know but he was destitute of a Bible. I told him I had one in my trunk, on the deck, and that if he had none, I would go up and get it. 'I have one,' said he, and unlocking his trunk, he took out a very nice Bible, and as he reached it out to me, the tears dropped on its cover. 'There, sir,' said he, 'is the last gift of a dying mother. My dear mother gave me that Bible about two hours before she died; and her dying admonition I shall never forget. O, sir, I had one of the best of mothers. She would never go to bed without coming to my bed-side, and if I was asleep, she would awaken me, and pray for me before she retired. Twelve years have elapsed since she died, and five years of that time I have been on the ocean, five years on this canal; and the other two years traveling. I do not know that I have laid my head on my pillow and gone to sleep, during that time, without thinking of the prayers of my mother: yet I am not a Christian; but the prayers of my mother are ended. I have put off the subject too long, but from this time I will attend to it. I will begin now and do all that I can to be a Christian.'
"I hope those dear mothers, who may have an opportunity of reading these sketches, will inquire of their own hearts, 'Will my own dear children, those little pledges of God's love, remember my prayers twelve years after my head is laid in the narrow house appointed for all the living?' Oh, could we place that estimate on the soul which we should do, in the light of eternity, how much anxiety would be manifested on the part of parents for their children, and for the whole families of the earth. The midnight slumber would more often be disturbed by cries to God, and tears for this fallen, apostate, rebellious world."
Mothers! what do you think of such facts? And what are they designed to teach you? Every one of them, as you meet them in the pilgrimage of life, is a voice of encouragement from above. Has God been kind towards other mothers? he can be kind towards you. Has he blessed their efforts? he can bless yours. Has he heard their prayers? he can hear and answer yours.
Say not that you have prayed, labored, watched, and all in vain! How long have you thus toiled? thus wrestled? Years? Well, and may be you will have to toil and strive years to come. What then! Your Heavenly Father knows precisely when it is best to answer you, and how! Suppose you pray and labor ten, twenty, thirty years—and then you succeed—won't the salvation of your children be a sufficient reward? How do worldly parents do? Take an example from them. They spend life in laying up this world's goods for their children—treasures which perish in the using. Surely, then, you may, with great propriety, devote a few years to secure an imperishable crown of glory for your sons and daughters. For what is the present world—its gold of California or its gems of Golconda—what are its honors—its stars, coronets, crowns—to an inheritance in the kingdom of God!
The time has not yet come when parents appreciate this subject as they will do. Oh, no! and until they realize their duty, their privileges, the purchase which they have on the throne of God by means of faith, and their covenant interest in the blood of Jesus, there is reason to fear that many children will perish, but who need not perish—who would not perish were their parents as faithful and energetic as parents will be in some more distant age of the world.
But why postpone what may be realized now? Why relinquish blessings of vast and incomparable magnitude to others which you may enjoy, and which it is no benevolence to forego for others, because when they come upon the stage, there will be blessings for them in abundance and to spare? Let the sentiment fall upon your hearts, and make its appropriate impression there—"While God invites, how blest the day!"