“There was the gay summer ‘garden party’ at Rest Cottage (Evanston, Illinois) in honor of Anna Gordon’s birthday with Miss Willard as master of ceremonies, when speeches and presentation of gifts, poems and tributes, were in order. And at the close all united in singing ‘How firm a foundation,’ as the aged saint, Miss Willard’s venerable mother, then in her closing eighty-eighth year, rose on the upper balcony, where she sat enjoying the bright scene in the garden, to wave her handkerchief in salutation at the words of her favorite hymn,
‘And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn,
Like lambs they shall still in My bosom be borne.’”
The substantial faith of mothers is illustrated in the case of one who
Sang the Nicene Creed
The sixth child in a family of eight, Joseph Von Wittig was born in a one-room cottage. He tells us how his mother used to sing before her marriage in the choir of the village church. “What did you like best to sing, mother?” he once asked her, and she answered, “The Creed.” He remembered a day when she was busy with field-work, and he heard her clear voice rising in the closing words of the Nicene Creed, et vitam venturi sæculi, “and the life of the world to come.”
The foretaste of the life to come has been enjoyed in the present life, to judge from these words by Bishop Adna W. Leonard, in his book, Evangelism in the Remaking of the World,[9] concerning his mother’s
Singing While Sleeping
“My own dear mother as she lay upon her dying bed, after many years of the severest suffering and invalidhood, fell into a very sound sleep. It was only a night or two before her outgoing. My father was keeping his faithful vigil, when suddenly he heard a familiar voice singing,
‘O Thou, in whose presence my soul takes delight,