Page:Letters to Mothers (1839).djvu/115

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children and does it heartily, in the spirit of faith and prayer."

Friends! Mothers! how long will it be, ere we shall be removed from our stewardship? ere a stranger may be seated where we have been wont to preside at the table, and the hearthstone? How brief will be the interval ere the infants that we now caress, shall be rocking the cradle of their own infants, or treading like us the threshold of that house of forgetfulness, whence there is no return? Bound on this ceaseless, unresting march in the footsteps of buried generations, enlisted in that warfare whence there is no discharge, let us on whom such pressing responsibilities devolve, take as our motto, "what thou doest, do quickly."

The dews of the morning are scarcely more fleeting, than the plastick period of the minds on which we operate. Every day removes them further from our jurisdiction. The companions with whom they are to associate, the world in which they are to act, hasten onward with opposing influences, and an indurating power. Now, while the garden of the soul is ours, let us give diligence to implant the germs of holy principle, of unswerving goodness, of humble piety, of the fear of sin, of faith in the Redeemer. "Now, while it is called to-day."

God in bestowing on us the privileges of being