Page:Robert Carter- his life and work. 1807-1889 (IA robertcarterhis00coch).pdf/130

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
114
LIFE OF ROBERT CARTER.

how faithfully she did so the writer of this can testify, as it was his privilege to dwell beneath her roof for seventeen years while the process of training was going on. People often complain of the difficulty of bringing up children in a great city, but it was amongst its temptations and difficulties that she brought up hers.

“As day by day I saw the absorbing devotion of that young mother to her little children, I sometimes wondered, as a child will, whether such devotion would pay. But it did pay, and with compound interest. The little homes that have gone out from this one, modelled on the same pattern, are in turn training up sons and daughters to be the heads of similar Christian households by and by. Thus the influence of one wise Christian woman is being felt, and will be felt, in places far remote from her home. And though she has gone to her reward, the work still goes on, and will, from generation to generation.

“As her children gathered round her, the missionary box became a prominent and important institution, For the cure of certain faults, and for the doing of certain services, little sums were paid by this careful mother to her children, with the understanding that they were to go into the missionary box.

“The children were brought up to consider others rather than themselves,—to remember that the only way to be happy was to labor for the happiness of others.

“The Sabbath evenings in this good woman’s house, to those who, like the writer of this, were privileged to be with her through many years, will not soon be forgotten.

“As the silent twilight shaded into the night, and before the candles were lighted, books were laid aside, and hymns and Scripture verses were repeated in rotation round the family circle. Ter favorite selection was Watts’s version of the Fifty-first Psalm:

Show pity, Lord, O Lord, forgive!
Let a repenting rebel live.’