Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 January 1894 — “WHERE’S MOTHER?” [ARTICLE]

“WHERE’S MOTHER?”

An Emotional Discourse By Dr. Talmage. ■ - Tribute to Old Fashioned Mothers Who Wait 'at Heaven's Falnce Windows for Their Loved Ones. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at the Brooklyn last Sunday, Text: Judges, v. 28—; The mother of Sisera looked out a window.” He said: Spikedoto the ground of Jael's tent lay the dead of the Canaanitish host. Gen. Sisera. not Ear from the river Kishon, which was only a dry bed of pebbles when Bah “sti ne. we, crossed i t, but the gullies and ravines which ran into it indicated the possibility of great freshets like the one at the time of the text. Gen. Sisera had gone<»ut with 900 iron chariots, but he was defeated, and . haridt wheels interlocked with the wheels of other chariots, he could not retreat fast enough, and so he leaped to the ground and ran till, exhausted, he went into Jael’s tent for safety. She had just been churning, and when he asked for water shegave him buttermilk, which if) the east is considered a most refreshing drink. Very tired and supposing he was -saf-e. he -went to sleep upon the floor r but .Tael, who had resolved upon his death, took a tent pin, long and round and sharp, in one hand and a hammer in >her other hand, and putting the sharp end of the tent pin to the forehead of Sisera with her other hand she lifted the hammer and brought it down on the head of the pin with a stout stroke, when Sisera struggled to rise, and she struck

him again, and he struggled to rise, and the third time she struck him, and the commander-in-chief of the Canaanitish host lay dead. Meanwhile in the distance Sisera’s mother sits amid surroundings of wealth and pomp and scenes palatial waiting for his return. Every mother cxpects her son to be victori- ' ous, and this mother looked out of the window expecting to see him ' drive up in his chariot, followed by i wagons loaded with embroideries and . also by;regiments of men vanquished ' and enslaved. I see her now sitting by the window in high expectation. She watches the farthest turn of the road. She looks for the flying dust of the swift hoofs. The first flash »f the bit of the horse's bridle she wid catch. The ladies of the court are stand- | ing around, and she tells them of j , what they shall have when her son | comes up—chains of gold and carca- ; nets of beauty, and dresses of such j wondrous fabric and splendor as the ; Bible only hints at. but leaves us to ' injagine-. “He ought to be here by i this time, ’ says his mother, “That ■ battle is surely’ over. I hope that | freshet of the river Kishpn has not I impeded him. I hope those strange j appearances we saw last night in the sky were not ominous when .the stars seethed to fight in t heir courses. No. ' no! He is so brave in battle I know he has won the day. He will soon be here.” But alas for the disappointed ; mother! She will not see the glit- ; tering headgear of the horses at full . gallop bringing her son home from I victorious battle. As a solitary mes- j senger arriving in hot haste rides u ) | to the window at which the mother of Sisera sits he cries, “Your armies are defeated and your son is dead!” There is a scene of anguish and horror from which we turn away. Now you see the full meaning of my short text, “The mother of Sissera looked out at a window.” Well, my friends, we are all out in the bat tie of life. It is raging now, and the i most of us have a mother waiting ; and watching for news of our victory | or defeat. If she be not sitting at I the window of earth, she is sitting at a window of heaven, and she is going to hear all about it. “Where’s mother?” is the i question most freauently asked in many households. It is asked by the husband as well as the child coming in at nightfall. “Where’s mother?” j It is asked bv the - little oßes when i they get hurt and come in crying with pain. "Where’s mother?” It ; is asked by those who have seen some : grand sight or heard some good ; news or received some beaiPtiful gift. “Where’s mother?"

She sometimes feels wearied by the question, for they all ask it and keep ■ asking it all the time. She is not only the first to hear every case of perplexity, but she is the judge in every court of domestic appeal. That is what puts tho premature wrinkles on so many maternal foreheads. You see it is a question that keeps on for all the years of childhood. It comes from the nursery, and from the evening stand where the boys and girls are learning their school lessons, and from the starting out in the morning, when the tippet, or hat or slate or book or overshoe is lost, until at night, all out of breath, the youngsters come in and shout until you can hear them from cellar to garret and from front door to the back fence of the back yard, “Where’s mother?” If that question were put to most of us this morning, we would have to say, if we spoke truthfully, like Sisera’s mother, she is at the palace window. She has become a queen unto God forever, and she is pulling back the rich folds of the king’s upholstery to look down at us. Those old fashioned mothqrs—if 'any persons eyer fitted appropriately into a good, easy, comfortable heaven they were the folks, and they ■got there, and they rested. They wear no spectacles, for they have

their third sight—as they lived long enough on earth to get their second sight —and they do not have to pant for breath after going up the emerald stairs of the eternal palaee, : at whosejvindow they now sit waiting for the news from the battle? put if any one keeps on asking the question, “Where’s mother?” I answer she is,in your present character. The probability is that your physical features suggest her. If there be seven children in a household at least six of them look like their mother, and the older you get the more you will look like her. But 1 speak now especially of your character and not of your looks. This is easily explained. During the first ten years of ycur life you were most all the time 'with her, and your father you saw only mornings and nights. There are no years in my life so important forimpression as the first ten. Then and there is the impression made for virtue or vice. for truth or falsehood, for bravery or cowardice, for religion or skepti-

cism. > Before one decade has passed you can decide whether that boy shall be a Shylock or a George Peabody. Boys and girls are generally echoes of fathers and mothers. W hat an incoherent thing for a mother out of temper to punish a child for getting mad, or for a father who smokes to shut his boy up in a dark closet because he has found him with an old stump of a cigar in his mouth, or for that mother tn rebuke, her daughter for staring at herself too much in the looking glass when the mother has her own mirrors so arranged as to repeat her from all sides. The great English poet’s loose moral character was decided before he left the nursery, and his schoolmaster in the school room overheard this conversation: “Byron, your mother is a fool,” and he answered,-VI-know it.” The most impressive thing at the inauguration of James A. Garfield as President of the United States was that after h£ had taken the oath of office he turned round, and in the presence of the Supreme Court and the Senate of the United States kissed his old mother. Ts I had time to take statistics out of this'audience and I could ask what proportion of you who are Christians owe your salvation under God to maternal fidelity, I think about three-fourths of you would spring to your feet. “Ha! ha!” said the soldiers of the regiment to Charlie, one of their comrades. “What has made the -change in you? You used to like sin as well as any of us.” Pulling from his pocket his mother’s letter, in which, after telling of sonrecomforts she had sent him, she concluded, “We are praying for you, Charlie, that you may be a Christian,” he said, “Boys, that’s the sentence.” The trouble with Sisera’s mother was that while sitting at the window of my text watching for news of her son from the battlefield.she had the two bad qualities of being dissolute and being too fond of personal adornment. The bible account says: “Her wise ladies answered her yea. She returned answer to herself: 'Have they not sped? Have they not divided" the prey—to every man a damsel or t wo, to Sisera a prey of divers colors of needlewoak, of divers colors of needlework on both sides?’ ” And I am not surprised to find that Sisera fought on the wrong side, when his mother at the window of my text, in that awful exigency, had her chief thought on dry goods achievement and social display. God only knows how many homes have been made shipwreck on the wardrobe. And that mother who sits at the window watching for vain glorious triumph of millinery and fine colors and domestic pageantry will after awhile hear as bad news from her children out in 'the battle of life as Sisera’s mother heard from the struggle at Esdraelon. But if you still press the question, “Where’s mother?” I will tell you where she is not, though once she was there. Some of you started with her likeness in your face and her principles in your soul. But you have cast her out. That was an awful thing to do, but you have done it. That hard, grinding, dissipated look you never got from her. If you had see anyone strike her, you would have struck him down without much care whether the blow was just sufficient or fatal; but, my boy, you have struck her down —struck her ■ innocence from your face and struck her principles from your soul. “But,” says some one, “are you not mistaken about my glorified i mother hearing of my evildoings ' since she went away ” Says some ; one else, “Are you not mistaken ■ about my glorified mother hearing ' of my self-sacrifice and moral bravery and struggle to do right?” No! Heaven and earth are in cloose communication. There are trains run ning every five minutes —trains of immortals ascending and descending —spirits going from earth to heaven to live there. Spirits descending from heaven to earth to minister and help. They ,hear from us many times a day. Do they hear good news or bad news from this battle —this Se- : dan, this Thermopylae, this Austeri litz, in which everyone of us isfight- ' ing on the right side or the wrong side? There is one thought that is almost too tender for utterance. I almost I (ear to start it lest I nave not conI trol of my emotion to conclude it. ' As when we were children we so i often came in from play, or from a i hurt, or from some childish injustice i practiced upon us, and as soon as the door was opened we cried, “Where’s mother?” and she said, “Here I am,” and we buried our weeping faces in her lap. So, after .1 r

awhile, when we get through with the pleasures and hurts of this life, we will, by the pardoning mercy of Christ, enter the heavenly home, and among the first questions, not the first, but among the first, will be the old question that we used to ask, the question that is being asked in thousands of places at this very mo- . ment —the question-; I Where's mother?” And it. will not take very long for us to find her or for her to find us, for she will have been watching at the window for our coming, and with the other children of our household on earth we will again gather round her. and she will say, "Well, how did you get through the battle of life? I have often heard from others about you. but now I want to heur it from your own souls. Tell me all about it. children.” And then we will tell her of all our earthly experience- -the holidays, the marriages, the birth hours, the burials, the heartbreaks, the losses, the gains? the victories, the defeats —and she will say: “Never mind. It is all over now. I see one of you has a crown, which was given you at the gate as you came through. Now cast it at the feet of the Christ who saved you and saved me and saved us all. Thank God we are never to part, and for all the ages of eternity you will never again have to ask, “Where's mother?”