A Bouquet of "Forget-me-nots" for Mothers

These excerpts are taken from "The Social Position and Culture Due To Women," written by Rev. Dr. William R. Williams included in the book entitled The Young Lady’s Guide, published by the American Tract Society, 1870.

Rev. William R. Williams (1804-1885) pastored Amity Baptist Church of New York over 50 years. He was described as “modest and retiring, almost diffident in his manner, seldom making himself prominent in public meetings, almost never, unless called out from the corner in which he had quietly seated himself.”[i]

Mothers, and especially Christian mothers, may never put accomplishments before principles... In addition to a spirit and temper of true refinement, those graceful and womanly accomplishments are not forbidden but are allowed and desirable, which tend to make home happier. Let not the education of your daughters (and sons) be one of mere accomplishments—brilliant as the colors that play on the air-bubble, and as durable, and as useful…

But let the Christian mother remind herself and prayerfully and continually remind her children that they have souls formed for immortality; and that death, each hour impending, is to them the gates of heaven or hell. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and a new heart and faith in Christ and the great atonement, and the witness of the renewing Spirit. Life before show. Heaven before earth…

As Christian mothers, you will anxiously and continually remember that you are training souls for eternity; and that the scenes and the relations, the unions and the honors of earth are soon to know the intrusion of the destroyer Death. Bring up your children for God, and your recompense is in eternity and in this world as well. Train them for this world only, and verily then also you have your reward. But it is a reward to fill the memory with desolation, and the conscience with despair. Perchance your gay (carefree) and indulged, your admired and idolized child finds herself on the death-bed destitute of Christ, without holiness and without hope. Can you hope to catch from her pallid lips, that death has already touched, a grateful blessing for your wise and faithful training? Can you encounter the gaze of those eyes, over which the films of death are already gathering, but cannot hide the despair that lies deep and dark in their reproachful glances? And as you stand with sons and daughters, at the judgement-seat; and when, amid an assembled and expectant universe, the palace of the Holy One and the prison-house of Satan await the parting troops of mankind, will it content you to remember how wistfully and watchfully you trained your offspring, at the behest of fashion, in the ways in which they should not go; and left them to become the poor dupes in this life, and the victims in the next, of the great deceiver? Will you then pride and bless yourselves on the fidelity with which you discharged your parental duties, in the thrift that preferred earth to heaven, the wisdom that rejected Christ for Satan, and the resolute perseverance that stifled conscience, grieved the Spirit, nullified the Scriptures, and earned perdition? Who dare face these bare results? But how many parents, nominally Christian, are in careless unconsciousness pursuing that path of contented worldliness, which must thus end.

Gather, my sisters, to the Saviour’s feet. See Him taking the little children into His arms. Become yourselves scholars in His school, prayerful and watchful, that you may become the successful and exulting teachers of your children; that over your nurseries and your homes may fall the great calming shadow of the cross; that odors of heaven may be wafted over those scenes of vexation and trial and bereavement, through which the mother’s earthly path must lead her; and that finding God your own refuge, and commending Him to your children as their shelter and portion, you may, in the moment of death, and the day of judgment, have children and children’s children rising up to call you blessed.