t in this day, when
there are so many opportunities of improving ourselves in the best
manner of cultivating children, that so often there is no more
advancement in this respect than there has been among the kids and the
eaglets and the whelps.

III. Again, Hannah stands before you as

A CHRISTIAN MOTHER.

From her prayers and from the way she consecrated her boy to God, I
know that she was good. A mother may have the finest culture, the most
brilliant surroundings; but she is not fit for her duties unless she
be a Christian mother. There may be well-read libraries in the house,
and exquisite music in the parlor, and the canvases of the best
artists adorning the walls, and the wardrobe be crowded with tasteful
apparel, and the children be wonderful for their attainments, and
make the house ring with laughter and innocent mirth, but there is
something woeful-looking in that house if it be not also the residence
of a Christian mother.

I bless God that there are not many prayerless mothers--not many of
them. The weight of the responsibility is so great that they feel the
need of a divine hand to help, and a divine voice to comfort and a
divine heart to sympathize. Thousands of mothers have been led into
the kingdom of God by the hands of their little children. There were
hundreds of mothers who would not have been Christians had it not been
for the prattle of their little ones. Standing some day in the
nursery, they bethought themselves: "This child God has given me to
raise for eternity. What is my influence upon it? Not being a
Christian myself, how can I ever expect him to become a Christian?
Lord, help me!" Are there

ANXIOUS MOTHERS

who know nothing of the infinite help of religion? Then I commend to
them Hannah, the pious mother of Samuel. Do not think it is absolutely
impossible that your children may come up iniquitous. Out of just such
fair brows and bright eyes, and soft hands, and innocent hearts, crime
gets its victims--extirpating purity from the heart, and rubbing out
the smoothness from the brow, and quenching the lustre of the eye, and
shriveling up and poisoning and putrefying and scathing and scalding
and blasting and burning with shame and woe.

Every child is a bundle of tremendous possibilities; and whether that
child shall come forth to life, its heart attuned to the eternal
harmonies, and, after a life of usefulness on earth, go to a life of
joy in heaven; or whether across it shall j