urrection. Oh, how she
was wont to pray! She prayed as they prayed to-night, so earnest, so
importunate, so believing. Shall I ever be a Christian? She was a
Christian. Oh, how bright and pure and happy was her life! She was a
cheerful and happy Christian. There is

"MY MOTHER'S BIBLE.

"I have not opened it for years. Did she believe I could ever neglect
her precious Bible? She surely thought I would read it much and often.
How often has she read it to me. Blessed mother, did you pray in vain
for your boy? It shall not be in vain. Ah! no, no, it shall not be in
vain. I will pray for myself. Who has sinned against so much
instruction as I have? against so many precious prayers put up to
heaven for me by one of the most lovely, tender, pious, confiding,
trusting of mothers in her heavenly Father's care and grace? She never
doubted. She believed. She always prayed as if she did. My Bible, my
mother's Bible and my conscience teach what I am and what I have made
myself. Oh, the bitter pangs of an accusing conscience! I need a
Saviour mighty to save. I must seek Him. I will. I am on the sea of
existence, and I can never get off from it. I am afloat. No anchor, no
rudder, no compass, no book of instructions, for I have put them all
away from me. Saviour of the perishing, save or I perish."

Do you wonder that the next day he arose in a prayer-meeting and said:
"My brethren, I stand before you a monument of God's amazing mercy and
goodness, forever blessed be His holy name; all I have and all I am I
consecrate to Jesus, my Saviour and my God?" Oh, the power of
ancestral prayer. Hear it! Hear it!

II. But I turn for a moment to those who had

EVIL PARENTAGE,

and I want to tell you that the highest thrones in heaven and the
mightiest triumphs and the brightest crowns will be for those who had
evil parentage, but who by the grace of God conquered. As useful, as
splendid a gentleman as I know of to-day had for father a man who died
blaspheming God until the neighbors had to put their fingers in their
ears to shut out the horror. One of the most consecrated and useful
Christian ministers of to-day was born of a drunken horse-jockey. Tide
of evil tremendous in some families. It is like Niagara Rapids, and
yet men have clung to a rock and been rescued.

There is a family in New York whose wealth has rolled up into many
millions that was founded by a man who, after he had vast estate sent
back a paper of tacks because th