he world and mixes freely with other
young men of his own standing. Whether it be at college, or in the army,
or in business, he will inevitably be influenced by the views of the men
he associates with, which he will enlarge into the opinion of the world
in general, and will probably come home, if not to contradict his
mother, at least to patronize her and go his own way, smiling at her
with an air of manly superiority and with a lofty consciousness that he
knows a thing or two which lie beyond a woman's ken. Probably enough he
takes up with views on religion, or politics, or social questions which
are emphatically not yours, and which make you feel left very far
behind, instead of the old familiar "walking together" which was so
sweet. Worse still, he may evince for a time a cynical indifference to
all great questions, and all your teaching may seem to be lost in a
desert flat. The days of the latch-key and the independent life have
come, and you often seem to stand outside the walls which once admitted
you into their dearest recesses, left with but little clue as to what is
going on within.

But have patience. Early teaching and influence, though it may pass for
a time into abeyance, is the one thing that leaves an indelible impress
which will in the end make itself felt, only waiting for those eternal
springs which well up sooner or later in every life to burst into upward
growth; it may be a pure attachment, it may be a great sorrow, it may be
a sickness almost unto death, it may be some awakening to spiritual
realities. I often think of that pathetic yet joyful resurrection cry,
"This is our God, we have waited for Him"--waited for Him, possibly
through such long years of disappointment and heart hunger--only to cry
at the last, "This is our God, we have waited for Him, and He has saved
us."

But it is not all waiting. If with early manhood the "old order" has to
give place to new, and old methods and instruments have to be laid
aside as no longer fitted for their task, God puts into the hands of the
mother new instruments, new methods of appeal, which in some ways are
more powerful than the old. In early manhood she can appeal to the
thought of the future wife. I believe that this appeal is one of the
strongest that you can bring to bear upon young men.

I once had to make it myself under circumstances of unparalleled
difficulty; and I was struck with the profound response that it evoked.
It was on the occasion