A Great Man and His Mother
"Forsake not the law of thy mother. . . . When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee." -- Prov. 6:20, 22
I have come upon some things in human life as beautiful as the stars and as fragrant as the flowers. And when I come upon such things, they seem to cling to my memory. One of these beautiful and fragrant things that takes hold of my memory, is a story of Henry W. Grady, the great orator and statesman, who perhaps did more than any other one man to reunite our country following the Civil War.
The story is that when at the height of his great career, Grady realised that some-thing had gone out of his life—something that left a feeling of emptiness, something which he felt that he must somehow get back. One morning he informed his associates that he would be away for a few days; and closing his office he went back to his old country home for a little visit with his old mother. At the close of the first day of his visit, as the evening shadows gathered and deepened, he said to his mother: "I have lost something out of my life, mother, and I have come to you to find it. I want you to let me be a boy again. I want to say my prayers at your knee. I want you to tuck me in bed, and kiss me good-night just as you did when I was a child." And at his mother’s knee he knelt and said the little prayer she had taught him in childhood—
"Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take.
And this I ask for Jesus’ sake—Amen."
What a picture! A great statesman bowing his head in his mother’s lap and repeating that sweet little prayer of childhood’s days. Grady was a great orator. But never was he so eloquent as when in manhood’s prime he knelt there at that holy shrine of his mother’s knee and repeated that prayer. And there at that holy of holies he found again that something that had gone out of his life amidst the pressure of his busy career.
How many men there are to-day—big men and small men—who need to go back again to childhood’s altar and rediscover the simple faith and ideals that were taught them in earlier years but which they have long since lost from their lives.
