The Journals of Martha E. McMillan

happiness in their afterlife let them look well to the planting has been. While there is everything to be said to the (growing?) mothers those who are just starting out, but what can we say to those who are older those of us who have crossed the meridian of life, who can look back to their mistakes. I remember of hearing of a mother who brought her son up in a country village where the air was pure and the morals of the people above suspicion it never seemed necessary for her to teach her son about the evil that was out in the world. But the years passed on and before she was aware he was grown and had secured a position in the city. The mother became alarmed to think she had never told him about the temptations and pitfalls that he would sure to meet. She wept and prayed much when the final good by came she took him by the hand and with a breaking heart said, “O my dear boy, you are leaving me and I never taught you the danger and traps that will be sure to be spread for your (___wary) feet. O my dear boy to think you are leaving me.” And not fortified with her good by kiss she gave him a Bible and with her finger pointed to the seventh chapter of Proverbs. She said, “My dear boy study this book but especially this chapter. It will keep you white and pure.” Long years after this mother had past from off the earth this man testified that this chapter had saved him and kept him pure. But it is a comfort to all mothers and Christian workers as well that God does not only promise to go before but to follow after as well. God can unloose the knots and make the trusted threads straight in our well of life. Now let me repeat what has always been a comfort to me when the road seemed dark. “Every life is full of failure. Every life is full of experience which no human wisdom can make clear. Our days are full of disappointment, the mother’s privilege or the Christians privilege is the midst of such experience is to commit all to Jesus, for he can take our failures and mistakes, our follies and even our falls and sins and make them into a beautiful life and character. He can take our tangled threads and disentangle them and weave them in garments of beauty for us. It matters not what the burden or care it we only lay it at his feet and leave it there he will transform it into good. 161