Lord reward him! But we others were a burden to her night and day. She told her Father in heaven all her sorrows and our sins." The first hymn she taught her lad, and which we doubt not he, for her dear sake, has in turn taught to his little boy, was this: 66 Happy the child whose tender years Who shuns the sinner's path, and fears "How her face beamed with joy when she took me to a friend's house," says Richard, who, being her youngest, perhaps was her favorite child, "and put me to stand on a chair to say that hymn! The soft kiss from her lips on my cheek, and a short prayer heaved to God from her heart, 'The Lord bless my boy!' I shall never forget." Nor were these motherly instructions in vain even then. Through them the Spirit of God often spoke to his soul; and though the whisper of the Holy Dove was quenched by the chattering of the unclean and hateful birds of which his heart too soon became the cage, yet the almighty "still small voice' would ever and again woo him for a while to Thomas, was killed by one of those accidents which are so frequent in the collieries. We have seldom heard Richard Weaver preach without some affectionate allusion to his praying mother, the old woman in Shropshire, whose loving heart ever yearned over her prodigal boy; who tenderly nursed him in infancy; taught him in childhood of the Holy One who came down from heaven, and became a child for children's sake; warned, counseled, pleaded with him, as growing up into manhood he forgot her instruction and laughed at her reproof; and with the tenacity of a mother's love, prayed for him still when he had cut himself adrift from his best earthly friend, leaving his home and her without one parting kiss or one word of kind farewell. Looking back upon these early days, Richard says: "I could tell some sad tales of sorrow that I witnessed when quite a child. Many a time have I clung to my mother, and cried to my drunken father, 'Don't kill my mother!' Yes, I think as I write this of the days of my childhood, when the praying mother has been down on her knees asking God to help her in her distress! My oldest brother was always kind to her. The Lord reward him! But we others were a burden to her night and day. She told her Father in heaven all her sorrows and our sins." The first hymn she taught her lad, and which we doubt not he, for her dear sake, has in turn taught to his little boy, was this: "Happy the child whose tender years Who shuns the sinner's path, and fears "How her face beamed with joy when she took me to a friend's house," says Richard, who, being her youngest, perhaps was her favorite child, "and put me to stand on a chair to say that hymn! The soft kiss from her lips on my cheek, and a short prayer heaved to God from her heart, The Lord bless my boy!' I shall never forget." Nor were these motherly instructions in vain even then. Through them the Spirit of God often spoke to his soul; and though the whisper of the Holy Dove was quenched by the chattering of the unclean and hateful birds of which his heart too soon became the cage, yet the almighty "still small voice would ever and again woo him for a while to holier thoughts, and awaken in his breast desires after God. One day, in the coalpit, when a little boy, while pushing a wagon along the rail, something angered him, and he uttered an oath. It was his first oath; and hardly were the words spoken before he was shocked at his own wickedness, and dropped on his knees. at the end of the wagon and prayed for pardon, promising that, if the Lord would spare him till he became a man, he would begin to serve him. The reason why he did not at once resolve to turn to God was, that he thought the boys who cursed and swore got on better than he who, up to this time, had feared an oath. It is a terrible thing to trifle with eternal things. God might justly have smitten him in the utterance of that blasphemous prayer. But these times of his ignorance God winked at; though from that moment, as he did not like to retain God in his knowledge, God gave him over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient. From that hour Richard Weaver dates the commencement of a life of ever-increasing ungodliness and profanity, which would have landed him in a drunkard's grave, and ushered him into a terrible |