Margaret was at the time of the story's beginning, the eldest of seven children, ages 3 to 14 years, whose father went home to be with the Lord after succumbing to pneumonia. Before his death, Mr. McDonald blessed each of his children individually with a laying on of hands, and then spoke encouraging words to his wife, Mary. It is a brave undertaking for any single parent raising seven children, and Mary McDonald in this story demonstrates how it can be done successfully.
Parenting is certainly not the same as it was when Mary McDonald raised her brood, but for the Christian family there are elements that never change. Life centered and focused upon God and home, as taught by God's Holy Word, teaching virtues and character of value throughout the centuries. We may not be as successful as Mary McDonald, yet there is something to learn from the reading of this chapter. The story is uplifting and inspirational.
At the end of this blog post you will find an Adobe PDF link of this chapter that includes added references and images.
A
King’s Daughter
from
Followers of the Gleam
or
Modern
Miracles of Grace
by
Charles L. Goodell, D.D.
Illustrated
New
York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1911.
Transcribed
by Mary Katherine May of QualityMusicandBooks.com.
I
have had much to say during the years of my ministry on the matter of home
religion. The great discovery of the
fifteenth century was printing. The
great discovery of the eighteenth century was the application of steam. The great discovery of the nineteenth century
was the application of electricity. We
are told that the great discovery of the last generation was the discovery of
childhood. I wish that this generation
might be the discoverer of the home. As
I have elsewhere said, the greatest influence in the life of a child is not the
school, or even the Church: it is the home.
The kind of religion that we need today is not so much a doctrinal
religion, or a formal social or ethical religion; it is a home religion,
applied and illustrated by those who live and serve in the tenderest and
dearest relations of earth. Anything
that looks like religious instruction is banished from our Public Schools, and
the religious instruction of the Sunday school is so limited and so partial,
and as we who are trying to do our best there, must sorrowfully admit, often
put into the hands of religious bunglers, to say nothing of those who are
unfit, either by character or training, to do the work. If we have any adequate training of our
children, it must be the training of home.
It has pained my heart to realize that when the Church had done her best
in the few hours in the week that she could come in touch with her children,
they must then be turned over to the influence of a degenerate home, where
every action nullifies the teaching of the Church, and all its tempers and
purposes work out the ruin of any high and noble character. The seeds of grace, like the seeds of the
garden, must be sown in the Spring.
In
his lecture on “The Religious Conquest of the Child’s Mind,” President G.
Stanley Hall says: “Childhood is the very best period of human life. Then all faculties are at their best. It is the Paradise from which growth is
always more or less of a fall. In all
its activities, physiological and physical, a child is nearer the type of the
species and has less of the limitations of the individual. The doors of the prison house have closed
upon him far less tightly than they have upon us. You will remember how Wordsworth puts the
same thought, and Wordsworth is the master interpreter of childhood:
Hence in a season of calm
weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that
immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon
the shore,
And hear the mighty waters
rolling evermore.
The
home is the guardian of childhood. Every
student of psychology and pedagogy understands the marvelous richness and
possibilities of those early years. If
parents only knew, and would consider!
Now is the time when life takes on whatever form you will for it. Now is the time when you can mold and fashion
it in such a way as to bless it and the world.
Now is the time to make a strong constitution; a pair of lungs that will
help to make pure blood; a stomach that will nourish a great brain, and a great
heart; a heart that will bear the strain of the dusty valley or the mountain
climb, and not break down in the middle life to leave its owner a wreck on the
shore, or a Hercules in a rotten boat.
Now is the time to form habits—those gossamer threads which will one day
harden to steel. Now is the time when
devotion can be nourished, when holy things can be set in the sky of a child,
like stars which go not out forever.
When
they asked Napoleon what was the great need of France, he said, “Mothers.” If you ask me what is the great need of
America, I answer, “Homes.” A home
implies a loving mother and a faithful father.
It implies a tender solicitude and yearning which will follow with
infinite patience the footsteps of the child, and will not be satisfied until
they are turned into the paths of peace.
You may board and clothe your children; you may give them a place to
sleep and a place to come in out of the storm, but you have not given them a
home until you have surrounded them with such blessings as will bring to birth
all the graces of a spiritual life. I
make my plea for Christian homes where a family altar is set up and the day is
bounded on the East by supplication, and on the West by thanksgiving to
God. We must give more time to our
children. They will soon be gone from
us. Strange, as says Socrates, that we
spend so much time to gather property and so little time on those to whom we
shall leave it. While the clay is plastic
we must mold it.
That
is a beautiful story which ex-President Roosevelt tells of his own father’s
home, and how he gave himself to his children, with such splendid success. Here in our city today, is a man, well born,
and who in his early manhood came into a large business inheritance. There seemed to open up to him a great field
of opportunity, but he was the father of four sons. If he went into his business ventures, he
might gain a great fortune, but it would require his frequent absence from
home, and would engross his time and strength to their fullest capacity. He debated in his own mind whether he would
give himself to the amassing of a fortune, so that each one of his sons might
have enough to start well in the race of life; or whether he would give himself
to the personal care and training of his sons, doing the best he could to form
good habits intellectually, morally and religiously. He decided to take the second course. He retired from the business and in all their
studies and sports, he was the companion of his boys. He watched them at every point, that they might
develop a true and noble character. He
has lived to see them universally respected in the city. They have gained fortunes, quite as large as
any he would probably have won for them, and they gained them by virtue of
their own ability and character. He will
insist that he made a wise choice, when he decided that to develop a noble
character was a wiser thing than to give a fortune to a child whose character
had been neglected.
All
that I have said thus far may pass as a twice-told tale, a homily trite and
commonplace. But I have a story to tell
which I wish might be heard and heeded in every home in America. My story is most impressive to myself,
because most of those who I shall name were my personal friends, and some of
them my parishioners. We have discussed
together the deep things of the kingdom, and I know the spirit which has
animated their hearts, and I am bound to say that there have been few families
in all my experience, in which the things of God were so vital, and devotion to
the noblest things in life so truly without struggle or affectation. I question if there has come from any home in
America influences which have so shaped the womanhood of the nation, as the
influences which came from this home, and in the field of business activity,
achievements have been made which satisfy all human needs and which leave a
record which any might envy, and all this flowed in large measure from the life
of one well-balanced, clear-headed, pure-hearted Christian mother.
The
home that I shall describe was a humble Scotch home, the home of the
McDonalds. On a cold, bleak night in
February, 1852, in Brooklyn, New York, a widow folded the hands of her dead
husband and knelt to pray. Seven
children knelt with her, their ages running from three to fourteen years. When the widow rose from her knees, her face
seemed transfigured. She had little
money, but she had love, and she had courage, and she had faith; and with seven
children clinging to her skirts, she turned to face the world. Dr. Daniel Curry was her pastor. He comforted her heart as best he might, with
those consolations which are eternal, and she took up her lot without
complaint. The funeral was held on
Saturday; and Sunday morning, before breakfast, as was her wont, she gathered
her children about her, read a chapter out of the Good Book, and led in
prayer. When the hour for service came
that morning, instead of spending it in agonizing grief at home, she took her
seven children and filled into her accustomed pew.
It
is not a mistaken custom which keeps us from the house of God when we most need
the help of worship?
Her
faith failed not, for in the quaint translation of Martin Luther, she “held on
to Him whom she saw not, as if she saw Him.”
And, as her son says of her, “she never let go.” Her faith held her until she looked into the
face of her Lord in the New Jerusalem.
I
shall have much to say about this Christian mother, but I wish to say here,
that the man who had fallen on sleep was worthy of her. While not a man of large means, he was a man
who was interested in many important matters, an Alderman of the city for many
years, and interested in all civic matters.
At the time of his death he was a candidate for the mayorality of
Brooklyn. He married early in life, his
wife being eighteen and he only two years older. She deferred to him in general matters, and
he deferred to her in matters of the religious life. As the children came, these parents devoted
themselves and their household to God, and “built an altar unto the Lord,” where
they evermore worshiped, they and their children. Mr. McDonald was hardly forty-five years of
age when he died. He had gone on a
mission of mercy for a poor man who lay under sentence of life
imprisonment. Evidence which was secured
later, sent Mr. McDonald to Albany to intercede for the man. He returned bearing the Governor’s pardon for
the man, but had himself taken a cold which passed into pneumonia, and the day
on which the prisoner was liberated, opened the gates of another world for him
who had set the prisoner free. Special
prayers were offered for him in many of the churches of the city, but he saw
his end approaching, and set his house in order. In “The Old Arm Chair,” his daughter gives a
touching description of his last hours.
“Mary,” said he to his wife, “get the children together and let me see
them alone. I have something to say to
them before I go.” The summons was
quickly answered, and the family drew to the bedside and took the family Bible,
for which he had asked. He opened to the
first Psalm, and with full, rich voice read with great unction the whole of it,
and then said, “That is true, my children.
I have proved it in my own life.”
Returning again to it, he commented on each paragraph, remarking with
great fervor, “How the Lord has blest me!
And it will be so with you, my children, if you follow the instructions
of this Psalm.” Then, as they each knelt
by his side, commencing with the eldest (Margaret Bottome), he put his hands on
their heads and blest them, giving to each his special benediction. Then dismissing them, he wished to be alone
with his Mary, and going over all the past, he again reminded her of God’s
great goodness to them and their mutual benefits under His grace. The poor brokenhearted wife, for the first
time completely overcome, threw her sobbing head upon his bosom, exclaiming,
“Oh, William, what shall I do when you are gone!” “Mary,” he said, “I give you God’s promises,
and He will keep them. And remember He
has said, ‘I will be a father to the fatherless and a husband to the
widow.’” His priestly duties were
ended. For a few hours he seemed to be
standing at the gate of heaven, pausing on its very threshold, to pour out exclamations
of ecstacy, in parting salutations to the throng of dear friends who pressed
around him for the last time, till the word came from within, and with a
whisper of glory on his sealing lips, he passed away.
From
that hour she was a changed woman. Not
that a revolution had taken place, but the hour had wrought sudden development
and decided manifestation of a strength of character which few would have
credited her with, if they had not seen her as she came from her Gethsemane to
bear the heaviest cross of human experience, the days of widowhood. It was then that the decided positiveness of
mind, which was really the underlying element of her character, exhibited
itself, and rose to support her under the circumstances which bereavement had
thrown around her.
Among
the sweetest memories of life to those devoted children are the recollections
of the dear old home. Theirs was a happy
home. When they gathered about the
piano, singing the sacred songs of the Church, the mother was the most pleased
and satisfied object of the group, and the special admiration of her
children. As the evening advanced, the
old family bible was placed in the hands of one of the number and family prayer
indicated the rule of the household, and early retirement. And so her children grew around her, held by
her without knowing it, and keeping close to her side because they loved her
better than anything else. They had no
disposition for amusements or fellowships which were questionable. They had better at home. She held a firm hand in her government, but
it was a soft hand. Strong and dominant
though she was, there was no spirit of contradiction in her, and no one ever
heard her speak ill of another, or even uncharitably. As her children passed to homes of their own,
this woman of sorrowful heart lived not only in her own children, but in their
husbands, their wives, and their children.
And she reaped what she had sowed, the universal love of her children
and her children’s children, and of anyone who came by any means within her
circle of unselfish relationships.
She
had a playful humor in her early days, and when her years multiplied, and she
began to feel that it was almost time for her to go home, she was so happy at
the thought that she made merry with those who came to see her, and crowded
such an element of gladness into her sick-room that it was more like a bridal
chamber than a place of death. Shortly
before she passed over, she said: “I must give something to each one of the
children.” One of them said, “I wish I could choose mine.” And when she asked what it would be, the
daughter replied, “Oh, Mother, if you could leave me your patience!” “Ah,” said she, “I cannot do that. You will have to learn patience, as I
did!” When Dr. Buckley, visiting her,
said, alluding to God’s legacy to the righteous, “Your children’s children will
be blest.” “Ah,” said she, “it’s further
than that. It’s not only to the third
and fourth generation, I have great-grandchildren on the sea.”
Her
passing over was unspeakably sweet, and it warms one’s heart like a breath from
heaven. “Your head is clear, Grandma,” said a friend. “Yes,” said she, “but that’s nothing. It’s the heart you want clear; a clean heart
and clean hands.” When someone remarked
how very feeble she was, she quickly responded:
“In age and feebleness extreme
Who shall a helpless worm redeem?
Jesus, my only hope Thou art,
Strength of my failing flesh and heart,
Oh, could I catch a smile from
Thee,
And drop into eternity.”
To
another who remarked how rapidly she was sinking, she said: “I am rounding the
cape, soon to drop anchor; and when I do, it will be home!” And so, surrounded by those who loved her,
whose lives she had helped to make beautiful and useful in the world, she
closed her eyes to the scenes of earth and passed, with a smile upon her face,
over the stormless sea, into the ageless land.
The city was moved at her going out.
Many of the leaders of the Church came to bring their personal tribute
to her splendid character. There were
scores besides her children who could have taken the stand of the mourners by
the side of Dorcas, who showed in their own characters, the beauty of the
garments which she had helped to weave.
It is because she was the fountain-head of such streams of blessedness for
the Church and the community, that I have written at such length concerning her
life and work.
Now
let me call your attention to the children which came forth from such a
home. There were eighteen of them—only
one less than came from the home of Susanna Wesley. The eldest was Margaret,
Margaret Bottome! At the time of her
father’s death, she had just married the Rev. Frank Bottome. The influence of the home had culminated in
the conversion of Margaret at the altar of Sand Street church, when she was a
girl of twelve. She began an active
Christian life at once, and gave herself, as a girl, without stint, to
Christian work. At twenty-one years of
age she became the wife of an itinerant Methodist preacher.
Is
there any woman since the days of Susanna Wesley and Hester Ann Rogers and Lady
Huntington, who has done more to develop the spiritual life and character of
the womanhood of the world? Or did even
these great names accomplish as much by personal touch, by voice or pen, or
personal power at first hand, as did she?
For nearly thirty years the wife of an itinerant Methodist preacher,
giving herself to that work as a helpmeet for her husband, inspiring him by her
splendid devotion, making the parsonage a holy place and at the same time a
happy place, with infinite vivacity and humor, smoothing out the rough places
in life, and showing religion to be not a thing for the ascetic, but something
for the happy heart and busy life, a thing for boys and girls, for young men
and young women, the most natural thing in the world. Her own son converted in youth is now an
Episcopalian rector. After almost a
generation spent in that work, God led her out to still greater fields of
privilege and toil. She became the
founder of King’s Daughters. What a
power that organization has been; and she was the heart and inspiration of
it. she had the entrée of the best homes
of our great cities, and there she gathered about her not only those who were
known as interested in Christian work, but she gathered the petted daughters of
fortune and talked to them until they grew ashamed of a selfish life, until the
noblest thing on earth seemed to them to be the discipleship of Christ. In hundreds of cases where they were never
known outside as Christian workers, it marked a new era of consecration, so
that the women of wealth took up work for the unfortunate, and they dedicated
millions of dollars and hundreds, probably thousands of lives to the blessing
of the world. God had touched her lips
with coal from off his altar and had a prophetic message. What a speaker she
was, and how contagious was her enthusiasm! And then he touched her pen. In the column of the “Ladies’ Home Journal”
she gave her “Heart to Heart Talks” to millions of readers throughout the
world. In many other publications, as
well as in the literature of the King’s Daughters, she gave her thrilling
message to the souls of men. Her work is
so well known, and is so vital in the lives of the present generation that we
need not dwell especially upon it.
Enough to say that she have a new significance to the words, “Saved for
service.” She showed the world that it
was the disciple’s business to be as his Lord.
She proved that the inspiration of every noble endeavor was to be found
in Christ Himself, and so she sent out the motto: “In His Name,” as the talisman
of victory. The little cross with its
“I. H. N.” has gone into hospitals and prisons, into hovels, and into palaces,
into Africa and India and China and Europe, into every civilized and every
missionary State on earth, carrying unconsciously additional seed to sow for
the harvest which will yet come forth from a consecrated mother’s life.
But Mrs. Bottome, glorious as was
her life, was only one of that consecrated household. There was another, the wife of Dr. Pearne, a
Methodist minister of wide reputation in Ohio, who by her devotion and interest
in Christian work, was a fit sister of Mrs. Bottome. She too, gave her heart to God as a little
child. Her twin sister, Mrs. Moore, the
embodiment of the combined strength and tenderness of father and mother, the
head of a beautiful Christian home, also came to God as a little child. Her seven children all united with the church
at a very early age. Two of them are
preachers, all successful. Mrs. Tate,
for many years one of our most faithful workers in the Methodism of Brooklyn,
is another sister, who shows the characteristics and exemplifies the life of
her noble mother.
And then come her sons, Edgar and
Willie, converted like the rest, in their childhood. Mr. Edgar McDonald is the President of the
Nassau Bank of Brooklyn, and was converted at fifteen. He was a class leader in Sand Street Church
before he was twenty-five.
Enthusiastically devoted to the work of Christ, an official member for
many years of Grace Methodist Church, and a loyal and royal supporter of his
pastor; interested in the salvation of men, believing that the faith of his
mother is the faith for him, and that with tremendous financial interests at
stake, and temptations multiplying on every side, the power which is greater
than any other power, is the grace of God, which hath appeared unto men in the
face of Jesus Christ, and that He will help men in the midst of all
temptations. To this day he, with the
other children go on stated pilgrimages, month after month to a holy shrine. Though the flowers have bloomed and faded for
thirty years over her grave, her children still gather where their mother’s
sacred dust is lying, in beautiful Greenwood, and sing there the songs she used
to love.
Last, but by no means least, I must
mention that noble Christian layman and stalwart Methodist, Willis McDonald,
for thirty-four years one of the leaders of Hanson Place Church, and for many
years a member of the Missionary Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church. For most of his life in Hanson Place, he has
been a Sunday-school teacher and a Class Leader, standing always for the things
of vital godliness and always holding up the example of his father and mother,
as an evidence which could not be disputed of the power of God in transforming
life and holding it steady under all burdens. I bear grateful testimony to the royal support
he has given to his pastors and to a generosity which has been unstinting for
every good cause. No man ever appealed
to him in vain for his sympathy and help.
Many days and nights we have spent together, talking over the great
things of Christian faith. We have sung
together the songs of Zion, and not infrequently have closed our interviews
with the sweet old hymn:
“And if our fellowship below
In Jesus be so sweet,
What heights of rapture shall we
know
When round His throne we meet!”
So the children of this noble father
and mother all came into the fellowship of the Church of Christ and into vital
connection with the things of the kingdom.
But I am not quite through with the story of this family. What has been true of two generations still
follows on. The children of those
children have also given their hearts to God in their youth, and are taking up
the burdens in their manhood and womanhood, which their parents and
grandparents bore so nobly. Nor is this
all. Their
children have given themselves to God, nearly every one before they were ten
years of age, and are enrolled in the fellowship of the Church of Christ. So here is the story of four generations that
signally fulfill the promises of God.
The annals of criminology show us
families that have filled our prisons from one generation to another. For five generations the Jukes family in
England, out of 709 descendants sent seventy-six to prison for one crime or
another. If vice is hereditary let us
thank God that virtue also perpetuates itself.
And let every father and mother be tremendously imprest by the fact that
unborn generations are to come into the world blest or curst by their example
and tendency. Our scientific studies are
making more and more certain and overwhelming the part which heredity plays in
the program of the individual and the world.
While there are doubtless those who would so far overestimate its power
as to make any struggle against it seems useless, we cannot go astray if we
insist on having every child so well born that he may be at least capable of a
new birth. There will be few skeptics
and no atheists in such a home as I have described. Faith in God and in all things good will come
easy then. Tho the chidren may sometimes
stray there will always be a tug at the soul which cannot go unheeded, and I
have seen it draw so strongly across the continent of the years that it brought
the boy back to the feet of his mother’s God.
Over against the Jukeses I put the McDonalds. Sin carries in its bosom the seed of its own
undoing, but righteousness hath God at the heart of it. In the end the McDonalds will win, and the
Christian home will produce a Christian nation and a Christian world.
A King's Daughter in Adobe PDF downloadable format.
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