Walking With God by Costen J. Harrell (1928)
“Her candle goeth not out by night…. Her children rise up and call her blessed.” Proverbs 31:18, 28
“Let me tell you the most pathetic story I ever heard,” a prominent citizen of my native State one day said to me. He continued: “Some years ago in eastern North Carolina a notorious character was shot down in a drunken brawl. As he lay dying he begged that some one standing by pray for him. They stood as dumb as stones. None of them, his companions in sin, knew how to pray. Then, as his life ebbed away, he began to pray. They stooped beside him to hear what he was saying. He was praying the prayer of his babyhood:
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray thee, Lord my soul to keep.”
Faintly whispering these words, he died. In the hour he needed most to pray – stained by sin and facing death – this was the only prayer he knew.”
A pathetic story indeed! It is tragic that one in such extremity should know how to pray nothing more than a baby’s prayer. But it is a beautiful story as well. A dying sinner remembered the prayer he had learned at his mother’s knee. Not all the blasts of iniquity had put out the flickering candle of faith which she had lighted in his baby heart. Hidden in the secret places of his soul, he had carried it through all the years of his prodigal life – the prayer he used to say in the sweet long ago. At the last he fell back on it. “Now I lay me down to sleep” – saying this, he lay down to sleep in death as in the other years he had laid down to sleep in his mother’s arms. “I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep” – that petition suited the needs of the sleeping child. Simple – but having enough of real prayer in it to save a soul, if one can pray it with unction. Perhaps it saved his soul at last. In the dark night of sin the little candle of faith that his mother lighted still burned. He had by no means outlived the influence of those early years when at eventime his mother taught him his prayer, tucked him in his little bed, and with a “God bless you” kissed him goodnight.
The most priestly calling in the world is motherhood. Mother hands light the candles of faith on the high alters of the hearts of little children. She passes from generation to generation the light that shone in far Galilee many centuries ago. If she fails in this holiest privilege of motherhood, alas for her children, alas for the world! We have quite enough bonfires. Amid the display of many bonfires there is danger lest the candle of faith be not lighted in the hearts of our children. The mothers of each generation hold the future in their control. They are the candle lighters of the world. Bonfires soon go out, but candles shine in their places through the darkest night. A mother’s heart is the most potential influence upon the earth. “Her candle goeth not out by night….Her children rise up and call her blessed.” And God himself will crown her at last the fairest and noblest of all his creation.
