186 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

RIZPAH:
THe Jewish MOTHER,
Wuose Love was STRONGER THAN DEATH.

It will not have been in vain, boys, that your attention
has been called to this romantic by-way story of the Bible, if
it should only result in deepening your gratitude for that great
benediction of heaven—a mother’s love. We have pity for
these crucified sons of Saul; but for their illustrious mother
we have reverence and homage.

Oh, the mothers! the mothers! the mothers! What are
all the great deeds men have wrought in the world compared
with the self-sacrificing tenderness of its mothers! The world
owes more to its gentle mothers than to all its valiant men.
In truth, it is the gentleness of the mothers that have made
the men great and strong. It is hardly possible to open a
book of biography of any great man without finding very
early in its pages some grateful, tender tribute to a mother’s
love and care. We have already quoted the words of Abraham
Lincoln concerning his mother, and when we remember how
much America and the world owes to that great patriot, we
can understand how much the world owes to Lincoln’s mother.
There was not one of all the four million slaves, whose fetters
fell when the music of Lincoln’s Proclamation was heard, but
owed a debt of gratitude to Lincoln’s mother. And of all
the wise, honorable words the great Emancipator left on record,
few are more precious, few more worthy of being remembered
and treasured, than these: “All that Iam, or hope to be, I owe
to my angel mother—blessings on her memory.”

A century and a half ago there was born in a quiet little
village, in the south of England, a boy named William Cowper.
He lived to be a much-admired poet. He was not, perhaps,