The Way of All Flesh
CHAPTER XXV
Three or four years after the birth of her daughter, Christina had had one
more child. She had never been strong since she married, and had a
presentiment that she should not survive this last confinement. She
accordingly wrote the following letter, which was to be given, as she endorsed
upon it, to her sons when Ernest was sixteen years old. It reached him on
his mother’s death many years later, for it was the baby who died now, and not
Christina. It was found among papers which she had repeatedly and
carefully arranged, with the seal already broken. This, I am afraid, shows
that Christina had read it and thought it too creditable to be destroyed when
the occasion that had called it forth had gone by. It is as follows—
“BATTERSBY, March 15th, 1841.
“My Two Dear Boys,—When this is put into your hands will you try to bring
to mind the mother whom you lost in your childhood, and whom, I fear, you will
almost have forgotten? You, Ernest, will remember her best, for you are
past five years old, and the many, many times that she has taught you your
prayers and hymns and sums and told you stories, and our happy Sunday evenings
will not quite have passed from your mind, and you, Joey, though only four,
will perhaps recollect some of these things. My dear, dear boys, for the
sake of that mother who loved you very dearly—and for the sake of your own
happiness for ever and ever—attend to and try to remember, and from time to
time read over again the last words she can ever speak to you. When I
think about leaving you all, two things press heavily upon me: one, your
father’s sorrow (for you, my darlings, after missing me a little while, will
soon forget your loss), the other, the everlasting welfare of my
children. I know how long and deep the former will be, and I know that
he will look to his children to be almost his only earthly comfort. You
know (for I am certain that it will have been so), how he has devoted his life
to you and taught you and laboured to lead you to all that is right and
good. Oh, then, be sure that you are his comforts. Let him
find you obedient, affectionate and attentive to his wishes, upright,
self-denying and diligent; let him never blush for or grieve over the sins and
follies of those who owe him such a debt of gratitude, and whose first duty it
is to study his happiness. You have both of you a name which must not be
disgraced, a father and a grandfather of whom to show yourselves worthy; your
respectability and well-doing in life rest mainly with yourselves, but far,
far beyond earthly respectability and well-doing, and compared with which they
are as nothing, your eternal happiness rests with yourselves. You know
your duty, but snares and temptations from without beset you, and the nearer
you approach to manhood the more strongly will you feel this. With God’s
help, with God’s word, and with humble hearts you will stand in spite of
everything, but should you leave off seeking in earnest for the first, and
applying to the second, should you learn to trust in yourselves, or to the
advice and example of too many around you, you will, you must fall. Oh,
‘let God be true and every man a liar.’ He says you cannot serve Him and
Mammon. He says that strait is the gate that leads to eternal
life. Many there are who seek to widen it; they will tell you that such
and such self-indulgences are but venial offences—that this and that worldly
compliance is excusable and even necessary. The thing cannot be;
for in a hundred and a hundred places He tells you so—look to your Bibles and
seek there whether such counsel is true—and if not, oh, ‘halt not between two
opinions,’ if God is the Lord follow Him; only be strong and of a good
courage, and He will never leave you nor forsake you. Remember, there is
not in the Bible one law for the rich, and one for the poor—one for the
educated and one for the ignorant. To all there is but one thing
needful. All are to be living to God and their fellow-creatures,
and not to themselves. All must seek first the Kingdom of God and
His righteousness—must deny themselves, be pure and chaste and
charitable in the fullest and widest sense—all, ‘forgetting those things that
are behind,’ must ‘press forward towards the mark, for the prize of the high
calling of God.’
“And now I will add but two things more. Be true through life to each
other, love as only brothers should do, strengthen, warn, encourage one
another, and let who will be against you, let each feel that in his brother he
has a firm and faithful friend who will be so to the end; and, oh! be kind and
watchful over your dear sister; without mother or sisters she will doubly need
her brothers’ love and tenderness and confidence. I am certain she will
seek them, and will love you and try to make you happy; be sure then that you
do not fail her, and remember, that were she to lose her father and remain
unmarried, she would doubly need protectors. To you, then, I especially
commend her. Oh! my three darling children, be true to each other, your
Father, and your God. May He guide and bless you, and grant that in a
better and happier world I and mine may meet again.—Your most affectionate
mother,
CHRISTINA PONTIFEX.”
From enquiries I have made, I have satisfied myself that most mothers write
letters like this shortly before their confinements, and that fifty per cent.
keep them afterwards, as Christina did.
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