I was thinking of what to do with Mother’s Day and trying to keep with the point of this blog and it dawned on me;  behind every great man or men there is a great woman.  This is the writing of Alexander Campbell as a portion of his memoir on his Father, Thomas Campbell.  As expected, there was a great woman behind these men.  I was going to rant and rave about my mother, but I think this will do her justice.  To see the entire memoir of Jane Campbell see the link in the Historical Links section to the right.

Jane Campbell

There are few facts or events of great importance and value in the life of most men, and still fewer in the life of most women. A truly good woman, as a wife and a mother, is, indeed, the most splendid spectacle in the horizon of human apprehension. Her empire is small, but her power is immense. The destiny, temporal, spiritual, and eternal, of the family of which she is the mother, and in whose hands God has placed, more or less, its temporal, spiritual, and eternal destiny, is one of the most interesting positions–the most soul-stirring, the most absorbing, and the most blissful in which a human being can be placed. Great are its cares, great are its labors, great are its responsibilities, but greater still are its honors, glories, and beatitudes.

Woman, next to God, makes the living world of humanity. She makes man what he is in this world, and very frequently makes him what he shall hereafter be in the world to come. We do not infringe on the pulpit or on the press in so affirming. These are, indeed, a supply of means to compensate the want or neglect of maternal influence, enlightened by the Gospel, and properly directed by its spirit.

Maternal influence is paramount to paternal influence. We read of an hereditary maternal influence possessed and developed by Grandmother Lois and Mother Eunice, but never of a grandfather’s influence by any hero in the Christian Scriptures. I do not say that a grandfather or a father may not, can not be the means of saving his descendants; but I do say that such cases are the exception and not the rule. Maternal love and assiduity are paramount to paternal love and assiduity. Besides, every infant looks up more to its mother for everything it wants than to its father. It is mercifully necessitated to look up to and to love its mother more than its father; and, therefore, a mother’s influence is paramount to every other human influence.

In this excursive view of the character of a mother, of a Christian mother, We have been only sketching out the more prominent characteristics of Mother Campbell. She made a nearer approximation to the acknowledged [316] beau ideal of a truly Christian mother than any one of her sex with whom I have had the pleasure of forming a special acquaintance.