Archibald Alexander on Maternal Piety

In an appendix to his Thoughts on Religious Experience entitled ‘Counsels to Christian Mothers’, Archibald Alexander makes the following interesting remarks¹These are found on pages 350–351.:

I take pleasure in saying that in no class of society anywhere have I found examples of more pure and elevated piety than among the ladies of Virginia. And I have reason to believe that these examples have rather been increased than diminished since I left my native State. It may, in an important sense, be said that the Commonwealth has been preserved from utter destruction by the prudence, purity and piety of Virginian mothers. They have been the salt which has arrested the progress of moral corruption in the mass of society. Accordingly there is no country in the world, perhaps, where mothers are so much respected by their children, and have so great an influence over them. Ask almost any young Virginian where he will look for the brightest examples of moral excellence, and his thoughts will turn at once to the character of pious females, and perhaps to his own mother, if she happens to be pious. I recollect a young gentleman, who, although he had an uncommonly pious mother, broke over all the restraints of his education, and became a professed infidel and the advocate of licentiousness in its vilest forms; but a gracious God heard the unceasing prayers of his mother, and by means somewhat unusual he was converted from the error of his ways. In speaking of his former career – which he evidently did with shame and humility – he said,

‘I could get over all arguments in defence of religion but one, and that I never could obviate, which was the pious example and conversation of my mother. When I had fortified myself against the truth by the aid of Bolingbroke, Hume, and Voltaire, yet, whenever I thought of my mother, I had the secret conviction which nothing could remove, that there was a reality in religion.’

Featured image (visible when article shared on social media) is a detail from a painting by Benjamin West, Elizabeth West (née Shewell), and Her Son Raphael [2024, YCBA], Public Domain.