Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/11

6 of women unflinching, heroical, and bold,—can never have been given by the Author of our existence for any mean or trifling purpose. In the animal creation we see that this wonder-working principle answers the end of its creation, simply by instructing the mother how to prepare for her offspring, and by enabling her to protect and provide for them during the limited period of their helplessness and incapacity for providing for themselves.

Thus far the human mother proceeds in the same manner; but as there is an existence beyond this, for which she has to prepare, so the love of the human mother, by its continuance to the end of life, is beautifully adapted to those higher responsibilities which devolve upon her as the parent of an immortal being, whose lot, it is her privilege to hope, will be cast among the happy, the holy, and the pure, for ever.

There is, then, a deep moral connected with the joyful tidings that a child is born into the world. And "joyful" let us call these tidings, notwithstanding all which a morbid and miserable philosophy would teach, about another human creature being sent into this world to sin and suffer like the rest. Yes, "joyful" let us call it; for the beneficent Creator himself has designed that there should be joy, and nature attests that there is joy, connected with this event, while the fond heart of the mother acknowledges, in the smiles of her infant, an "overpayment of delight" for all her solicitudes, her anxieties, and her fears.

And why should not the mother rejoice? Has she not become the possessor of a new nature, to whose support she can devote all the vast resources of her self-love, without its selfishness? She has now an object peculiarly her own, for which to think and to feel, and, not less, for which to suffer. It is with joy, then, that a new being is ushered into the world, to share its portion among the many, in the mingled lot of human weal and wo—to enter upon a career in which it is but reasonable to indulge the hope of filling an honored place on the great theatre of life, of contributing its share to the sum of human happiness, and of en joying in its turn the full exercise of all those faculties of mind and body with which so much happiness is connected.