The Advocate and news., 1899-04-05

thing in the world, as we have it on better
authority than the Areopagites--are supe-
rior, in the ability to uplift to lofty plane,
to all the intellectual energy which can
command the elements, unraVel sOphistries,
amass millions of money. What the Higher
Power of all thinks as to the value of this
principle is evinced not only in the rever-
ence all men have for the mother, but in the
care taken for the perpetuation of the type
throughout nature, in the never-varying
fact that the acorn produces only the oak,
the apple seed the apple; while we know
that if the sun, burning out his blaze be-
came only black cinder in space, should
any impact with foreign body again gen.
crate the heat that should start his fires
once more, were there but one cell left
sleeping inert upon our frozen g,obe, it
would be enough to repeople the earth and
renew its civilization, DR.. Dawar's expert
ments have proven that the frozen germ
still retains its vitality.
Thus this maternal principle is often as
potent force in the lives of those who as
sert themselves by going out in the worll
to do its exterior work as in those who re-
main at the fireside and among the curly
heads of their children. It is the mothering
of the race that impels them, that leads
women into the reforms visiting of
prisons, the cleaning of cities, the suppress
sion Of public evils; into the relief 80 lie les
hospital service, sanitary commissions,
school inspection, associated charities, and
the mnumerable company of attempts to
improve the human condit,on-actuating
the new woman, on whom witlings have
spent their shafts and timorous souls have
wasted their tremOrs, as much as it did the
older woman who trusted the race to take
care of itself, and did nothing outside tho
narrow range of immediate personal sym.
pathy
1t is the same spirit which moves the
dauntless new woman, the potential mother,
as that which makes the actual mother
rush into the flames for her child, shield it
with her body, forget sleep, food, fatigue,
ignore pain in its behalf; sacrifice health
and strength and happiness for it's welfare
that spirit illustrated by the words,
Greater love hath no man than this, that
man lay down his life for his friends"
since every day of it's existence the mother
is ready to lay down her life for her child.
There is, then, about this maternal prin-
ciple holiness, an awfulness, making every
mother, perhaps every woman, sacred.
Every man feels something OF this about
his own mother-if not in so strong degree
about his wife's mother, about your mother.
In her character of mother he feels, too a
certain curious and lovely reverence for his
own wife, Far within his inner conscious
ness is the recognition of the divinity in
motherhood, an acquiescence in its sover-
eighty. "God is fortunate to have such a
soul as my mothers in his Heaven" said
one man, without thought of profanity
Our German ancestors so appreciated this
essence of divinity in the maternal principle
that they gave women the rank of priest
hood, and adventured no great undertake
ings without their reverend advice. The
church itself, the world over, has no
stronger way of appeal, no loftier represen-
tation of the supernal strength and sweet
ness, than the enshrined Mother and Child.