Nobody but a parent can realize what these affections are, can tell what a fountain of emotion the newborn child unseals, what chords of strange love are drawn out from the heart, that before lay there concealed.One may have all powers of intellect, a refined moral culture, a noble and wide-reaching philanthropy, and yet a child born to him shall awaken within him a depth of tenderness, a sentiment of love, a yearning affection, that shall surprise him as to the capacity and the mystery of his nature.
And the relation of a mother to her child; what other is like it? Without it, how undeveloped is the great element of affection, how small a horn of its orb is filled and lighted!
What was she until that new love woke up within her, and her heart and soul thrilled with it, and first truly lived in it?
Of all the degrees of human love, how amply is this the highest! In all the depths of human love, how surely is this the nethermost! When illustrations fail us, how confidently do we seize upon this! The mother nurturing her child in tenderness, watching over it with untiring love! O! that is affection stronger than any of this earth.It has a power, a beauty, a holiness like no other sentiment.When that child has grown to maturity, and has gone out from her in profligacy and in scorn; when the world has denounced him, and justice sets its price upon his head, and lovers and companions fall off from him in utter loathing-we do not ask, we know, there is one heart that cannot reject him.No sin of his can paralyze the chord that vibrates there for him.
No alienation can cancel the affection that was born at his birth, that pillowed him in his infancy, centred in him its life, clasped him with its strength, and shed upon him its blessings, its hopes, and its prayers.
And no one feels the death of a child as a mother feels it.Even the father cannot realize it thus.There is a vacancy in his home, and a heaviness in his heart.There is a chain of association that at set times comes round with its broken link;there are memories of endearment, a keen sense of loss, a weeping over crushed hopes, and a pain of wounded affliction.But the mother feels that one has been taken away who was still closer to her heart.Hers has been the office of constant ministration.
Every gradation of feature has developed before her eyes.She has detected every new gleam of intelligence.She heard the first utterance of every new word.She has been the refuge of his fears; the supply of his wants.And every task of affection has woven a new link, and made dear to her its object.And when he dies, a portion of her own life, as it were, dies.How can she give him up, with all these memories, these associations?
The timid hands that have so often taken hers in trust and love, how can she fold them on his breast, and surrender them to the cold clasp of death? The feet whose wanderings she has watched so narrowly, how can she see them straitened to go down into the dark valley? The head that she has pressed to her lips and her bosom, that she has watched in burning sickness and in peaceful slumber, a hair of which she could not see harmed, O! how can she consign it to the chamber of the grave? The form that not for one night has been beyond her vision or her knowledge, how can she put it away for the long night of the sepulchre, to see it no more? Man has cares and toils that draw away his thoughts and employ them; she sits in loneliness, and all these memories, all these suggestions, crowd upon her.How can she bear all this?
She could not, were it not that her faith is as her affection;and if the one is more deep and tender than in man, the other is more simple and spontaneous, and takes confidently hold of the hand of God.
Thus, then, do children awaken within us deep and mighty affections; and is it not their mission to do so? Do we not see many beautiful offices created and discharged by these affections--tender and far-reaching relationships into which they run? Do we not see how they win the heart from frivolity and selfishness, and make it aware of duties, and quick with sympathies? I shall not enter into detailed considerations of the results of this affection thus awakened in us by children.Alittle reflection will render them obvious to you.Let me simply say, that in awakening these affections children discharge an important and beautiful mission.
