Letters to Mothers/Letter II
LETTER II.
INFLUENCE OF CHILDREN UPON PARENTS.
We speak of educating our children. Do we know that our children also educate us?
"How much tenderness, how much generosity," says a fine writer, "springs into the father's heart, from the cradle of his child. What is there so affecting to the noble and virtuous man, as that being which perpetually needs his help, and yet cannot call for it. Inarticulate sounds, or sounds which he receives half formed, he bows himself down to modulate, he lays them with infinite care and patience not only on the tender, attentive car, but on the half-open lips, on the cheeks, as if they all were listeners."
And if the sterner nature of man, is thus readily softened, how much more must the pliancy of woman be modified, through the melting affections of the mother.
Our authority over our children passes away with their period of tutelage. But their influence over us, increases with time. The mother, associating her daughters with herself, becomes gradually guided by the judgment which she had assisted to form. How common is the remark, "I have done this, or that, because my daughter thought it best." And the acquiescence is still more common than the remark. The father quotes the opinion of his sons with pride, and is perhaps governed by it, even when it differs from his own. This influence of the younger over the elder, naturally gains strength, as one comes forth with new vigour and energy, and the other, passing into the vale of years, learns to love repose.
It is important that the power which is eventually to modify us, should be under the guidance of correct principle. We select with care, a garment which is to protect us from cold, or which is expected to be in use for years. We are solicitous to obtain the best plan, when we erect a permanent habitation. We take pains that the chronometer which is to measure our hours, shall be accurate. Ought we not to be still more anxious, more faithful, more wary, in fashioning the instrument which is to measure our happiness, when the snows of the winter of life shall cover us? If we fail to instil correct principles into those, who are in the end to impress their own semblance upon us; if through their want of respectability, we are to be made less respectable; if even in their errors, we are to partake, as well as to be wounded, how great will be the loss!
"How keen the pang, but keener far to feel,
We nurs'd the feather, that impell'd the steel."
While the minds of children are in their waxen state, let parents then be most assiduous to impress on them such a likeness, as they should be willing themselves to bear. This injunction addresses itself more immediately to the mother, who has it in her power to make the earliest impressions, and is liable in her turn to be the most strongly impressed.
Observe how soon, and to what a degree, this influence begins to operate. Her first ministration for her infant is to enter, as it were, the valley of the shadow of death, and win its life at the peril of her own. How different must an affection thus founded, be from all others. As if to deepen its power, a season of languor ensues, when she is comparatively alone with her infant and with Him who gave it, cultivating an acquaintance with a new being, and through a new channel, with the greatest of all beings. Is she not also herself an image of His goodness, while she cherishes in her bosom the young life that he laid there? A love, whose root is in death, whose fruit must be in Eternity, has taken possession of her. No wonder that its effects are obvious and great.
Has she been selfish? or rather has the disposition to become so, been nourished by the indulgence of affluence, or the adulation offered to beauty? How soon she sacrifices her own ease and convenience to that of her babe. She wakens at its slightest cry, and in its sicknesses forgets to take sleep.
"Night after night
She keepeth vigil, and when tardy morn
Breaks on her watching eyelids, and she fain
Would lay her down to rest, its weak complaining
O'ercomes her weariness."
Has she been indolent or vain? The physical care of her child helps to correct these faults. She patiently plies the needle, to adorn its person. She is pleased to hear the praises that were once lavished on herself, transferred to her new darling. Almost could she respond to the sentiment of Ossian, "Let the name of Morni, be forgotten among the people, if they will only say, behold the father of Gaul."
Has she been too much devoted to fashionable amusements? She learns to prize home-felt pleasures. She prefers her nursery to the lighted saloon, and the brilliant throng.
Has she been passionate? She restrains herself. How can she require the government of temper from her child, and yet set him no example? She learns to feel with Rousseau, that "the greatest respect is due to children." When her temper has been discomposed, she dreads the gaze of that little, pure, wondering eye, perhaps even more than the reproof of conscience.
In the artificial intercourse of society, has she sometimes ceased to regard the true import of words? And does she not require truth of her child? As he advances toward moral agency, is she not more and more moved to exemplify that strict integrity which she demands of him?
Has she evaded the requisitions of religion? And is she willing that her child should be impious?
Thus powerful are the influences exercised by the infant upon its mother, from the moment of its birth. If she yields to the transforming power, daily soliciting the Spirit of God to sanctify and sublimate the newly implanted affection, she may trust to reap a blessed harvest. But however imperfect may be her own spiritual improvement of the precious gift, she can scarcely fail to feel and acknowledge, that in this new existence, she has doubled her own capacities for enjoyment. No matter by what suffering, this joy has been obtained. The sleepless nights, the days of seclusion, the long, heaviness that weighed down the buoyant spirit, the pang that has never yet been described, all are forgotten. "She remembereth no more her sorrow," saith that sacred pen, which knows to touch the soul's inmost recesses. Nay, she would willingly have endured a thousand fold, for such a payment.
She has entered the temple of a purer happiness, and become the disciple of a higher school. She is led to be disinterested, she is induced to resign the restless search of pleasure, to feel her own insufficiency, to sit down under the shadow and shelter of Almighty wisdom. Are not these blessed results?
But, young mother, what do you hold in your arms? A machine of exquisite symmetry; the blue veins revealing the mysterious life-tide through an almost transparent surface; the waking thought speaking through the sparkling eye, or dissolving there in tears; such a form as the art of man has never equalled; and such a union of matter with mind, as his highest reason fails to comprehend. You embrace a being, whose developements may yet astonish you; who may perhaps sway the destiny of others; whose gatherings of knowledge you can neither foresee or limit; and whose chequered lot of sorrow or of joy, are known only to the Omnipotence which fashioned him. Still, if this were all, the office of a mother would lose its crowning dignity. But to be the guide of a spirit which can never die, to make the first indelible impressions on what may be a companion of seraphs, and live with an unbounded capacity for bliss or woe, when these poor skies under which it was born, shall have vanished like a vision, this is the fearful honour which God hath entrusted to the "weaker vessel," and which would make us tremble amid our happiness, if we took not refuge in Him.
I have seen a young and beautiful mother, herself like a brilliant and graceful flower. Nothing could divide her from her infant. It was to her as a twin-soul. She had loved society, for there she had been as an idol. But what was the fleeting delight of adulation, to the deep love that took possession of her whole being? She had loved her father's house. There, she was ever like a song-bird, the first to welcome the day, and the last to bless it. Now, she wreathed the same blossoms of the heart around another home, and lulled her little nursling with the same inborn melodies.
It was sick. She hung over it. She watched it. She comforted it. She sat whole nights with it in her arms. It was to her, like the beloved of the King of Israel, "feeding among the lillies." Under the pressure of this care, there was in her eye, a deep and holy beauty, which never gleamed there, when she was radiant in the dance, or in the halls of fashion, the cynosure. She had been taught to love God, and his worship, from her youth up; but when health again glowed in the face of her babe, there came from her lip, such a prayer of flowing praise, as it had never before breathed.
And when in her beautiful infant, there were the first developements of character, and of those preferences and aversions which leave room to doubt whether they are from simplicity or perverseness, and whether they should be repressed or pitied, and how the harp might be so tuned as not to injure its tender and intricate harmony, there burst from her soul a supplication more earnest, more self abandoning, more prevailing, than she had ever before poured into the ear of the majesty of heaven.
So the feeble hand of the babe that she nourished, led her through more profound depths of humility, to higher aspirations of faith. And I felt that the affection, to whose hallowed influence she had so yielded, was guiding her to a higher seat among the "just made perfect."