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,
