A DAILY MESSAGE

Hokitika Guardian, 14 June 1929, Page 1

A DAILY MESSAGE

MOTHERHOOD I Nc: poem, no discourse, no eloquence, can express mother-love; no artist can tell it; but all humanity has climbed upwards upon it, and lias derived from it its richest lesson. What does the race owe to brother love? What great and enduring thing has grown from the love of sisters? What arc the tracings left upon the tablets of human character because of the love of father for child? We know all love is a holy stream, fructifying, vivifying, and beautifying all that it touches, and that the world lias been deeply enriched by these great relationships. But at the same time we hesitate unconsciously when asked to make a passionate affirmation as to what the world owes to the loves of father for child, brother for brother, sister for sister. But when we are asked what the world owes to that idealized, spiritualized, and complicated force, which we call mother-love, enriched with a thousand blendings of tender colours, embodying the poetry of spring mornings and the gloom of winter, the song of the tender nestling, and the deep majestic music of ’the organ, sublimed by suffering and expanded by sorrow——when we are asked what of motherlove, the answer comes swift and spontaneous from proud and humble, wise and foolish, good and bad. Alike from life’s failures and from those who have worn the laurel, the , answer is: “M'otlier-lovc is the purest, deepest, holiest, most potent, radiant, and evergreen force in this world.” There is no hesitation—there can be none—for all the world knows that the mother is the priestess of humanity; she is the great altruist; she is the artist. —M. PRESTON STANLEY