eaven's work. Not in angels' hearts beats a
sweeter, deeper, richer feeling. Mother is another name for consecrated
love. Not all the theologians in the world could convince me that the
natural mother-heart is not holy. I have seen too deeply into my own
mother's soul; I have felt too much of the fire of her deathless love; I
have witnessed too many evidences of its immaculate purity to believe it
inherently depraved. I have always felt that it was a slander against
our own mother to believe the mother-heart naturally corrupt. Yes, all
the mother is holy. God loves the mother for what she is. She is a
reflection of himself. The gates of his everlasting Home will never
close against a mother. Though she may be wicked in other respects, in
her maternal heart lives a germ of the tree of life which can never
wholly die. What love sometimes beams in a wicked mother's heart! All
mothers are alike. The wise and the foolish, the idiotic and
philosophic, the rich and poor, the cultivated and barbaric, are all the
same in love; the same beautiful, tender, forgiving spirit of devoted
affection dwells in all. Oh, see the mother as she gazes fondly upon her
child; as she feeds him from her breast; as she watches by his sick
couch; as she counsels him to virtue and goodness; as she weeps over his
waywardness and toils for his happiness!

All the arching glory of the moral world bows in reverence before the
mother's love. This is the radiant center, the focus of human
affection. And this is the central sun of _Home_! Home has no permanent
force, no abiding stability without a mother's love. Take mother out of
Home, and the Home is gone. She is the regulator, the main-spring, the
center around which all else revolves. How rich is every Home that has
in it a true mother! If there were no other attraction in this sacred
spot, no other charm, the mother's presence would make it dear and
glorious. While a mother lives, Home will be a blessed place. Then
_heaven_ is another word of universal use and power. In every human soul
there lies an idea of heaven; dim and shadowy sometimes, bright and
glorious at others; but yet everywhere present. The Arab wanderers, the
wild men of the forest, the jabbering Ajetas, the South Sea Islanders,
the wall-girt Chinamen, the sable Ethiopians, the cultured Christians,
all cherish the thought of heaven--another home, a final resting-place
from all that wearies or troubles. It seems as though God in goodness