bring up
children for heaven. This is their grand mission. What a happiness, what
an honor for a mother to give angels to heaven! Would to God she only
knew the real dignity and importance of her mission, and comprehended
the qualifications in the moral and religious order that best prepare
her for the duties of her sublime calling! What mission can be more
sublime, more sacred, what mission can be more meritorious before God
than that of giving to the young child the primary lessons of religion?

There is indeed nothing more honorable, nothing more meritorious,
nothing which conducts to higher perfection, than to instruct children
in their religious duties. This instruction of children is a royal,
apostolic, angelic, and divine function. _Royal_, because the office of
a king is to protect his people from danger. _Apostolic_, because our
Lord commissioned apostles to instruct the nations, and, as St. Jerome
says, thus made them the saviours of men. _Angelic_, because the
angelical spirits in heaven enlighten, purify, and perfect each other
according to their spheres, and their earthly mission is to labor
without ceasing for the salvation of man. St. Peter Chrysologus calls
those who instruct others in the way of salvation, "the substitutes of
angels." Indeed this mission of mothers is divine; they are called to
carry on the very work of God Himself. Everything that Almighty God has
done from the creation of the world, and which He will continue to do to
the end, has been, and will be, for the salvation of mankind. For this
He sent His Son from heaven, who enlightened the world by His doctrine,
and who still continues to instruct His people by His chosen disciples.
Those mothers, then, who direct their children in the paths to heaven,
who allure them from vice, who form them to virtue, may fitly be termed
apostles, angels, and saviours. Oh! what glory awaits those mothers who
perform the office of angels, and even of God Himself, in laboring for
the salvation of the souls of their children. If this employment is
honorable for mothers, it is also not less meritorious for them. What is
the religious instruction of children, but conferring on a class of our
race, the weakest and most helpless, with inconceivable labor and
fatigue, the greatest of all blessings? For while the physical
development of the child advances with age, it is not so with the
mental; for religious instruction only can develop the noble faculties
of th