The Empire of Motherhood

The Empire of Motherhood October 9, 2004

The destiny of America lies around the hearthstone … If thrift and industry are taught there… if the example of self sacrifice oft appears; if honor abide there, and high ideals; if there the building of fortune be subordinate to the building of character—America will live in security, rejoicing in an abundant prosperity and good government at home, and peace, respect and confidence abroad…Look well, then, to the hearthstone; herein all hope for America lies.

But the hearthstone is an emblem. Beside it is enthroned the mother. It is a symbol of the Empire of Motherhood. The Creator lays the next generation in the lap of the mother; and we have high warrant for the belief that “ the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.”

When God wants important thing done in this world, or a wrong righted, He goes about it in a very singular way. He doesn’t release His thunderbolts nor stir up His earthquakes. He simply has a tiny, helpless baby born, perhaps in a very obscure home, perhaps of a very humble mother. And He puts the idea or purpose in a mother’s heart. And she puts it in the baby’s mind, and then—God waits!

“The great events of this world,” says someone, “are not battles and earthquakes and hurricanes. The great events of this world are babies. They are the earthquakes and the hurricanes.” Oh the secrets that lie all about us hidden from our eyes! We glance at a tiny child, and we do not see, we do not know, what a thunderbolt of the Almighty is wrapped up in that little child.

“I walked down the furrow in the field,” said a humble mother who lived on a New Hampshire farm; “I walked down the furrow with the governor of New Hampshire in my arms, and the governor of Massachusetts clinging to my skirts.” She said that afterwards, long afterwards, in her old age. For she new not then, and no one knew, that her two baby boys would be the governors of two New England states.”

Quote attributed to President Coolidge from The Power of Motherhood by Nancy Campbell. Thanks to Fr Josiah Trenham & Fr Demetri Carellas for forwarding this post.


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