By Lina Orman Cooper, Author of "Our Home Rulers," Etc.

So wrote Pindar long, long ago; and I, having gathered many arrows of help and knowledge from the quiver of books around me, would fain pass them on. In this paper I string these barbs to the bow of motherhood, and trust they may pierce to the joints of the harness.

Perhaps there is no subject absorbing more attention at the present time than that of motherhood and heredity. Never has the cult of maternity been better formulated—never has the practice of it been more carefully studied. "In these days of pressure," writes Lyttleton, "it is a mother's first duty to her children to secure for them a full seven years of passive life." "The best and first service a mother can do her children," says another writer, "is to maintain the standard of her own life at its highest—

"'Allure to brighter worlds, and lead the way.'"

"It is a mother's first duty to provide for each newborn soul an environment which will foster its highest development," says another. "To praise is a part of a mother's first work in the world on behalf of her children," adds a fourth. "I consider it to be the first and most important part of the education of childhood to lead them early to think" is Froebel's opinion.

The importance of a mother's influence during the first few years of existence is repeated in Lord Macaulay's well-known aphorism, "Give me the first seven years of a child's life, and let who will take the rest"; and by Froebel, when he says, "The most important period of human education is before the child is seven years old."

We mothers, who are God's special servants—His instruments, as it were, for the particular purpose of carrying out His will for the wee individuals confided to us—are apt to think too little about those first years of a child's life. Our children, from two to five, are often left to self-education. Very little scientific care is expended on them. Yet beauty of body and soul would not be so seldom met with, or so transient as it is apt to be with us, if we truly educated persons took our children in hand from their babyhood, instead of leaving them to the most ignorant class of the community.

"It is usual to speak of the Greeks," writes Peabody in his "Primary School," "as if they were of exceptional organisation. Their organisation was only exceptional because it was more carefully treated in infancy than ours is apt to be."

"The laws which govern the growth of the human mind are as definite and as general in their application as those which apply to the material universe," and we know the basis of all development is a good foundation. This must be laid in early youth, both as regards the body and as regards the mind. "It is so fatally easy to do mischief" in those first seven years. The limbs of a sapling are not more easily bent than the budding desires of the infant. "The soul instinctively expects love" from the first, and only a mother's exclusively cherishing tenderness ought to be the rule in a nursery. "The true educational instinct is but the mother's instinct and method clearly understood in all its bearings and carried out intelligently."

This last word opens out a wonderful vista. "Parents should make the care of their children an object to study physiology and psychology," says Peabody; and thus we find education is always mutual. According to Goethe, "the child teaches the parent what the parents omit to teach him"; and, as Plato adds, "man cannot propose (or woman either) a higher or loftier object for his study than education and all that pertains thereto."

Before leaving this branch of the subject, it is well for all mothers clearly to understand the difference between education and instruction. The former (training of the heart) belongs exclusively to the parent. The latter (training of the intellect) to the governess. As Renan puts it, "Instruction is given in the school. Education takes place in the father's house; the masters are the mothers and sisters."

Well for us if we remember that education is always going on, whether we will it or not. Our life, our morals, are affecting our children for weal or woe, whether we realise or shirk the fact. "Every human life is lifted or lowered by the home it is born into." That magic and omnipotent gift of a mother's influence "is an hourly, unconscious, emanating force" exercised on those around. "We always know when we are instructing. We do not always know when we are educating." The realisation of this amazing power is enough to stagger the bravest heart. "A mother has to be convinced that the great function of motherhood is not only to guard her child, to exhort him, to train him, but to live her life in the presence of that child as a pattern of what the child should aspire to become."

A mother's influence should certainly be at its strongest during the early years of life. It "depends on what she is, and only in a subordinate way on what she does." Therefore, she can carry altruism too far. A mother is of as much value in the sight of God as is her child, and "the path in which she has to walk is plainly that of self-sanctification for the sake of" that child. This implies seasons for culture, rest, prayer, and the preservation of her body in health. To quote Miss Mason on this point, "Health is a duty, and any trifling with health, either vicious or careless, is really in the nature of suicide, because life is held in trust from a supreme Authority."

Will the years be wasted if we spend them mastering the science of education in our nurseries? Nay! even our personal charms will be amplified by the most entrancing study in the world. "The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance can only consist in that majestic peace which is founded in memory of happy and useful years full of sweet records" (Ruskin). Verily we shall have our reward.

Words by James Montgomery. Music by Gordon Saunders, Mus.D. Oxon.