“But the true mother yields herself uncomplainingly, yea, cheerfully, to the wholesome privation, solitude, and self-denial allotted her.....Was she fond of travelling, of visiting the wonderful in Nature and in Art, of mingling in new and often-varying scenes?  Now she has found ‘an abiding city,’ and no allurements are strong enough to tempt her thence.  Had society charms for her, and in the social circle and the festive throng were her chief delights?  Now she stays at home, and the gorgeous saloon and brilliant assemblage give place to the nursery and the baby.  Was she devoted to literary pursuits?  Now the library is seldom visited, the cherished studies are neglected, the rattle and the doll are substituted for the pen.  Her piano is silent, while she chants softly and sweetly the soothing lullaby.  Her dress can last another season now, and the hat—­oh, she does not care, if it is not in the latest mode, for she has a baby to look after, and has no time for herself.  Even the ride and the walk are given up, perhaps too often, with the excuse, ‘Baby-tending is exercise enough for me.’  Her whole life is reversed.”

The assumption is that all this is just as it should be.  The thoughtless person may fancy that it is a pity; but it is not a pity.  This is a model mother and a model state of things.  It is not simply to be submitted to, not simply to be patiently borne; it is to be aspired to as the noblest and holiest state.

That is the strychnine.  You may counsel people to take joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and comfort, encourage, and strengthen them by so doing; but when you tell them that to be robbed and plundered is of itself a priceless blessing, the highest stage of human development, you do them harm; because, in general, falsehood is always harmful, and because, in particular, so far as you influence them at all, you prevent them from taking measures to stop the wrong-doing.  You ought to counsel them to bear with Christian resignation what they cannot help; but you ought with equal fervor to counsel them to look around and see if there are not many things which they can help, and if there are, by all means to help them.  What is inevitable comes to us from God, no matter how many hands it passes through; but submission to unnecessary evils is cowardice or laziness; and extolling of the evil as good is sheer ignorance, or perversity, or servility.  Even the ills that must be borne should be borne under protest, lest patience degenerate into slavery.  Christian character is never formed by acquiescence in or apotheosis of wrong.