Article March 5, 1932 Issue

Mother-Love

MAY LILIAN SPURWAY

What do we understand by the term "mother-love"; and why is it regarded so highly by humanity? Is it not because mother-love manifests unselfishness, willing service, purity, constancy, readiness to forgive, unreadiness to take offense; in fact, all the elements of the wonderful quality described in the thirteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians?

A mother's love is unselfish because it is never tired of serving. Nothing is too much trouble, whether or not anything is received in return. Its purpose is to give, and it is little concerned with getting. Its greatest joy is derived from seeing the beloved ones free and happy. Who has not seen a busy mother's face light up as she watches her child at play, or listens with loving sympathy to some tale the child has come to tell her? And who so readily opens comforting arms when consolation is needed? The prophet Isaiah must have recognized this quality when he represented God as saying, "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you."

When a child has been disobedient, mother-love is not weaned from the child. Rather is it found waiting for the least sign of repentance on the part of the erring one, ready to give encouragement and fresh opportunity to do better. Mother-love does not say: I trusted you once; I cannot trust you again. Rather does it exemplify Mrs. Eddy's description of changeless divine Love in "Christian Healing" (p. 19), "Tireless Being, patient of man's procrastination, affords him fresh opportunities every hour." The writer well remembers an incident of childhood, when apology, accompanied by a promise to try to do better, had been made to a beloved school teacher. The teacher, for the moment lacking mother-love, replied, "I cannot accept your promise; you have broken it too often." Such a rebuff, bringing as it did a sense of hopelessness to one who really longed to be good, surely did not come from a heart overflowing with an understanding mother-love.

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