a _healthy_ baby, for that
implies healthy parents, especially a healthy mother. She may justly
feel proud that God has intrusted a young immortal to her care, and
she should at all times bear in mind that it is His gift. While it is
on all hands considered honorable to hold a commission from the
President, and to fill a high office, contributing to the welfare of
many people, a mother may feel her office at least as honorable,
seeing she has intrusted to her the rearing and training of an
immortal being, and that she holds her commission direct from the King
of Kings. For, recollect, it is only by God's blessing that she
becomes a mother; for such is the present state of society that many
very worthy married people have not the privilege of offspring,
although they are intensely fond of children and seem to have no other
earthly want. They may, nevertheless, be very useful, and therefore
happy, in a different sphere, by the adoption of nephews and nieces or
in some similar way.

AT THE BIRTH OF HER FIRST CHILD

there is opened in the mother's heart a new well of love, such as she
had not known before; and although she may fancy that this is all
spent upon her babe, it is not so, for she loves her God, her husband,
and everybody else better than ever. The father, too, is similarly
affected; he also has a warmer love for his wife and for all his
connections.

A similar idea is well expressed by Moehler, a German writer, who says:
"The power of selfishness, which is inwoven with our whole being, is
altogether broken by marriage, and by degrees love, becoming more and
more pure, takes its place." When a man marries he gives himself up
entirely to _another_ being; in this affair of life he first goes out
of himself, and inflicts the first deadly wound on his egotism. By
every child with which his marriage is blessed, nature renews the same
attack on his selfhood, causes him to live less for himself, and
more--even without being distinctly conscious of it--for others; his
heart expands in proportion as the claimants upon it increase, and,
bursting the bonds of its former narrow exclusiveness, it eventually
extends its sympathies to all around.

Whenever a mother is supplying her baby with the food which God has so
wisely provided for it, or is ministering to any other of its numerous
and increasing wants, she may feel that everything she does for it is
pleasing to her Heavenly Father and has its i