It has been truly said that children are the wealth of nations: if we were to take our parenthood very seriously indeed--far, far more seriously than we now do, surely this would prove the strongest defence against the moral and physical decay of which we hear so much. I would like to see parenthood elevated to the dignity of a great spiritual ideal. Not that I advocate the ultra-glorification of mere procreation in itself, though to bring fine and healthy children into the world is an excellent service, and one that men and women ought to take the highest pride in, but ‘to summon an immortal soul into being--what act is comparable to this?’ To train the new-born spirit to grow towards the sun, striving to develop in it the nobler possibilities of the complex human organism and make of it an ‘upright, heaven-facing speaker’--what better lifework can a man or woman hope to achieve, what greater monument to leave behind? If parenthood were to become a great ideal, in time public opinion--that mighty weapon--would grow so strong that unworthy parenthood would be regarded with disfavour by all decent people. The unfit would not dare to commit the crime of perpetuating their kind, and the stigma attached to this sin against the community might eventually even equal the stigma attached nowadays to the awful crime of cheating at cards! Inspired by the ideal of noble parenthood, maidens would look for the father’s heart in their lovers; men would seek the beautiful maternal qualities in the girls they were wooing, and the material considerations that now so largely influence both would obtain less and less. The bond of marriage would be strengthened a hundredfold. Infidelity would be rarer, for the husband and wife who had been blessed with children would feel that their union had been dignified, made truly indissoluble. The father and mother who had embraced for the first time over the form of their first-born could never forget that ineffable moment. The man and woman who had shared a baby between them, taught it to talk and to play and guided its first faltering steps, could never lightly set aside the vows that bound them. The soft hands of little children were made to link men and women’s hearts together, and wonderfully they fulfil the task! ‘Only when we become fathers and mothers do we realise all that our fathers and mothers have done for us’--and what a revelation it is! What a new heaven and a new earth are opened to us by the magic of a little child’s presence in our home--the little body that has been mysteriously fashioned in our image, the little soul given into our keeping.