| The Love of Mother |
This January 1910 Improvement
Era editorial in the may be the first published reference to a stake "Home
Evening" program, preceeding by five years the April 27, 1915 letter of
the First Presidency that ingaurated the Home Evening program published in the
June 1915 Improvement Era vol. 18:733–734. The program "drift[ed]
into disuse and then [was] revived again nearly a half century later with many
of the essential features and the philosophy of the original program of 1915"
(Messages of the First Presidency 4:337).
The editorial consists of President Joseph F. Smith's remarks to the parents
of the Granite Stake at the Home Evening organizing meeting. So far as is known,
this is the most detailed description Joseph F. ever gave of his relationship
with his mother—the only reference to his deserving punishment, of her
discipline, and his reaction.
| Editor's
Table. |
Improvement Era, vol. 13 no. 3 (January 1910) 276–280 | |||
| The
Love of Mother. |
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| Granite
Stake Home Evening program Organizing meeting |
The Granite stake of Zion has set aside Tuesday evening of
each week for a "Home Evening." Every family in the stake is asked
to be at home, and the time is to be spent for the use and benefit of the
home. The parents are to teach their children the gospel, there are to be
songs, hymns, music, scripture readings, instructions, games, refreshments
and counsel—a getting nearer together, in the family circle. The movement
was started by a large meeting of parents in the stake tabernacle recently.
At this meeting President Joseph F. Smith delivered a stirring sermon on
"Family Government," and from his remarks on this occasion are
selected these beautiful and instructive sentiments on "The Love of
Mother:" |
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| No love like that of a mother's | I learned in my childhood, as most children, probably, have
learned, more or less at least, that no love in all the world can equal
the love of a true mother. |
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| It
was life to me No sacrifice to great for her children |
I did not think in those days and still I am at a loss to
know how it would be possible for anyone to love her children more truly
than did my mother. I have felt sometimes how could oven the Father love
his children more than my mother loved her children? It was life to me;
it was strength; it was encouragement it was love that begot love or likeness
in myself. I knew she loved me with all her heart. She loved her children
with all her soul. She would toil and labor and sacrifice herself day and
eight, for the temporal comforts and blessings that she could meagerly give,
through the results of her own labors, to her children. There was no sacrifice
of self—of her own time, of her leisure, or pleasure, or opportunities
for rest—that was considered for a moment, when it came in comparison
with her duty and her love to her children. |
What does Joseph F. mean when he says her love "begot love or likeness in myself"? (Italics original.) | ||
| Her love was my anchor | [277] When I was fifteen years of age, and called
to go to a foreign country to preach the gospel—or to learn how, and
to learn it for myself—the strongest anchor that was fixed in my life,
and that helped to hold my ambition and my desire steady, to bring me upon
a level and keep me straight, was that love which I knew she had for me,
who bare me into the world. |
Cp.,
Joseph F.'s 1888 description of the year and a half after Mary's death as
"perilous times … I was almost like a comet or fiery meteor, without
attraction or gravitation to keep me balanced or guide me within reasonable
bounds." "Courage: Joseph F. Smith
Letters," 2. These temptations likely refer to the response of a sexually maturing teenager: "we seen a sight that was worth all other ‘sights' that I ever seen. It was composed of 3 native girls engaged in a Hawaiian dance. It is more than I can describe." JFS diary, May 1, 1856. |
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| Remembered Mother whenever tempted | Only a little boy, not matured at all in judgment, without
the advantage of education, thrown in the midst of the greatest allurements
and temptations that it was possible for any boy or any man to be subjected
to,—and yet, whenever those temptations became most alluring and most
tempting to me, the first thought that rose in my soul was this: "Remember
the love of your mother. Remember how she strove for your welfare. Remember
how veiling she was to sacrifice her life for your good. Remember what she
taught you in your childhood, and how she insisted upon your reading the
New Testament—the only book, except a few little school books, that
we had in the family, or that was within reach of us at that time. This
feeling toward my mother became a defense, a barrier between me and temptation,
so that I could turn aside from temptation and sin by the help of the Lord
and the love begotten in my soul, toward her whom I knew loved me more than
anybody else in all the world, and more than any other living being could
love me. |
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| Uniqueness of a mother's love | A wife may love her husband, but it is different to that of
the love of mother to her child. The true mother, the mother who has the
fear of God and the love of truth in her soul, would never hide from danger
or evil and leave her child exposed to it. But as natural as it is for the
sparks to fly upward, as natural as it is to breathe the breath of life,
if there were danger coming to her child, she would step between the child
and that danger; she would defend her child to the uttermost. Her life would
be nothing in the balance, in comparison with the life of her child. That
is the love of true motherhood—for children. |
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| Instinct to protect children, be protected by husband | Her love for her husband would be different, for if danger should come to him, as natural as it would be for her to step between her child and danger, instead her disposition world be to step behind her husband for protection; and that is the difference between the love of mother for children and the love of wife for husband—there is a great difference between the two. | |||
| Nearer
the love of God than any other kind of love Father's love is different |
I have learned to place a high estimate upon the love of mother.
I have often said, and will repeat it, that the love of a true mother comes
nearer being like the love of God than any other kind of love. The father
may love his children, too; and next to the love that the mother feels for
her child, unquestionably and rightfully, too, comes the love that the father
feels for his child. But, as it has been illustrated here by Brother Anderson,
the love of the father is of a different character, or degree, to the love
of the mother for her child: illustrated by the fact he related here of
having the privilege of working with his boy, having him in his presence,
becoming more intimate with him, learning his characteristics more clearly;
becoming more familiar and more; closely related to him; the result of which
was that his love for his boy increased, and the love of the boy increased
for his father, for the same reason, merely because of that closer association.
So the child learns to love its mother best, as a rule, when the mother
is good, wise, prudent, and intelligent, because the child is with her more,
they are more familiar with each other and understand each other better. |
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| Fathers,
love your children Speak kindly, cry together, reason, and persuade Coax, lead, but don't drive them |
Now, this is the thought that I desire to express: Fathers,
if you wish your children to be taught in the principles of the gospel,
if you wish them to love the truth and understand it, if you wish them to
be obedient to and united with you, love them! and prove to them that you
do love them, by your every word or act to them. For your own sake, for
the love that should exist between you and your boys—however wayward
they might be, or one or the other might be, when you speak or talk to them,
do it not in anger; do it not, harshly, in a condemning spirit. Speak to
them kindly: get down and weep with them, if necessary, and get them to
shed tears with you if possible. Soften their hearts; get them to feel tenderly
towards you. Use no lash and no violence, but argue, or rather reason—approach
them with reason, with persuasion and love unfeigned. With these means,
if you cannot gain your boys and your girls, they will prove to be reprobate
to you; and there will be no means left in the world by which you can win
them to yourselves. But, get them to feel as you feel, have interest in
the things in which you take interest, to love the gospel as you love it,
to love one another as you love them; to love their parents as [279] the
parents love the children. You can't do it any other way. You can't do it
by unkindness; you cannot do it by driving—our children are like we
are: we couldn't be driven; we can't be driven now. We are like some other
animals that we know of in the world: You can coax them; you can lead them,
by holding out inducements to them and by speaking kindly to them, but you
can't drive them; they won't be driven. We won't be driven. Men are not
in the habit of being driven; they are not made that way. |
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| God's way is free love, free grace | That is not the way that God intended, in the
beginning, to deal with his children—by force. It is all free love,
free grace. The poet expressed it in these words: |
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| Can't force children to heaven | You can't force your boys, nor your girls into heaven. You
may force them to hell—by using harsh means in the efforts to make
them good, when you yourselves are not as good as you should be. The man
that will be angry at his boy, and try to correct him while he is in anger,
is in the greatest .fault; lie is more to be pitied and more to be condemned
than the child who has done wrong. You can only correct your children in
love, in kindness by love unfeigned, by persuasion and reason. |
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| Joseph F.'s childhood disobedience | When I was a child, sometimes a wayward,
disobedient little boy—not that I was wilfully disobedient, but I would
forget what I ought to do; I would go off with playful boys and be absent
when I should have been at home, and I would forget to do things I was asked
to do. Then I would go home, feel guilty, know that I was guilty, that I
had neglected my duty and that I deserved punishment. |
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| Mary's
warning Consistency |
On one occasion I had done something that was not just right,
and my mother said to me: "Now, Joseph,if you do that again I shall
have to whip you." Well, time went on, and by and by I forgot it, and
I did something similar again; and this is the one thing that I admired
more, perhaps, than any secondary thing in her: it was that when she made
a promise she kept it. She never made a promise, that I know of, that she
did not keep. |
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| Discipline: whipping | Well, I was called to account. She said: "Now, I told
you. You knew that if you did this I would have to whip you, for I said
[280] I would. I must do it. I do not want to do it. It hurts me worse than
it does you, but I must whip you." |
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| Her reasoning was worse than the rawhide strap | Well, she had a little rawhide, already there, and while she
was talking or reasoning with me, showing me how much I deserved it and
how painful it was to her to inflict the punishment I deserved—I had
only one thought and that was: "For goodness sake, whip me; do not
reason with me;" for I felt the lash of her just criticism and admonition
a thousand fold worse than I did the switch. I felt as if, when she laid
the lash on me, I had at least partly paid my debt and had answered for
my wrong doing. Her reasoning cut me down into the quick; it made me feel
sorry to the very core. |
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| I could have endured a hundred lashes with the rawhide better
than I could endure a ten minutes talk in which I felt and was made to feel
that the punishment inflicted upon me was painful to her that I loved—punishment
upon my own mother! |
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| (During the time the President was relating these incidents,
he spoke with great feeling, and at this point was obliged to stop his discourse
for a time, to calm his feelings; then he continued:) |
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| Thoughts of Mary (Fielding) and Jesus melt his heart | You must excuse me. There are two divine personages that I
can scarcely think or talk about without it softens my spirit and brings
me down to the similitude of a little child; and those two beings are my
mother and my Redeemer! My Redeemer, the Savior of my soul, my Redeemer
from sin—Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of the living God, he who restored
the fulness of his gospel and the plan of life and salvation, through the
Prophet Joseph Smith, in the dispensation in which we live. I cannot read
the New Testament about the Lord but it softens my soul. When I think of
him and of the humiliation that he passed through, the death that he suffered
for the redemption of man, I am captured and captivated, and I can't help
myself. I thank the Lord that this is so. |