The greatest opportunity to better the world which can come to any
woman is through the experience of maternity.
The power of prenatal influence which a mother possesses is
awe-inspiring to realize.
It has been said upon excellent authority that Napoleon's mother read
Roman history with absorbing interest during the months preceding his
birth.
Think of the nations and the centuries influenced by that one woman's
mental concentration! The geography of the world was changed by her
power of focused thought.
In all probability Napoleon's mother did not know what she was doing;
she was not conscious of the destiny her mind was shaping for her
unborn child, nor of the law governing such conditions.
Women have been strangely ignorant of this vital truth; until recent
years it has not been considered a "proper" theme for tongue or pen,
and to-day the great majority of young women marry absolutely
uninformed upon the subject of prenatal influence.
Men are equally oblivious of any knowledge regarding the matter, and
consequently make no special effort to keep the expectant mother of
their offspring happy, hopeful, or free of anxiety and worry during
this period. Often they do not strive to aid them in their own
attempts to bestow a desirable temperament upon the unborn child, but
heedlessly and needlessly aggravate or grieve the mind which is
stamping its impress upon an unborn soul.
It is just here that the "New Thought" can perform its greatest
miracles of good.
Even the woman who has not been enlightened upon the law of
ante-birth-influence will, if a true disciple of the Religion of
Right-living, bring healthy and helpful children into the world,
because her normal state of mind will be inclusive of those three
qualities; and her continued and repeated assertions of her own divine
nature will shape the brain of her child in optimistic and reverential
mould.
There is the old law of the continual falling of the drop of water upon
the stone to be verified in the spiritual plane. Continual assertions
of a mother that her child will be all that she desires it to be, will
wear away the stone of inherited tendencies, and bring into physical
being a malleable nature wholly amenable to the after influences and
efforts she may bring to bear upon it.
It is a tremendous responsibility which rests upon the woman who knows
she is to be a mother of a human being.
A hundred ancestors may have contributed certain qualities to that
invisible and formless atom which contains an immortal soul, yet the
mother's mind has the power to remake and rebuild all those
characteristics, and to place over them her own dominating impulse,
whether for good or ill.
Surely, if success in the arts or the sciences is worthy of years of
devoted attention and interested effort, the moulding of a noble human
being is worth eight or nine months of concentrated thought and
unflagging zeal of purpose.
Every expectant mother should set herself about the important business
God has entrusted her with, unafraid, and confident of her divine
mission. She should direct her mind into wholesome and optimistic
channels; she should read inspiring books and think loving and large
thoughts. She should pray and aspire! and always should she carry in
her mind the ideal of the child she would mother, and command from the
great Source of all Opulence the qualities she would desire to
perpetuate.
And they will be given.