The sacrifice of Jesus, so much boasted by the Christian church, is nothing compared to the sacrifice of a mother for her family. It is not to be spoken of in the same light. A mother’s sacrifice is constant: momentary, hourly, daily, life-long. It never ceases. It is a veritable providence; a watchful care; a real giving of one life for another, or for several others; a gift of love so pure and holy, so single and complete, that it is an offering in spirit and in substance.
This is to me the highest, purest, holiest act of humanity. All others, when weighed with this unselfish consecration to duty, seem small and insignificant. There is, in a mother’s life, no counting of cost, no calculation of reward. It is enough that a duty is to be done; that a service is to be rendered; that a sacrifice is called for. The true mother gives herself to the offices of love without hope, expectation, or wish of recompense. A mother’s love for her children cannot be determined by any earthly measure, by any material standard. It outshines all glory, and is the last gleam of light in the human heart. A mother’s love walks in a thousand Gethsemanes, endures a thousand Calvaries, and has a thousand agonies that the dying of Jesus upon a cross cannot symbolize. This maternal sacrifice is the greater that it is made cheerfully, without a murmur, and even with joy. If it is not sought; it is never pushed aside.
A mother’s sacrifice for her family makes a chapter of suffering, of patient toil and strife, of heroic endurance and forbearance, that religion is not yet high enough to appreciate; and this sublime devotion is not in one home, but in
hundreds of thousands in every land everywhere on earth, and it is real, true, heart-born, and the utmost of renunciation that human life has revealed.
The brief martyrdom of Jesus was not voluntary, was not lasting in its pain or in its service to mankind. His death was cruel, his suffering and agony terrible to think of, but it was all soon over. A few hours of torture make up the tragedy of the cross. But the story of this crucifixion may be fictitious, imaginary; most likely is such. Perhaps no such man died such a death in any such way. Then how vain and foolish to waste our sympathy on a fanciful sufferer, an imaginary martyr, who never existed outside of the brain of the writer of the story, while there are actual, real beings living who are making a greater sacrifice, doing a holier duty, within our reach!
We need not go to a Bible to find those who deserve our tears, or who have earned our admiration. The bravest heart that ever author wrote into being, fails to come up to the lofty height of endurance, of a life inspired by love, of heroic sacrifice, that can be found in hundreds of homes in our land.
Far be it from my intention to paint less any deed of mortal that has brightened the lot of man, or to throw discredit upon aught that is worthy of human gratitude and praise. I yield most ready sympathy and most willing admiration to every noble soul that has lived or died to make earth better and happier, but I do not believe that greatness, goodness and love are all dead, and that our whole duty is to stand and weep around a tomb. I believe in living men and women, in living hearts and souls, in living greatness and goodness and love, and I tell you all that the earth never bore more loving, more humane, tenderer, braver, or truer hearts than beat today in the living breasts of mankind.
And I place above all that is brave and true, great and good, in the past or present, the mothers of our age.—What man cannot see that silent, patient mother in her home, the victim of a multitude of trials, crosses, annoyances, day after day and week after week, meeting all, bearing all, with a saint’s look and manner; and what man, seeing her there, at the side of the sick, worn out with watching and waiting, and then at the bed of death, faithful and true to the last, though wounded in heart and spirit never faltering in the way of duty, that would not say if there be one sacrifice that is above, and greater than, all others, it is that of a mother’s love?
[The end]
Lemuel K. Washburn's essay: Sacrifice