The genial air of May comes to us all laden with the sweet breath of opening blossoms, and has a balm for the spirits as well as for the health. It stirs within us a sentiment deeper than we know how to define, revives our chilled or buried ideals, and makes every heart young again. It cannot but give something of its own tone to our thought, and we find that in all nations this month has been a continued festival in the calendar, and associated with the loveliest imagery of earth and heaven. The heathen nations, who gave the month its present name, called it so after the fairest of their goddesses, and Christians following a similar sentiment, and desirous also of enlisting every natural feeling in the service of a purer faith, transferred the honors of Maia to Mary, and in every land white flowers deck the shrines of the Madonna, and the "Hail Mary" is the burden of the matin and vesper hymn. Some of the hymns and aspirations connected with the season convey thoughts with which an earnest Protestant may sympathize, and grateful for the maternal love that has made our lives so blessed, we cannot ridicule, although we cannot imitate the Italian devotee, who salutes the Holy Mother as the representative of God's tender mercy to man through her sex, in words of such fervor:--
"Joy of my heart! O let me pay
To thee thine own sweet month of May.
Mother! be love of thee a ray
From Heaven to show the heavenward way.
Sweet Day-Star! let thy beauty be
A light to draw my soul to thee."
May we not once more speak the name of Mary, the Blessed Mother, not to adore her as a divinity, but to win from her an illustration of our common humanity in one of its great sorrows and consolations? Cheerfully as under the returning smile of heaven, solemnly as in presence of much grief, our meditation now turns upon orphanage of the affections, as one of the facts of our homes, and upon the secondary relations which may be its solace.
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Consider, first of all, the fact as one of the events of every life, sooner or later. Mary at the Cross is a representation of our common humanity in its bereavements. Every mother and every parent in some way enters into her anguish, as she saw the life of her Divine Son ebbing from those cruel wounds. She was indeed doubly bereaved,--at once childless and fatherless for the victim upon the Cross had been at once the son of her travail and the father of her faith, born of her into the world that she might be born of Him into the spiritual kingdom. His own pains did not make Him insensible to her anguish, nor indifferent to the fact common to our nature, which feels itself always so void and desolate, when the being of all most loved is suddenly taken away. Tenderly He provided for her the consolation that she needed, by commending her to the disciple, whose ever present kindness would be so great a solace in itself, and so powerful a remembrance of the departed by its associations. The disciple took to his house from that hour the mother of Him upon whose bosom he had leaned.
Life is full of cases that illustrate the same principles, although not connected with facts so peculiar. It may be said indeed, that some kind of orphanage is the lot of every person, whose years are not early cut off, and whose heart is not utterly hardened against home affections. The order of nature is that children should survive their parents, and very many of us in tender childhood have learned the worth of kind and judicious parents, by being called to face the trials and cares of life without their counsel and comfort. When the case is reversed, and the parent is mourner for the child, the desolation of the heart is quite as great, and the affections, deprived of their wonted object, are, perhaps, more deeply wounded than the child's can be, even when losing the only protector in losing the parent; so strongly do the affections press downward, and so mightily does the love that sacrifices so much for offspring grow by its own exercise. Every day this bereavement strikes somewhere, and since my last word to you, it has stricken parents whose oldest child was last Sunday present at church, and to-day is in his grave;--on Sunday I spoke to that bright boy pleasantly at our school, and on Friday said the funeral service over his coffin. Never can such a bereavement come without leaving a feeling of double orphanage, for parents in losing their offspring lose at once an instructor as well as a pupil; and surely the eldest born of a family, however young, is spiritually father or mother of much that is best in the parent's heart. Survey life in its whole compass, enlarge our own experience by observation, and we need no argument to interpret Mary's desolation at the Cross, or to learn that some form of orphanage is the common lot; nay, that before life ceases, some portion of our life is severed, when those in whose companionship we had lived are taken away. The world is full of such desolation, and there are many to whom existence is a burden, because its light has thus gone out.
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But God has always some providential alleviations in store for such bereavement, and let us turn from the fact to its solace. In some form the mercy of that voice from the Cross may always be heard, "Woman, behold thy son! Disciple, behold thy mother!" The Christian church itself never practically unmerciful to its people, even in its sternest days, has always rejoiced to comfort orphanage by the solace of secondary relations; providing new protégés for the childless, new guardians for the fatherless, and new homes for the homeless. There are few families of large experience and just feeling, where something of this same office has not been performed; and where, although other gifts may not be needed, the solace of sympathy is never withheld.
It becomes an important practical question with many, how those secondary relations shall be formed, which may in some measure take the place of the ties severed by death. Here may be children without father, or mother, or both. Here are homes that are childless either through death or by the absence of the blessing, whose absence is of itself to our nature as a bereavement. It is not well to leave the heart void, and God himself, whose Spirit moved our Saviour to commend his mother to his disciple, has provided alleviations. They who need them for themselves or seek them for others must use their best judgment and principle in the choice. There may be gross wrong or frivolous error in the selection, for there are some so desperate as to drown grief in dissipation, and others so light-minded as to lavish upon a parrot, or a dog, or a horse, the affections that belong to immortal creatures.
There are three most obvious modes of selection. The orphan finds a protector by some natural relationship, or by attracting some guardian friend, or by being placed under the care of one, who occupies by marriage the position of the parent taken away. Each of these secondary relations has been full of blessing, as also of danger and trial. Many are the cases in which a desolate child has been abused by a relative, swindled by a friend, and oppressed by a stepfather or stepmother. But not judging through plays and romances, but through life as we see it from a perhaps favored position, we have cause of much satisfaction in view of the secondary relations spoken of. How many a lonely child finds counsellors and helpers among kindred and friends, who keep alive in his heart the parent's memory by their kindness, and deepen the first relation by the second! How many desolate parents comfort themselves by comforting others; and how much grief is soothed, like Mary's, by distilling healing balm for others from its own wounds! Among the ministers of mercy, that cheer this too benighted world, none is more powerful than that which carries comfort to the suffering in the name of some departed child; and who shall number the countenances that contemplate the little ones, whose angels behold the face of our Father in Heaven, to copy their tenderness, and throw their light upon the path of the disconsolate?
Of one class of secondary relations, I cannot but say a word in justice to the subject, and in a different tone from that which usually prevails. The word stepmother has become a proverb in the language, and persons who should know better, sometimes idly speak, so as to add to its odious significance. But may not this relation be assumed in so true and devoted a spirit, and its offices be so performed, as to be great mercy to the orphan? No wonder indeed, that wretchedness comes from the misalliances that sometimes introduce a giddy trifler without ideas, or a selfish worldling without conscience, into the place that has been made sacred by a true Christian mother now no more in the world,--when, in fact, some greedy hawk creeps into the nest of the dove, or the wanton butterfly invades the cell of the ant, or the provoking wasp steals the sweets of the honey-bee's hive. No wonder that trouble comes, when natural rivalries and jealousies are embittered by one, who is mother in name but not in feeling, one whose first joy is personal vanity, and whose least wish is to sacrifice any whim for the welfare of those now entrusted to her care. Well may the curse of Heaven rest upon such connections. Let not a shallow fancy or reckless impulse, never excusable, but least excusable in mature years, dictate a choice so sacred as that which replaces the natural parent by another. Let the choice be guided by words as sacred as those which came from the Cross, and let him, who commends his children to another's care, use his best thought and principle, as if called in this way to say, "Woman, behold thy son! Son, behold thy mother!"
Whatever may be the form of the secondary relation, whether the virtual adoption be from natural relationship, from friendliness or by marriage, two obvious principles should preside over the choice, as in the example of the Cross. The secondary relation should be such as not to shame the first; and such also as to be a mutual blessing, a blessing to the orphaned and the protector. When Jesus commended his mother to his most loved disciple's care, he carried out the spirit of his own entire life, and placed her in the charge of one whose companionship would be a constant remembrance of himself. The lessons of the former years were deepened by those that followed--the disciple was ever nearer his Master by the mother's presence and the mother was nearer to her Son by the disciple's ministry. Happy are they whose existence, however saddened by bereavement, is not broken into incongruous or antagonistic fragments,--happy are the orphan hearts who, like that adopted mother and son, cherish throughout life the same high allegiance, and mature their first vows in their secondary obligations.
This cannot well be, unless the second principle named be observed, and due congeniality be found between the orphaned and the protector. Some choice may generally be used, and the choice should turn on the fitness of the one to guide and the other to be guided. No statement is given of the process in our Saviour's mind, that led him to make the bequest of the Cross, that legacy of love. But He knew what was in man, and knew well how much the mother and disciple were fitted for that filial companionship; the one by his deep intuitive mind fitted to enlighten her faith, and the other by her boundless affection fitted to inflame his piety and charity, to kindle his meditative wisdom into seraphic love. Let not the example be lost upon those who shrink from claiming equal sanctity. Are any of us to choose for an orphan or a half-orphan a protector, whether a guardian or an adopted parent, remember the legacy of the Cross, and in Christ's name minister to the desolate.
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We have illustrated first, the fact of orphanage, and secondly, the secondary relations that may be its alleviation. May we not add, that where the principles recommended are adopted, great blessing results to both parties concerned, the protector, and the protected. If, as the poet says,
"An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high!"
an orphan's blessing can lift to the mercy-seat of God a frail spirit of the earth. Many a time has this blessing been granted, and they who have befriended the lonely, have found a friend in God's own Providence. Is it not remarkably the case, that orphan children when judiciously and kindly counselled and cautioned, well repay all solicitude, and well appreciate, as a gratuitous offering from their protector, the care which, if from a parent, they might regard as a matter of course, hardly claiming any grateful recognition? A relation of peculiar beauty sometimes springs up, at once filial and friendly, blending in itself the affections both of companion and child. The remark applies to step-children as well as to those who are wards by adoption or guardianship. "Hence," says that gifted and fervent writer, Henry Zchokke, "not rare instances in which step-children manifest more cordial sympathy, more touching attachment towards their foster parents, than their own children. For what the latter are apt to take as matter of obligation, the former look upon as token of disinterested love and genuine goodness; and a grateful mind brings before them all the kindness and fidelity which they received from step-parents in the years of minority. As children, they may not understand what you have given, although they may see how you gave it. But when grown up, they understand what you have done for them."
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When under this form of adoption or the others specified, there is surely enough to interpret such secondary relations cheerfully, and history is full of passages, that illustrate the blessing of the legacy of the Cross. In our own experience we must in some way interpret that legacy, and find its joy or its rebuke. Do not leave the subject without touching its practical point. If such and so general is the fact of orphanage, such are the secondary relations which are providentially offered, and such is their solace when properly employed, there is a lesson from the subject, which no person can escape, a lesson as to our duty to our own children and to others. First of all, bear in mind the lonely, and strive to be comforter, and to find comforters for them. Think tenderly of the orphaned, who are in any way near your own sphere, whether from relationship, friendship, or any other association. It may not be, it is not generally money, that is most needed, but kindness, counsel, encouragement. Many an orphan boy is saved by a judicious word and timely hand from a friend of his lost father or mother, and many a lonely girl finds the path of peace and usefulness smoothed for her by those who remember the parent's image in the daughter's face. The story of Moses, the foundling of the Nile, and of Joseph, the exile from Jacob's house, is often repeated in the lives of youths, like them in loneliness, and not wholly unlike them in subsequent energy and honor. Think of this in your homes, and make them pleasant and instructive and elevating to some guests sought by you, because you can make them happy, and who will repay your blessing better than guests of idleness or vanity, sometimes too eagerly sought, who may besot and befool your children by folly and excess. Think of it in your places of business, and seek openings of usefulness for the unprotected. Then you may hear, nay, have you not heard other voices than those of hard traffic there? then you may see, have you not seen, springs of living water gushing from the dusty pavements which you tread? Think of the orphan. For his own sake, do it, and for our own and our children's sake. The probability is, that what others ask of us we shall need for ourselves. We must expect that our children will be in want of the very sympathy which we are to show; for who can be sure of leaving his offspring mature enough in years and wisdom to demand no guardian care in place of the parental? It becomes, therefore, an imperious duty to educate our children in such a manner, as to secure them trusty friends; to give them habits of self-reliance, that shall save them from annoying others by burdensome dependence; to train them to conciliating manners, attractive conversation, elevated ideas, that shall win for them the companionship and protection of the wise and good, keep them in right paths, and mature in their new homes all the worthy seeds of old scenes and affections. Then when the hour of our parting comes, we can think not wholly with sorrow of the legacy of the Cross; believing that they who have trusted in us, may trust in each other, or in friends divinely given, and that future years will deepen the former communion.
The great security, that this shall be so, is found where Christ placed it, in the Father. "I will not leave you comfortless,"--or orphaned, as the word is literally to be translated,--"I will come to you. Ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." They that learn to live in the Father's love, are saved from the worst bereavement, and the orphanage of the earth opens to them the parentage of heaven. The first and secondary relationships of earth are both commended and consecrated by the relation prior to them both and primal of all, however late it may be understood; for in spiritual as well as earthly ties, it requires time and thought to know our truest friend; and the playmates of an hour win the child of mortality's ear more readily than the far-seeing parent, or than the Ancient of Days, the Father of all. Remember that whatever paternal wisdom or maternal tenderness we have ever known here, has its source and archetype on high. There dwells the Godhead that spoke and wrought through the victim of the Cross; there shines the wisdom that opened that disciple's vision; there burns the love that glowed in the mother's faithful heart. From the unseen, comes all the glory that is seen; and if any of us have an orphaned heart, as in some respects we all may have, let us find its solace in God, and whatever is God's. Let the sweet breath of May, that whispers to devotees of Mary's holy maternity, fill our hearts with more than vernal promise, ideals of more than human loveliness,--call us away from all wintry chills to the light and love of the Parent above all parents--to the home that unites all homes in one.
May. [The end]
Samuel Osgood's essay: Orphan