But it is not a question of deserts. These women were mothers. If they
should not have been, they should not have been, and if the blame was
theirs, they were blameworthy. But mothers they were, with the duties
of mothers to perform, and therefore with the rights of mothers. They
got their concert and were all the better for the remarkably indifferent
music of which it consisted, as such concerts commonly do; and I am only
very sorry if any of them argued therefrom that she had nothing in the
past to regret.
But the spiritual attitude revealed in the question, "Do they deserve
it?" is one which must speedily go to its own place. Let us strive to
dignify marriage, to educate the young of both sexes for parenthood, to
reduce illegitimacy, to reward virtue. But where there is motherhood in
being, whether expectant or achieved, we have a duty which is the
highest and most sacred of all because it is the Future that we are
called upon to serve, and upon us it wholly depends.
As Mr. John Burns said to our first Infant Mortality Conference in Great
Britain in 1907, "Let us dignify, purify and glorify motherhood by every
means in our power." Evidently this can only be done through marriage,
which is in its very essence an institution for the dignifying of
motherhood. But a biological writer cannot distinguish as a theologian
can between legal and extra-legal motherhood.
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