Diet in Childhood
173
serve her children from the health and life destroying vices of the
present day. Let mothers place themselves without delay in right re-
lations to their Creator, that they may by His assisting grace build
around their children a bulwark against dissipation and intemperance.
If mothers would but follow such a course, they might see their chil-
dren, like the youthful Daniel, reach a high standard in moral and
intellectual attainments, becoming a blessing to society and an honor
to their Creator.
The Infant
340. The best food for the infant is the food that nature provides.
Of this it should not be needlessly deprived. It is a heartless thing for
a mother, for the sake of convenience or social enjoyment, to seek to
free herself from the tender office of nursing her little one.
The mother who permits her child to be nourished by another
should consider well what the result may be. To a greater or less
degree the nurse imparts her own temper and temperament to the
nursing child.—
The Ministry of Healing, 383, 1905
341. In order to keep pace with fashion, nature has been abused,
instead of being consulted. Mothers sometimes depend upon a hireling,
or a nursing bottle must be substituted, for the maternal breast. And
one of the most delicate and gratifying duties a mother can perform for
her dependent offspring, which blends her life with its own, and which
awakens the most holy feelings in the hearts of women, is sacrificed to
fashion’s murderous folly.
There are mothers who will sacrifice their maternal duties in nurs-
ing their children simply because it is too much trouble to be confined
to their offspring, which is the fruit of their own body. The ballroom
and the exciting scenes of pleasure have had the influence to benumb
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the fine sensibilities of the soul. These have been more attractive to
the fashionable mother than maternal duties to her children. Maybe
she puts her children out to a hireling, to do those duties for them
which should belong to herself exclusively. Her false habits make the
necessary duties, which it should be her joy to perform, disagreeable
to her, because the care of her children will interfere with the claims
of fashionable life. A stranger performs the duties of the mother, and
gives from her breast the food to sustain life.