Published in the Canadian Home Journal May 1931By: Henrietta Muir EdwardsDear Readers:
I am not rushing into print, I have been invited in. Your Managing Editor has asked me to speak to the 150,000 readers of the Canadian Home Journal a few words on 'Looking Back on Life'.
My lines have fallen in pleasant places. All my life God's Banner over me has been love. Looking back I see that some of the tragedies and hard things of my life have been my greatest blessings. I have traveled a long way on the Road of Life, always up, and in looking back find myself in a world of beauty and full of nice people. Does it not thrill one to see the crowd? Billions! Of every colour; every costume; every creed; every land. They are passing through the happy land of childhood, the land of adolescence and are entering (often suddenly), the land of maturity. We know where they came from. Do they all know where they are going?
Life has three distinct periods: Childhood, Adolescence and Maturity. Life begins in the happy protected land of childhood, in the valleys, a land free of care and responsibility. There the children toil not, rather they do spin. They laugh and play, wander in the meadows and gather flowers. Unconsciously one enters the land of adolescence, that enchanted land of dreams and visions, to pass on to the third and last stage of human life where one enters the University of the Road of Life. On the threshold one is met by two Powers: the Law, in cap and gown, who gives each one freedom and responsibility. The other Power is Experience, who is the teacher and guide who accompanies each one to the end of the earthly journey.
I have learned that God is Love; that every one is dealt with under the Absolute Law of Compensation. What makes me so sure of this is that of the great number of people whom I have asked: "Have you met one person with whom, if you could, you would change places—not change one or two things—not take the cream off their pan of milk and add it to the cream on your pan—but change places in every particular, change husband, children, homes, wealth, health and happiness?" and I have not found one person.
I have learnt, like Sir Oliver Lodge, that: "Existence is the most magnificent thing that can be conceived." I thank God each day that I am, that I live, and that I always will, for I am sure there is no death, only a passing on to things more wonderful and more beautiful of which man has not even conceived. I firmly believe that Right is Might and will ultimately prevail.
The most precious thing I have learnt is that Motherhood is one of the greatest of God's gifts. A mother is a co-worker with God in a way that no man can ever be, in the building of a temple for a human soul, a soul that is immortal for it is the breath of God. In Genesis is stated that God made a body out of matter and breathed his breath into it and man became a living soul.
"Going down the Hill of Life," is a heathenish expression. We are not going, we are climbing up. When we reach the end we leave our mortal part and take flight into the Ocean of Eternity.