MATERNAL IMPRESSIONS. 219 



sassination of his father and the heroism ever 

 manifest in his mother, all tended to develop these 

 qualities in the boy ; but from having made a very 

 careful study of Col. Cody, I am very sure that 

 the inborn traits most potential in his life were 

 largely the product of maternal impressions. 



Rev. Geo. D. Herron, Professor of Applied 

 Christianity in Iowa College, an eminent thinker 

 and advocate of Christian socialism, is reported 

 as having said, "I may have been converted before 

 I was born. During the year preceding my birth 

 my mother lived in an atmosphere of prayer, 

 studying good books and brooding over her Bible. 

 She asked God to give her a child who should be 

 His servant, and she besought God to keep me 

 upon the altar of a perfect sacrifice in the service 

 of His Christ and her Redeemer. She never again, 

 nor had she before, reached the spiritual height 

 upon which she walked with God during the year 

 of my birth. * * * Nothing has ever been 

 able to separate her from the belief that in bring- 

 ing me into the world she had fulfilled the pur- 

 pose of her being, and she never doubted that I 

 would be a messenger of God to my fellow men. 

 Of all this I knew nothing until after I had been 

 preaching the Gospel." 



A careful study of the mentality of any family 

 where there are two or more children will demon- 

 strate the potency of maternal impressions. The Variations 

 differences in the environment, habits, conditions '^ 

 and mental states of a mother will be found clear- 

 ly marked in her children. Hundreds of mothers 

 have assured me that they could trace their exist- 

 ing states in the life and disposition of their chil- 



