God's first law, regarding the propagation of the human species, is that the mother must be dominated by a supreme and ruling emotion to give to the world the highest type of a child.
Your mother loved your father with all her heart and soul. She was a young girl, ignorant of the world. She thought of her lover as her rightful mate, and lived but for the hour when he should rescue her from the unhappy fate arranged by unwise and sordid-minded parents.
Your father loved her, and they were in God's sight more truly husband and wife than the soulless and loveless ceremony of the law made her and her legal husband afterward.
It is a great misfortune that your parents lacked the self-control which is necessary to every well-balanced human being who seeks for the fullest development. It is a sad thing that over your life this shadow of unlegalized birth must rest.
But were I given the choice to-day to be what you are, or what your sister is, and what thousands of children born of loveless marriages are, I would not for one second hesitate in my choice.
The world needs marriage laws to keep any order in society.
The wisely reared and well-balanced woman will keep herself in womanly reserve for her legal husband.
Your mother, by a moment's weakness and loss of self-control, left a blight upon her life for ever, and a shadow upon yours.
But do not for one instant think of yourself as anything but a child of God, endowed with all the wealth of the spiritual kingdom, whatever the law may withhold from you here.
You are legitimized by love, your sister is legitimate by law. She is illegitimate in the sight of heaven, you in sight of earth.