A Child's Faith in the Lord's Prayer

About the 30th of July, 1864, the beautiful village of Chambersburgh was invaded and pillaged by the Confederate army. A superintendent of a Sabbath school, formerly resident in the South, but who had been obliged to flee to the North because of his known faithfulness to the national government, was residing there, knowing that if discovered by the Confederate soldiers, he would be in great peril of life, property and every indignity, — in the gray dawn of that memorable day, with his wife and two little girls, again on foot, he fled to the chain of mountains lying north-west of the doomed village.

After remaining out for some days and nights, with no shelter but such as was afforded by the friendly boughs of large forest trees, and without food, they became nearly famished. At last, the head of the family, unable to endure the agony of beholding his wife and children starving to death before his face, and he not able to render the needed relief, withdrew to a place by himself, that he might not witness the sad death of his loved ones. With his back against a large oak, he had been seated only a short time, when his eldest little daughter, not quite ten years old, came to him and exclaimed:

“Father, father, I have found such a precious text in my little Testament which I brought to the mountain with me, for very joy I could not stop to read it to mother, but hastened to you with it. Please listen while I read.^^ To which he said:

“Yes, my child, read it. There is comfort to be found in the Scriptures. We will not long be together on earth, and there could be no better way of spending our last mortal hours.” To which she replied:

“0, father, I believe that we will not die at this time; that we will not bo permitted to starve; that God will surely send us relief; but do let me read.” Then opening her dear little volume, at the ninth verse of the sixth chapter of Matthew she read as follows:

“‘Our Father, which art in heaveUf hallowed he Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will he done on earth cw it is in heaven; give us this day our daily hread.’ 0, father, to think that our dear Saviour Himself taught His disciples to pray for their daily bread. These are His own words. It is not possible, therefore, that He will allow any person to starve, vjho, in His own appointed language, asks Him for food. Will He. not, dear father, hear our prayers for bread ?^’

At once and forever the scales fell from the eyes of that parent. With tears streaming down his cheeks, he clasped his child to his bosom, and earnestly repeated the Lord’s Prayer. He had scarcely finished it when a small dog ran to where he and his daughter were upon their knees, and harked so fiercely as to attract to the spot its owner, a wealthy Penn sylvania farmer, who was upon the mountain in search of cattle that he had lost for several days. The kind-hearted tiller of the soil immediately piloted the suffering family to his own comfortable home, and properly provided for their wants.