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

very 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:



"O, father, I believe that we will not die at this time; that we will

not be 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 heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom

come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; give us this day our

daily bread.' O, 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,

who, 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

barked so fiercely as to attract to the spot its owner, a wealthy

Pennsylvania 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.