"Our daily bread" lingered a moment on the air, as the mother's
voice was hushed into silence.
"And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors."
The eyes of the children had drooped for a moment. But they were
uplifted again as they prayed--"And forgive us our debts, as we also
forgive our debtors."
"And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For
Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen."
All these holy words were said, piously and fervently, by the little
ones, as they knelt with clasped hands beside their mother. Then, as
their thoughts, uplifted on the wings of prayer to their heavenly
Father, came back again and rested on their earthly parents, a
warmer love came gushing from their hearts.
Pure kisses--tender embraces--the fond "good night." What a sweet
agitation pervaded all their feelings! Then two dear heads were
placed side by side on the snowy pillow, the mother's last kiss
given, and the shadowy curtains drawn.
What a pulseless stillness reigns throughout the chamber! Inwardly
the parents' listening ears are bent. They have given these innocent
ones into the keeping of God's angels, and they can almost hear the
rustle of their garments as they gather around their sleeping babes.
A sigh, deep and tremulous, breaks on the air. Quickly the mother
turns to the father of her children, with a look of earnest inquiry
on her countenance. And he answers thus her silent question.
"Far back, through many years, have my thoughts been wandering. At
my mother's knee thus said I nightly, in childhood, my evening
prayer. It was that best and holiest of all prayers, "Our Father,"
that she taught me. Childhood and my mother passed away. I went
forth as a man into the world, strong, confident, and self-seeking.
Once I came into great temptation. Had I fallen in that temptation,
I would have fallen, I sadly fear, never to have risen again. The
struggle in my mind went on for hours. I was about yielding. All the
barriers I could oppose to the in-rushing flood seemed just ready to
give way, when, as I sat in my room one evening, there came from an
adjoining chamber, now first occupied for many weeks, the murmur of
low voices. I listened. At first, no articulate sound was heard, and
yet something in the tones stirred my heart with new and strange
emotions. At length, there came to my ears, in the earnest, loving
voice of a woman, the words--'Deliver us from evil.' For an instant,
it seemed to me as if the voice were that of my mother. Back, with a
sudden bound through all the intervening years, went my thoughts;
and, a child in heart again, I was kneeling at my mother's knee.
Humbly and reverently I said over the words of the holy prayer she
had taught me, heart and eyes uplifted to heaven. The hour and the
power of darkness had passed. I was no longer standing in slippery
places, with a flood of waters ready to sweep me to destruction; but
my feet were on a rock. My mother's pious care had saved her son. In
the holy words she taught me in childhood, was a living power to
resist evil through all my after life. Ah! that unknown mother, as
she taught her child to repeat his evening prayer, how little
dreamed she that the holy words were to reach a stranger's ears, and
save him through memories of his own childhood and his own mother!
And yet it was so. What a power there is in God's Word, as it flows
into and rests in the minds of innocent children!"
Tears were in the eyes of the wife and mother as she lifted her
face, and gazed with a subdued tenderness upon the countenance of
her husband. Her heart was too full for utterance. A little while
she thus gazed, and then, with a trembling joy, laid her head upon
his bosom. Angels were in the chamber where their dear ones slept,
and they felt their holy presence.