“Our daily bread give us,” your young apprehension
    May well understand is to pray for our food;
  Although we ask bread, and no other thing mention,
    God’s bounty gives all things sufficient and good.

  You pray that your “trespasses may be forgiven,
    As you forgive those that are done unto you;”
  Before this you say to the God that’s in heaven,
    Consider the words which you speak.  Are they true?

  If any one has in the past time offended
    Us angry creatures who soon take offence,
  These words in the prayer are surely intended
    To soften our minds, and expel wrath from thence.

  We pray that “temptations may never assail us,”
    And “deliverance beg from all evil” we find;
  But we never can hope that our pray’r will avail us,
    If we strive not to banish ill thoughts from our mind.

  “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,
    For ever and ever,” these titles are meant
  To express God’s dominion and majesty o’er ye: 
    And “Amen” to the sense of the whole gives assent.

“SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN, AND FORBID THEM NOT, TO COME UNTO ME”

  To Jesus our Saviour some parents presented
    Their children—­what fears and what hopes they must feel! 
  When this the disciples would fain have prevented,
    Our Saviour reprov’d their unseas’nable zeal.

  Not only free leave to come to him was given,
    But “Of such” were the blessed words Christ our Lord spake,
  “Of such is composed the kingdom of heaven:” 
    The disciples, abashed, perceiv’d their mistake.

  With joy then the parents their children brought nigher,
    And earnestly begg’d that his hands he would lay
  On their heads; and they made a petition still higher,
    That he for a blessing upon them would pray.

  O happy young children, thus brought to adore him,
    To kneel at his feet, and look up in his face;
  No doubt now in heaven they still are before him,
    Children still of his love, and enjoying his grace.

  For being so blest as to come to our Saviour,
    How deep in their innocent hearts it must sink! 
  ’Twas a visit divine; a most holy behaviour
    Must flow from that spring of which then they did drink.

THE MAGPYE’S NEST OR A LESSON OF DOCILITY

A FABLE

  When the arts in their infancy were,
    In a fable of old ’tis exprest,
  A wise Magpye constructed that rare
    Little house for young birds, call’d a nest.

  This was talk’d of the whole country round,
    You might hear it on every bough sung,
  “Now no longer upon the rough ground
    Will fond mothers brood over their young.

  “For the Magpye with exquisite skill
    Has invented a moss-cover’d cell,
  Within which a whole family will
    In the utmost security dwell.”