PLEASE GOD, GIVE US A HOME.
Mr. Moody tells of a beautiful answer to the faith of a little child.
“I remember a child that lived with her parents in a small village. One day the news came that her father had joined the army (it was the beginning of our war), and a few days after, the landlord came to demand the rent. The mother told him she hadn’t got it, and that her husband had gone into the army. He was a hard-hearted wretch, and he stormed, and said that they must leave the house; he wasn’t going to have people who couldn’t pay the rent.
“After he was gone, the mother threw herself into the armchair, and began to weep bitterly. Her little girl, whom she taught to pray in faith, (but it is more difficult to practice than to preach,) came up to her, and said, ’What makes you cry, mamma, I will pray to God to give us a little home, and won’t He?’ What could the mother say? So the little child went into the next room and began to pray. The door was open, and the mother could hear every word.
"’O, God, you have come and taken away father, and mamma has got no money, and the landlord will turn us out because we can’t pay, and we will have to sit on the door-step, and mamma will catch cold. Give us a little home.’ Then she waited as if for an answer, and then added, ‘Won’t you, please, God?’
“She came out of that room quite happy, expecting a home to be given them. The mother felt reproved. God heard the prayer of that little one, for he touched the heart of the cruel landlord, and she has never paid any rent since.”
God give us the faith of that little child, that we may likewise expect an answer, “nothing wavering.”
“OF COURSE HE WILL.”
Mr. Moody also gives the story of a little child whose father and mother had died, and she was taken into another family. The first night she asked if she could pray, as she used to do.
They said, Oh, yes! So she knelt down, and prayed as her mother taught her, and when that was ended she added a little prayer of her own: “Oh, God, make these people as kind to me as father and mother were.” Then she paused, and looked up, as if expecting an answer, and added, “Of course he will.”
How sweetly simple was that little one’s faith; she expected God to “do,” and she got her request.
STRIKING ANSWER.
The following incidents are specially contributed to these pages by Rev. J.S. Bass, a Home Missionary of Brooklyn, N.Y.: