“‘Now, Johnny, you may say your prayers;’ for dearly as his mother loved him, she could ill afford to lose a moment from her work.  He repeated ‘Our Father’ with her until they came to the petition, ’Give us this day our daily bread.’  The earnestness, almost agony, with which the mother uttered these words, impressed Johnny strongly.  He said them over again:  ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’  Then opening his blue eyes, he fixed them on his mother, and said:  ’We shall never be hungry any more.  God is our Father, and he will hear us.’  The prayer was finished and Johnny laid to rest.  The mother sewed with renewed energy.  Her heart was sustained by the simple faith of her child.  Many were the gracious promises which came to her remembrance.  Although tired and hungry, still it was with a light heart she sank to rest.

“Early in the morning a gentleman called on his way to business.  He wished Johnny’s mother to come to his home to take charge of his two motherless boys.  She immediately accepted the offer.  They were thus provided with all the comforts of a good home.  Johnny is a man now, but he has never forgotten the time when he prayed so earnestly for his daily bread.

“God will hear prayer is his firm belief.  In many ways has he had the faith of his childhood confirmed.  He looks to God as his Father with the same trust now as then.

GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF ME.

“When the yellow fever raged in New Orleans, the pestilence visited a Christian household, and the father died.  Then the mother was suddenly seized, and knowing that she must die, she gathered the four children around her bed, the oldest being only about ten years of age, and said to them that God was about to take her home to heaven.  She urged them to have no fears, and assured them that the kind, heavenly Father who had so long provided for them would surely come and take care of them.  The children, with almost breaking hearts, believed what the dying mother had told them.

“She was buried.  The three youngest soon followed her, although they received every necessary attention from friends during their sickness.  The oldest, a boy, was also seized by the pestilence, and in an unguarded moment, under the influence of delirium, wandered from his sick-bed out into the suburbs of the city, and lying down in the tall grass by the roadside, looked steadfastly up, murmuring, incoherently at times, ’Mother said God would come and take care of me—­would come and take care of me!’ A gentleman happening to pass at the time, and hearing the unusual sounds, went where the lad was lying, and rousing him, asked him what he was doing there.  Said the little fellow in reply:  ’Father died; mother died; little brother and sisters died.  But just before mother went away into heaven, she told us to have no fear, for God would come and take care of us, and I am now waiting for him to come down and take me.  I know he will come, for mother said so, and she always told us the truth.’