A very little child, not two years old, always seemed delighted to hold her little book at prayer time, and when her father said Amen, she always repeated it after him aloud.  One day she seemed very uneasy during prayer time, and though she made great resistance, she was taken out of the room.  She insisted on going back to the drawing-room, and the chairs being still in the order in which the family had been seated during prayer time, the little creature went by the side of each, and folding her little hands, she repeated “Amen,” “Amen,” until she had been to each one.  Thus we see it is not so much for want of knowledge, as for a right state of heart, right teachings, right examples, that children do not live and act, speak and think and pray aright.

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Original.

FIRST PRAYER IN CONGRESS.

In the letters of John Adams to his wife, Sept. 10, 1774, we have an account of the First Prayer in Congress.  What an instructive and encouraging lesson is here taught to all religious persons, always unhesitatingly to obey all holy and good impulses.

Had Mr. Cushing, who moved the resolution, held back,—­or had Mr. Samuel Adams refused to second this resolution,—­or had Rev. Mr. Duche declined, when called upon to lead on that occasion, our nation might never have presented the sublime spectacle of uniting, as a body, in calling upon God at the opening of their Congressional sessions.

And who would dare to predict the loss which this omission might at that time have occasioned to this infant Republic!

Mr. Adams’s account is as follows:—­

“When Congress first met, Mr. Cushing moved that it should be opened with prayer.  This was opposed on the ground that the members, being of various denominations, were so divided in their religious sentiments that they could not join in any one mode of worship.  Mr. Samuel Adams arose, and after saying that he was no bigot, and could hear a prayer from any gentleman of piety and virtue who was a friend to his country, moved that Rev. Mr. Duche—­an Episcopal clergyman, who, he said, he understood deserved that character—­be invited to read prayers before Congress the next morning.  The motion was passed; and the next morning Mr. Duche appeared, and after reading several prayers in the Established form, then read the Collect for the 7th of September, which was the thirty-fifth Psalm.  This was the next morning after the startling news had come of the cannonade of Boston;” and, says John Adams, “I never saw a greater effect upon an audience:  it seemed as if Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that morning.”

“After this,” he continues, “Mr. Duche, unexpectedly to everybody, struck out into an extemporaneous prayer, which filled the bosom of every man present.  I never heard a better prayer, or one so well pronounced.  Dr. Cooper himself never prayed with such fervor, ardor, earnestness, and pathos, and in language so eloquent and sublime, for America, for the Congress, for the province of Massachusetts, and especially for Boston.  It had an excellent effect upon everybody here,” and many, he tells us, were melted to tears.