The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1904, Page 52

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52° _- The Lutheran Pioneer.

“Forgive Us Our Trespasses.”’

he Lord’s Prayer is a solemn prayer for a per-
son to utter who is not willing to forgive and forget.
It asks God to forgive us just as we forgive those
who haye injured us. An English writer describes
an incident in the life of a bishop of Alexandria, in
Egypt, which illustrates the necessity of a forgiving
spirit in the sincere petitioner who uses the Lord’s
Prayer.

The bishop, whose name was John the Alms-
giver, was once visited by a nobleman. In the
course of conversation the nobleman declared with
warmth, that he would never, to his dying day, for-
give a certain man who had cruelly wronged him.
Just then the bell in the bishop’s private chapel
rang for prayers.

_. Entering the chapel, the two men knelt before
the altar. Presently the bishop began to repeat, in
a loud voice, the Lord’s Prayer, and the nobleman
repeated each petition after him.

‘“‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.’’? The bishop
stopped abruptly. The nobleman went on alone:
‘And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those
who trespass against us.’’? Then, finding that he
alone was praying, he also stopped. The bishop
remained kneeling, but was silent. Suddenly the
sense of- the words of the petition he had uttered
rushed on the nobleman’s mind. He was appalled
at his own prayer. Silently he rose from his knees,
went forth, and, finding the man who had injured
wna, frankly forgave him.

Or

One of Stonewall’s. Men.

Stonewall Jackson, the prea Southern General,
by his Christian character and godly life, made
a deep impression upon the men who'served under
him. In illustration of this the president of a New
York bank related the following incident on his
return from a visit to the Shenandoah Valley in
Virginia, where he had enjoyed’ the companion-
ship’ of General Jordan, chief of staff to General
: Beauregard.

‘The two men founds thomigelves at nightfall in
a wild and lonely place, with no house near except
a. apaney cutee by the track-walker on the rail-

eeticied when the frackwalker came in and took
_ his seat at the hend of the table. A bear out of
- the woods could hardly have been rougher than he,

with his unshaven beard and unkempt hair. He
looked like a border ruflian, the bank president
thought. —

As he took his seat, however, he rapped on the
table, bowed his head, and began to pray. ‘‘And
such a prayer!’’ ‘exclaimed the bank president.
*‘So simple, so reverent, so tender, so full of hu-
mility, penitence, and thankfulness !’’

At the first opportunity the New Yorker whis-
pered to General Jordan, ‘‘Who can he be?”’

**T don’t know,’’ was the reply, but he must be
one of Stonewall Jackson’s old soldiers.

And so he was. As the three men walked out
of doors after supper, the New Yorker, after a few
questions about the country, said, ‘‘Were you in
the war?”

“Oh, yes,’”’ replied the Virginian, with a smile;
“T was out with old Stonewall.”?~

——  —~+02+-— - —_-

Only a Step.

A person who, by birth, wealth, and education,
should have been a gentleman, but was not, went
to see a coal-mine. The miner who took him down
was a Christian, and was much pained by the pro-
fane language used by the visitor. As they de-
scended the shaft, they felt it getting hotter and
hotter. At last the heat became s0 great that the
visitor said, ‘‘Dear me, it is terribly hot! I wonder
how far it is to hell.’’ ‘‘I don’t know the exact dis-
tance, sir,’’ replied the Christian gravely, ‘‘but if
one link of the chain gives way you’ll be there in
a minute!’? The plain answer was the means of
arousing the profane man to a sense of his perilous
condition. - In the case of every unconverted man

there is only a step—a breath—betwixt him and

death, ‘‘and after death the judgment.’

———_-

How to Read the Bible.

Luther used to teach his children to read the
Bible in the following way: First to read through
one book carefully, then to study chapter by chapter,
and then verse by verse, and lastly word by word;
for he said: ‘‘It is like a person shaking a fruit
tree; first shaking the tree and gathering up the
fruit which falls to the ground, and then shaking
each branch, and afterwards each twig of the branch,
and last of all looking carefully under each leaf to
see that no fruit remains. In this way, and in no
other, shall we also find the hidden reas 8 that are
in the Bible.’’— Sel.

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