“Will God hear you? What was it that you said just before I forgot everything this morning?”
“I told you that there was another here besides ourselves, a good and gracious God, who is always with us and always ready to come to our assistance if we call upon Him.”
“You told me God lived beyond the stars.”
“My poor boy, as if He were a God who was afar off and did not attend to our prayers! Such is not the case. He is with us always in spirit, listening to all our prayers, and reading every secret thought of our hearts.”
I was silent for some time, thinking upon what she had told me; at last I said—“Then pray to Him.”
Mrs Reichardt knelt down and prayed in a clear and fervent voice, without hesitation or stop. She prayed for protection and support in our desolate condition, that we might be supplied with all things needful for our sustenance, and have a happy deliverance from our present position. She prayed that we might be contented and resigned until it should please Him to rescue us—that we might put our whole trust and confidence in Him, and submit without murmuring to whatever might be His will. She prayed for health and strength, for an increase of faith and gratitude towards Him for all His mercies. She thanked him for our having been preserved by being left on the desolate rock, instead of having left it in the boat with the seamen. (This surprised me.) And then she prayed for me, entreating that she might be the humble instrument of leading me to my Heavenly Father, and that He would be pleased to pour down upon me His Holy Spirit, so that I might by faith in Christ, be accepted, and become a child of God and an inheritor of eternal bliss.
There was something so novel to me and so beautiful in her fervency of prayer, that the tears came into my eyes, and about a minute after she had finished, I said—
“I now recollect, at least, I think I do—for the memory of it is very confused—that my mother used to kneel down by me and pray just as you have done. Oh, how I wish I had a mother!”
“My child,” replied she, “promise me that you will be a good and obedient son, and I will be a mother to you.”
“Will you? Oh! How kind of you. Yes, I will be all you wish; I will work for you day and night if it is necessary. I will do everything, if you will but be my mother.”