The poor fellow righted himself a little and answered: "What mother taught me"; he then folded his hands and spoke the following verse with perfect ease, and without mistakes:
Lord Jesus, who dost love me,
O, spread thy wings above me,
And shield me from alarm.
Everything was forgotten. Not one event in his life was he able to recall in his memory. Everything had been left out of his soul, out of his memory—only not that one prayer his mother had taught him.
I have myself had a somewhat similar experience. It was a Dane who was not wholly demented—rather what is known in the vernacular as "crazy"—and a little more. He never did any harm, and for that reason he was sent to the poor-house instead of to an insane asylum. Whenever he found an opportunity, he made his escape, and once in a while he came to my home—once at eventide and he was then allowed to stay overnight. In the evening he sat plucking at his clothes just like a child, and he then said: "I'm clean enough, all right." A little later he said: "I ain't forgotten how to pray—want to hear me?" Then he folded his hands and spoke two little verses of the kind a mother teaches her very young child. These he could remember. It was the same thing over again: What mother taught me.
Remember this, you Christian mothers!
3. The Evening Prayer: A Protection
Above all, it is important to give the evening prayer a fixed and permanent place in the daily schedule of our life. When we intend to pray for something, the time at which it is done may be relatively immaterial, but if we think of the prayer as a protection, the evening prayer goes before anything else.
And why?
Because it requires the peaceful quiet of eventide—and the same thing is true about all kinds of silly fun and of evil. In point of time, the evening prayer meets with the tempting voices of wickedness that sound with the greatest irresistance in the darkness. A decisive battle thus takes place between the tempting voices of wickedness and the evening prayer—a battle about time; it is a Whether—Or, for to divide the time in twain in this matter is impossible. It is not possible to devote one evening hour to wickedness, and the other to prayer. Then, if the evening prayer is given a regular place in one's everyday life, it is a protection against the temptations.
Therefore the evening prayer should be a part of the child's life even 'way back in the days of the cradle. And therefore we praise the fact that the evening prayer is just that prayer which it is easiest for a mother to make a part of the everyday life of the child; this is not a mere accident, but is due to that grace of God which descends upon Christian mothers. Say the evening prayer with your child, and for your child, every evening when you tuck him or her into bed—do it even before the babbling voice of the child is able to say the words after you—and do never miss an evening!