Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1869-03-30

uoH; TWO because tney were ChrlSt s
open foes-Annas and Caiaphas; two
because they were his secret friends
Nicodemus and Joseph Of Aramathea.
A few centuries pass away. New
conflicts impend. New adversaries
arise. The heathenism of Greece
and Rome did not abandon its faith
without struggle. All that art, cul-
ture, learning, genius could do, by
rhetoric, by logic. by sarcasm, by ri
bald jests, to turn back the flowing
wave of Christianity, was done. Gel
sus, Hierocles, Pophyry were to the
first centuries what Renan and Strauss
are to the nineteenth. Their philos-
ophies are buried in the oblivion of
the past. They are known but to the
scholar. The infdelity Of heathenism,
like that of Judaism is a part of Ar
cheology. Its results are gathered
with difficulty, chiefly from the replies
OF Christian antagonists,-its very lit
erature entombed, while the words
OF Jesus, multiplied in myriad forms,
are household words in every ciyiliz-
ed neutrality-suspicious..
THE SEA CAPTAINS PRAYER
Captain Mitchell K-was from ear
ly life accustomed to the sea. He
commanded merchant ship that sail
ed from Philadelphia. After his mar
rlage he went to sea; and one day
committed to writing, while in a de-
votional frame Of mind a prayer for
the temporal and eternal happiness
for his beloved wife and unborn babe.
This prayer nearly filling a sheet of
paper, was deposited, with his other
writings, at the bottom of an old
chest. The captain died before the
completion of the voyage, in the year
1857, and his instruments, papers,
&C., were returned to his wife. Find
ing they were. for the most part, what
she could not understand, she locked
up the chest for the use of the babe,
who proved to be son, at some fn-
ture period. At eighteen years of
age this son entered the army, and in
1775 marched for Boston. He gave
the reins to his evil passions, and for
many years yielded to almost every
temptation to sin. At length he was
called to the death bed of his moth
er. who gave him the key of his faith
er's chest, which. however, he did not
open, lest he should meet with some
thing of religious kind that should
reprove his sins, and disturb his mind.
At length in 1914, when in his fifty
sixth year, he determined to examine
its whole contents. When he reach
ed the bottom, he discovered a paper
neatly folded, on the back of which
was written: "The prayer of Mitchell
K, for blessings on his wife
and child. August 23d, 1851" He
read it, The scene, the time, the
place, the circumstances under which.
1t was written and put there, all rush
ed upon his mind, and overwhelmed
him; for often had his widowed moth
er led him to the beach, and pointed
to him the direction on the horizon
where she had traced the last glimpse
of the ship that bore his father from
her, never to return.
He threw the contents back into
the chest, folded up the paper, and
put it into tie case with his fathers
quadrant, locked up the chest, and
determined never to unlock it. But
his fathers prayer haunted his imag-
ination, and he could not forget it
The prayer inflicted a wound which
the Great Physician of souls only
could heal. From that period he be-
came an altered man. He united him.
self to the church of Christ, set his
slaves at liberty, and lived and died
humble, exemplary christian.