world through Him might be saved; because He is The Giver, The Father of lights, from whom comes every good and perfect gift; because all which makes this earth habitable—­all justice, order, wisdom, goodness, mercy, humbleness, self-sacrifice—­ all which is fair, or honourable, or useful, in men or angels, in kings on their thrones or in labourers at the plough, in divines in their studies or soldiers in the field of battle—­all in the whole universe, which is not useless, and hurtful, and base, and damnable, and doomed (blessed thought that it is so!) to be burned up in unquenchable fire—­all, I say, comes forth from the Father of the spirits of all flesh, the Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working; who spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us, and will with Him freely give us all things.

SERMON IX.  THE LORD’S PRAYER

Matt. vi. 9, 10.  After this manner pray ye:  Our Father which art in heaven.

I have shown you what a simple account of our duty to God and to our neighbour the Catechism gives us.  I now beg you to remark, that simple and everyday as this same duty is, the Catechism warns us that we cannot do it without God’s special grace, and I beg you to remark further, that the Catechism does not say that we cannot do these things well without God’s special grace, but that we cannot do them at all.  It does not say that we cannot do all these things of ourselves, but that we can do none of them.  But I want you to remark one thing more, which is very noteworthy:  that in this case, for the first time throughout the Catechism, the teacher tells the child something.  All along the teacher has, as I have often shown you, been making the child tell him what is right, calling out in the child’s heart thoughts and knowledge which were there already.  Now he in his turn tells the child something which he takes for granted is not in the child’s heart, of which, if it is, has been put into it by his teachers, and of which he must be continually reminded, lest he should forget it; namely, that he cannot do these of himself; that, as St. Paul says, ‘in him,’ that is, in his flesh, ‘dwells no good thing;’ that he is not able to think or to do anything as of himself, but his sufficiency is of God, who works in him to will and to do of His good pleasure, who has also given him His Holy Spirit.

The Catechism, in short, takes for granted that the child knows his duty; but it takes for granted also that he does not know how to do that duty.  It takes for granted, that in every child there is as St. Paul says, ’a law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin’ (literally, of short coming, or missing the mark) ‘which is in his members.’  Now man’s natural inclination is to suppose that good thoughts are part of himself, and therefore that a good will to put them