pour out thy spirit on all flesh, that so
their Father's name may be hallowed, His kingdom come, His will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. And so will come the one and only true
progress of the human race--which is, that all men should become faithful
and obedient citizens of the holy city, the kingdom of God, which is the
Church of Christ. To which may God in His mercy bring us all, and our
children after us. Amen.

This, then, is the lesson why we are met together this Advent day. We
are met to pray that God would so help us by His grace and mercy that we
may bring forth the fruit of good works, and that when our Lord Jesus
Christ shall come in His glorious majesty to judge the quick and the
dead, we, and our descendants after us, may be found an acceptable people
in His sight.

We are met to pray, in a National Church, for the whole nation of
England, that all orders and degrees therein may, each in his place and
station, help forward the hallowing of God's name, the coming of His
kingdom, the doing of His will on earth. We are met to pray for the
Queen and all that are in authority, that these Advent collects may be
fulfilled in them, and by them, for the good of the whole people; for the
ministers and stewards of Christ's mysteries, that the same collects may
be fulfilled by them and in them, till they turn the hearts of the
disobedient to the wisdom of the just; for the Commons of this nation,
that each man may he delivered, by God's grace and mercy, from the
special sin which besets him in this faithless and worldly generation and
hinders him from running the race of duty which is set before him, and
get strength from God so to live that in that dread day he may meet his
Judge and King, not in tenor and in shame, but in loyalty and in humble
hope.

But more--we are here to worship God in Christ, both God and man. To
confess that without Him we can do nothing, that unless He enlighten our
understandings we are dark, unless He stir up our wills we are powerless
for good. To confess that though we have forgotten Him, yet He has not
forgotten us. That He is the same gracious and generous Giver and
Saviour. That though we deny Him He cannot deny Himself. That He is the
same yesterday, to-day, and for ever as when He came to visit this earth
in great humility. That the Lord is King, though the earth be moved. He
sitteth upon His throne, be the nations never so unquiet