because His mercy is over all His works, and
because He loved the world, and sent His Son, not to condemn the
world, but that the 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