e, noble, old Church Catechism,
without one word about rewards and punishments, heaven or hell, begins to
talk to the child, like a true English Catechism as it is, about that
glorious old English key-word Duty? It calls on the child to confess its
own duty, and teaches it that its duty is something most human, simple,
everyday--commonplace, if you will call it so. And I rejoice in the
thought that the Church Catechism teaches that the child's duty is
commonplace. I rejoice that in what it says about our duty to God and
our neighbour, it says not one word about counsels of perfection, or
those frames and feelings which depend, believe me, principally on the
state of people's bodily health, on the constitution of their nerves, and
the temper of their brain; but that it requires nothing except what a
little child can do as well as a grown person, a labouring man as well as
a divine, a plain farmer as well as the most refined, devout, imaginative
lady.

_Sermons for the Times_. 1855.

SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.

FEBRUARY 2.
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple,
COMMONLY CALLED
The Purification of the Virgin Mary.

Little children may think of Christ as a child now and always. For to
them He is always the Babe of Bethlehem. Let them not say to themselves,
"Christ is grown up long ago." He is, and yet He is not. His life is
eternal in the heavens, above all change of time and space. . . . Such
is the sacred heart of Jesus--all things to all. To the strong He can be
strongest, to the weak weakest of all. With the aged and dying He goes
down for ever to the grave; and yet with you children Christ lies for
ever on His mother's bosom, and looks up for ever into His mother's face,
full of young life and happiness and innocence, the Everlasting Christ-
child, in whom you must believe, whom you must love, to whom you must
offer up your childish prayers.

_The Christ-child_,
_Sermons_, (_Good News of God_).

FEBRUARY 24.
St. Matthias, Apostle and Martyr.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from their
labours--all their struggles, failures, past and over for ever. But
their works follow them. The good which they did on earth--_that_ is not
past and over. It cannot die. It lives and grows for ever, following on
in their path long after they are dead, and bearing fruit unto
everlasting life, not only in them, but in men whom they never saw, and
in generations yet unbor