out that too soon by sad experience: but still, the Divine Light is
there, the sense of duty is in their minds, and the law of God is
written in their hearts by the Holy Spirit of God, who is
sanctifying them, not merely by teaching them to hope for heaven, or
to dread hell, but by showing them what is good.

And herein, I say, the simple and noble old Church Catechism, by
faith in God's Spirit, does indeed perfect praise out of the mouths
of babes. Without one word about rewards or punishments, heaven or
hell, it 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. I rejoice that it is commonplace; I rejoice that in
what it says about our duty to God, and to our neighbour, it says
not one word about those 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. May God bless them all; may God help them
all to do their Duty in that station of life to which it has pleased
God to call them; but may God grant to them never to forget that
there is but one Duty for all, and that all of them can do that Duty
equally well, whatever their constitution, or scholarship, or
station of life may be, provided they will but remember that God has
called them to that station, and not try to invent some new and
finer one for themselves; provided they remember that they are to do
in that station neither more nor less than every one else is to do