sin is, until it has told him against whom sin is committed, and
that if he sins against God he sins against a Father, and breaks his
duty to his Father? And how can it tell him that till it has told
him that God is his Father? How can it tell him what sin is till it
has told him what righteousness is? How can it tell him what
breaking his duty is till it has told him what the duty itself is?
But the child knows already that God is his Father; and therefore,
when the Catechism asks him, 'What is his duty to God?' it is as
much as to say, 'My child, thou hast confessed already that thou
hast a good Father in heaven, and thou knowest as well as I (perhaps
better) what a father means. Tell me, then, how dost thou think
thou oughtest to behave to such a Father?' And the whole answer
which is put into the child's mouth, is the description of duty to a
father; of things which there would be no reason for his doing to
anyone who was not his father; nay, which he could not do honestly
to anyone else, but only hypocritically, for the sake of flattering,
and which differs utterly from any notion of duty to God which the
heathen have ever had just in this, that it is a description of how
a son should behave to a father. Read it for yourselves, my
friends, and judge for yourselves; and may God give you all grace to
act up to it--not in order that you, by 'acts of faith,' or 'acts of
love,' or 'acts of devotion,' may persuade God to love you; but
because He loves you already, with a love boundless as Himself;
because in Him you live, and move, and have your being, and are the
offspring of God; 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--