What that is; what the Church Catechism does tell us, which the
favourite religious books now-a-days do not tell us; and what that
has to do with turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, I
must tell you hereafter. God grant that my words may sink into all
hearts, as far as they are right and true; if sooner or later we are
not all brought to understand the meaning of those two simple words,
Father and Son, neither Baptism, nor Confirmation, nor Schools, nor
this Church, nor the very body and blood of Him who died for us, to
share which you are all called this day, will be of avail for the
well-being of this parish, or of this country, or any other country
upon earth. For where the root is corrupt, the fruit will be also;
and where family life and family ties, which are the root and
foundation of society, are out of joint, there the Nation and the
Church will decay also; as it is written, 'If the foundations be
cast down, what can the righteous do?'

And whensoever, in any family, or nation and church, the root of the
tree (which is the conduct of parents to children, and of children
to parents) grows corrupt and rotten, then 'last days,' as St. Paul
calls them, are indeed come to it, and evil times therewith; for the
Lord will surely lay the axe to the root of it, and cut it down and
cast it into the fire: neither will the days of that family, or
that people, or that Church, be long in the land which the Lord
their God has given them. So it has been as yet, in all ages and in
all countries on the face of God's earth, and so it will be until
the end. Wheresoever the hearts of the fathers are not turned to
the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, there
will a great and terrible day of the Lord come; and that nation,
like Judaea of old, like many a fair country in Europe at this