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Good morning. Earlier this week hundreds of MPs and members of the House of Lords gathered in St Margaret’s, Westminster, to mark the ending of the First World War. A passage from Hansard for November 11th 1918 was read, “This is no time for words” said the Prime Minister Lloyd George, “our hearts are too full of gratitude”. He then moved that “ We proceed as a House of Commons to St Margaret’s, to give humble and reverent thanks for the deliverance of the world from so great a peril.” I am sure there were plenty of sceptics and agnostics amongst those MPs 100 years ago, but they all shared such a sense of relief that they wanted to give thanks, and to do so in a religious setting. This instinct of gratitude seems to go very deep. The novelist Katherine Mansfield, who was an agnostic said when she first encountered the Alps, “If only one could make some small grasshopper sound of praise to someone, of thanks to someone, but to who? Interestingly, the importance of gratitude has now been rediscovered in medical science. Many studies show that a person’s willingness to express gratitude is linked to well being in all kinds of ways, less depression, better sleep, less stress. And people are being recommended to keep a gratitude dairy for all they have appreciated during the day. None of this will surprise the religious minded for they know, as Wordsworth put it that “Theologians might puzzle their heads about dogmas as they will, but the religion of gratitude cannot mislead us.” Poets know this too. Rupert Brooke, who died in the First World War, in his poem “The Great Lover, has a long list of all the things he loves. A more modern poet Elizabeth Jennings has a similar list with some wonderfully idiosyncratic objects she gives thanks for like safety pins. The General thanksgiving, from the Book of Common Prayer , is a favourite for many. It has the line, “We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life”. The following words are special to Christians “But above all, for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace and for the hope of Glory”- but gratitude, now affirmed in secular scientific terms, belongs to all of us.