d) The recipient of gifts or favors usually feels gratitude towards the giver, which he expresses in the form of thanks. Hence the word _gratiae_ (plural) frequently stands for thanksgiving (“_gratias agere_,” “_Deo gratias_,” “to say grace after meals”).(5) The first and fundamental of these meanings is “a free gift or favor.” The benevolence of the giver and the attractiveness of the recipient are merely the reasons for which the gift is imparted, whereas the expression of thanks is an effect following its bestowal. Dogmatic theology is concerned exclusively with grace in the fundamental sense of the term. e) Grace is called a gift (_donum_, δωρεά), because it is owing to free benevolence, not required by justice. It is called gratuitous (_gratis datum_), because it is bestowed without any corresponding merit on the part of the creature. A gift may be due to the recipient as a matter of distributive or commutative justice, and in that case it would not be absolutely gratuitous (_gratis_). Grace, on the contrary, is bestowed out of pure benevolence, from no other motive than sheer love. This is manifestly St. Paul’s idea when he writes: “And if by grace, it is not now by works: otherwise grace is no more grace.”(6) It is likewise the meaning of St. Augustine when he says, in his Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, that grace is “something gratuitously given ... as a present, not in return for something else.”(7) 2. NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL GRACE.—Grace is not necessarily supernatural. Sacred Scripture and the Fathers sometimes apply the word to purely natural gifts. We petition God for our daily bread, for good health, fair weather and other temporal favors, and we thank Him for preserving us from pestilence, famine, and war, although these are blessings which do not transcend the order of nature.(8)