Daily Thoughts: selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife

“Life is uncertain,” folks say.  Life is certain, say I, because God is educating us thereby.  But this process of education is so far above our sight that it looks often uncertain and utterly lawless; wherefore fools conceive (as does M. Comte) that there is no Living God, because they cannot condense His formulas into their small smelling-bottles.

O glorious thought! that we are under a Father’s education, and that He has promised to develop us, and to make us go on from strength to strength.

Letters and Memories.  1868.

Sensuality.  June 11.

What is sensuality?  Not the enjoyment of holy glorious matter, but blindness to its meaning.

MS.  1842.

The Journey’s End.  June 12.

Let us live hard, work hard, go a good pace, get to our journey’s end as soon as possible—then let the post-horse get his shoulder out of the collar. . . . I have lived long enough to feel, like the old post-horse, very thankful as the end draws near. . . .  Long life is the last thing that I desire.  It may be that, as one grows older, one acquires more and more the painful consciousness of the difference between what ought to be done and what can be done, and sits down more quietly when one gets the wrong side of fifty, to let others start up to do for us things we cannot do for ourselves.  But it is the highest pleasure that a man can have who has (to his own exceeding comfort) turned down the hill at last, to believe that younger spirits will rise up after him, and catch the lamp of Truth, as in the old lamp-bearing race of Greece, out of his hand before it expires, and carry it on to the goal with swifter and more even feet.

Speech at Lotus Club, New York.  1874.

It is a fact that God does punish here, in this life.  He does not, as false preachers say, give over this life to impunity and this world to the devil, and only resume the reigns of moral government and the right of retribution when men die and go into the next world.  Here in this life He punishes sin.  Slowly but surely God punishes.  If any of you doubt my words you have only to commit sin and then see whether your sin will find you out.

Sermons on David.  1866.

The Problem Solved.  June l4.

After all, the problem of life is not a difficult one, for it solves itself so very soon at best—by death.  Do what is right the best way you can, and wait to the end to know.

MS. Letter.

But remember that though death may alter our place, it cannot alter our character—though it may alter our circumstances, it cannot alter ourselves.

Discipline and other Sermons.

The Father’s Education.  June 15.

Sin, αμαρτια, is the missing of a mark, the falling short of an ideal; . . . and that each miss brings a penalty, or rather is itself the penalty, is to me the best of news and gives me hope for myself and every human being past, present, and future, for it makes me look on them all as children under a paternal education, who are being taught to become aware of, and use their own powers in God’s house, the universe, and for God’s work in it; and, in proportion as they do that, they attain salvation, σωτηρια, literally health and wholeness of spirit, “soul,” which is, like health of body, its own reward.

Letters and Memories.  1852.

Superstition is the child of fear, and fear is the child of ignorance.

Lectures on Science and Superstition.
1866.

A Charm of Birds.  June 17.

Listen to the charm of birds in any sequestered woodland on a bright forenoon in early summer.  As you try to disentangle the medley of sounds, the first, perhaps, which will strike your ear will be the loud, harsh, monotonous, flippant song of the chaffinch, and the metallic clinking of two or three sorts of titmice.  But above the tree-tops, rising, hovering, sinking, the woodlark is fluting tender and low.  Above the pastures outside the skylark sings—as he alone can sing; and close by from the hollies rings out the blackbird’s tenor—rollicking, audacious, humorous, all but articulate.  From the tree above him rises the treble of the thrush, pure as the song of angels; more pure, perhaps, in tone, though neither so varied nor so rich as the song of the nightingale.  And there, in the next holly, is the nightingale himself; now croaking like a frog, now talking aside to his wife, and now bursting out into that song, or cycle of songs, in which if any man find sorrow, he himself surely finds none. . . . In Nature there is nothing melancholy.

Prose Idylls.  1866.

Notes of Character.  June 18.

Without softness, without repose, and therefore without dignity.

MS.

Why should not those who are gone be actually nearer us, not farther from us, in the heavenly world, praying for us, and it may be influencing and guiding us in a hundred ways of which we, in our prison-house of mortality, cannot dream?  Yes!  Do not be afraid to believe that he whom you have lost is near you, and you near him, and both of you near God, who died on the cross for you.

Letters and Memories.  1871.

Silent Influence.  June 20.

Violence is not strength, noisiness is not earnestness.  Noise is a sign of want of faith, and violence is a sign of weakness.

By quiet, modest, silent, private influence we shall win.  “Neither strive nor cry nor let your voice be heard in the streets,” was good advice of old, and is still.  I have seen many a movement succeed by it.  I have seen many a movement tried by the other method of striving and crying and making a noise in the streets, but I have never seen one succeed thereby, and never shall.

Letters and Memories.  1870.

Chivalry.  June 21.

Some say that the age of chivalry is past.  The age of chivalry is never past as long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth, and a man or woman left to say, “I will redress that wrong, or spend my life in the attempt.”  The age of chivalry is never past as long as men have faith enough in God to say, “God will help me to redress that wrong; or if not me, surely He will help those that come after me.  For His eternal will is to overcome evil with good.”

Water of Life Sermons.  1865.

When once you have learnt the beauty of little mossy banks, and tiny leaves, and flecks of cloud, with what a fulness the glories of Claude, or Ruysdael, or Berghem, will unfold themselves to you!  You must know Nature or you cannot know Art.  And when you do know Nature you will only prize Art for being like Nature.

MS. Letter.  1842.

Simple and Sincere.  June 23.

There are those, and, thanks to Almighty God, they are to be numbered by tens of thousands, who will not perplex themselves with questionings; simple, genial hearts, who try to do what good they can in the world, and meddle not with matters too high for them; people whose religion is not abstruse but deep, not noisy but intense, not aggressive but laboriously useful; people who have the same habit of mind as the early Christians seem to have worn, ere yet Catholic truth had been defined in formulæ, when the Apostles’ Creed was symbol enough for the Church, and men were orthodox in heart rather than exact in head.

For such it is enough if a fellow-creature loves Him whom they love, and serves Him whom they serve.  Personal affection and loyalty to the same unseen Being is to them a communion of saints both real and actual, in the genial warmth of which all minor differences of opinion vanish. . . .

Preface to Tauler’s Sermons.  1854.

God’s Words.  June 24.

Do I mean, then, that this or any text has nothing to do with us?  God forbid!  I believe that every word of our Lord’s has to do with us, and with every human being, for their meaning is infinite, eternal, and inexhaustible.

MS. Letter.

So I am content to have failed.  I have learned in the experiment priceless truths concerning myself, my fellow-men, and the city of God, which is eternal in the heavens, for ever coming down among men, and actualising itself more and more in every succeeding age.  I only know that I know nothing, but with a hope that Christ, who is the Son of Man, will tell me piecemeal, if I be patient and watchful, what I am and what man is.

Letters and Memories.  1857.

Presentiments.  June 26.

“I cannot deny,” said Claude, “that such things as presentiments may be possible.  However miraculous they may seem, are they so very much more so than the daily fact of memory?  I can as little guess why we remember the past, as why we may not at times be able to foresee the future.” . . .

Two Years Ago, chap. xxviii.

A thing need not be unreasonable—that is, contrary to reason—because it is above and beyond reason, or, at least, our human reason, which at best (as St. Paul says) sees as in a glass darkly.

MS. Letter.  1856.

Common Duties.  June 27.

But after all, what is speculation to practice?  What does God require of us, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him?  The longer I live this seems to me more important, and all other questions less so—if we can but live the simple right life—

Do the work that’s nearest,
Though it’s dull at whiles;
Helping, when we meet them,
Lame dogs over stiles.

Letters and Memories.  1857.

“My welfare?  It is gone!”

“So much the better.  I never found mine till I lost it.”

Hypatia, chap. xxvii.  1852.

How to bear Sorrow.  June 29.

I believe that the wisest plan is sometimes not to try to bear sorrow—as long as one is not crippled for one’s everyday duties—but to give way to it utterly and freely.  Perhaps sorrow is sent that we may give way to it, and in drinking the cup to the dregs, find some medicine in it itself, which we should not find if we began doctoring ourselves, or letting others doctor us.  If we say simply, “I am wretched—I ought to be wretched;” then we shall perhaps hear a voice, “Who made thee wretched but God?  Then what can He mean but thy good?”  And if the heart answers impatiently, “My good?  I don’t want it, I want my love;” perhaps the voice may answer, “Then thou shalt have both in time.”

Letters and Memories.  1871.

A certain Hope.  June 30.

Let us look forward with quiet certainty of hope, day and night; believing, though we can see but little day, that all this tangled web will resolve itself into golden threads of twined, harmonious life, guiding both us, and those we love, together, through this life to that resurrection of the flesh, when we shall at last know the reality and the fulness of life and love.  Even so come, Lord Jesus!

Letters and Memories.  1844.

Whit Sunday.

Think of the Holy Spirit as a Person having a will of His own, who breatheth whither He listeth, and cannot be confined to any feelings or rules of yours or of any man’s, but may meet you in the Sacraments or out of the Sacraments, even as He will, and has methods of comforting and educating you of which you will never dream; One whose will is the same as the will of the Father and of the Son, even a good will.

Discipline Sermons.

Trinity Sunday.

Some things I see clearly and hold with desperate clutch.  A Father in heaven for all, a Son of God incarnate for all, and a Spirit of the Father and the Son—who works to will and to do of His own good pleasure in every human being in whom there is one spark of active good, the least desire to do right or to be of use—the Fountain of all good on earth.

Letters and Memories.

JUNE 11.
St. Barnabas, Apostle and Martyr.

. . . Which is Love?
To do God’s will, or merely suffer it?
. . . . .
No!  I must headlong into seas of toil,
Leap far from self, and spend my soul on others.
For contemplation falls upon the spirit,
Like the chill silence of an autumn sun:
While action, like the roaring south-west wind,
Sweeps laden with elixirs, with rich draughts
Quickening the wombed earth.

Saint’s Tragedy.

How shall we picture John the Baptist to ourselves?  Great painters have exercised their fancy upon his face, his figure, his actions.  The best which I can recollect is Guido’s—of the magnificent lad sitting on the rock, half clad in his camel’s-hair robe, his stalwart hand lifted up to denounce he hardly knows what, save that things are going all wrong, utterly wrong to him—his beautiful mouth open to preach he hardly knows what, save that he has a message from God, of which he is half conscious as yet—that he is a forerunner, a prophet, a foreteller of something and some one who is to come, and which is very near at hand.  The wild rocks are round him, the clear sky over him, and nothing more, . . . and he, the noble and the priest, has thrown off—not in discontent and desperation (for he was neither democrat nor vulgar demagogue), but in hope and awe—all his family privileges, all that seems to make life worth having; and there aloft and in the mountains, alone with God and Nature, feeding on locusts and wild honey and clothed in skins, he, like Elijah of old, preaches to a generation sunk in covetousness, party spirit, and superstition—preaches what?—The most common—Morality.  Ah, wise politician! ah, clear and rational spirit, who knows and tells others to do the duty which lies nearest to them! . . . who in the hour of his country’s deepest degradation had divine courage to say, our deliverance lies, not in rebellion but in doing right.

St. John the Baptist,
All Saints’ Day Sermons.

God is revealed in the Crucified;
The Crucified must be revealed in me:—
I must put on His righteousness; show forth
His sorrow’s glory; hunger, weep with Him;
Taste His keen stripes, and let this aching flesh
Sink through His fiery baptism into death.

Saint’s Tragedy.

St. Peter, as he is drawn in the Gospels and the Acts, is a grand and colossal human figure, every line and feature of which is full of meaning and full of beauty to us.

Sermons, Discipline.

It was a day of God.  The earth lay like one great emerald, ringed and roofed with sapphire: blue sea, blue mountain, blue sky overhead.  There she lay, not sleeping, but basking in her quiet Sabbath joy, as though her two great sisters of the sea and air had washed her weary limbs with holy tears, and purged away the stains of last week’s sin and toil, and cooled her hot worn forehead with their pure incense-breath, and folded her within their azure robes, and brooded over her with smiles of pitying love, till she smiled back in answer, and took heart and hope for next week’s weary work.

Heart and hope for next week’s work.—That was the sermon which it preached to Tom Thurnall, as he stood there alone, a stranger and a wanderer like Ulysses of old: but, like him, self-helpful, cheerful, fate defiant.  He was more of a heathen than Ulysses—for he knew not what Ulysses knew, that a heavenly guide was with him in his wanderings; still less that what he called the malicious sport of fortune was, in truth, the earnest education of a Father. . . .  “Brave old world she is after all,” he said; “and right well made; and looks right well to-day in her go-to-meeting clothes, and plenty of room and chance for a brave man to earn his bread, if he will but go right on about his business, as the birds and the flowers do, instead of peaking and pining over what people think of him.”

Two Years Ago, chap. xiv.

God is the God of Nature as well as the God of Grace.  For ever He looks down on all things which He has made; and behold they are very good.  And therefore we dare to offer to Him in our churches the most perfect works of naturalistic art, and shape them into copies of whatever beauty He has shown us in man or woman, in cave or mountain-peak, in tree or flower, even in bird or butterfly.  But Himself?  Who can see Him except the humble and the contrite heart, to whom He reveals Himself as a Spirit to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and not in bread nor wood, nor stone nor gold, nor quintessential diamond?

Lecture on Grots and Groves.  1871.

Love and Book-Learning.  July 2.

I see more and more that the knowledge of one human being, such as love alone can give, and the apprehension of our own private duties and relations, is worth more than all the book-learning in the world.

MS.

The Ancient Creeds.  July 3.

Blessed and delightful it is when we find that even in these new ages the Creeds, which so many fancy to be at their last gasp, are still the finest and highest succour, not merely of the peasant and the outcast, but of the subtle artist and the daring speculator.  Blessed it is to find the most cunning poet of our day able to combine the rhythm and melody of modern times with the old truths which gave heart to the martyrs at the stake, to see in the science and the history of the nineteenth century new and living fulfilments of the words which we learnt at our mother’s knee!

Miscellanies.  1850.

Every creature of God is good, if it be sanctified with prayer and thanksgiving!  This to me is the master-truth of Christianity, the forgetfulness of which is at the root of almost all error.  It seems to me that it was to redeem man and the earth that Christ was made man and used the earth!—that Christianity has never yet been pure, because it never yet, since St. Paul’s time, has stood on this as the fundamental truth, and that it has been pure or impure, just in proportion as it has practically and really acknowledged this truth.

Letters and Memories.  1842.

English Women.  July 5.

Let those who will sneer at the women of England.  We who have to do the work and fight the battle of life know the inspiration which we derive from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness—and, but too often, from their compassion and their forgiveness.  There is, I doubt not, still left in England many a man with chivalry and patriotism enough to challenge the world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a cultivated British woman.

Lecture on Thrift.  1869.

Life retouched again.  July 6.

Even in the saddest woman’s soul there linger snatches of old music, odours of flowers long dead and turned to dust,—pleasant ghosts, which still keep her mind attuned to that which may be in others, though in her never more; till she can hear her own wedding-hymn re-echoed in the tones of every girl who loves, and see her own wedding-torch re-lighted in the eyes of every bride.

Westward Ho! chap. xxix.

“All things begin in some wonder, and in some wonder end,” said St. Augustine, wisest in his day of mortal men.  It is a strange thing, and a mystery, how we ever got into this world; a stranger thing still to me how we shall ever get out of this world again.  Yet they are common things enough—birth and death.

Good News of God Sermons.

Beauty of Life.  July 8.

The Greeks were, as far as we know, the most beautiful race which the world ever saw.  Every educated man knows that they were the cleverest of all nations, and, next to his Bible, thanks God for Greek literature.  Now the Greeks had made physical, as well as intellectual education a science as well as a study.  Their women practised graceful, and in some cases even athletic exercises.  They developed, by a free and healthy life, those figures which remain everlasting and unapproachable models of human beauty.

Lecture on Thrift.  1869.

Study the human figure, both as intrinsically beautiful and as expressing mind.  It only expresses the broad natural childish emotions, which are just what we want to return to from our over subtlety.  Study “natural language”—I mean the language of attitude.  It is an inexhaustible source of knowledge and delight, and enables one human being to understand another so perfectly.  Therefore learn to draw and paint figures.

Letters and Memories.  1842.

True Civilisation.  July 9.

Civilisation with me shall mean—not more wealth, more finery, more self-indulgence, even more æsthetic and artistic luxury—but more virtue, more knowledge, more self-control, even though I earn scanty bread by heavy toil.

Lecture on Ancient Civilisation.  1874.

“The Church is a very good thing, and I keep to mine,” said Captain Willis, “having served under her Majesty and her Majesty’s forefathers, and learned to obey orders, I hope; but don’t you think, sir, you’re taking it as the Pharisees took the Sabbath Day?”

“How then?”

“Why, as if man was made for the Church, and not the Church for man.”

Two Years Ago, chap. ii.  1856.

What does God ask?  July 11.

What is this strange thing, without which even the true knowledge of doctrine is of no use? without which either a man or a nation is poor, and blind, and wretched, and naked in soul, notwithstanding all his religion?  Isaiah will tell, “Wash you, make you clean, saith the Lord.  Do justice to the fatherless, relieve the widow.”  Church-building and church-going are well, but they are not repentance.  Churches are not souls.  I ask for your hearts, and you give me fine stones and fine words.  I want souls, I want your souls.

National Sermons.  1851.

Work or Want.  July 12.

Remember that we are in a world where it is not safe to sit under the tree and let the ripe fruit drop into your mouth; where the “competition of species” works with ruthless energy among all ranks of being, from kings upon their thrones to the weed upon the waste; where “he that is not hammer is sure to be anvil;” and “he who will not work neither shall he eat.”

Ancien Régime.  1867.

It is easy to see the spiritual beauty of Raffaelle’s Madonnas, but it requires a deeper and more practised, all-embracing, loving, simple spirituality, to see the same beauty in the face of a worn-out, painful, peasant woman haggling about the price of cottons.

Form and colour are but the vehicle for the spirit-meaning.  In the “spiritual body” I fancy they will both be united with the meaning—all and every part and property of man and woman instinct with spirit!

MS.  1843.

Retribution inevitable.  July 14.

Know this—that as surely as God sometimes punishes wholesale, so surely is He always punishing in detail.  By that infinite concatenation of moral causes and effects, which makes the whole world one mass of special Providences, every sin of ours will punish itself, and probably punish itself in kind.  Are we selfish?  We shall call out selfishness in others.  Do we neglect our duty?  Then others will neglect their duty to us.  Do we indulge our passions?  Then others who depend on us will indulge theirs, to our detriment and misery.

All Saints’ Day Sermons.

Antinomies.  July 15.

Spiritual truths present themselves to us in “antinomies,” apparently contradictory pairs, pairs of poles, which, however, do not really contradict, or even limit, each other, but are only correlatives, the existence of the one making the existence of the other necessary, explaining each other, and giving each other a real standing ground and equilibrium.  Such an antinomic pair are, “He that loveth not knoweth not God,” and “If a man hateth not his father and mother he cannot be My disciple.”

Letters and Memories.  1848.

God’s Word, while it alone sanctifies rank and birth, says to all equally, “Ye are brethren, work for each other.”  Let us then be above rank, and look at men as men, and women as women, and all as God’s children.  There is a “refinement” which is the invention of that sensual mind, which looks only at the outward and visible sign.

MS. Letter.  1843.

Music’s Meaning.  July 17.

Some quick music is inexpressibly mournful.  It seems just like one’s own feelings—exultation and action, with the remembrance of past sorrow wailing up, yet without bitterness, tender in its shrillness, through the mingled tide of present joy; and the notes seem thoughts—thoughts pure of words; and a spirit seems to call to me in them and cry, “Hast thou not felt all this?”  And I start when I find myself answering unconsciously, “Yes, yes, I know it all!  Surely we are a part of all we see and hear!”  And then, the harmony thickens, and all distinct sound is pressed together and absorbed in a confused paroxysm of delight, where still the female treble and the male bass are distinct for a moment, and then one again—absorbed into each other’s being—sweetened and strengthened by each other’s melody. . . .

Letters and Memories.  1842.

Vagueness of Mind.  July 18.

By allowing vague inconsistent habits of mind, almost persuaded by every one you love, when you are capable by one decided act of leading them, you may be treading blindfold a terrible path to your own misery.

MS. Letter.  1842.

That is not faith, to see God only in what is strange and rare; but this is faith, to see God in what is most common and simple, to know God’s greatness not so much from disorder as from order, not so much from those strange sights in which God seems (but only seems) to break His laws, as from those common ones in which He fulfils His laws.

Town and Country Sermons.

Charms of Monotony.  July 20.

I delight in that same monotony.  It saves curiosity, anxiety, excitement, disappointment, and a host of bad passions.  It gives a man the blessed, invigorating feeling that he is at home; that he has roots deep and wide struck down into all he sees, and that only the Being who can do nothing cruel or useless can tear them up.  It is pleasant to look down on the same parish day after day, and say I know all that is beneath, and all beneath know me.  It is pleasant to see the same trees year after year, the same birds coming back in spring to the same shrubs, the same banks covered by the same flowers.

Prose Idylls.  1857.

How to attain.  July 21.

If our plans are not for time but for eternity, our knowledge, and therefore our love to God, to each other, to everything, will progress for ever.  And the attainment of this heavenly wisdom requires neither ecstacy nor revelation, but prayer and watchfulness, and observation, and deep and solemn thought.

Two great rules for its attainment are simple enough—Never forget what and where you are, and grieve not the Holy Spirit, for “If a man will do God’s will he shall know of the doctrine.”

Letters and Memories.  1842.

I should like to make every one I meet discontented with themselves; I should like to awaken in them, about their physical, their intellectual, their moral condition, that divine discontent which is the parent first of upward aspiration and then of self-control, thought, effort to fulfil that aspiration even in part.  For to be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue.

Lecture on Science of Health.  1872.

Dra et labora.  July 23.

“Working is praying,” said one of the holiest of men.  And he spoke truth; if a man will but do his work from a sense of duty, which is for the sake of God.

Sermons.

Distrust and Anarchy.  July 24.

Over the greater part of the so-called civilised world is spreading a deep distrust, a deep irreverence of every man towards his neighbour, and a practical unbelief in every man whom you do see, atones for itself by a theoretic belief in an ideal human nature which you do not see.  Such a temper of mind, unless it be checked by that which alone can check it, namely, the grace of God, must tend towards sheer anarchy.  There is a deeper and uglier anarchy than any mere political anarchy,—which the abuse of the critical spirit leads to,—the anarchy of society and of the family, the anarchy of the head and of the heart, which leaves poor human beings as orphans in the wilderness to cry in vain, “What can I know?  Whom can I love?”

The Critical Spirit.  1871.

Why need we suppose that heaven is to be one vast lazy retrospect?  Why is not eternity to have action and change, yet both like God, compatible with rest and immutability?  This earth is but one minor planet of a minor system.  Are there no more worlds?  Will there not be incident and action springing from these when the fate of this world is decided?  Has the evil one touched this alone?  Is it not self-conceit which makes us think the redemption of this earth the one event of eternity?

Letters.  1842.

An Ideal Aristocracy.  July 26.

We may conceive an Utopia governed by an aristocracy that should be really democratic, which should use, under developed forms, that method which made the mediæval priesthood the one great democratic institution of old Christendom; bringing to the surface and utilising the talents and virtues of all classes, even the lowest.

Lectures on Ancien Régime.  1867.

Our Weapons.  July 27.

God, who has been very good to us, will be more good, if we allow Him!  Worldly-minded people think they can manage so much better than God.  We must trust.  Our weapons must be prayer and faith, and our only standard the Bible.  As soon as we leave these weapons and take to “knowledge of the world,” and other people’s clumsy prejudices as our guides, we must inevitably be beaten by the World, which knows how to use its own arms better than we do.  What else is meant by becoming as a little child?

MS. Letter.  1843.

Take warning by what you see abroad.  In every country where the women are uneducated, unoccupied; where their only literature is French novels or translations of them—in every one of those countries the women, even to the highest, are the slaves of superstition, and the puppets of priests.  In proportion as women are highly educated, family life and family secrets are sacred, and the woman owns allegiance and devotion to no confessor or director, but to her own husband or her own family.

Lecture on Thrift.  1860.

Pardon and Cure.  July 29.

After the forgiveness of sin must come the cure of sin.  And that cure, like most cures, is a long and a painful process.

But there is our comfort, there is our hope—Christ the great Healer, the great Physician, can deliver us, and will deliver us, from the remains of our old sins, the consequences of our own follies.  Not, indeed, at once, or by miracle, but by slow education in new and nobler motives, in purer and more unselfish habits.

All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1861.

Eternal Law.  July 30.

The eternal laws of God’s providence are still at work, though we may choose to forget them, and the Judge who administers them is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, even Jesus Christ the Lord, the Everlasting Rock, on which all morality and all society is founded.  Whosoever shall fall on that Rock, in repentance and humility, shall indeed be broken, but of him it is written, “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.”

Discipline and other Sermons.  1866.

“He fought till he could fight no more, and then died like a hero, with all his wounds in front; and may God have mercy on his soul.”

“That last was a Popish prayer, Master Frank,” said old Mr. Carey.

“Most worshipful sir, you surely would not wish God not to have mercy on his soul?”

“No—Eh?  Of course not, for that’s all settled by now, for he is dead, poor fellow!”

“And you can’t help being a little fond of him still?”

“Eh?  Why, I should be a brute if I were not.  Fond of him? why, I would sooner have given my forefinger than that he should have gone to the dogs.”

“Then, my dear sir, if you feel for him still, in spite of all his faults, how do you know that God may not feel for him in spite of all his faults?  For my part,” said Frank, in his fanciful way, “without believing in that Popish purgatory, I cannot help holding with Plato that such heroical souls, who have wanted but little of true greatness here, are hereafter, by strait discipline, brought to a better mind.”

Westward Ho! chap. v.  1854.

The Chrysalis State.

You ask, “What is the Good?”  I suppose God Himself is the Good; and it is this, in addition to a thousand things, which makes me feel the absolute certainty of a resurrection, and a hope that this, our present life, instead of being an ultimate one, which is to decide our fate for ever, is merely some sort of chrysalis state in which man’s faculties are so narrow and cramped, his chances (I speak of the millions, not of units) of knowing the Good so few, that he may have chances hereafter, perhaps continually fresh ones, to all eternity.

Letters and Memories.  1852.

JULY 25.
St. James, Apostle and Martyr.

And they will know his worth
Years hence . . .
And crown him martyr; and his name will ring
Through all the shores of earth, and all the stars
Whose eyes are sparkling through their tears to see
His triumph, Preacher and Martyr. . .
. . . . .
. . . It is over; and the woe that’s dead,
Rises next hour a glorious angel.

Santa Maura.

“I cannot tell what you say, green leaves,
   I cannot tell what you say;
But I know that there is a spirit in you,
   And a word in you this day.

“I cannot tell what ye say, rosy rocks,
   I cannot tell what ye say;
But I know that there is a spirit in you,
   And a word in you this day.

“I cannot tell what ye say, brown streams,
   I cannot tell what ye say;
But I know, in you too, a spirit doth live,
   And a word in you this day.”

“Oh! rose is the colour of love and youth,
And green is the colour of faith and truth,
   And brown of the fruitful clay.
The earth is fruitful and faithful and young,
And her bridal morn shall rise erelong,
And you shall know what the rocks and streams
   And the laughing green woods say.”

Dartside, August 1849.

Do the work that’s nearest,
Though it’s dull at whiles,
Helping, when you meet them,
Lame dogs over stiles;
See in every hedgerow
Marks of angels’ feet,
Epics in each pebble
Underneath our feet.

The Invitation.  1857.

Genius and Character.  August 2.

I have no respect for genius (I do not even acknowledge its existence) where there is no strength and steadiness of character.  If any one pretends to be more than a man he must begin by proving himself a man at all.

Two Years Ago, chap. xv.

Nature’s Student.  August 3.

The perfect naturalist must be of a reverent turn of mind—giving Nature credit for an inexhaustible fertility and variety, which will keep him his life long, always reverent, yet never superstitious; wondering at the commonest, but not surprised by the most strange; free from the idols of sense and sensuous loveliness; able to see grandeur in the minutest objects, beauty in the most ungainly: estimating each thing not carnally, as the vulgar do, by its size, . . . but spiritually, by the amount of Divine thought revealed to him therein. . . .

Glaucus.  1855.

Though permitted evils should not avenge themselves by any political retribution, yet avenge themselves, if unredressed, they surely will.  They affect masses too large, interests too serious, not to make themselves bitterly felt some day. . . .  We may choose to look on the masses in the gross as objects for statistics—and of course, where possible, for profits.  There is One above who knows every thirst, and ache, and sorrow, and temptation of each slattern, and gin-drinker, and street-boy.  The day will come when He will require an account of these neglects of ours—not in the gross.

Miscellanies.  1851.

We sit in a cloud, and sing like pictured angels,
And say the world runs smooth—while right below
Welters the black, fermenting heap of life
On which our State is built.

Saint’s Tragedy, Act ii. Scene v.

Love and Knowledge.  August 5.

He who has never loved, what does he know?

MS.

Siccum Lumen.  August 6.

How shall I get true knowledge?  Knowledge which will be really useful, really worth knowing.  Knowledge which I shall know accurately and practically too, so that I can use it in daily life, for myself and others?  Knowledge too, which shall be clear knowledge, not warped or coloured by my own fancies, passions, prejudices, but pure and calm and sound; Siccum Lumen, “Dry Light,” as the greatest of philosophers called it of old.

To all such who long for light, that by the light they may live, God answers through His only begotten Son: “Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find.”

Westminster Sermons.  1873.

What should the external world be to those who truly love, but the garden in which they are placed, not so much for sustenance or enjoyment of themselves and each other, as to dress it and to keep it—it to be their subject-matter, not they its tools!  In this spirit let us pray “Thy kingdom come.”

MS.  1842.

The Life of the Spirit.  August 8.

The old fairy superstition, the old legends and ballads, the old chronicles of feudal war and chivalry, the earlier moralities and mysteries—these fed Shakespeare’s youth.  Why should they not feed our children’s?  That inborn delight of the young in all that is marvellous and fantastic—has that a merely evil root?  No, surely! it is a most pure part of their spiritual nature; a part of “the heaven which lies about us in our infancy;” angel-wings with which the free child leaps the prison-walls of sense and custom, and the drudgery of earthly life.  It is a God-appointed means for keeping alive what noble Wordsworth calls those

      “. . . . obstinate questionings,
. . . . . .
   Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised.”

Introductory Lecture, Queen’s College.
1848.

A Quiet Depth.  August 9.

The deepest affections are those of which we are least conscious—that is, which produce least startling emotion, and most easy and involuntary practice.

MS.  1843.

Every time we perform an act of kindness to any human being, ay, even to a dumb animal; every time we conquer our worldliness, love of pleasure, ease, praise, ambition, money, for the sake of doing what our conscience tells us to be our duty,—we are indeed worshipping God the Father in spirit and in truth, and offering Him a sacrifice which He will surely accept for the sake of His beloved Son, by whose Spirit all good deeds and thoughts are inspired.

All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1871.

Chivalry.  August 11.

Chivalry; an idea which, perfect or imperfect, God forbid that mankind should ever forget till it has become the possession—as it is the God-given right—of the poorest slave that ever trudged on foot; and every collier lad shall have become

“A very gentle, perfect knight.”

Lectures on Ancien Régime.  1867.

God waits for Man.  August 12.

Patiently, nobly, magnanimously, God waits; waits for the man who is a fool, to find out his own folly; waits for the heart that has tried to find pleasure in everything else, to find out that everything else disappoints, and to come back to Him, the fountain of all wholesome pleasure, the well-spring of all life, fit for a man to live.

God condescends to wait for His creature; because what He wants is not His creature’s fear, but His creature’s love; not only his obedience, but his heart; because He wants him not to come back as a trembling slave to his master, but as a son who has found out at last what a father he has still left him, when all beside has played him false.  Let him come back thus.

Discipline and other Sermons.

The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much work as possible done with the least expenditure of power, the least jar and obstruction, the least wear and tear.  And the secret of thrift is knowledge.  In proportion as you know the laws and nature of a subject, you will be able to work at it easily, surely, rapidly, successfully, instead of wasting your money or your energies in mistaken schemes, irregular efforts, which end in disappointment and exhaustion.

Lecture on Thrift.  1869.

Revelations.  August 14.

Only second-rate hearts and minds are melancholy.  When we become like little children, our very playfulness tells that we are seeing deep, when we see that God is love in His works as well as in Himself, and we look at Nature as a baby does, as a beautiful mystery which we scarcely wish to solve.  And therefore deep things, which the intellect in vain struggles after, will reveal themselves to us.

MS.  1842.

Christ comes in many ways.  August 15.

Often Christ comes to us in ways in which the world would never recognise Him—in which perhaps neither you nor I shall recognise Him; but it will be enough, I hope, if we but hear His message, and obey His gracious inspiration, let Him speak through whatever means He will.  He may come to us by some crisis in our life, either for sorrow or for bliss.  He may come to us by a great failure; by a great disappointment—to teach the wilful and ambitious soul that not in that direction lies the path of peace; or He may come in some unexpected happiness to teach that same soul that He is able and willing to give abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think.

MS. Sermon.  1874.

On the Cross God has sanctified suffering, pain, and sorrow, and made them holy; as holy as health and strength and happiness are.

National Sermons.  1851.

The Ideal Unity.  August 17.

“Oh, make us one.”  All the world-generations have but one voice!  “How can we become One? at harmony with God and God’s universe!  Tell us this, and the dreary, dark mystery of life, the bright, sparkling mystery of life, the cloud-chequered, sun-and-shower mystery of life, is solved! for we shall have found one home and one brotherhood, and happy faces will greet us wherever we move, and we shall see God! see Him everywhere, and be ready to wait for the Renewal, for the Kingdom of Christ perfected!  We came from Eden, all of us: show us how we may return, hand in hand, husband and wife, parent and child, gathered together from the past and the future, from one creed and another, and take our journey into a far country, which is yet this earth—a world-migration to the heavenly Canaan, through the Red Sea of Death, back again to the land which was given to our forefathers, and is ours even now, could we but find it!”

Letters and Memories.  1843.

Body and Soul.  August 18.

The mystics considered the soul, i.e. the intellect, as the “moi” and the body as the “non moi;” and this idea that the body is not self, is the fundamental principle of mysticism and asceticism, and diametrically opposed to the whole doctrines and practice of Scripture.  Else why is there a resurrection of the body? and why does the Eucharist “preserve our body and soul to everlasting life?”

MS.  1843.

If you wish to be “a little child,” study what a little child could understand—Nature; and do what a little child could do—love.  Feed on Nature.  It will digest itself.  It did so when you were a little child the first time.

Keep a common-place book, and put into it not only facts and thoughts, but observations on form, and colour, and nature, and little sketches, even to the form of beautiful leaves.  They will all have their charm . . . all do their work in consolidating your ideas.  Put everything into it. . . .

Letters and Memories.  1842.

Inspiration.  August 20.

Every good deed comes from God.  His is the idea, His the inspiration, and His its fulfilment in time; and therefore no good deed but lives and grows with the everlasting life of God Himself.

MS.

Lifting of the Veil.  August 21.

I seldom pass those hapless loungers who haunt every watering-place without thinking sadly how much more earnest, happier, and better men and women they might be if the veil were but lifted from their eyes, and they could learn to behold that glory of God which is all around them like an atmosphere, while they, unconscious of what and where they are, wrapt up each in his little selfish world of vanity and interest, gaze lazily around them at earth, sea, and sky—

And have no speculation in those eyes
Which they do glare withal

Glaucus.  1855.

To take up the cross means, in the minds of most persons, to suffer patiently under affliction.  It is a true and sound meaning, but it means more.  Why did Christ take up the cross?  Not for affliction’s sake, or for the cross’s sake, as if suffering were a good thing in itself.  No.  But that He might thereby do good.  That the world through Him might be saved.  That He might do good at whatever cost or pain to Himself.

Sermons.

The Crucifix.  August 23.

If I had an image in my room it should be one of Christ glorified, sitting at the right hand of God.  The crucifix has been the image, because the idea of torture and misery has been the idea in the melancholy and the ferocious (for the two ultimately go together),. . . and thus ascetics became inquisitors. . . .

MS.  1843.

Love to God proved.  August 24.

Our love to God does not depend upon the emotions of the moment.  If you fancy you do not love Him enough, above all when Satan tempts you to look inward, go immediately and minister to others; visit the sick, perform some act of self-sacrifice or thanksgiving.  Never mind how dull you may feel while doing it; the fact of your feeling excited proves nothing; the fact of your doing it proves that your will, your spiritual part, is on God’s side, however tired or careless the poor flesh may be.  The “flesh” must be brought into harmony with the spirit, not only by physical but by intellectual mortification.

MS. Letter.  1843.

There is many a road into our hearts besides our ears and brains; many a sight and sound and scent even, of which we have never thought at all, sinks into our memory and helps to shape our characters; and thus children brought up among beautiful sights and sweet sounds will most likely show the fruits of their nursing by thoughtfulness and affection and nobleness of mind, even by the expression of the countenance.

True Words to Brave Men.  1848.

Ignorance of the Cynic.  August 26.

Be sure that no one knows so little of his fellow-men as the cynical, misanthropic man, who walks in darkness because he hates his brother.  Be sure that the truly wise and understanding man is he who by sympathy puts himself in his neighbours’ place; feels with them and for them; sees with their eyes, hears with their ears; and therefore understands them, makes allowances for them, and is merciful to them, even as his Father in heaven is merciful.

Westminster Sermons.  1872.

Penitential Prayer.  August 27.

Faith in God it is which has made the fifty-first Psalm the model of all true penitence for evermore.  Penitential prayers in all ages have too often wanted faith in God, and therefore have been too often prayers to avert punishment.  This, this—the model of all true penitent prayers—is that of a man who is to be punished, and is content to take his punishment, knowing that he deserves it, and far more besides.

Sermons on David.  1866.

Believe the Holy Communion is the sign of Christ’s perpetual presence; that when you kneel to receive the bread and wine, Christ is as near you—spiritually, indeed, and invisibly, but really and truly as near you as those who are kneeling by your side.

And if it be so with Christ, then is it so with those who are Christ’s, with those whom we love. . . .  Surely, like Christ, they may come and go even now, though unseen.  Like Christ they may breathe upon our restless hearts and say, “Peace be unto you,” and not in vain.  For what they did for us when they were on earth they can more fully do now that they are in heaven.

All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1862.

A Living God.  August 29.

Man would never have even dreamed of a Living God had not that Living God been a reality, who did not leave the creature to find his Creator, but stooped from heaven, at the very beginning of our race, to find His creature.

Sermons on David.  1866.

Thine, not mine.  August 30.

Whensoever you do a thing which you know to be right and good, instead of priding yourself upon it as if the good in it came from you, offer it up to your Heavenly Father, from whom all good things come, and say, “Oh, Lord! the good in this is Thine and not mine; the bad in it is mine and not Thine.  I thank Thee for having made me do right, for without Thy help I should have done nothing but wrong.  For mine is the laziness, and the weakness, and the selfishness, and the self-conceit; and Thine is the kingdom, for Thou rulest all things; and the power, for Thou doest all things; and the glory, for Thou doest all things well, for ever and ever.  Amen.”

Sermons.

A fire which cannot be quenched, a worm which cannot die, I see existing, and consider them among the most blessed revelations of the gospel.  I fancy I see them burning and devouring everywhere in the spiritual world, as their analogues do in the physical.  I know that they have done so on me, and that their operation, though exquisitely painful, is most healthful.  I see the world trying to quench and kill them; I know too well that I often do the same ineffectually.  But, in the comfort that the worm cannot die and the fire cannot be quenched, I look calmly forward through endless ages to my own future, and the future of that world whereof it is written, “He shall reign until He hath put all enemies under His feet, and death and hell shall be cast into the lake of fire.”

* * * * *

The Day of the Lord will be revealed in flaming fire, not merely to give new light and a day-spring from on high to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, but to burn up out of sight, and off the universe, the chaff, hay, and stubble which men have built on the One Living Foundation, Christ, in that unquenchable fire, of which it is written that Death and Hell shall one day be cast into it also, to share the fate of all other unnatural and abominable things, and God’s universe be—what it must be some day—very good.

* * * * *

Because I believe in a God of absolute and unbounded love, therefore I believe in a loving anger of His, which will and must devour and destroy all which is decayed, monstrous, abortive, in His universe, till all enemies shall be put under His feet, to be pardoned surely, if they confess themselves in the wrong and open their eyes to the truth.  And God shall be All in All.  Those last are wide words.

Letters and Sermons.  1856.

AUGUST 24.
St. Bartholomew, Apostle and Martyr.

Blessed are they who once were persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Great indeed is their reward, for it is no less than the very beatific vision to contemplate and adore that supreme moral beauty, of which all earthly beauty, all nature, all art, all poetry, all music, are but phantoms and parables, hints and hopes, dim reflected rays of the clear light of everlasting day.

All Saints’ Day Sermons.