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

Lecture on Ancient Civilisation.  1874.The Church.  July 10

“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.True Insight.  July 13

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.False Refinement.  July 16

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.A Faith for Daily Life.  July 19

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.The Divine Discontent.  July 22

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.A Future Life of Action.  July 25

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.Uneducated Women.  July 28

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.God’s Mercy or Man’s?  July 31

“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.SAINTS’ DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALSJULY 25St. James, Apostle and MartyrAnd they will know his worthYears hence . . .And crown him martyr; and his name will ringThrough all the shores of earth, and all the starsWhose eyes are sparkling through their tears to seeHis triumph, Preacher and Martyr. . .. . . . .. . . It is over; and the woe that’s dead,Rises next hour a glorious angel.Santa Maura.

August

“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.Sight and Insight.  August 1Do the work that’s nearest,Though it’s dull at whiles,Helping, when you meet them,Lame dogs over stiles;See in every hedgerowMarks of angels’ feet,Epics in each pebbleUnderneath 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.The Masses.  August 4

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 belowWelters the black, fermenting heap of lifeOn 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.This World.  August 7

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 creatureMoving 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.Acceptable Sacrifices.  August 10

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.Thrift.  August 13

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.Lesson of the Cross.  August 16

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.Childlikeness.  August 19

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 eyesWhich they do glare withal Glaucus.  1855.The Cross—its meaning.  August 22

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.