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

Two Years Ago, chap. i.Blessing of Daily Work.  October 1

Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day which must be done whether you like it or not.  Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know.

Town and Country Sermons.  1861.The Forming Form.  October 2

As the acorn, because God has given it “a forming form,” and life after its kind, bears within it not only the builder oak but shade for many a herd, food for countless animals, and at last the gallant ship itself, and the materials of every use to which Nature or Art can put it, and its descendants after it, throughout all time, so does every good deed contain within itself endless and unexpected possibilities of other good, which may and will grow and multiply for ever, in the genial light of Him whose eternal mind conceived it, and whose eternal spirit will for ever quicken it, with that life of which He is the Giver and the Lord.

Preface to Tauler’s Sermons.  1854.Special Providences.  October 3

And as for special Providences.  I believe that every step I take, every person I meet, every thought which comes into my mind—which is not sinful—comes and happens by the perpetual Providence of God watching for ever with Fatherly care over me, and each separate thing that He has made.

MS. Letter.Virtue.  October 4

Nothing, nothing can be a substitute for purity and virtue.  Man will always try to find substitutes for it.  He will try to find a substitute in superstition, in forms and ceremonies, in voluntary humility and worship of angels, in using vain repetitions, and fancying he will be heard for his much speaking; he will try to find a substitute in intellect, and the worship of intellect and art and poetry, . . . but let no man lay that flattering unction to his soul.

Sermons on David.  1866.God-likeness.  October 5

“We can become like God—only in proportion as we are of use,” said –.  “I did not see this once.  I tried to be good, not knowing what good meant.  I tried to be good, because I thought it would pay me in the world to come.  But at last I saw that all life, all devotion, all piety, were only worth anything, only Divine, and God-like and God-beloved, as they were means to that one end—to be of use.”

Two Years Ago, chap. xix.  1856.The Refiner’s Fire.  October 6

“Not quite that,” said Amyas.  “He was a meeker man latterly than he used to be.  As he said himself once, a better refiner than any whom he had on board had followed him close all the seas over, and purified him in the fire.  And gold seven times tried he was when God, having done His work in him, took him home at last.”

Westward Ho! chap. xiii.The Prayer of Faith.  October 7

With the prayer of faith we can do anything.  Look at Mark xi. 24—a text that has saved more than one soul from madness in the hour of sorrow; and it is so simple and wide—wide as eternity, simple as light, true as God Himself.  If we are to do great things it must be in the spirit of that text.  Verily, when the Son of God cometh shall He find faith in the earth?

Letters and Memories.  1843.Mountain-Ranges.  October 8

We fancy there are many independent sciences, because we stand half-way up on different mountain-peaks, calling to each other from isolated stations.  The mists hide from us the foot of the range beneath us, the depths of primary analysis to which none can reach, or we should see that all the peaks were but offsets of one vast mountain-base, and in their inmost root but One!  And the clouds which float between us and the heaven shroud from us the sun-lighted caps themselves—the perfect issues of synthetic science, on which the Sun of Righteousness shines with undimmed lustre—and keep us from perceiving that the complete practical details of our applied knowledge is all holy and radiant with God’s smile.  And so, half-way up, on the hillside, beneath a cloudy sky, we build up little earthy hill-cairns of our own petty synthesis, and fancy them Babel-towers whose top shall reach to heaven!

MS. Note-book.  1843.The Temper for Success in Life.  October 9

The men whom I have seen succeed best in life have always been cheerful and hopeful men, who went about their business with a smile on their faces, and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men, facing rough and smooth alike as it came, and so found the truth of the old proverb that “good times and bad times and all times pass over.”

MS.Want of Simplicity.  October 10

Faith and prayer are simple things, . . . but when we begin to want faith, and to assist prayer by our own inventions and to explain away God’s providence, then faith and prayer become intricate and uncertain.  We cannot serve God and mammon.  We must either utterly depend on God (and therefore on our own reason enlightened by His spirit after prayer), or we must utterly depend on the empirical maxims of the world.  Choose!

MS. Letter.True Rest.  October 11

What is true rest?  To rest from sin, from sorrow, from doubt, from care; this is true rest.  Above all, to rest from the worst weariness of all—knowing one’s duty and not being able to do it.  That is true rest; the rest of God who works for ever, and yet is at rest for ever; as the stars over our heads move for ever, thousands of miles a day, and yet are at perfect rest, because they move orderly, harmoniously, fulfilling the law which God has given them.  Perfect rest in perfect work; that surely is the rest of blessed spirits till the final consummation of all things.

Water of Life Sermons.  1867.God’s Image.  October 12

. . . “Honour all men.”  Every man should be honoured as God’s image, in the sense in which Novalis says—that we touch Heaven when we lay our hand on a human body! . . .  The old Homeric Greeks, I think, felt that, and acted up to it, more than any nation.  The Patriarchs too seem to have had the same feeling. . . .

Letters and Memories.  1843.Woman’s Work.  October 13

Let woman never be persuaded to forget that her calling is not the lower and more earthly one of self-assertion, but the higher and diviner one of self-sacrifice; and let her never desert that higher life which lives in and for others, like her Redeemer and her Lord.

Lecture on Thrift.  1869.Self-Enjoyment.  October 14

“How do ye expect,” said Sandy, “ever to be happy, or strong, or a man at a’, as long as ye go on only looking to enjoy yersel—yersel?  Mony was the year I looked for nought but my ain pleasure, and got it too, when it was a’

“‘Sandy Mackaye, bonny Sandy Mackaye,There he sits singing the lang simmer day;   Lassies gae to him,   And kiss him, and woo him—   Na bird is so merry as Sandy Mackaye.’

An’ muckle good cam’ o’t.  Ye may fancy I’m talking like a sour, disappointed auld carle.  But I tell ye nay.  I’ve got that’s worth living for, though I am downhearted at times, and fancy a’s wrong, and there’s na hope for us on earth, we be a’ sic liars—a’ liars, I think—I’m a great liar often mysel, especially when I’m praying.”

Alton Locke, chap. vii.Temptations of Temperament.  October 15

A man of intense sensibilities, and therefore capable, as is but too notorious, of great crimes as well as of great virtues.

Sermons on David.

The more delicate and graceful the organisation, the more noble and earnest the nature, the more certain it is, I fear, if neglected, to go astray.

Lecture on Thrift.  1869.Egotism of Melancholy.  October 16

Morbid melancholy results from subjectivity of mind.  The self-contemplating mind, if it be a conscientious and feeling one, must be dissatisfied with what it sees within.  Then it begins unconsciously to flatter itself with the idea that it is not the “moi” but the “non moi,” the world around, which is evil.  Hence comes Manichæism, Asceticism, and that morbid tone of mind which is so accustomed to look for sorrow that it finds it even in joy—because it will not confess to itself that sorrow belongs to sin, and that sin belongs to self; and therefore it vents its dissatisfaction on God’s earth, and not on itself in repentance and humiliation.

The world looks dark.  Shall we therefore be dark too?  Is it not our business to bring it back to light and joy?

MS. Letter.  1843.Poetry of Doubt.  October 17

The “poetry of doubt” of these days, however pretty, would stand us in little stead if we were threatened by a second Armada.

Miscellanies.  1859.Work of the Physician.  October 18

The question which is forcing itself more and more on the minds of scientific men is not how many diseases are, but how few are not, the consequences of men’s ignorance, barbarism, folly, self-indulgence.  The medical man is felt more and more to be necessary in health as he is in sickness, to be the fellow-workman not merely of the clergyman, but of the social reformer, the political economist, and the statesman; and the first object of his science to be prevention, and not cure.

National Sermons.  1851.Love Many-sided.  October 19

There are many sides to love—admiration, reverence, gratitude, pity, affection; they are all different shapes of that one great spirit of love—the only feeling which will bind a man to do good, not once in a way but habitually.

National Sermons.  1851.The only Path to Light.  October 20

The path by which some come to see the Light, to find the Rock of Ages, is the simple path of honest self-knowledge, self-renunciation, self-restraint, in which every upward step towards right exposes some fresh depth of inward sinfulness, till the once proud man, crushed down by the sense of his own infinite meanness, becomes a little child once more, and casts himself simply on the generosity of Him who made him.  And then there may come to him the vision, dim, perhaps, and fitting ill into clumsy words, but clearer, surer, nearer to him than the ground on which he treads, or than the foot which treads it—the vision of an Everlasting Spiritual Substance, most Human and yet most Divine, who can endure; and who, standing beneath all things, can make their spiritual substance endure likewise, though all worlds and eons, birth and growth and death, matter and space and time, should melt indeed—

And like the baseless fabric of a vision,Leave not a rack behind. Preface to Tauler’s Sermons.  1854.Proverbs False and True.  October 21

There is no falser proverb than that devil’s beatitude, “Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”  Say rather, “Blessed is he who expecteth everything, for he enjoys everything once at least, and if it falls out true, twice also.”

Prose Idylls.  1857.True Sisters of Mercy.  October 22

Ah! true Sisters of Mercy! whom the world sneers at as “old maids,” if you pour out on cats and dogs and parrots a little of the love that is yearning to spend itself on children of your own.  As long as such as you walk this lower world one needs no Butler’s Analogy to prove to us that there is another world, where such as you will have a fuller and a fairer (I dare not say a juster) portion.

Two Years Ago, chap. xxv.  1856.The Divine Fire.  October 23Well spoke the old monks, peaceful, watching life’s turmoil,“Eyes which look heavenward, weeping still we see:God’s love with keen flame purges, like the lightning flash,Gold which is purest, purer still must be.” Saint’s Tragedy, Act iii. Scene i.1847.The Cross a Token.  October 24

Have patience, have faith, have hope, as thou standest at the foot of Christ’s Cross, and holdest fast to it, the anchor of the soul and reason, as well as of the heart.  For, however ill the world may go, or seem to go, the Cross is the everlasting token that God so loved the world that He spared not His only-begotten Son, but freely gave Him for it.  Whatsoever else is doubtful, that at least is sure—that good must conquer, because God is good, that evil must perish, because God hates evil, even to the death.

Westminster Sermons.  1870.The True Self-Sacrifice.  October 25

What can a man do more than die for his countrymen?

Live for them.  It is a longer work, and therefore a more difficult and a nobler one.

Two Years Ago, chap. xix.  1856.Now as Then.  October 26

Men can be as original now as ever, if they had but the courage, even the insight.  Heroic souls in old times had no more opportunities than we have; but they used them.  There were daring deeds to be done then—are there none now?  Sacrifices to be made—are there none now?  Wrongs to be redrest—are there none now?  Let any one set his heart in these days to do what is right, and nothing else; and it will not be long ere his brow is stamped with all that goes to make up the heroical expression—with noble indignation, noble self-restraint, great hopes, great sorrows; perhaps even with the print of the martyr’s crown of thorns.

Two Years Ago, chap. vii.  1856.One Anchor.  October 27

In such a world as this, with such ugly possibilities hanging over us all, there is but one anchor which will hold, and that is utter trust in God; let us keep that, and we may yet get to our graves without misery though not without sorrow.

Letters and Memories.  1871.Self-Control.  October 28

Settle it in your minds, young people, that the first and the last of all virtues and graces which God can give is Self-Control, as necessary for the saint and the sage lest they become fanatics and pedants, as for the young in the hey-day of youth and health.

Sermons on David.  1866.Nature’s Permanence.  October 29

We abolish many things, good and evil, wisely and foolishly, in these fast-going times; but, happily for us, we cannot abolish the blue sky, and the green sea, and the white foam, and the everlasting hills, and the rivers which flow out of their bosoms.  They will abolish themselves when their work is done, but not before.  And we, who, with all our boasted scientific mastery over Nature, are, from a merely mechanical and carnal point of view, no more than a race of minute parasitic animals burrowing in the fair Earth’s skin, had better, instead of boasting of our empire over Nature, take care lest we become too troublesome to Nature, by creating, in our haste and greed, too many great black countries, and too many great dirty warrens of houses, miscalled cities, peopled with savages and imps of our own mis-creation; in which case Nature, so far from allowing us to abolish her, will by her inexorable laws abolish us.

MS. Presidential Address.  1871.The Only Refuge.  October 30

Prayer is the only refuge against the Walpurgis-dance of the witches and the fiends, which at hapless moments whirl unbidden through a mortal brain.

Two Years Ago, chap. xix.  1856.England’s Forgotten Worthies.  October 31

Among the higher-hearted of the early voyagers, the grandeur and glory around them had attuned their spirits to itself and kept them in a lofty, heroical, reverent frame of mind; while they knew as little about what they saw in an “artistic” or “critical” point of view as in a scientific one. . . .  They gave God thanks and were not astonished.  God was great: but that they had discovered long before they came into the tropics.

Noble old child-hearted heroes, with just romance and superstition enough about them to keep from that prurient hysterical wonder and enthusiasm which is simply, one often fears, a product of our scepticism!  We do not trust enough in God, we do not really believe His power enough, to be ready, as they were, as every one ought to be on a God-made earth, for anything and everything being possible; and then when a wonder is discovered we go into ecstasies and shrieks over it, and take to ourselves credit for being susceptible of so lofty a feeling—true index, forsooth, of a refined and cultivated mind!!

Smile if you will: but those were days (and there never were less superstitious ones) in which Englishmen believed in the living God, and were not ashamed to acknowledge, as a matter of course, His help, and providence, and calling, in the matters of daily life, which we now, in our covert atheism, term “secular and carnal.”

Westward Ho! chap. xxiii.SAINTS’ DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALSOCTOBER 18St. Luke, Physician and Evangelist

It is good to follow Christ in one thing and to follow Him utterly in that.  And the physician has set his mind to do one thing—to hate calmly, but with an internecine hatred, disease and death, and to fight against them to the end.  In his exclusive care for the body the physician witnesses unconsciously yet mightily for the soul, for God, for the Bible, for immortality.  Is he not witnessing for God when he shows by his acts that he believes God to be a God of life, not of death; of health, not of disease; of order, not of disorder; of joy and strength, not of misery and weakness?  Is he not witnessing for Christ when, like Christ, he heals all manner of sickness and disease among the people, and attacks physical evil as the natural foe of man and of the Creator of man?

“Water of Life,” and other Sermons.OCTOBER 28St. Simon and St. Jude, Apostles and Martyrs

He that loseth his life shall save it.  The end and aim of our life is not happiness but goodness.  If goodness comes first, then happiness may come after; but if not, something better than happiness may come, even blessedness.

Oh! sad hearts and suffering! look to the Cross.  There hung your King!  The King of sorrowing souls; and more, the King of Sorrows.  Ay, pain and grief, tyranny and desertion, death and hell,—He has faced them one and all, and tried their strength and taught them His, and conquered them right royally.  And since He hung upon that torturing Cross sorrow is divine,—godlike, as joy itself.  All that man’s fallen nature dreads and despises God honoured on the Cross, and took unto Himself, and blest and consecrated for ever. . . .  And now—Blessed are tears and shame, blessed are agony and pain; blessed is death, and blest the unknown realms where souls await the Resurrection-day.

National Sermons.

November

“The giant trees are black and still, the tearful sky is dreary gray.  All Nature is like the grief of manhood in its soft and thoughtful sternness.  Shall I lend myself to its influence, and as the heaven settles down into one misty shroud of ‘shrill yet silent tears,’ as if veiling her shame in a cloudy mantle, shall I, too, lie down and weep?  Why not? for am I not ‘a part of all I see’?  And even now, in fasting and mortification, am I not sorrowing for my sin and for its dreary chastisement?  But shall I then despond and die?

“No! Mother Earth, for then I were unworthy of thee and thy God!  We may weep, Mother Earth, but we have Faith—faith which tells us that above the cloudy sky the bright clear sun is shining, and will shine.  And we have Hope, Mother Earth—hope, that as bright days have been, so bright days soon shall be once more!  And we have Charity, Mother Earth, and by it we can love all tender things—ay, and all rugged rocks and dreary moors, for the sake of the glow which has gilded them, and the fertility which will spring even from their sorrow.  We will smile through our tears, Mother Earth, for we are not forsaken!  We have still light and heat, and till we can bear the sunshine we will glory in the shade!”

MS.  1842.Sympathy of the Dead.  November 1

Believe that those who are gone are nearer us than ever; and that if (as I surely believe) they do sorrow over the mishaps and misdeeds of those whom they leave behind, they do not sorrow in vain.  Their sympathy is a further education for them, and a pledge, too, of help—I believe of final deliverance—for those on whom they look down in love.

Letters and Memories.  1852.Nature’s Parable.  November 2

There is a devil’s meaning to everything in nature, and a God’s meaning too.  As I read nature’s parable to-night I find nothing in it but hope.  What if there be darkness, the sun will rise to-morrow; what if there seem chaos, the great organic world is still living and growing and feeding, unseen by us all the night through; and every phosphoric atom there below is a sign that in the darkest night there is still the power of light, ready to flash out wherever and however it is stirred.

Prose Idylls.  1849.Passing Onward.  November 3

Liturgies are but temporary expressions of the Church’s heart.  The Bible is the immutable story of her husband’s love.  She must go on from grace to grace, and her song must vary from age to age, and her ancient melodies become unfitted to express her feelings; but He is the same for ever.

MS.  1842.See how the autumn leaves float by decaying,   Down the wild swirls of the dark-brimming stream;So fleet the works of men back to their earth again—   Ancient and holy things pass like a dream. A Parable.  1848.The Divine Intention.  November 4

I am superstitious enough, thank God, to believe that not a stone or a handful of mud gravitates into its place without the will of God; that it was ordained, ages since, into what particular spot each grain of gold should be washed down from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man might find it at a certain moment and crisis of his life.

Science Lectures.Christ Weeping over Jerusalem.  November 5

That which is true of nations is true of individuals, of each separate human brother of the Son of man.  Is there one young life ruined by its own folly—one young heart broken by its own wilfulness—or one older life fast losing the finer instincts, the nobler aims of youth, in the restlessness of covetousness, of fashion, of ambition?  Is there one such poor soul over whom Christ does not grieve?  One to whom, at some supreme crisis of their lives, He does not whisper—“Ah, beautiful organism—thou too art a thought of God—thou too, if thou wert but in harmony with thyself and God, a microcosmic City of God!  Ah! that thou hadst known—even thou—at least in this thy day—the things which belong to thy peace”?

MS. Sermon.  1874.Love Expansive.  November 6

The mystics think it wrong to love any created thing, because our whole love should be given to God.  But as flame increases by being applied to many objects, so does love.  He who loves God most loves God’s creatures most, and them for God’s sake, and God for their sake.

MS. Note-book.  1843.Still the same.  November 7

Those who die in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ do not really taste death; to them there is no death, but only a change of place, a change of state; they pass at once into some new life, with all their powers, all their feelings, unchanged; still the same living, thinking, active beings which they were here on earth.  I say active.  Rest they may, rest they will, if they need rest.  But what is true rest?  Not idleness, but peace of mind.

Water of Life Sermons.  1862.An absolutely Good God.  November 8

Fix in your minds—or rather ask God to fix in your minds—this one idea of an absolutely good God; good with all forms of goodness which you respect and love in man; good, as you, and I, and every honest man, understand the plain word good.  Slowly you will acquire that grand and all-illuminating idea; slowly and most imperfectly at best: for who is mortal man that he should conceive and comprehend the goodness of the infinitely good God!  But see, then, whether, in the light of that one idea, all the old-fashioned Christian ideas about the relation of God to man—whether Providence, Prayer, Inspiration, Revelation, the Incarnation, the Passion, and the final triumph of the Son of God—do not seem to you, not merely beautiful, not merely probable, but rational, and logical, and necessary, moral consequences from the one idea of an Absolute and Eternal Goodness, the Living Parent of the universe?

Westminster Sermons.  1873.Nature’s Lesson.  November 9

Learn what feelings every object in Nature expresses, but do not let them mould the tone of your mind; else, by allowing a melancholy day to make you melancholy, you worship the creature more than the Creator.

MS. Letter.  1842.Morals and Mind.  November 10

Not upon mind, not upon mind, but upon morals, is human welfare founded.  The true subjective history of man is not the history of his thought, but of his conscience: the true objective history of man is not that of his inventions, but of his vices and his virtues.  So far from morals depending upon thought, thought, I believe, depends on morals.  In proportion as a nation is righteous—in proportion as common justice is done between man and man, will thought grow rapidly, securely, triumphantly; will its discoveries be cheerfully accepted and faithfully obeyed, to the welfare of the whole common weal.