Transcribed from the 1885 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
DAILY THOUGHTS
Selected from the Writings
OF
CHARLES KINGSLEY
BY HIS WIFE
SECOND EDITION
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1885
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.
_This little Volume_, _selected from the MS. Note-books_, _Sermons and
Private Letters_, _as well as from the published Works of my Husband_,
_is dedicated to our children_, _and to all who feel the blessing of his
influence on their daily life and thought_.
_F. E. K._
_July_ 10, 1884.
January.
Welcome, wild North-easter!
Shame it is to see
Odes to every zephyr:
Ne'er a verse to thee.
. . . . .
Tired we are of summer,
Tired of gaudy glare,
Showers soft and steaming,
Hot and breathless air.
Tired of listless dreaming
Through the lazy day:
Jovial wind of winter
Turn us out to play!
Sweep the golden reed-beds;
Crisp the lazy dyke;
Hunger into madness
Every plunging pike.
Fill the lake with wild-fowl;
Fill the marsh with snipe;
While on dreary moorlands
Lonely curlew pipe.
Through the black fir forest
Thunder harsh and dry,
Shattering down the snow-flakes
Off the curdled sky.
. . . . .
Come; and strong within us
Stir the Viking's blood;
Bracing brain and sinew:
Blow, thou wind of God!
_Ode to North-east Wind_.
New Year's Day. January 1. {3}
Gather you, gather you, angels of God--
Freedom and Mercy and Truth;
Come! for the earth is grown coward and old;
Come down and renew us her youth.
Wisdom, Self-sacrifice, Daring, and Love,
Haste to the battlefield, stoop from above,
To the day of the Lord at hand!
_The Day of the Lord_. 1847.
The Nineteenth Century. January 2.
Now, and at no other time: in this same nineteenth century lies our work.
Let us thank God that we are here now, and joyfully try to understand
_where_ we are, and what our work is _here_. As for all superstitions
about "the good old times," and fancies that _they_ belonged to God,
while this age belongs only to man, blind chance, and the evil one, let
us cast them from us as the suggestions of an evil lying spirit, as the
natural parents of laziness, pedantry, fanaticism, and unbelief. And
therefore let us not fear to ask the meaning of this present day, and of
all its different voices--the pressing, noisy, complex present, where our
workfield lies, the most intricate of all states of society, and of all
schools of literature yet known.
_Introductory Lecture_, _Queen's College_.
1848.
Forward. January 3.
Let us forward. God leads us. Though blind, shall we be afraid to
follow? I do not see my way: I do not care to: but I know that He sees
His way, and that I see Him.
_Letters and Memories_. 1848.
The Noble Life. January 4.
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them all day long;
And so make life, and death, and that For Ever
One grand sweet song.
_A Farewell_. 1856.
Live in the present that you may be ready for the future.
_MS._
Duty and Sentiment. January 5.
God demands not _sentiment_ but _justice_. The Bible knows nothing of
"the religious sentiments and emotions" whereof we hear so much talk
nowadays. It speaks of _Duty_. "Beloved, if God so loved us, we _ought_
to love one another."
_National Sermons_. 1851.
The Everlasting Harmony. January 6.
If thou art living a righteous and useful life, doing thy duty orderly
and cheerfully where God has put thee, then thou in thy humble place art
humbly copying the everlasting harmony and melody which is in heaven; the
everlasting harmony and melody by which God made the world and all that
therein is--and behold it was very good--in the day when the morning
stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy over the new-
created earth, which God had made to be a pattern of His own perfection.
_Good News of God Sermons_. 1859.
The Keys of Death and Hell. January 7.
Fear not. Christ has the keys of death and hell. He has been through
them and is alive for evermore. Christ is the _first_, and was loving
and just and glorious and almighty before there was any death or hell.
And Christ is the _last_, and will be loving and just and glorious and
almighty as ever, in that great day when all enemies shall be under His
feet, and death shall be destroyed, and death and hell shall be cast into
the lake of fire.
_MS. Sermon_. 1857.
A Living God. January 8.
Here and there, among rich and poor, there are those whose heart and
flesh, whose conscience and whose intellect, cry out for the _Living_
God, and will know no peace till they have found Him. For till then they
can find no explanation of the three great human questions--Where am I?
Whither am I going? What must I do?
_Sermons on the Pentateuch_. 1862.
The Fairy Gardens. January 9.
Of all the blessings which the study of Nature brings to the patient
observer, let none, perhaps, be classed higher than this, that the
farther he enters into those fairy gardens of life and birth, which
Spenser saw and described in his great poem, the more he learns the awful
and yet comfortable truth, that they do not belong to him, but to One
greater, wiser, lovelier than he; and as he stands, silent with awe, amid
the pomp of Nature's ever-busy rest, hears as of old, The Word of the
"Lord God walking among the trees of the garden in the cool of the day."
_Glaucus_. 1855.
Love. January 10.
Oh! Love! Love! Love! the same in peasant and in peer! The more
honour to you, then, old Love, to _be_ the same thing in this world which
_is_ common to peasant and to peer. They say that you are blind, a
dreamer, an exaggerator--a liar, in short! They just know nothing about
you, then. You will not see people as they seem--as they have become, no
doubt; but why? Because you see them as they ought to be, and are in
some deep way eternally, in the sight of Him who conceived and created
them!
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xiv. 1856.
Life--Love. January 11.
We must live nobly to love nobly.
_MS._
The Seed of Good. January 12.
Never was the young Abbot heard to speak harshly of any human being.
"When thou hast tried in vain for seven years," he used to say, "to
convert a sinner, then only wilt thou have a right to suspect him of
being a worse man than thyself." That there is a seed of good in all
men, a divine word and spirit striving with all men, a gospel and good
news which would turn the hearts of all men, if abbots and priests could
but preach it aright, was his favourite doctrine, and one which he used
to defend, when at rare intervals he allowed himself to discuss any
subject, from the writings of his favourite theologian, Clement of
Alexandria.
Above all, Abbot Philamon stopped by stern rebuke any attempt to revile
either heretics or heathens. "On the Catholic Church alone," he used to
say, "lies the blame of all heresy and unbelief; for if she were but for
one day that which she ought to be, the world would be converted before
nightfall."
_Hypatia_, chap. xxx. 1852.
Danger of Thinking vaguely. January 13.
Watch against any fallacies in your ideas which may arise, not from
disingenuousness, but from allowing yourself in moments of feeling to
think vaguely, and not to attach precise meaning to your words. Without
any cold caution of expression, it is a duty we owe to God's truth, and
to our own happiness and the happiness of those around us, to think and
speak as correctly as we can. Almost all heresy, schism, and
misunderstandings, between either churches or individuals who ought to be
one, have arisen from this fault of an involved and vague style of
thought.
_MS._ 1842.
The Possession of Faith. January 14.
I don't want to possess a faith, I want a faith which will possess me.
_Hypatia_, chap. xvii. 1852.
The Eternal Life. January 15.
Eternally, and for ever, in heaven, says St. John, Christ says and is and
does what prophets prophesied of Him that He would say and be and do. "I
am the Root and the Offspring of David, the bright Morning Star. And let
him that is athirst, come: and whosoever will, let him take of the Water
of Life freely." For ever Christ calls to every anxious soul, every
afflicted soul, to every man who is ashamed of himself, and angry with
himself, and longs to live a gentler, nobler, purer, truer, and more
useful life, "Come, and live for ever the eternal life of righteousness,
holiness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, which is the one true
and only salvation bought for us by the precious blood of Christ our
Lord." Amen.
_Water of Life Sermons_. 1865
The Golden Cup of Youth. January 16.
Ah, glorious twenty-one, with your inexhaustible powers of doing and
enjoying, eating and hungering, sleeping and sitting up, reading and
playing! Happy are those who still possess you, and can take their fill
of your golden cup, steadied, but not saddened, by the remembrance that
for all things a good and loving God will bring them to judgment!
Happier still those who (like a few) retain in body and soul the health
and buoyancy of twenty-one on to the very verge of forty, and, seeming to
grow younger-hearted as they grow older-headed, can cast off care and
work at a moment's warning, laugh and frolic now as they did twenty years
ago, and say with Wordsworth--
"So was it when I was a boy,
So let it be when I am old,
Or let me die."
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xix. 1856.
Work and Duty. January 17.
If a man is busy, and busy about his duty, what more does he require for
time or for eternity?
_Chalk Stream Studies_. 1856.
Members of Christ. January 18.
. . . Would you be humble, daughter?
You must look up, not down, and see yourself
A paltry atom, sap-transmitting vein
Of Christ's vast vine; the pettiest joint and member
Of His great body. . . .
. . . Let thyself die--
And dying, rise again to fuller life.
To be a whole is to be small and weak--
To be a part is to be great and mighty
In the one spirit of the mighty whole--
The spirit of the martyrs and the saints.
_Saint's Tragedy_, Act ii. Scene vi.
1847.
Beauty a Sacrament. January 19.
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful. Beauty is God's
handwriting--a way-side sacrament; welcome it in every fair face, every
fair sky, every fair flower, and thank Him for it, who is the Fountain of
all loveliness, and drink it in simply and earnestly with all your eyes;
it is a charmed draught, a cup of blessing.
_True Words to Brave Men_. 1844.
The Ideal of Rank. January 20.
With Christianity came in the thought that domination meant
responsibility, that responsibility demanded virtue. The words which
denoted Rank came to denote, likewise, high moral excellencies. The
_nobilis_, or man who was known, and therefore subject to public opinion,
was bound to behave nobly. The gentle-man--gentile-man--who respected
his own gens, or family, or pedigree, was bound to be gentle. The
courtier who had picked up at court some touch of Roman civilisation from
Roman ecclesiastics was bound to be courteous. He who held an "honour,"
or "edel" of land, was bound to be honourable; and he who held a
"weorthig," or "worthy," thereof, was bound himself to be worthy.
_Lectures on Ancien Regime_. 1866.
An Indulgent God. January 21.
A merely indulgent God would be an unjust God, and a cruel God likewise.
If God be just, as He is, then He has boundless pity for those who are
weak, but boundless wrath for the strong who misuse the weak. Boundless
pity for those who are ignorant, misled, and out of the right way; but
boundless wrath for those who mislead them and put them out of the right
way.
_Discipline Sermons_. 1867.
The Fifty-First Psalm. January 22.
It is such utterances as these which have given for now many hundred
years their priceless value to the little Book of Psalms ascribed to the
shepherd outlaw of the Judean hills, which have sent the sound of his
name into all lands throughout all the world. Every form of human
sorrow, doubt, struggle, error, sin--the nun agonising in the cloister;
the settler struggling for his life in Transatlantic forests; the pauper
shivering over the embers in his hovel and waiting for kind death; the
man of business striving to keep his honour pure amid the temptations of
commerce; the prodigal son starving in the far country and recollecting
the words which he learnt long ago at his mother's knee; the peasant boy
trudging afield in the chill dawn and remembering that the Lord is his
Shepherd, therefore he will not want--all shapes of humanity have found,
and will find to the end of time, a word said here to their inmost
hearts. . . .
_Sermons on David_. 1866.
Waiting for Death. January 23.
Death, beautiful, wise, kind Death, when will you come and tell me what I
want to know? I courted you once and many a time, brave old Death, only
to give rest to the weary. That was a coward's wish--and so you would
not come. . . . I was not worthy of you. And now I will not hunt you
any more, old Death. Do you bide your time, and I mine. . . . Only when
you come, give me not rest but work. Give work to the idle, freedom to
the chained, sight to the blind!
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xv. 1856.
The One Refuge. January 24.
Safe! There is no safety but from God, and that comes by prayer and
faith.
_Hypatia_. 1852.
Future Identity. January 25.
I believe that the union of those who have loved here will in the next
world amount to perfect identity, that they will look back on the
expressions of affection here as mere meagre strugglings after and
approximation to the union which then will be perfect. Perfect!
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
Friendship. January 26.
A friend once won need never be lost, if we will be only trusty and true
ourselves. Friends may part, not merely in body, but in spirit, for a
while. In the bustle of business and the accidents of life, they may
lose sight of each other for years; and more, they may begin to differ in
their success in life, in their opinions, in their habits, and there may
be, for a time, coldness and estrangement between them, but not for ever
if each will be trusty and true. For then they will be like two ships
who set sail at morning from the same port, and ere night-fall lose sight
of each other, and go each on its own course and at its own pace for many
days, through many storms and seas, and yet meet again, and find
themselves lying side by side in the same haven when their long voyage is
past.
_Water of Life Sermons_.
Night and Morning. January 27.
It is morning somewhere or other now, and it will be morning here again
to-morrow. "Good times and bad times and all times pass over." I learnt
that lesson out of old Bewick's Vignettes, and it has stood me in good
stead this many a year.
_Two Years Ago_, chap. i. 1856.
Communion with the Blessed Dead. January 28.
Shall we not recollect the blessed dead above all in Holy Communion, and
give thanks for them there--at that holy table at which the Church
triumphant and the Church militant meet in the communion of saints? Where
Christ is they are; and, therefore, if Christ be there, may not they be
there likewise? May not they be near us though unseen? like us claiming
their share in the eternal sacrifice, like us partaking of that spiritual
body and blood which is as much the life of saints in heaven as it is of
penitent sinners on earth? May it not be so? It is a mystery into which
we will not look too far. But this at least is true, that they are with
Him where He is.
_MS. Sermon_.
The Great Law. January 29.
True rest can only be attained as Christ attained it, through labour.
True glory can only be attained in earth or heaven through
self-sacrifice. Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; whosoever
will lose his life shall save it.
_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1870.
The Coming Kingdom. January 30.
There is a God-appointed theocracy promised to us, and which we must wait
for, when all the diseased and false systems of this world shall be swept
away, and Christ's feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, and the
twelve apostles shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of
Israel! All this shall come, and blessed is that servant whom his Lord
when He cometh shall find ready! All this we shall not see before we
die, but we shall see it when we rise in the perfect material and
spiritual ideal, in the kingdom of God!
_Letters and Memories_.
Christ's Coming. January 31.
Christ may come to us when our thoughts are cleaving to the ground, and
ready to grow earthy of the earth--through noble poetry, noble music,
noble art--through aught which awakens once more in us the instinct of
the true, the beautiful, and the good. He may come to us when our souls
are restless and weary, through the repose of Nature--the repose of the
lonely snow-peak and of the sleeping forest, of the clouds of sunset and
of the summer sea, and whisper Peace. Or He may come, as He comes on
winter nights to many a gallant soul--not in the repose of Nature, but in
her rage--in howling storm and blinding foam and ruthless rocks and
whelming surge--and whisper to them even so--as the sea swallows all of
them which _it_ can take--of calm beyond, which this world cannot give
and cannot take away.
And therefore let us say in utter faith, Come as Thou seest best--but in
whatsoever way Thou comest, Even so come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
_Last Sermon_. _MS._ 1874.
SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.
Since we gave up at the Reformation the superstitious practice of praying
to the saints, Saints' Days have sunk--and, indeed, sunk too much--into
neglect. We forget too often still, that though praying to any saint or
angel, or other created being, is contrary both to reason and Scripture,
yet it is according to reason and to Scripture to commemorate them. That
is, to remember them, to study their characters, and to thank God for
them,--both for the virtues He bestowed on them, and the example which He
has given us in them.
_MS. Sermon_.
JANUARY 6.
The Epiphany,
Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.
On this day the Lord Jesus was first shown to the Gentiles. The word
Epiphany means "showing." The Wise Men were worshippers of the true God,
though in a dim confused way; and they had learnt enough of what true
faith, true greatness was, not to be staggered and fall into unbelief
when they saw the King of the Jews laid, not in a palace, but in a
manger, tended by a poor village maiden. And therefore God bestowed on
them the great honour that they first of all--Gentiles--should see the
glory and the love of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God grant that
they may not rise up against us in the Day of Judgment and condemn us!
They had but a small spark, a dim ray, of the Light which lighteth every
man who cometh into the world; but they were more faithful to that little
than many of us, who live in the full sunshine of the Gospel, with
Christ's Spirit, Christ's Sacraments, Christ's Churches,--means of grace
and hopes of glory of which they never dreamed.
_Town and Country Sermons_.
JANUARY 25.
Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle and Martyr.
How did St. Paul look on his past life? There is no sentimental
melancholy in him. He is saved, and he knows it. He is an Apostle, and
he stands boldly on his dignity. He is cheerful, hopeful, joyful. And
yet, when he speaks of the past, it is with noble shame and sorrow that
he calls himself the chief of sinners, not worthy to be called an
Apostle, because he persecuted the Church of Christ. What he is, he will
not deny; what he was, he will not forget; lest he should forget that in
him, that is, in his flesh--his natural character--dwelleth no good
thing; lest he should forget that the good which he does, _he_ does not,
but Christ which dwelleth in him; lest he should grow careless, puffed
up, self-indulgent; lest he should neglect to subdue his evil passions;
and so, after preaching to others, himself become a castaway.
_Town and Country Sermons_.
February.
. . . Every winter,
When the great sun has turned his face away,
The earth goes down into the vale of grief,
And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,
Leaving her wedding garments to decay;
Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.
_Saint's Tragedy_, Act iii. Scene i.
Out of the morning land,
Over the snow-drifts,
Beautiful Freya came,
Tripping to Scoring.
White were the moorlands,
And frozen before her;
Green were the moorlands,
And blooming behind her.
Out of her gold locks
Shaking the spring flowers,
Out of her garments
Shaking the south wind,
Around in the birches
Awaking the throstles,
Love and love-giving,
Came she to Scoring.
. . . . .
_The Longbeard's Saga_. 1852.
Virtue. February 1.
The first and last business of every human being, whatever his station,
party, creed, capacities, tastes, duties, is morality; virtue, virtue,
always virtue. Nothing that man will ever invent will absolve him from
the universal necessity of being good as God is good, righteous as God is
righteous, holy as God is holy.
_Sermons on David_. 1866.
Happiness. February 2.
God has not only made things beautiful; He has made things happy;
whatever misery there is in the world there is no denying that. Misery
is the exception; happiness is the rule. No rational man ever heard a
bird sing without feeling that the bird was happy, and that if God made
that bird He made it to be happy, and He takes pleasure in its happiness,
though no human ear should ever hear its song, no human heart should ever
share in its joy.
_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1871.
A Dream of the Future. February 3.
God grant that the day may come when in front of the dwellings of the
poor we may see real fountains--not like the drinking-fountains, useful
as they are, which you see here and there about the streets, with a tiny
dribble of water to a great deal of expensive stone, but real fountains,
which shall leap, and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle, and fill the place
with life and light and coolness; and sing in the people's ears the
sweetest of all earthly songs--save the song of a mother over her
child--the song of "The Laughing Water."
_The Air Mothers_. 1872.
Bondage of Custom. February 4.
Strive all your life to free men from the bondage of _custom_ and _self_,
the two great elements of the world that lieth in wickedness.
_MS. Letter_. l842.
Henceforth let no man peering down
Through the dim glittering mine of future years
Say to himself, "Too much! this cannot be!"
To-day and custom wall up our horizon:
Before the hourly miracle of life
Blindfold we stand, and sigh, as though God were not.
_Saint's Tragedy_, Act i. Scene ii.
1847.
The Childlike Mind. February 5.
There comes a time when we must _narrow_ our sphere of thought much, that
we may _truly enlarge_ it! we must, _artificialised_ as we _have_ been,
return to the rudiments of life, to children's pleasures, that we may
find easily, through their transparent simplicity, spiritual laws which
we may apply to the more intricate spheres of art and science.
_MS. Letter_. 1842.
Unselfish Prayer. February 6.
The Lord's Prayer teaches that we are members of a family, when He tells
us to pray not "_My_ Father" but "Our Father;" not "_my_ soul be saved,"
but "Thy kingdom come;" not "give _me_" but "give _us_ our daily bread;"
not "forgive me," but "forgive _us_ our trespasses," and that only as we
forgive others; not "lead _me_ not," but "lead _us_ not into temptation;"
not "deliver _me_," but "deliver _us_ from evil." After _that_ manner
our Lord tells us to pray, and in proportion as we pray in that manner,
just so far, and no farther, will God hear our prayers.
_National Sermons_. 1850.
God is Light. February 7.
All the deep things of God are bright, for God is Light. God's arbitrary
will and almighty power may seem dark by themselves though deep, but that
is because they do not involve His moral character. Join them with the
fact that He is a God of mercy as well as justice; remember that His
essence is love, and the thunder-cloud will blaze with dewy gold, full of
soft rain and pure light.
_MS. Letter_. 1844.
The Veil Lifted. February 8.
Science is, I verily believe, like virtue, its own exceeding great
reward. I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the
man to whom--panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life in
the tropic forest--Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil and show
him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of, some law, or even
mere hint of a law, explaining one fact: but explaining with it a
thousand more, connecting them all with each other and with the mighty
whole, till order and meaning shoots through some old chaos of scattered
observations. Is not that a joy, a prize, which wealth cannot give nor
poverty take away? What it may lead to he knows not. Of what use it may
be he knows not. But this he knows, that somewhere it must lead, of some
use it will be. For it is a truth.
_Lectures on Science and Superstition_.
1866.
All Science One. February 9.
Physical and spiritual science seem to the world to be distinct. One
sight of God as we shall some day see Him will show us that they are
indissolubly and eternally the same.
_MS._
Passion and Reason. February 10.
Passion and reason in a healthy mind ought to be inseparable. We need
not be passionless because we reason correctly. Strange to say, one's
feelings will often sharpen one's knowledge of the truth, as they do
one's powers of action.
_MS._ 1843.
Enthusiasm and Tact. February 11.
. . . People smile at the "enthusiasm of youth"--that enthusiasm which
they themselves secretly look back at with a sigh, perhaps unconscious
that it is partly their own fault that they ever lost it. . . . Do not
fear being considered an enthusiast. What matter? But pray for _tact_,
the true tact which love alone can give, to prevent scandalising a weak
brother.
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
Be earnest, earnest, earnest; mad, if thou wilt:
Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven, And that thy last deed ere
the judgment-day.
When all's done, nothing's done. There's rest above--
Below let work be death, if work be love!
_Saint's Tragedy_, Act ii. Scene viii. 1847.
The Eternal Good. February 12.
"God hath showed thee what is good," . . . what is good in itself, and of
itself--the one very eternal and absolute good, which was with God and in
God and from God, before all worlds, and will be for ever, without
changing, or growing less or greater, eternally the same good--the good
which would be just as good and just and right and lovely and glorious if
there were no world, no men, no angels, no heaven, no hell, and God were
alone in His own abyss.
_Sermons for the Times_. 1855.
Awfulness of Words. February 13.
A difference in words is a very awful and important difference; a
difference in words is a difference in things. Words are very awful and
wonderful things, for they come from the most awful and wonderful of all
beings, Jesus Christ, THE WORD. He puts words into men's minds. He made
all things, and He made words to express those things. And woe to those
who use the wrong words about anything.
_Village Sermons_. 1848.
A Wise Woman. February 14.
What wisdom she had she did not pick off the hedge, like blackberries.
God is too kind to give away wisdom after that useless fashion. So she
had to earn her wisdom, and to work hard, and suffer much ere she
attained it. And in attaining she endured strange adventures and great
sorrows; and yet they would not have given her the wisdom had she not had
something in herself which gave her wit to understand her lessons, and
skill and courage to do what they taught her. There had been many names
for that something before she was born, there have been many names for it
since, but her father and mother called it the Grace of God.
_Unfinished Novel_. 1869.
Charity the one Influence. February 15.
The older we grow, the more we understand our own lives and histories,
the more we shall see that the spirit of wisdom is the spirit of love;
that the true way to gain influence over our fellow-men is to have
charity towards them. That is a hard lesson to learn; and all those who
learn it generally learn it late; almost--God forgive us--too late.
_Westminster Sermons_.
The Ascetic Painters. February 16.
We owe much (notwithstanding their partial and Manichean idea of beauty)
to the early ascetic painters. Their works are a possession for ever. No
future school of religious art will be able to rise to eminence without
learning from them their secret. They taught artists, and priests, and
laymen, too, that beauty is only worthy of admiration when it is the
outward sacrament of the beauty of the soul within; they helped to
deliver men from that idolatry to merely animal strength and loveliness
into which they were in danger of falling in ferocious ages, and among
the relics of Roman luxury.
_Miscellanies_. 1849.
Reveries. February 17.
Beware of giving way to reveries. Have always some employment in your
hands. Look forward to the future with hope. Build castles if you will,
but only bright ones, and _not too many_.
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
Woman's Mission. February 18.
It is the glory of woman that she was sent into the world to live for
others rather than for herself; and therefore, I should say, let her
smallest rights be respected, her smallest wrongs redressed; but let her
never be persuaded to forget that she is sent into the world to teach
man--what I believe she has been teaching him all along, even in the
savage state, namely, that there is something more necessary than the
claiming of rights, and that is, the performing of duties; to teach him
specially, in these so-called intellectual days, that there is something
more than intellect, and that is--purity and virtue.
_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.
The Heroic Life. February 19.
Provided we attain at last to the truly heroic and divine life, which is
the life of virtue, it will matter little to us by what wild and weary
ways, or through what painful and humiliating processes, we have arrived
thither. If God has loved us, if God will receive us, then let us submit
loyally and humbly to His law--"whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom He receiveth."
_All Saints' Day Sermons_.
The Wages of Sin. February 20.
It is sometimes said, "The greater the sinner the greater the saint." I
do not believe it. I do not see it. It stands to reason--if a man loses
his way and finds it again, he is so much the less forward on his way,
surely, by all the time he has spent in getting back into the way.
And if any of you fancy you can sin without being punished, remember that
the prodigal son is punished most severely. He does not get off freely
the moment he chooses to repent, as false preachers will tell you. Even
after he does repent and resolves to go back to his father's house he has
a long journey home in poverty and misery, footsore, hungry, and all but
despairing. But when he does get home; when he shows he has learnt the
bitter lesson; when all he dares to ask is, "Make me as one of thy hired
servants,"--he is received as freely as the rest.
_Water of Life Sermons_. 1864.
Silent Depths. February 21.
Our mightiest feelings are always those which remain most unspoken. The
most intense lovers and the greatest poets have generally, I think,
written very little personal love-poetry, while they have shown in
fictitious characters a knowledge of the passion too painfully intimate
to be spoken of in the first person.
_MS._ 1843.
True Justification. February 22.
God grant us to be among those who wish to be really justified by faith,
by being made just persons by faith,--who cannot satisfy either their
conscience or their reason by fancying that God looks on them as right
when they know themselves to be wrong; and who cannot help trusting that
union with Christ must be something real and substantial, and not merely
a metaphor and a flower of rhetoric.
_MS._ 1854.
A Present Hell. February 23.
"Ay," he muttered, "sing awa', . . . wi' pretty fancies and gran' words,
and gang to hell for it."
"To hell, Mr. Mackaye?"
"Ay, to a verra real hell, Alton Locke, laddie--a warse ane than any
fiend's kitchen or subterranean Smithfield that ye'll hear o' in the
pulpits--the hell on earth o' being a flunkey, and a humbug, and a
useless peacock, wasting God's gifts on your ain lusts and pleasures--and
kenning it--and not being able to get oot o' it for the chains of vanity
and self-indulgence."
_Alton Locke_, chap. viii. 1849.
Time and Eternity. February 24.
Eternity does not mean merely some future endless duration, but that ever-
present _moral_ world, governed by ever-living and absolutely necessary
laws, in which we and all spirits are now; and in which we should be
equally, whether time and space, extension and duration, and the whole
material universe to which they belong, became nothing this moment, or
lasted endlessly.
_Theologica Germanica_. 1854.
Christ's Life. February 25.
What was Christ's life? Not one of deep speculations, quiet thoughts,
and bright visions, but a life of fighting against evil; earnest, awful
prayers and struggles within, continued labour of body and mind without;
insult, and danger, and confusion, and violent exertion, and bitter
sorrow. This was Christ's life. This was St. Peter's, and St. James's,
and St. John's life afterwards.
_Village Sermons_. 1849.
The Higher Education. February 26.
In teaching women we must try to make our deepest lessons bear on the
great purpose of unfolding Woman's own calling in all ages--her especial
calling in this one. We must incite them to realise the chivalrous
belief of our old forefathers among their Saxon forests, that something
Divine dwelt in the counsels of woman: but, on the other hand, we must
continually remind them that they will attain that divine instinct, not
by renouncing their sex, but by fulfilling it; by becoming true women,
and not bad imitations of men; by educating their heads for the sake of
their hearts, not their hearts for the sake of their heads; by claiming
woman's divine vocation as the priestess of purity, of beauty, and of
love.
_Introductory Lecture_, _Queen's College_.
1848.
God's Kingdom. February 27.
Philamon had gone forth to see the world, and he had seen it; and he had
learnt that God's kingdom was not a kingdom of fanatics yelling for a
doctrine, but of willing, loving, obedient hearts.
_Hypatia_, chap. xxiii. 1852.
Sowing and Reaping. February 28.
So it is, that by every crime, folly, even neglect of theirs, men drive a
thorn into their own flesh, which will trouble them for years to come, it
may be to their dying day--
Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all--
as those who neglect their fellow-creatures will discover, by the most
patent, undeniable proofs, in that last great day, when the rich and poor
shall meet together, and then, at last, discover too that the Lord is the
Maker of them all.
_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1871.
The Church Catechism. February 29.
Did it ever strike you that the simple, noble, old Church Catechism,
without one word about rewards and punishments, heaven or hell, begins to
talk to the child, like a true English Catechism as it is, about that
glorious old English key-word Duty? It calls on the child to confess its
own duty, and teaches it that its duty is something most human, simple,
everyday--commonplace, if you will call it so. And I rejoice in the
thought that the Church Catechism teaches that the child's duty is
commonplace. I rejoice that in what it says about our duty to God and
our neighbour, it says not one word about counsels of perfection, or
those frames and feelings which depend, believe me, principally on the
state of people's bodily health, on the constitution of their nerves, and
the temper of their brain; but that it requires nothing except what a
little child can do as well as a grown person, a labouring man as well as
a divine, a plain farmer as well as the most refined, devout, imaginative
lady.
_Sermons for the Times_. 1855.
SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.
FEBRUARY 2.
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple,
COMMONLY CALLED
The Purification of the Virgin Mary.
Little children may think of Christ as a child now and always. For to
them He is always the Babe of Bethlehem. Let them not say to themselves,
"Christ is grown up long ago." He is, and yet He is not. His life is
eternal in the heavens, above all change of time and space. . . . Such
is the sacred heart of Jesus--all things to all. To the strong He can be
strongest, to the weak weakest of all. With the aged and dying He goes
down for ever to the grave; and yet with you children Christ lies for
ever on His mother's bosom, and looks up for ever into His mother's face,
full of young life and happiness and innocence, the Everlasting Christ-
child, in whom you must believe, whom you must love, to whom you must
offer up your childish prayers.
_The Christ-child_,
_Sermons_, (_Good News of God_).
FEBRUARY 24.
St. Matthias, Apostle and Martyr.
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from their
labours--all their struggles, failures, past and over for ever. But
their works follow them. The good which they did on earth--_that_ is not
past and over. It cannot die. It lives and grows for ever, following on
in their path long after they are dead, and bearing fruit unto
everlasting life, not only in them, but in men whom they never saw, and
in generations yet unborn.
_Sermons_ (_Good News of God_).
Ash Wednesday.
There is a repentance too deep for words--too deep for all confessionals,
penances, and emotions or acts of contrition; the repentance, not of the
excitable, theatric Southern, unstable as water even in his most violent
remorse, but of the still, deep-hearted Northern, whose pride breaks
slowly and silently, but breaks once for all; who tells to God what he
will never tell to man, and having told it, is a new creature from that
day forth for ever.
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xviii.
The True Fast.
The _rationale_ of Fasting is to give up habitual indulgences for a time,
lest they become our masters--artificial _necessities_.
_MS._
March.
Early in the Springtime, on raw and windy mornings,
Beneath the freezing house-eaves, I heard the starlings sing--
Ah! dreary March month, is this then a time for building wearily?
Sad, sad, to think that the year is but begun!
Late in the Autumn, on still and cloudless evenings,
Among the golden reed-beds I heard the starlings sing--
Ah! that sweet March month, when we and our mates were courting
merrily;
Sad, sad, to think that the year is all but done.
_The Starlings_.
Knowledge and Love. March 1.
Knowledge and Love are reciprocal. He who loves knows. He who knows
loves. Saint John is the example of the first; Saint Paul of the second.
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
A Charm of Birds. March 2.
Little do most people know how much there is to learn--what variety of
character, as well as variety of motion, may be distinguished by the
practised ear in a "charm of birds"--from the wild cry of the
missel-thrush, ringing from afar in the first bright days of March a
passage of one or two bars repeated three or four times, and then another
and another, clear and sweet and yet defiant--for the great "storm-cock"
loves to sing when rain and wind is coming on, and faces the elements as
boldly as he faces hawk and crow--down to the delicate warble of the
wren, who slips out of his hole in the brown bank where he has huddled
through the frost with wife and children, all folded in each other's arms
like human beings. Yet even he, sitting at his house-door in the low
sunlight, says grace for all mercies in a song so rapid, so shrill, so
loud, and yet so delicately modulated, that you wonder at the amount of
soul within that tiny body; and then stops suddenly, like a child that
has said its lesson or got to the end of a sermon, gives a self-satisfied
flirt of his tail, and goes in again to sleep.
_Prose Idylls_. 1866.
Tact of the Heart. March 3.
Random shots are dangerous and cruel, likely to hit the wrong person and
hurt his feelings unnecessarily. It is very easy to say a hard thing,
but not so easy to say it to the right person at the right time.
_MS._
Special Providences. March 4.
I believe not only in "special providences," but in the whole universe as
one infinite complexity of special providences.
_Letters and Memories_.
The grain of dust is a thought of God; God's power made it; God's wisdom
gave it whatsoever properties or qualities it may possess. God's
providence has put it in the place where it is now, and has ordained that
it should be in that place at that moment, by a train of causes and
effects which reaches back to the very creation of the universe. The
grain of dust can no more go from God's presence or flee from God's
Spirit than you or I can.
_Town Geology_. 1871.
Be Calm. March 5.
Strive daily and hourly to be calm; to stop yourself forcibly and recall
your mind to a sense of what you are, where you are going, and whither
you ought to be tending. This is most painful discipline, but most
wholesome.
_MS. Letter_. 1842.
Self-sacrifice and Personality. March 6.
What a strange mystery is that of mutual self-sacrifice! to exist for one
moment for another! the perfection of human bliss! And does not love
teach us two things? First, that self-sacrifice, the living for others,
is the law of our perfect being, and next, that by and in self-sacrifice
alone can we attain to the perfect apprehension of ourselves, our own
personality, our own duty, our own bliss. So that the mystics are
utterly wrong when they fancy that self-sacrifice can be attained by self-
annihilation. Self-sacrifice, instead of destroying the sense of
personality, perfects it.
_MS. Letter_. 1843.
Follow your Star. March 7.
I believe with Dante, "_se tu segui la tua Stella_," that He who ordained
my star will not lead me _into_ temptation but _through_ it. Without Him
all places and methods of life are equally dangerous, with Him all
equally safe.
_Letters and Memories_. 1848.
Reverence for Books. March 8.
This is the age of _books_. And we should reverence books. Consider!
except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book--a
message to us from the dead, from human souls whom we never saw, who
lived perhaps thousands of miles away, and yet in those little sheets of
paper speak to us, amuse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their
hearts to us as brothers!
We ought to reverence books, to look at them as awful and mighty things.
If they are good and true, whether they are about religion or politics,
trade or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the Maker of all
things, the Teacher of all truth, which He has put into the heart of some
men to speak. And at the last day, be sure of it, we shall have to
render an account--a strict account--of the books which we have read, and
of the way in which we have obeyed what we read, just as if we had had so
many prophets or angels sent to us.
_Village Sermons_. 1849.
The Unknown Future. March 9.
As for the things which God has prepared for those who love Him, the
Bible tells me that no man can conceive them, and therefore I believe
that I cannot conceive them. God has conceived them; God has prepared
them; God is our Father. That is enough.
_Sermons for the Times_. 1855.
Secular and Sacred. March 10.
I grudge the epithet of "_secular_" to any matter whatsoever. But more;
I deny it to anything which God has made, even to the tiniest of insects,
the most insignificant grain of dust. To those who believe in God, and
try to see all things in God, the most minute natural phenomenon cannot
be secular. It must be divine, I say deliberately, divine, and I can use
no less lofty word.
_Town Geology_. 1871.
Content or Happy? March 11.
My friends, whether you will be the happier for any knowledge of physical
science, or for any other knowledge whatsoever, I cannot tell. That lies
in the decision of a higher Power than I; and, indeed, to speak honestly,
I do not think that any branch of physical science is likely, at first at
least, to make you happy. Neither is the study of your fellow-men.
Neither is religion itself. We were not sent into the world to be happy,
but to be right--at least, poor creatures that we are--as right as we can
be, and we must be content with being right, and not happy. . . . And we
shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not only
with what we can understand, but content with what we do not
understand--the habit of mind which theologians call (and rightly) faith
in God, true and solid faith, which comes often out of sadness and out of
doubt.
_Lecture on Bio-geology_. 1869.
Duty of Man to Man. March 12.
Each man can learn something from his neighbour; at least he can learn
this--to have patience with his neighbour, to live and let live.
Peace! peace! Anything which is not _wrong_ for the sake of heaven-born
Peace!
_Town and Country Sermons_. 1861.
Blessing of a True Friend. March 13.
A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend, one human
soul whom we can trust utterly, who knows the best and worst of us, and
who loves us in spite of all our faults; who will speak the honest truth
to us, while the world flatters us to our face, and laughs at us behind
our back; who will give us counsel and reproof in the days of prosperity
and self-conceit; but who, again, will comfort and encourage us in the
day of difficulty and sorrow, when the world leaves us alone to fight our
battle as we can.
It is only the great-hearted who can be true friends: the mean and
cowardly can never know what true friendship means.
_Sermons on David_. 1866.
True Heroines. March 14.
What is the commonest, and yet the least remembered form of heroism? The
heroism of an average mother. Ah! when I think of that broad fact I
gather hope again for poor humanity, and this dark world looks bright,
this diseased world looks wholesome to me once more, because, whatever
else it is or is not full of, it is at least full of mothers.
_Lecture on Heroism_. 1873.
Secret Atheism. March 15.
There is little hope that we shall learn the lessons God is for ever
teaching us in the events of life till we get rid of our secret Atheism,
till we give up the notion that God only visits now and then to disorder
and destroy His own handiwork, and take back the old scriptural notion
that God is visiting all day long for ever, to give order and life to His
own work, to set it right where it goes wrong, and re-create it whenever
it decays.
_Water of Life Sermons_. 1866.
Tolerance. March 16.
If we really love God and long to do good and work for God, if we really
love our neighbours and wish to help them, we shall have no heart to
quarrel about _how_ the good is to be done, provided _it is_ done.
"Master," said St. John, "we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and
he followeth not us; wilt Thou that we forbid him? And Jesus said,
Forbid him not."
_Sermons_.
The Hopes of Old Age. March 17.
Christianity alone deprives old age of its bitterness, making it the gate
of heaven. Our bodies will fade and grow weak and shapeless, just when
we shall not want them, being ready and in close expectation of that
resurrection of the flesh which is the great promise of Christianity (no
miserable fancies about "pure souls" escaped from matter, but)--of
bodies, _our_ bodies, beloved, beautiful, ministers to us in all our
joys, sufferers with us in all our sorrows--yea, our very own selves
raised up again to live and love in a manner inconceivable from its
perfection.
_MS._ 1842.
. . . No! I can wait:
Another body!--Ah, new limbs are ready,
Free, pure, instinct with soul through every nerve,
Kept for us in the treasuries of God!
_Santa Maura_. 1852.
The Highest Study for Man, March 18.
Man is _not_, as the poet said, "the noblest study of mankind." God is
the noblest study of man, and Him we can study in three ways. 1st. From
His image as developed in Christ the Ideal, and in all good men--great
good men. 2dly. From His works. 3dly. From His dealings in history;
this is the real philosophy of history.
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
Eclecticism. March 19.
An eclectic, if it mean anything, means this--one who in any branch of
art or science refuses to acknowledge Bacon's great law, that "Nature is
only conquered by obeying her;" who will not take a full and reverent
view of the whole mass of facts with which he has to deal, and from them
deducing the fundamental laws of his subject, obey them whithersoever
they may lead; but who picks and chooses out of them just so many as may
be pleasant to his private taste, and then constructs a partial system
which differs from the essential ideas of Nature in proportion to the
number of facts which he has determined to discard.
_Miscellanies_. 1849.
Duty. March 20.