glare of dawn, which last night hung high in the north-west, has
travelled now to the north-east, and above the wooded wall of the hills
the sky is flushing with rose and amber. A long line of gulls goes
wailing inland; the rooks come cawing and sporting round the corner at
Landcross, while high above them four or five herons flap solemnly along
to find their breakfast on the shallows. The pheasants and partridges
are clucking merrily in the long wet grass; every copse and hedgerow
rings with the voice of birds; but the lark, who has been singing since
midnight in the "blank height of the dark," suddenly hushes his carol and
drops headlong among the corn, as a broad-winged buzzard swings from some
wooded peak into the abyss of the valley, and hangs high-poised above the
heavenward songster. The air is full of perfume; sweet clover, new-mown
hay, the fragrant breath of kine, the dainty scent of sea-weed, and fresh
wet sand. Glorious day, glorious place, "bridal of earth and sky,"
decked well with bridal garments, bridal perfumes, bridal songs.
_Westward Ho_! chap. xii.
Open Thou mine Eyes. June 1.
I have wandered in the mountains mist-bewildered,
And now a breeze comes, and the veil is lifted;
And priceless flowers, o'er which I trod unheeding,
Gleam ready for my grasp.
_Saint's Tragedy_, Act i. Scene ii.
1847.
The Spirit of Romance. June 2.
Some say that the spirit of romance is dead. The spirit of romance will
never die as long as there is a man left to see that the world might and
can be better, happier, wiser, fairer in all things than it is now. The
spirit of romance will never die as long as a man has faith in God to
believe that the world will actually be better and fairer than it is now,
as long as men have faith, however weak, to believe in the romance of all
romances, in the wonder of all wonders, in that of which all poets'
dreams have been but childish hints and dim forefeelings--even
"That one divine far-off event
Towards which the whole creation moves,
that wonder which our Lord Himself has bade us pray for as for our daily
bread, and say, "Father, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as
it is done in heaven."
_Water of Life Sermons_. 1865.
The Everlasting Music. June 3.
All melody and all harmony upon earth, whether in the song of birds, the
whisper of the wind, the concourse of voices, or the sounds of those
cunning instruments which man has learnt to create, because he is made in
the image of Christ, the Word of God, who creates all things; all music
upon earth, I say, is beautiful in as far as it is a pattern and type of
the everlasting music which is in heaven, which was before all worlds and
shall be after them.
_Good News of God Sermons_. 1859.
Gifts are Duties. June 4.
Exceeding gifts from God are not blessings, they are duties, and very
solemn and heavy duties. They do not always increase a man's happiness;
they always increase his responsibility, the awful account which he must
render at last of the talents committed to his charge. They increase,
too, his danger.
_Water of Life Sermons_.
Summer Days. June 5.
Now let the young be glad,
Fair girl and gallant lad,
And sun themselves to-day
By lawn and garden gay;
'Tis play befits the noon
Of rosy-girdled June;
. . . . .
The world before them, and above
The light of Universal Love.
_Installation Ode_, _Cambridge_. 1862.
"Sufficient for the Day." June 6.
Let us not meddle with the future, and matters which are too high for us,
but refrain our souls, and keep them low like little children, content
with the day's food, and the day's schooling, and the day's play-hours,
sure that the Divine Master knows that all is right, and how to train us,
and whither to lead us; though we know not and need not know, save this,
that the path by which He is leading each of us, if we will but obey and
follow step by step, leads up to everlasting life.
_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1871.
Secret of Thrift. June 7.
The secret of thrift is knowledge. The more you know the more you can
save yourself and that which belongs to you, and can do more work with
less effort. Knowledge of domestic economy saves income; knowledge of
sanitary laws saves health and life: knowledge of the laws of the
intellect saves wear and tear of brain, and knowledge of the laws of the
spirit--what does it not save?
_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.
Out-door Worship. June 8.
In the forest, every branch and leaf, with the thousand living things
which cluster on them, all worship, worship, worship with us! Let us go
up in the evenings and pray there, with nothing but God's cloud temple
between us and His heaven! And His choir of small birds and night
crickets and booming beetles, and all happy things who praise Him all
night long! And in the still summer noon, too, with the lazy-paced
clouds above, and the distant sheep-bell, and the bee humming in the beds
of thyme, and one bird making the hollies ring a moment, and then all
still--hushed--awe-bound, as the great thunder-clouds slide up from the
far south! Then, then, to praise God! Ay, even when the heaven is black
with wind, the thunder crackling over our heads, then to join in the paean
of the storm-spirits to Him whose pageant of power passes over the earth
and harms us not in its mercy!
_Letters and Memories_. 1844.
God's Countenance. June 9.
Study nature as the countenance of God! Try to extract every line of
beauty, every association, every moral reflection, every inexpressible
feeling from it.
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
Certain and Uncertain. June 10.
"Life is uncertain," folks say. Life is certain, say I, because God is
educating us thereby. But this process of education is so far above our
sight that it looks often uncertain and utterly lawless; wherefore fools
conceive (as does M. Comte) that there is no Living God, because they
cannot condense His formulas into their small smelling-bottles.
O glorious thought! that we are under a Father's education, and that _He_
has promised to develop us, and to make us go on from strength to
strength.
_Letters and Memories_. 1868.
Sensuality. June 11.
What is sensuality? Not the enjoyment of holy glorious matter, but
blindness to its meaning.
_MS._ 1842.
The Journey's End. June 12.
Let us live hard, work hard, go a good pace, get to our journey's end as
soon as possible--then let the post-horse get his shoulder out of the
collar. . . . I have lived long enough to feel, like the old post-horse,
very thankful as the end draws near. . . . Long life is the last thing
that I desire. It may be that, as one grows older, one acquires more and
more the painful consciousness of the difference between what _ought_ to
be done and what _can_ be done, and sits down more quietly when one gets
the wrong side of fifty, to let others start up to do for us things we
cannot do for ourselves. But it is the highest pleasure that a man can
have who has (to his own exceeding comfort) turned down the hill at last,
to believe that younger spirits will rise up after him, and catch the
lamp of Truth, as in the old lamp-bearing race of Greece, out of his hand
before it expires, and carry it on to the goal with swifter and more even
feet.
_Speech at Lotus Club_, _New York_. 1874.
Punishment Inevitable. June 13.
It is a fact that God does punish here, in this life. He does not, as
false preachers say, give over this life to impunity and this world to
the devil, and only resume the reigns of moral government and the right
of retribution when men die and go into the next world. Here in this
life He punishes sin. Slowly but surely God punishes. If any of you
doubt my words you have only to commit sin and then see whether your sin
will find you out.
_Sermons on David_. 1866.
The Problem Solved. June l4.
After all, the problem of life is not a difficult one, for it solves
itself so very soon at best--by death. Do what is right the best way you
can, and wait to the end to _know_.
_MS. Letter_.
But remember that though death may alter our place, it cannot alter our
character--though it may alter our circumstances, it cannot alter
ourselves.
_Discipline and other Sermons_.
The Father's Education. June 15.
Sin, [Greek text], is the missing of a mark, the falling short of an
ideal; . . . and that each miss brings a penalty, or rather is itself the
penalty, is to me the best of news and gives me hope for myself and every
human being past, present, and future, for it makes me look on them all
as children under a paternal education, who are being taught to become
aware of, and use their own powers in God's house, the universe, and for
God's work in it; and, in proportion as they do that, they attain
salvation,
_Letters and Memories_. 1852.
Parent and Child. June 16.
Superstition is the child of fear, and fear is the child of ignorance.
_Lectures on Science and Superstition_.
1866.
A Charm of Birds. June 17.
Listen to the charm of birds in any sequestered woodland on a bright
forenoon in early summer. As you try to disentangle the medley of
sounds, the first, perhaps, which will strike your ear will be the loud,
harsh, monotonous, flippant song of the chaffinch, and the metallic
clinking of two or three sorts of titmice. But above the tree-tops,
rising, hovering, sinking, the woodlark is fluting tender and low. Above
the pastures outside the skylark sings--as he alone can sing; and close
by from the hollies rings out the blackbird's tenor--rollicking,
audacious, humorous, all but articulate. From the tree above him rises
the treble of the thrush, pure as the song of angels; more pure, perhaps,
in tone, though neither so varied nor so rich as the song of the
nightingale. And there, in the next holly, is the nightingale himself;
now croaking like a frog, now talking aside to his wife, and now bursting
out into that song, or cycle of songs, in which if any man find sorrow,
he himself surely finds none. . . . In Nature there is nothing
melancholy.
_Prose Idylls_. 1866.
Notes of Character. June 18.
Without softness, without repose, and therefore without dignity.
_MS._
Our Blessed Dead. June 19.
Why should not those who are gone be actually nearer us, not farther from
us, in the heavenly world, praying for us, and it may be influencing and
guiding us in a hundred ways of which we, in our prison-house of
mortality, cannot dream? Yes! Do not be afraid to believe that he whom
you have lost is near you, and you near him, and both of you near God,
who died on the cross for you.
_Letters and Memories_. 1871.
Silent Influence. June 20.
Violence is not strength, noisiness is not earnestness. Noise is a sign
of want of faith, and violence is a sign of weakness.
By quiet, modest, silent, private influence we shall win. "Neither
strive nor cry nor let your voice be heard in the streets," was good
advice of old, and is still. I have seen many a movement succeed by it.
I have seen many a movement tried by the other method of striving and
crying and making a noise in the streets, but I have never seen one
succeed thereby, and never shall.
_Letters and Memories_. 1870.
Chivalry. June 21.
Some say that the age of chivalry is past. The age of chivalry is never
past as long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth, and a man or
woman left to say, "I will redress that wrong, or spend my life in the
attempt." The age of chivalry is never past as long as men have faith
enough in God to say, "God will help me to redress that wrong; or if not
me, surely He will help those that come after me. For His eternal will
is to overcome evil with good."
_Water of Life Sermons_. 1865.
Nature and Art. June 22.
When once you have learnt the beauty of little mossy banks, and tiny
leaves, and flecks of cloud, with what a fulness the glories of Claude,
or Ruysdael, or Berghem, will unfold themselves to you! You must know
Nature or you cannot know Art. And when you do know Nature you will only
prize Art for being like Nature.
_MS. Letter_. 1842.
Simple and Sincere. June 23.
There are those, and, thanks to Almighty God, they are to be numbered by
tens of thousands, who will not perplex themselves with questionings;
simple, genial hearts, who try to do what good they can in the world, and
meddle not with matters too high for them; people whose religion is not
abstruse but deep, not noisy but intense, not aggressive but laboriously
useful; people who have the same habit of mind as the early Christians
seem to have worn, ere yet Catholic truth had been defined in formulae,
when the Apostles' Creed was symbol enough for the Church, and men were
orthodox in heart rather than exact in head.
For such it is enough if a fellow-creature loves Him whom they love, and
serves Him whom they serve. Personal affection and loyalty to the same
unseen Being is to them a communion of saints both real and actual, in
the genial warmth of which all minor differences of opinion vanish. . . .
_Preface to Tauler's Sermons_. 1854.
God's Words. June 24.
Do I mean, then, that this or any text has nothing to do with us? God
forbid! I believe that every word of our Lord's has to do with us, and
with every human being, for their meaning is infinite, eternal, and
inexhaustible.
_MS. Letter_.
Taught by Failure. June 25.
So I am content to have failed. I have learned in the experiment
priceless truths concerning myself, my fellow-men, and the city of God,
which is eternal in the heavens, for ever coming down among men, and
actualising itself more and more in every succeeding age. I only know
that I know nothing, but with a hope that Christ, who is the Son of Man,
will tell me piecemeal, if I be patient and watchful, what I am and what
man is.
_Letters and Memories_. 1857.
Presentiments. June 26.
"I cannot deny," said Claude, "that such things as presentiments may be
possible. However miraculous they may seem, are they so very much more
so than the daily fact of memory? I can as little guess why we remember
the past, as why we may not at times be able to foresee the future." . .
.
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xxviii.
A thing need not be unreasonable--that is, contrary to reason--because it
is above and beyond reason, or, at least, our human reason, which at best
(as St. Paul says) sees as in a glass darkly.
_MS. Letter_. 1856.
Common Duties. June 27.
But after all, what is speculation to practice? What does God require of
us, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him? The
longer I live this seems to me more important, and all other questions
less so--if we can but live the simple right life--
Do the work that's nearest,
Though it's dull at whiles;
Helping, when we meet them,
Lame dogs over stiles.
_Letters and Memories_. 1857.
Lost and Found. June 28.
"My welfare? It is gone!"
"So much the better. I never found mine till I lost it."
_Hypatia_, chap. xxvii. 1852.
How to bear Sorrow. June 29.
I believe that the wisest plan is sometimes not to try to bear sorrow--as
long as one is not crippled for one's everyday duties--but to give way to
it utterly and freely. Perhaps sorrow is sent that we _may_ give way to
it, and in drinking the cup to the dregs, find some medicine in it
itself, which we should not find if we began doctoring ourselves, or
letting others doctor us. If we say simply, "I am wretched--I ought to
be wretched;" then we shall perhaps hear a voice, "Who made thee wretched
but God? Then what can He mean but thy good?" And if the heart answers
impatiently, "My good? I don't want it, I want my love;" perhaps the
voice may answer, "Then thou shalt have both in time."
_Letters and Memories_. 1871.
A certain Hope. June 30.
Let us look forward with quiet certainty of hope, day and night;
believing, though we can see but little day, that all this tangled web
will resolve itself into golden threads of twined, harmonious life,
guiding both us, and those we love, together, through this life to that
resurrection of the flesh, when we shall at last know the reality and the
fulness of life and love. Even so come, Lord Jesus!
_Letters and Memories_. 1844.
SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.
Whit Sunday.
Think of the Holy Spirit as a Person having a will of His own, who
breatheth whither He listeth, and cannot be confined to any feelings or
rules of yours or of any man's, but may meet you in the Sacraments or out
of the Sacraments, even as He will, and has methods of comforting and
educating you of which you will never dream; One whose will is the same
as the will of the Father and of the Son, even a good will.
_Discipline Sermons_.
Trinity Sunday.
Some things I see clearly and hold with desperate clutch. A Father in
heaven for all, a Son of God incarnate for all, and a Spirit of the
Father _and_ the Son--who works to will and to do of His own good
pleasure in every human being in whom there is one spark of active good,
the least desire to do right or to be of use--the Fountain of all good on
earth.
_Letters and Memories_.
JUNE 11.
St. Barnabas, Apostle and Martyr.
. . . Which is Love?
To do God's will, or merely suffer it?
. . . . .
No! I must headlong into seas of toil,
Leap far from self, and spend my soul on others.
For contemplation falls upon the spirit,
Like the chill silence of an autumn sun:
While action, like the roaring south-west wind,
Sweeps laden with elixirs, with rich draughts
Quickening the wombed earth.
_Saint's Tragedy_.
JUNE 21.
St. John the Baptist.
How shall we picture John the Baptist to ourselves? Great painters have
exercised their fancy upon his face, his figure, his actions. The best
which I can recollect is Guido's--of the magnificent lad sitting on the
rock, half clad in his camel's-hair robe, his stalwart hand lifted up to
denounce he hardly knows what, save that things are going all wrong,
utterly wrong to him--his beautiful mouth open to preach he hardly knows
what, save that he has a message from God, of which he is half conscious
as yet--that he is a forerunner, a prophet, a foreteller of something and
some one who is to come, and which is very near at hand. The wild rocks
are round him, the clear sky over him, and nothing more, . . . and he,
the noble and the priest, has thrown off--not in discontent and
desperation (for he was neither democrat nor vulgar demagogue), but in
hope and awe--all his family privileges, all that seems to make life
worth having; and there aloft and in the mountains, alone with God and
Nature, feeding on locusts and wild honey and clothed in skins, he, like
Elijah of old, preaches to a generation sunk in covetousness, party
spirit, and superstition--preaches what?--The most common--Morality. Ah,
wise politician! ah, clear and rational spirit, who knows and tells
others to do the duty which lies nearest to them! . . . who in the hour
of his country's deepest degradation had divine courage to say, our
deliverance lies, not in rebellion but in _doing right_.
_St. John the Baptist_,
_All Saints' Day Sermons_.
JUNE 29.
St. Peter, Apostle and Martyr.
God is revealed in the Crucified;
The Crucified must be revealed in me:--
I must put on His righteousness; show forth
His sorrow's glory; hunger, weep with Him;
Taste His keen stripes, and let this aching flesh
Sink through His fiery baptism into death.
_Saint's Tragedy_.
St. Peter, as he is drawn in the Gospels and the Acts, is a grand and
colossal human figure, every line and feature of which is full of meaning
and full of beauty to us.
_Sermons_, _Discipline_.
July.
It was a day of God. The earth lay like one great emerald, ringed and
roofed with sapphire: blue sea, blue mountain, blue sky overhead. There
she lay, not sleeping, but basking in her quiet Sabbath joy, as though
her two great sisters of the sea and air had washed her weary limbs with
holy tears, and purged away the stains of last week's sin and toil, and
cooled her hot worn forehead with their pure incense-breath, and folded
her within their azure robes, and brooded over her with smiles of pitying
love, till she smiled back in answer, and took heart and hope for next
week's weary work.
Heart and hope for next week's work.--That was the sermon which it
preached to Tom Thurnall, as he stood there alone, a stranger and a
wanderer like Ulysses of old: but, like him, self-helpful, cheerful, fate
defiant. He was more of a heathen than Ulysses--for he knew not what
Ulysses knew, that a heavenly guide was with him in his wanderings; still
less that what he called the malicious sport of fortune was, in truth,
the earnest education of a Father. . . . "Brave old world she is after
all," he said; "and right well made; and looks right well to-day in her
go-to-meeting clothes, and plenty of room and chance for a brave man to
earn his bread, if he will but go right on about his business, as the
birds and the flowers do, instead of peaking and pining over what people
think of him."
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xiv.
Nature and Grace. July 1.
God is the God of Nature as well as the God of Grace. For ever He looks
down on all things which He has made; and behold they are very good. And
therefore we dare to offer to Him in our churches the most perfect works
of naturalistic art, and shape them into copies of whatever beauty He has
shown us in man or woman, in cave or mountain-peak, in tree or flower,
even in bird or butterfly. But Himself? Who can see Him except the
humble and the contrite heart, to whom He reveals Himself as a Spirit to
be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and not in bread nor wood, nor
stone nor gold, nor quintessential diamond?
_Lecture on Grots and Groves_. 1871.
Love and Book-Learning. July 2.
I see more and more that the knowledge of one human being, such as love
alone can give, and the apprehension of our own private duties and
relations, is worth more than all the book-learning in the world.
_MS._
The Ancient Creeds. July 3.
Blessed and delightful it is when we find that even in these new ages the
Creeds, which so many fancy to be at their last gasp, are still the
finest and highest succour, not merely of the peasant and the outcast,
but of the subtle artist and the daring speculator. Blessed it is to
find the most cunning poet of our day able to combine the rhythm and
melody of modern times with the old truths which gave heart to the
martyrs at the stake, to see in the science and the history of the
nineteenth century new and living fulfilments of the words which we
learnt at our mother's knee!
_Miscellanies_. 1850.
A Master-Truth. July 4.
Every creature of God is good, if it be sanctified with prayer and
thanksgiving! This to me is the master-truth of Christianity, the
forgetfulness of which is at the root of almost all error. It seems to
me that it was to redeem man and the earth that Christ was made man and
used the earth!--that Christianity has never yet been pure, because it
never yet, since St. Paul's time, has stood on _this_ as the fundamental
truth, and that it has been pure or impure, just in proportion as it has
_practically_ and _really_ acknowledged this truth.
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
English Women. July 5.
Let those who will sneer at the women of England. We who have to do the
work and fight the battle of life know the inspiration which we derive
from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness--and, but too often,
from their compassion and their forgiveness. There is, I doubt not,
still left in England many a man with chivalry and patriotism enough to
challenge the world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a
cultivated British woman.
_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.
Life retouched again. July 6.
Even in the saddest woman's soul there linger snatches of old music,
odours of flowers long dead and turned to dust,--pleasant ghosts, which
still keep her mind attuned to that which may be in others, though in her
never more; till she can hear her own wedding-hymn re-echoed in the tones
of every girl who loves, and see her own wedding-torch re-lighted in the
eyes of every bride.
_Westward Ho_! chap. xxix.
Mystery of Life. July 7.
"All things begin in some wonder, and in some wonder end," said St.
Augustine, wisest in his day of mortal men. It is a strange thing, and a
mystery, how we ever got into this world; a stranger thing still to me
how we shall ever get out of this world again. Yet they are common
things enough--birth and death.
_Good News of God Sermons_.
Beauty of Life. July 8.
The Greeks were, as far as we know, the most beautiful race which the
world ever saw. Every educated man knows that they were the cleverest of
all nations, and, next to his Bible, thanks God for Greek literature. Now
the Greeks had made physical, as well as intellectual education a science
as well as a study. Their women practised graceful, and in some cases
even athletic exercises. They developed, by a free and healthy life,
those figures which remain everlasting and unapproachable models of human
beauty.
_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.