mind. It only expresses the broad natural childish emotions, which are
just what we want to return to from our over subtlety. Study "natural
language"--I mean the language of attitude. It is an inexhaustible
source of knowledge and delight, and enables one human being to
understand another so perfectly. Therefore learn to draw and paint
figures.
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
True Civilisation. July 9.
Civilisation with me shall mean--not more wealth, more finery, more self-
indulgence, even more aesthetic and artistic luxury--but more virtue,
more knowledge, more self-control, even though I earn scanty bread by
heavy toil.
_Lecture on Ancient Civilisation_. 1874.
The Church. July 10.
"The Church is a very good thing, and I keep to mine," said Captain
Willis, "having served under her Majesty and her Majesty's forefathers,
and learned to obey orders, I hope; but don't you think, sir, you're
taking it as the Pharisees took the Sabbath Day?"
"How then?"
"Why, as if man was made for the Church, and not the Church for man."
_Two Years Ago_, chap. ii. 1856.
What does God ask? July 11.
What is this strange thing, without which even the true knowledge of
doctrine is of no use? without which either a man or a nation is poor,
and blind, and wretched, and naked in soul, notwithstanding all his
religion? Isaiah will tell, "Wash you, make you clean, saith the Lord.
Do justice to the fatherless, relieve the widow." Church-building and
church-going are well, but they are not repentance. Churches are not
souls. I ask for your hearts, and you give me fine stones and fine
words. I want souls, I want _your_ souls.
_National Sermons_. 1851.
Work or Want. July 12.
Remember that we are in a world where it is not safe to sit under the
tree and let the ripe fruit drop into your mouth; where the "competition
of species" works with ruthless energy among all ranks of being, from
kings upon their thrones to the weed upon the waste; where "he that is
not hammer is sure to be anvil;" and "he who will not work neither shall
he eat."
_Ancien Regime_. 1867.
True Insight. July 13.
It is easy to see the spiritual beauty of Raffaelle's Madonnas, but it
requires a deeper and more practised, all-embracing, loving, simple
spirituality, to see the same beauty in the face of a worn-out, painful,
peasant woman haggling about the price of cottons.
Form and colour are but the vehicle for the spirit-meaning. In the
"spiritual body" I fancy they will both be united _with_ the meaning--all
and every part and property of man and woman instinct with spirit!
_MS._ 1843.
Retribution inevitable. July 14.
Know this--that as surely as God sometimes punishes wholesale, so surely
is He always punishing in detail. By that infinite concatenation of
moral causes and effects, which makes the whole world one mass of special
Providences, every sin of ours will punish itself, and probably punish
itself in kind. Are we selfish? We shall call out selfishness in
others. Do we neglect our duty? Then others will neglect their duty to
us. Do we indulge our passions? Then others who depend on us will
indulge theirs, to our detriment and misery.
_All Saints' Day Sermons_.
Antinomies. July 15.
Spiritual truths present themselves to us in "antinomies," apparently
contradictory pairs, pairs of poles, which, however, do not really
contradict, or even limit, each other, but are only correlatives, the
existence of the one making the existence of the other necessary,
explaining each other, and giving each other a real standing ground and
equilibrium. Such an antinomic pair are, "He that loveth not knoweth not
God," and "If a man hateth not his father and mother he cannot be My
disciple."
_Letters and Memories_. 1848.
False Refinement. July 16.
God's Word, while it _alone_ sanctifies rank and birth, says to all
_equally_, "Ye are brethren, _work_ for each other." Let us then be
above rank, and look at men as men, and women as women, and all as God's
children. There is a "refinement" which is the invention of that sensual
mind, which looks only at the outward and visible sign.
_MS. Letter_. 1843.
Music's Meaning. July 17.
Some quick music is inexpressibly mournful. It seems just like one's own
feelings--exultation and action, with the remembrance of past sorrow
wailing up, yet without bitterness, tender in its shrillness, through the
mingled tide of present joy; and the notes seem thoughts--thoughts pure
of words; and a spirit seems to call to me in them and cry, "Hast thou
not felt all this?" And I start when I find myself answering
unconsciously, "Yes, yes, I know it all! Surely we are a part of all we
see and hear!" And then, the harmony thickens, and all distinct sound is
pressed together and absorbed in a confused paroxysm of delight, where
still the female treble and the male bass are distinct for a moment, and
then one again--absorbed into each other's being--sweetened and
strengthened by each other's melody. . . .
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
Vagueness of Mind. July 18.
By allowing vague inconsistent habits of mind, almost persuaded by every
one you love, when you are capable by one decided act of _leading_ them,
you may be treading blindfold a terrible path to your own misery.
_MS. Letter_. 1842.
A Faith for Daily Life. July 19.
That is not faith, to see God only in what is strange and rare; but this
is faith, to see God in what is most common and simple, to know God's
greatness not so much from disorder as from order, not so much from those
strange sights in which God seems (but only seems) to break His laws, as
from those common ones in which He fulfils His laws.
_Town and Country Sermons_.
Charms of Monotony. July 20.
I delight in that same monotony. It saves curiosity, anxiety,
excitement, disappointment, and a host of bad passions. It gives a man
the blessed, invigorating feeling that he is at home; that he has roots
deep and wide struck down into all he sees, and that only the Being who
can do nothing cruel or useless can tear them up. It is pleasant to look
down on the same parish day after day, and say I know all that is
beneath, and all beneath know me. It is pleasant to see the same trees
year after year, the same birds coming back in spring to the same shrubs,
the same banks covered by the same flowers.
_Prose Idylls_. 1857.
How to attain. July 21.
If our plans are not for time but for eternity, our knowledge, and
therefore our love to God, to each other, to everything, will progress
for ever. And the attainment of this heavenly wisdom requires neither
ecstacy nor revelation, but prayer and watchfulness, and observation, and
deep and solemn thought.
Two great rules for its attainment are simple enough--Never forget what
and where you are, and grieve not the Holy Spirit, for "If a man will do
God's will he shall know of the doctrine."
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
The Divine Discontent. July 22.
I should like to make every one I meet discontented with themselves; I
should like to awaken in them, about their physical, their intellectual,
their moral condition, that divine discontent which is the parent first
of upward aspiration and then of self-control, thought, effort to fulfil
that aspiration even in part. For to be discontented with the divine
discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and
first upgrowth of all virtue.
_Lecture on Science of Health_. 1872.
Dra et labora. July 23.
"Working is praying," said one of the holiest of men. And he spoke
truth; if a man will but do his work from a sense of duty, which is for
the sake of God.
_Sermons_.
Distrust and Anarchy. July 24.
Over the greater part of the so-called civilised world is spreading a
deep distrust, a deep irreverence of every man towards his neighbour, and
a practical unbelief in every man whom you do see, atones for itself by a
theoretic belief in an ideal human nature which you do not see. Such a
temper of mind, unless it be checked by that which alone can check it,
namely, the grace of God, must tend towards sheer anarchy. There is a
deeper and uglier anarchy than any mere political anarchy,--which the
abuse of the critical spirit leads to,--the anarchy of society and of the
family, the anarchy of the head and of the heart, which leaves poor human
beings as orphans in the wilderness to cry in vain, "What can I know?
Whom can I love?"
_The Critical Spirit_. 1871.
A Future Life of Action. July 25.
Why need we suppose that heaven is to be one vast lazy retrospect? Why
is not eternity to have action and change, yet both like God, compatible
with rest and immutability? This earth is but one minor planet of a
minor system. Are there no more worlds? Will there not be incident and
action springing from these when the fate of this world is decided? Has
the evil one touched this alone? Is it not self-conceit which makes us
think the redemption of this earth the one event of eternity?
_Letters_. 1842.
An Ideal Aristocracy. July 26.
We may conceive an Utopia governed by an aristocracy that should be
really democratic, which should use, under developed forms, that method
which made the mediaeval priesthood the one great democratic institution
of old Christendom; bringing to the surface and utilising the talents and
virtues of all classes, even the lowest.
_Lectures on Ancien Regime_. 1867.
Our Weapons. July 27.
God, who has been very good to us, will be more good, if _we allow Him_!
Worldly-minded people think they can manage so much better than God. We
must _trust_. Our weapons must be prayer and faith, and our only
standard the Bible. As soon as we leave these weapons and take to
"knowledge of the world," and other people's clumsy prejudices as our
guides, we must inevitably be beaten by the World, which knows how to use
its own arms better than we do. What else is meant by becoming as a
little child?
_MS. Letter_. 1843.
Uneducated Women. July 28.
Take warning by what you see abroad. In every country where the women
are uneducated, unoccupied; where their only literature is French novels
or translations of them--in every one of those countries the women, even
to the highest, are the slaves of superstition, and the puppets of
priests. In proportion as women are highly educated, family life and
family secrets are sacred, and the woman owns allegiance and devotion to
no confessor or director, but to her own husband or her own family.
_Lecture on Thrift_. 1860.
Pardon and Cure. July 29.
After the forgiveness of sin must come the cure of sin. And that cure,
like most cures, is a long and a painful process.
But there is our comfort, there is our hope--Christ the great Healer, the
great Physician, can deliver us, and will deliver us, from the remains of
our old sins, the consequences of our own follies. Not, indeed, at once,
or by miracle, but by slow education in new and nobler motives, in purer
and more unselfish habits.
_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1861.
Eternal Law. July 30.
The eternal laws of God's providence are still at work, though we may
choose to forget them, and the Judge who administers them is the same
yesterday, to-day, and for ever, even Jesus Christ the Lord, the
Everlasting Rock, on which all morality and all society is founded.
Whosoever shall fall on that Rock, in repentance and humility, shall
indeed be broken, but of him it is written, "A broken and a contrite
heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise."
_Discipline and other Sermons_. 1866.
God's Mercy or Man's? July 31.
"He fought till he could fight no more, and then died like a hero, with
all his wounds in front; and may God have mercy on his soul."
"That last was a Popish prayer, Master Frank," said old Mr. Carey.
"Most worshipful sir, you surely would not wish God _not_ to have mercy
on his soul?"
"No--Eh? Of course not, for that's all settled by now, for he is dead,
poor fellow!"
"And you can't help being a little fond of him still?"
"Eh? Why, I should be a brute if I were not. Fond of him? why, I would
sooner have given my forefinger than that he should have gone to the
dogs."
"Then, my dear sir, if _you_ feel for him still, in spite of all his
faults, how do you know that God may not feel for him in spite of all his
faults? For my part," said Frank, in his fanciful way, "without
believing in that Popish purgatory, I cannot help holding with Plato that
such heroical souls, who have wanted but little of true greatness here,
are hereafter, by strait discipline, brought to a better mind."
_Westward Ho_! chap. v. 1854.
The Chrysalis State.
You ask, "What is the Good?" I suppose God Himself is the Good; and it
is this, in addition to a thousand things, which makes me feel the
absolute certainty of a resurrection, and a hope that this, our present
life, instead of being an ultimate one, which is to decide our fate for
ever, is merely some sort of chrysalis state in which man's faculties are
so narrow and cramped, his chances (I speak of the millions, not of
units) of knowing the Good so few, that he may have chances hereafter,
perhaps continually fresh ones, to all eternity.
_Letters and Memories_. 1852.
SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.
JULY 25.
St. James, Apostle and Martyr.
And they will know his worth
Years hence . . .
And crown him martyr; and his name will ring
Through all the shores of earth, and all the stars
Whose eyes are sparkling through their tears to see
His triumph, Preacher and Martyr. . .
. . . . .
. . . It is over; and the woe that's dead,
Rises next hour a glorious angel.
_Santa Maura_.
August.
"I cannot tell what you say, green leaves,
I cannot tell what you say;
But I know that there is a spirit in you,
And a word in you this day.
"I cannot tell what ye say, rosy rocks,
I cannot tell what ye say;
But I know that there is a spirit in you,
And a word in you this day.
"I cannot tell what ye say, brown streams,
I cannot tell what ye say;
But I know, in you too, a spirit doth live,
And a word in you this day."
"Oh! rose is the colour of love and youth,
And green is the colour of faith and truth,
And brown of the fruitful clay.
The earth is fruitful and faithful and young,
And her bridal morn shall rise erelong,
And you shall know what the rocks and streams
And the laughing green woods say."
_Dartside_, _August_ 1849.
Sight and Insight. August 1.
Do the work that's nearest,
Though it's dull at whiles,
Helping, when you meet them,
Lame dogs over stiles;
See in every hedgerow
Marks of angels' feet,
Epics in each pebble
Underneath our feet.
_The Invitation_. 1857.
Genius and Character. August 2.
I have no respect for genius (I do not even acknowledge its existence)
where there is no strength and steadiness of character. If any one
pretends to be more than a man he must begin by proving himself a man at
all.
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xv.
Nature's Student. August 3.
The perfect naturalist must be of a reverent turn of mind--giving Nature
credit for an inexhaustible fertility and variety, which will keep him
his life long, always reverent, yet never superstitious; wondering at the
commonest, but not surprised by the most strange; free from the idols of
sense and sensuous loveliness; able to see grandeur in the minutest
objects, beauty in the most ungainly: estimating each thing not carnally,
as the vulgar do, by its size, . . . but spiritually, by the amount of
Divine thought revealed to him therein. . . .
_Glaucus_. 1855.
The Masses. August 4.
Though permitted evils should not avenge themselves by any political
retribution, yet avenge themselves, if unredressed, they surely will.
They affect masses too large, interests too serious, not to make
themselves bitterly felt some day. . . . We may choose to look on the
masses in the gross as objects for statistics--and of course, where
possible, for profits. There is One above who knows every thirst, and
ache, and sorrow, and temptation of each slattern, and gin-drinker, and
street-boy. The day will come when He will require an account of these
neglects of ours--not in the gross.
_Miscellanies_. 1851.
We sit in a cloud, and sing like pictured angels,
And say the world runs smooth--while right below
Welters the black, fermenting heap of life
On which our State is built.
_Saint's Tragedy_, Act ii. Scene v.
Love and Knowledge. August 5.
He who has never loved, what does he know?
_MS._
Siccum Lumen. August 6.
How shall I get true knowledge? Knowledge which will be really useful,
really worth knowing. Knowledge which I shall know accurately and
practically too, so that I can use it in daily life, for myself and
others? Knowledge too, which shall be clear knowledge, not warped or
coloured by my own fancies, passions, prejudices, but pure and calm and
sound; Siccum Lumen, "Dry Light," as the greatest of philosophers called
it of old.
To all such who long for light, that by the light they may live, God
answers through His only begotten Son: "Ask and ye shall receive, seek
and ye shall find."
_Westminster Sermons_. 1873.
This World. August 7.
What should the external world be to those who truly love, but the garden
in which they are placed, not so much for sustenance or enjoyment of
themselves and each other, as to dress it and to keep it--_it_ to be
their subject-matter, not they its tools! In this spirit let us pray
"Thy kingdom come."
_MS._ 1842.
The Life of the Spirit. August 8.
The old fairy superstition, the old legends and ballads, the old
chronicles of feudal war and chivalry, the earlier moralities and
mysteries--these fed Shakespeare's youth. Why should they not feed our
children's? That inborn delight of the young in all that is marvellous
and fantastic--has that a merely evil root? No, surely! it is a most
pure part of their spiritual nature; a part of "the heaven which lies
about us in our infancy;" angel-wings with which the free child leaps the
prison-walls of sense and custom, and the drudgery of earthly life. It
is a God-appointed means for keeping alive what noble Wordsworth calls
those
". . . . obstinate questionings,
. . . . . .
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised."
_Introductory Lecture_, _Queen's College_.
1848.
A Quiet Depth. August 9.
The deepest affections are those of which we are least conscious--that
is, which produce least _startling_ emotion, and most easy and
involuntary practice.
_MS._ 1843.
Acceptable Sacrifices. August 10.
Every time we perform an act of kindness to any human being, ay, even to
a dumb animal; every time we conquer our worldliness, love of pleasure,
ease, praise, ambition, money, for the sake of doing what our conscience
tells us to be our duty,--we are indeed worshipping God the Father in
spirit and in truth, and offering Him a sacrifice which He will surely
accept for the sake of His beloved Son, by whose Spirit all good deeds
and thoughts are inspired.
_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1871.
Chivalry. August 11.
Chivalry; an idea which, perfect or imperfect, God forbid that mankind
should ever forget till it has become the possession--as it is the God-
given right--of the poorest slave that ever trudged on foot; and every
collier lad shall have become
"A very gentle, perfect knight."
_Lectures on Ancien Regime_. 1867.
God waits for Man. August 12.
Patiently, nobly, magnanimously, God waits; waits for the man who is a
fool, to find out his own folly; waits for the heart that has tried to
find pleasure in everything else, to find out that everything else
disappoints, and to come back to Him, the fountain of all wholesome
pleasure, the well-spring of all life, fit for a man to live.
God condescends to wait for His creature; because what He wants is not
His creature's fear, but His creature's love; not only his obedience, but
his heart; because He wants him not to come back as a trembling slave to
his master, but as a son who has found out at last what a father he has
still left him, when all beside has played him false. Let him come back
thus.
_Discipline and other Sermons_.
Thrift. August 13.
The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much work as
possible done with the least expenditure of power, the least jar and
obstruction, the least wear and tear. And the secret of thrift is
knowledge. In proportion as you know the laws and nature of a subject,
you will be able to work at it easily, surely, rapidly, successfully,
instead of wasting your money or your energies in mistaken schemes,
irregular efforts, which end in disappointment and exhaustion.
_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.
Revelations. August 14.
Only second-rate hearts and minds are melancholy. When we become like
little children, our very playfulness tells that we are _seeing deep_,
when we see that God is love in His _works_ as well as in Himself, and we
look at Nature as a baby does, as a beautiful mystery which we scarcely
wish to solve. And therefore deep things, which the intellect in vain
struggles after, will reveal themselves to us.
_MS._ 1842.
Christ comes in many ways. August 15.
Often Christ comes to us in ways in which the world would never recognise
Him--in which perhaps neither you nor I shall recognise _Him_; but it
will be enough, I hope, if we but hear His message, and obey His gracious
inspiration, let Him speak through whatever means He will. He may come
to us by some crisis in our life, either for sorrow or for bliss. He may
come to us by a great failure; by a great disappointment--to teach the
wilful and ambitious soul that not in _that_ direction lies the path of
peace; or He may come in some unexpected happiness to teach that same
soul that He is able and willing to give abundantly beyond all that we
can ask or think.
_MS. Sermon_. 1874.
Lesson of the Cross. August 16.
On the Cross God has sanctified suffering, pain, and sorrow, and made
them holy; as holy as health and strength and happiness are.
_National Sermons_. 1851.
The Ideal Unity. August 17.
"Oh, make us one." All the world-generations have but one voice! "How
can we become One? at harmony with God and God's universe! Tell us this,
and the dreary, dark mystery of life, the bright, sparkling mystery of
life, the cloud-chequered, sun-and-shower mystery of life, is solved! for
we shall have found one home and one brotherhood, and happy faces will
greet us wherever we move, and we shall see God! see Him everywhere, and
be ready to wait for the Renewal, for the Kingdom of Christ perfected! We
came from Eden, all of us: show us how we may return, hand in hand,
husband and wife, parent and child, gathered together from the past and
the future, from one creed and another, and take our journey into a far
country, which is yet this earth--a world-migration to the heavenly
Canaan, through the Red Sea of Death, back again to the land which was
given to our forefathers, and is ours even now, could we but find it!"
_Letters and Memories_. 1843.
Body and Soul. August 18.
The mystics considered the soul, _i.e._ the intellect, as the "_moi_" and
the body as the "_non moi_;" and this idea that the body is not _self_,
is the fundamental principle of mysticism and asceticism, and
diametrically opposed to the whole doctrines and practice of Scripture.
Else why is there a resurrection of the body? and why does the Eucharist
"preserve our body and soul to everlasting life?"
_MS._ 1843.
Childlikeness. August 19.
If you wish to be "a little child," study what a little child could
understand--Nature; and do what a little child could do--love. Feed on
Nature. It will digest itself. It did so when you were a little child
the first time.
Keep a common-place book, and put into it not only facts and thoughts,
but observations on form, and colour, and nature, and little sketches,
even to the form of beautiful _leaves_. They will all have their charm .
. . all do their work in consolidating your ideas. Put everything into
it. . . .
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
Inspiration. August 20.
Every good deed comes from God. His is the idea, His the inspiration,
and His its fulfilment in time; and therefore no good deed but lives and
grows with the everlasting life of God Himself.
_MS._
Lifting of the Veil. August 21.
I seldom pass those hapless loungers who haunt every watering-place
without thinking sadly how much more earnest, happier, and better men and
women they might be if the veil were but lifted from their eyes, and they
could learn to behold that glory of God which is all around them like an
atmosphere, while they, unconscious of what and where they are, wrapt up
each in his little selfish world of vanity and interest, gaze lazily
around them at earth, sea, and sky--