healthily tired with the revelry of summer, is composing herself, with a
quiet satisfied smile, for her winter's sleep. Sheets of dappled cloud
were sliding slowly from the west; long bars of hazy blue hung over the
southern chalk downs, which gleamed pearly gray beneath the low south-
eastern sun. In the vale below, soft white flakes of mist still hung
over the water meadows, and barred the dark trunks of the huge elms and
poplars, whose fast-yellowing leaves came showering down at every rustle
of the western breeze, spotting the grass below. The river swirled
along, glassy no more, but dingy gray with autumn rains and rotting
leaves. All beyond the garden told of autumn, bright and peaceful even
in decay; but up the sunny slope of the garden itself, and to the very
window-sill, summer still lingered. The beds of red verbena and geranium
were still brilliant, though choked with fallen leaves of acacia and
plane; the canary plant, still untouched by frost, twined its delicate
green leaves, and more delicate yellow blossoms, through the crimson lace-
work of the Virginia creeper; and the great yellow noisette swung its
long canes across the window, filling all the air with fruity fragrance.
_Two Years Ago_, chap. i.
Blessing of Daily Work. October 1.
Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do
that day which must be done whether you like it or not. Being forced to
work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-
control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a
hundred virtues which the idle will never know.
_Town and Country Sermons_. 1861.
The Forming Form. October 2.
As the acorn, because God has given it "a forming form," and life after
its kind, bears within it not only the builder oak but shade for many a
herd, food for countless animals, and at last the gallant ship itself,
and the materials of every use to which Nature or Art can put it, and its
descendants after it, throughout all time, so does every good deed
contain within itself endless and unexpected possibilities of other good,
which may and will grow and multiply for ever, in the genial light of Him
whose eternal mind conceived it, and whose eternal spirit will for ever
quicken it, with that life of which He is the Giver and the Lord.
_Preface to Tauler's Sermons_. 1854.
Special Providences. October 3.
And as for special Providences. I believe that every step I take, every
person I meet, every thought which comes into my mind--which is not
sinful--comes and happens by the perpetual Providence of God watching for
ever with Fatherly care over me, and each separate thing that He has
made.
_MS. Letter_.
Virtue. October 4.
Nothing, nothing can be a substitute for purity and virtue. Man will
always try to find substitutes for it. He will try to find a substitute
in superstition, in forms and ceremonies, in voluntary humility and
worship of angels, in using vain repetitions, and fancying he will be
heard for his much speaking; he will try to find a substitute in
intellect, and the worship of intellect and art and poetry, . . . but let
no man lay that flattering unction to his soul.
_Sermons on David_. 1866.
God-likeness. October 5.
"We can become like God--only in proportion as we are of use," said ---.
"I did not see this once. I tried to be good, not knowing what good
meant. I tried to be good, because I thought it would pay me in the
world to come. But at last I saw that all life, all devotion, all piety,
were only worth anything, only Divine, and God-like and God-beloved, as
they were means to that one end--to be of use."
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xix. 1856.
The Refiner's Fire. October 6.
"Not quite that," said Amyas. "He was a meeker man latterly than he used
to be. As he said himself once, a better refiner than any whom he had on
board had followed him close all the seas over, and purified him in the
fire. And gold seven times tried he was when God, having done His work
in him, took him home at last."
_Westward Ho_! chap. xiii.
The Prayer of Faith. October 7.
With the prayer of faith we can do anything. Look at Mark xi. 24--a text
that has saved more than one soul from madness in the hour of sorrow; and
it is so _simple_ and _wide_--wide as eternity, simple as light, true as
God Himself. If we are to do great things it must be in the spirit of
that text. Verily, when the Son of God cometh shall He find faith in the
earth?
_Letters and Memories_. 1843.
Mountain-Ranges. October 8.
We fancy there are many independent sciences, because we stand half-way
up on different mountain-peaks, calling to each other from isolated
stations. The mists hide from us the foot of the range beneath us, the
depths of primary analysis to which none can reach, or we should see that
all the peaks were but offsets of one vast mountain-base, and in their
inmost root but One! And the clouds which float between us and the
heaven shroud from us the sun-lighted caps themselves--the perfect issues
of synthetic science, on which the Sun of Righteousness shines with
undimmed lustre--and keep us from perceiving that the complete practical
details of our applied knowledge is all holy and radiant with God's
smile. And so, half-way up, on the hillside, beneath a cloudy sky, we
build up little earthy hill-cairns of our own petty synthesis, and fancy
them Babel-towers whose top shall reach to heaven!
_MS. Note-book_. 1843.
The Temper for Success in Life. October 9.
The men whom I have seen succeed best in life have always been cheerful
and hopeful men, who went about their business with a smile on their
faces, and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men,
facing rough and smooth alike as it came, and so found the truth of the
old proverb that "good times and bad times and all times pass over."
_MS._
Want of Simplicity. October 10.
Faith and prayer are simple things, . . . but when we begin to want
faith, and to assist prayer by our own inventions and to explain away
God's providence, then faith and prayer become intricate and uncertain.
We cannot serve God and mammon. We must either utterly depend on God
(and therefore on our own reason enlightened by His spirit after prayer),
or we must utterly depend on the empirical maxims of the world. Choose!
_MS. Letter_.
True Rest. October 11.
What is true rest? To rest from sin, from sorrow, from doubt, from care;
this is true rest. Above all, to rest from the worst weariness of
all--knowing one's duty and not being able to do it. That is true rest;
the rest of God who works for ever, and yet is at rest for ever; as the
stars over our heads move for ever, thousands of miles a day, and yet are
at perfect rest, because they move orderly, harmoniously, fulfilling the
law which God has given them. Perfect rest in perfect work; that surely
is the rest of blessed spirits till the final consummation of all things.
_Water of Life Sermons_. 1867.
God's Image. October 12.
. . . "Honour all men." Every man should be honoured as God's image, in
the sense in which Novalis says--that we touch Heaven when we lay our
hand on a human body! . . . The old Homeric Greeks, I think, felt that,
and acted up to it, more than any nation. The Patriarchs too seem to
have had the same feeling. . . .
_Letters and Memories_. 1843.
Woman's Work. October 13.
Let woman never be persuaded to forget that her calling is not the lower
and more earthly one of self-assertion, but the higher and diviner one of
self-sacrifice; and let her never desert that higher life which lives in
and for others, like her Redeemer and her Lord.
_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.
Self-Enjoyment. October 14.
"How do ye expect," said Sandy, "ever to be happy, or strong, or a man at
a', as long as ye go on only looking to enjoy yersel--_yersel_? Mony was
the year I looked for nought but my ain pleasure, and got it too, when it
was a'
"'Sandy Mackaye, bonny Sandy Mackaye,
There he sits singing the lang simmer day;
Lassies gae to him,
And kiss him, and woo him--
Na bird is so merry as Sandy Mackaye.'
An' muckle good cam' o't. Ye may fancy I'm talking like a sour,
disappointed auld carle. But I tell ye nay. I've got that's worth
living for, though I am downhearted at times, and fancy a's wrong, and
there's na hope for us on earth, we be a' sic liars--a' liars, I
think--I'm a great liar often mysel, especially when I'm praying."
_Alton Locke_, chap. vii.
Temptations of Temperament. October 15.
A man of intense sensibilities, and therefore capable, as is but too
notorious, of great crimes as well as of great virtues.
_Sermons on David_.
The more delicate and graceful the organisation, the more noble and
earnest the nature, the more certain it is, I fear, if neglected, to go
astray.
_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.
Egotism of Melancholy. October 16.
Morbid melancholy results from subjectivity of mind. The
self-contemplating mind, if it be a conscientious and feeling one, must
be dissatisfied with what it sees within. Then it begins unconsciously
to flatter itself with the idea that it is not the "_moi_" but the "_non
moi_," the world around, which is evil. Hence comes Manichaeism,
Asceticism, and that morbid tone of mind which is so accustomed to look
for sorrow that it finds it even in joy--because it will not confess to
itself that sorrow belongs to _sin_, and that sin belongs to _self_; and
therefore it vents its dissatisfaction on God's earth, and not on itself
in repentance and humiliation.
The world looks dark. Shall we therefore be dark too? Is it not our
business to bring it back to light and joy?
_MS. Letter_. 1843.
Poetry of Doubt. October 17.
The "poetry of doubt" of these days, however pretty, would stand us in
little stead if we were threatened by a second Armada.
_Miscellanies_. 1859.
Work of the Physician. October 18.
The question which is forcing itself more and more on the minds of
scientific men is not how many diseases _are_, but how few are _not_, the
consequences of men's ignorance, barbarism, folly, self-indulgence. The
medical man is felt more and more to be necessary in health as he is in
sickness, to be the fellow-workman not merely of the clergyman, but of
the social reformer, the political economist, and the statesman; and the
first object of his science to be prevention, and not cure.
_National Sermons_. 1851.
Love Many-sided. October 19.
There are many sides to love--admiration, reverence, gratitude, pity,
affection; they are all different shapes of that one great spirit of
love--the only feeling which will bind a man to do good, not once in a
way but habitually.
_National Sermons_. 1851.
The only Path to Light. October 20.
The path by which some come to see the Light, to find the Rock of Ages,
is the simple path of honest self-knowledge, self-renunciation,
self-restraint, in which every upward step towards right exposes some
fresh depth of inward sinfulness, till the once proud man, crushed down
by the sense of his own infinite meanness, becomes a little child once
more, and casts himself simply on the generosity of Him who made him. And
then there may come to him the vision, dim, perhaps, and fitting ill into
clumsy words, but clearer, surer, nearer to him than the ground on which
he treads, or than the foot which treads it--the vision of an Everlasting
Spiritual Substance, most Human and yet most Divine, who can endure; and
who, standing beneath all things, can make their spiritual substance
endure likewise, though all worlds and eons, birth and growth and death,
matter and space and time, should melt indeed--
And like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a rack behind.
_Preface to Tauler's Sermons_. 1854.
Proverbs False and True. October 21.
There is no falser proverb than that devil's beatitude, "Blessed is he
who expecteth nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." Say rather,
"Blessed is he who expecteth everything, for he enjoys everything once at
least, and if it falls out true, twice also."
_Prose Idylls_. 1857.
True Sisters of Mercy. October 22.
Ah! true Sisters of Mercy! whom the world sneers at as "old maids," if
you pour out on cats and dogs and parrots a little of the love that is
yearning to spend itself on children of your own. As long as such as you
walk this lower world one needs no Butler's _Analogy_ to prove to us that
there is another world, where such as you will have a fuller and a fairer
(I dare not say a juster) portion.
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xxv. 1856.
The Divine Fire. October 23.
Well spoke the old monks, peaceful, watching life's turmoil,
"Eyes which look heavenward, weeping still we see:
God's love with keen flame purges, like the lightning flash,
Gold which is purest, purer still must be."
_Saint's Tragedy_, Act iii. Scene i.
1847.
The Cross a Token. October 24.
Have patience, have faith, have hope, as thou standest at the foot of
Christ's Cross, and holdest fast to it, the anchor of the _soul_ and
_reason_, as well as of the _heart_. For, however ill the world may go,
or seem to go, the Cross is the everlasting token that God so loved the
world that He spared not His only-begotten Son, but freely gave Him for
it. Whatsoever else is doubtful, that at least is sure--that good must
conquer, because God is good, that evil must perish, because God hates
evil, even to the death.
_Westminster Sermons_. 1870.
The True Self-Sacrifice. October 25.
What can a man do more than _die_ for his countrymen?
_Live_ for them. It is a longer work, and therefore a more difficult and
a nobler one.
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xix. 1856.
Now as Then. October 26.
Men can be as original now as ever, if they had but the courage, even the
insight. Heroic souls in old times had no more opportunities than we
have; but they used them. There were daring deeds to be done then--are
there none now? Sacrifices to be made--are there none now? Wrongs to be
redrest--are there none now? Let any one set his heart in these days to
do what is right, and nothing else; and it will not be long ere his brow
is stamped with all that goes to make up the heroical expression--with
noble indignation, noble self-restraint, great hopes, great sorrows;
perhaps even with the print of the martyr's crown of thorns.
_Two Years Ago_, chap. vii. 1856.
One Anchor. October 27.
In such a world as this, with such ugly possibilities hanging over us
all, there is but one anchor which will hold, and that is utter trust in
God; let us keep that, and we may yet get to our graves without _misery_
though not without _sorrow_.
_Letters and Memories_. 1871.
Self-Control. October 28.
Settle it in your minds, young people, that the first and the last of all
virtues and graces which God can give is Self-Control, as necessary for
the saint and the sage lest they become fanatics and pedants, as for the
young in the hey-day of youth and health.
_Sermons on David_. 1866.
Nature's Permanence. October 29.
We abolish many things, good and evil, wisely and foolishly, in these
fast-going times; but, happily for us, we cannot abolish the blue sky,
and the green sea, and the white foam, and the everlasting hills, and the
rivers which flow out of their bosoms. They will abolish themselves when
their work is done, but not before. And we, who, with all our boasted
scientific mastery over Nature, are, from a merely mechanical and carnal
point of view, no more than a race of minute parasitic animals burrowing
in the fair Earth's skin, had better, instead of boasting of our empire
over Nature, take care lest we become too troublesome to Nature, by
creating, in our haste and greed, too many great black countries, and too
many great dirty warrens of houses, miscalled cities, peopled with
savages and imps of our own mis-creation; in which case Nature, so far
from allowing us to abolish her, will by her inexorable laws abolish us.
_MS. Presidential Address_. 1871.
The Only Refuge. October 30.
Prayer is the only refuge against the Walpurgis-dance of the witches and
the fiends, which at hapless moments whirl unbidden through a mortal
brain.
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xix. 1856.
England's Forgotten Worthies. October 31.
Among the higher-hearted of the early voyagers, the grandeur and glory
around them had attuned their spirits to itself and kept them in a lofty,
heroical, reverent frame of mind; while they knew as little about what
they saw in an "artistic" or "critical" point of view as in a scientific
one. . . . They gave God thanks and were not astonished. God was great:
but that they had discovered long before they came into the tropics.
Noble old child-hearted heroes, with just romance and superstition enough
about them to keep from that prurient hysterical wonder and enthusiasm
which is simply, one often fears, a product of our scepticism! We do not
trust enough in God, we do not really believe His power enough, to be
ready, as they were, as every one ought to be on a God-made earth, for
anything and everything being possible; and then when a wonder is
discovered we go into ecstasies and shrieks over it, and take to
ourselves credit for being susceptible of so lofty a feeling--true index,
forsooth, of a refined and cultivated mind!!
Smile if you will: but those were days (and there never were less
superstitious ones) in which Englishmen believed in the living God, and
were not ashamed to acknowledge, as a matter of course, His help, and
providence, and calling, in the matters of daily life, which we now, in
our covert atheism, term "secular and carnal."
_Westward Ho_! chap. xxiii.
SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.
OCTOBER 18.
St. Luke, Physician and Evangelist.
It is good to follow Christ in one thing and to follow Him utterly in
that. And the physician has set his mind to do one thing--to hate
calmly, but with an internecine hatred, disease and death, and to fight
against them to the end. In his exclusive care for the body the
physician witnesses unconsciously yet mightily for the soul, for God, for
the Bible, for immortality. Is he not witnessing for God when he shows
by his acts that he believes God to be a God of life, not of death; of
health, not of disease; of order, not of disorder; of joy and strength,
not of misery and weakness? Is he not witnessing for Christ when, like
Christ, he heals all manner of sickness and disease among the people, and
attacks physical evil as the natural foe of man and of the Creator of
man?
"_Water of Life_," _and other Sermons_.
OCTOBER 28.
St. Simon and St. Jude, Apostles and Martyrs.
He that loseth his life shall save it. The end and aim of our life is
not happiness but goodness. If goodness comes first, then happiness may
come after; but if not, something better than happiness may come, even
blessedness.
Oh! sad hearts and suffering! look to the Cross. There hung your King!
The King of sorrowing souls; and more, the King of Sorrows. Ay, pain and
grief, tyranny and desertion, death and hell,--He has faced them one and
all, and tried their strength and taught them His, and conquered them
right royally. And since He hung upon that torturing Cross sorrow is
divine,--godlike, as joy itself. All that man's fallen nature dreads and
despises God honoured on the Cross, and took unto Himself, and blest and
consecrated for ever. . . . And now--Blessed are tears and shame,
blessed are agony and pain; blessed is death, and blest the unknown
realms where souls await the Resurrection-day.
_National Sermons_.
November.
"The giant trees are black and still, the tearful sky is dreary gray. All
Nature is like the grief of manhood in its soft and thoughtful sternness.
Shall I lend myself to its influence, and as the heaven settles down into
one misty shroud of 'shrill yet silent tears,' as if veiling her shame in
a cloudy mantle, shall I, too, lie down and weep? Why not? for am I not
'a part of all I see'? And even now, in fasting and mortification, am I
not sorrowing for my sin and for its dreary chastisement? But shall I
then despond and die?
"No! Mother Earth, for then I were unworthy of thee and thy God! We may
weep, Mother Earth, but we have Faith--faith which tells us that above
the cloudy sky the bright clear sun is shining, and will shine. And we
have Hope, Mother Earth--hope, that as bright days have been, so bright
days soon shall be once more! And we have Charity, Mother Earth, and by
it we can love all tender things--ay, and all rugged rocks and dreary
moors, for the sake of the glow which _has_ gilded them, and the
fertility which will spring even from their sorrow. We will smile
through our tears, Mother Earth, for we are not forsaken! We have still
light and heat, and till we can bear the sunshine we will glory in the
shade!"
_MS._ 1842.
Sympathy of the Dead. November 1.
Believe that those who are gone are nearer us than ever; and that if (as
I surely believe) they do sorrow over the mishaps and misdeeds of those
whom they leave behind, they do not sorrow in vain. Their sympathy is a
further education for them, and a pledge, too, of help--I believe of
final deliverance--for those on whom they look down in love.
_Letters and Memories_. 1852.
Nature's Parable. November 2.
There is a devil's meaning to everything in nature, and a God's meaning
too. As I read nature's parable to-night I find nothing in it but hope.
What if there be darkness, the sun will rise to-morrow; what if there
seem chaos, the great organic world is still living and growing and
feeding, unseen by us all the night through; and every phosphoric atom
there below is a sign that in the darkest night there is still the power
of light, ready to flash out wherever and however it is stirred.
_Prose Idylls_. 1849.
Passing Onward. November 3.
Liturgies are but temporary expressions of the Church's heart. The Bible
is the immutable story of her husband's love. _She_ must go on from
grace to grace, and her song must vary from age to age, and her ancient
melodies become unfitted to express her feelings; but He is the same for
ever.
_MS._ 1842.
See how the autumn leaves float by decaying,
Down the wild swirls of the dark-brimming stream;
So fleet the works of men back to their earth again--
Ancient and holy things pass like a dream.
_A Parable_. 1848.
The Divine Intention. November 4.
I am superstitious enough, thank God, to believe that not a stone or a
handful of mud gravitates into its place without the will of God; that it
was ordained, ages since, into what particular spot each grain of gold
should be washed down from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man
might find it at a certain moment and crisis of his life.
_Science Lectures_.
Christ Weeping over Jerusalem. November 5.
That which is true of nations is true of individuals, of each separate
human brother of the Son of man. Is there one young life ruined by its
own folly--one young heart broken by its own wilfulness--or one older
life fast losing the finer instincts, the nobler aims of youth, in the
restlessness of covetousness, of fashion, of ambition? Is there one such
poor soul over whom Christ does not grieve? One to whom, at some supreme
crisis of their lives, He does not whisper--"Ah, beautiful organism--thou
too art a thought of God--thou too, if thou wert but in harmony with
thyself and God, a microcosmic _City of God_! Ah! that thou hadst
known--even thou--at least in this thy day--the things which belong to
thy peace"?
_MS. Sermon_. 1874.
Love Expansive. November 6.
The mystics think it wrong to love any created thing, because our whole
love should be given to God. But as flame increases by being applied to
many objects, so does love. He who loves God most loves God's creatures
most, and them for God's sake, and God for their sake.
_MS. Note-book_. 1843.
Still the same. November 7.
Those who die in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ do not really
taste death; to them there is no death, but only a change of place, a
change of state; they pass at once into some new life, with all their
powers, all their feelings, unchanged; still the same living, thinking,
active beings which they were here on earth. I say active. Rest they
may, rest they will, if they need rest. But what is true rest? Not
idleness, but peace of mind.
_Water of Life Sermons_. 1862.
An absolutely Good God. November 8.