of an absolutely good God; good with all forms of goodness which you
respect and love in man; good, as you, and I, and every honest man,
understand the plain word good. Slowly you will acquire that grand and
all-illuminating idea; slowly and most imperfectly at best: for who is
mortal man that he should conceive and comprehend the goodness of the
infinitely good God! But see, then, whether, in the light of that one
idea, all the old-fashioned Christian ideas about the relation of God to
man--whether Providence, Prayer, Inspiration, Revelation, the
Incarnation, the Passion, and the final triumph of the Son of God--do not
seem to you, not merely beautiful, not merely probable, but rational, and
logical, and necessary, moral consequences from the one idea of an
Absolute and Eternal Goodness, the Living Parent of the universe?
_Westminster Sermons_. 1873.
Nature's Lesson. November 9.
Learn what feelings every object in Nature expresses, but do not let them
mould the tone of your mind; else, by allowing a melancholy day to make
you melancholy, you worship the creature more than the Creator.
_MS. Letter_. 1842.
Morals and Mind. November 10.
Not upon mind, not upon mind, but upon morals, is human welfare founded.
The true subjective history of man is not the history of his thought, but
of his conscience: the true objective history of man is not that of his
inventions, but of his vices and his virtues. So far from morals
depending upon thought, thought, I believe, depends on morals. In
proportion as a nation is righteous--in proportion as common justice is
done between man and man, will thought grow rapidly, securely,
triumphantly; will its discoveries be cheerfully accepted and faithfully
obeyed, to the welfare of the whole common weal.
_Inaugural Lecture_, _Cambridge_. 1860.
Fastidiousness. November 11.
Do not let us provoke God (though that is _really_ impossible) by
complaining of His gifts because they do not come just in the form _we_
should have wished. . . .
_MS. Letter_. 1844.
Unconscious Faith. November 12.
For the rest, Amyas never thought about thinking or felt about feeling;
and had no ambition whatsoever beyond pleasing his father and mother,
getting by honest means the maximum of "red quarrenders" and mazard
cherries, and going to sea when he was big enough. Neither was he what
would be nowadays called by many a pious child, for though he said his
Creed and Lord's Prayer night and morning, and went to service at the
church every forenoon, and read the day's Psalms with his mother every
evening, and had learnt from her and his father that it was infinitely
noble to do right and infinitely base to do wrong, yet he knew nothing
more of theology or of his own soul than is contained in the Church
Catechism.
_Westward Ho_! chap. i. 1855.
Silence. November 13.
There are silences more pathetic than all words.
_MS._
The Nineteenth Century. November 14.
. . . What so maddening as the new motion of our age--the rush of the
express train, when the live iron pants and leaps and roars through the
long chalk cutting, and white mounds gleam cold a moment against the sky
and vanish; and rocks and grass and bushes fleet by in dim blended lines;
and the long hedges revolve like the spokes of a gigantic wheel; and far
below meadows and streams and homesteads, with all their lazy old-world
life, open for an instant, and then flee away; while awestruck, silent,
choked with the mingled sense of pride and helplessness, we are swept on
by that great pulse of England's life-blood rushing down her iron veins;
and dimly out of the future looms the fulfilment of our primeval mission
to conquer and subdue the earth, and space too, and time, and all
things--even hardest of all tasks, yourselves, my cunning brothers; ever
learning some fresh lesson, except the hardest one of all, that it is the
Spirit of God which giveth you understanding?
Yes, great railroads, and great railroad age, who would exchange you,
with all your sins, for any other time? For swiftly as rushes matter,
more swiftly rushes mind; more swiftly still rushes the heavenly dawn up
the eastern sky. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." "Blessed
is the servant whom his Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching."
_Prose Idylls_.
Unreality. November 15.
Those who have had no real sorrows can afford to play with imaginary
ones.
_MS._
The indwelling Light. November 16.
The doctrine of Christ in every man, as the indwelling Word of God, the
Light who lights every one who comes into the world, is no peculiar tenet
of the Quakers, but one which runs through the whole of the Old and New
Testaments, and without which they would both be unintelligible, just as
the same doctrine runs through the whole history of the Early Church for
the first two centuries, and is the only explanation of them.
_Theologica Germanica_. 1854.
Woman's Calling. November 17.
What surely is a woman's calling but to teach man? and to teach him what?
To temper his fiercer, coarser, more self-assertive nature by the contact
of her gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice. To make him see that not by
blare of trumpets, not by noise, wrath, greed, ambition, intrigue,
puffery, is good and lasting work to be done on earth; but by wise self-
distrust, by silent labour, by lofty self-control, by that charity which
hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things; by such an
example, in short, as women now in tens of thousands set to those around
them; such as they will show more and more, the more their whole
womanhood is educated to employ its powers without waste and without
haste in harmonious unity.
_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.
Waste. November 18.
Thrift of the heart, thrift of the emotions--how are they wasted in these
days in reading sensation novels! while British literature--all that the
best hearts and intellects among our forefathers have bequeathed to us--is
neglected for light fiction, the reading of which is the worst form of
intemperance--dram-drinking and opium-eating, intellectual and moral.
_Lecture on Thrift_.
True Penance. November 19.
"Senor," said Brimblecombe, "the best way to punish oneself for doing ill
seems to me to go and do good; and the best way to find out whether God
means you well is to find out whether He will help you to do well."
_Westward Ho_! chap. xxv.
Political Economy of the Future. November 20.
I can conceive a time when, by improved chemical science, every foul
vapour which now escapes from the chimney of a manufactory, polluting the
air, destroying the vegetation, shall be seized, utilised, converted into
some profitable substance, till the black country shall be black no
longer, the streams once more crystal clear, the trees once more
luxuriant, and the desert, which man has created in his haste and greed,
shall in literal fact once more blossom as the rose. And just so can I
conceive a time when by a higher civilisation, formed on a political
economy more truly scientific, because more truly according to the will
of God, our human refuse shall be utilised like our material refuse; when
man as man, down to the weakest and most ignorant, shall be found (as he
really is) so valuable that it will be worth while to preserve his
health, to develop his capabilities, to save him alive, body, intellect,
and character, at any cost; because men will see that a man is, after
all, the most precious and useful thing on the earth, and that no cost
spent on the development of human beings can possibly be thrown away.
_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1870.
God's Pleasure. November 21.
The world was not made for man: but man, like all the world, was made for
God. Not for man's pleasure merely, not for man's use, but for God's
pleasure all things are, and for God's pleasure they were, created.
_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1869.
The Hospital Nurse. November 22.
Fearless, uncomplaining, she "trusted in God and made no haste." She did
her work and read her Bible; and read, too, again and again at stolen
moments of rest, a book which was to her as the finding of an unknown
sister--Longfellow's "Evangeline."
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xxviii.
Let us learn to look on hospitals not as acts of charity, supererogatory
benevolences of ours towards those to whom we owe nothing, but as
confessions of sin, and worthy fruits of penitence; as poor and late and
partial compensation for misery which _we_ might have prevented.
_National Sermons_. 1851.
No Work Lost. November 23.
If you lose heart about your work, remember that none of it is
_lost_--that the good of every good deed remains and breeds and works on
for ever, and that all that fails and is lost is the outside shell of the
thing, which, perhaps, might have been better done; but better or worse
has nothing to do with the real spiritual good which you have done to
men's hearts.
_Letters and Memories_. 1862.
True Temperance. November 24.
What we all want is inward rest; rest of heart and brain; the calm,
strong, self-contained, self-denying character, which needs no
stimulants, for it has no fits of depression; which needs no narcotics,
for it has no fits of excitement; which needs no ascetic restraints, for
it is strong enough to use God's gifts without abusing them; the
character, in a word, which is truly temperate, not in drink and food
merely, but in all desires, thoughts, and actions.
_Essays_. 1873.
A Present Veil. November 25.
What is there in this world worth having without religion? Do you not
feel that true religion, even in its most imperfect stage, is not merely
an escape from hell after death but the only _real state_ for a man--the
only position to live in in this world--the only frame of mind which will
give anything like happiness here. I cannot help feeling at moments--if
there were _no Christ_, everything, even the very flowers and insects,
and every beautiful object, would be hell _now_--dark, blank, hopeless.
_MS. Letter_. 1843.
Cowardice. November 26.
There is but one thing which you have to fear in earth or heaven--being
untrue to your better selves, and therefore untrue to God. If you will
not do the thing you know to be right, and say the thing you know to be
true, then indeed you are weak. You are a coward; you desert God.
_True Words for Brave Men_.
Blind Faith. November 27.
In Him--"The Father"--I can trust, in spite of the horrible things I see
happen, in spite of the fact that my own prayers are not answered. I
believe that He makes all things work together for the good of the human
race, and of me among the rest, as long as I obey His will. I believe He
will answer my prayer, not according to the letter, but according to the
spirit of it; that if I desire good, I shall find good, though not _the_
good I longed for.
_MS. Letter_. 1862.
Small and Great. November 28.
Begin with small things--you cannot enter into the presence of another
human being without finding there more to do than you or I or any soul
will ever learn to do perfectly before we die. Let us be content to do
little if God sets us little tasks. It is but pride and self-will which
says, "Give me something huge to fight and I shall enjoy that--but why
make me sweep the dust?"
_Letters and Memories_. 1854.
True and False. November 29.
We must remember that dissatisfaction at existing evil (the feeling of
all young and ardent minds), the struggle to escape from the
"circumstance" of the evil world, has a carnal counterfeit--the love of
novelty, and self-will, and self-conceit, which may thrust us down into
the abysses of misrule and uncertainty; as it has done such men as
Shelley and Byron; trying vainly every loophole, beating against the
prison bars of an imperfect system; neither degraded enough to make
themselves a fool's paradise within it, nor wise enough to escape from it
through Christ, "the door into the sheepfold," to return when they will,
and bring others with them into the serene empyrean of spiritual
truth--truth which explains, and arranges, and hallows, and subdues
everything.
_Letters and Memories_. 1842.
The Mind of Christ. November 30.
How can we attain to the blessed and noble state of mind--the mind of
Christ, who must needs be about His Father's business, which is doing
good? Only by prayer and practice. There is no more use in praying
without practising than there is in practising without praying. You
cannot learn to walk without walking; no more can you learn to do good
without trying to do good.
_Sermons for the Times_. 1855.
SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.
NOVEMBER 1.
All Saints' Day.
Commemoration of the Blessed Dead.
"If any man serve Me, him will My Father honour," said the Blessed One.
And if God honours His servants, shall not we honour them likewise? We
may not, as our forefathers did blindly, though lovingly, worship them as
mediators and lesser gods, and pray to them instead of to their Father in
heaven to whose throne of grace we may all come boldly through Christ
Jesus, or believe that their relics will work miracles in our behalf,
thus honouring the creature instead of the Creator. This we may not do,
but we may honour the Creator in His creature, and honour God in those
who have lived godly and God-like lives; and when they have passed away
from among us--souls endued by God with manifold virtues and precious
gifts of grace--we may give thanks and say, These, O God, are the fruits
of Thy Spirit. Thou honourest them in heaven with Thy approving smile.
We will honour them on earth, not merely with our lips, but in our lives.
What they were we too might be, if we were as true as they to the
inspiration of Thy Spirit. Help us to honour their memories, as Thou and
they would have us do, by following their example; by setting them before
us, and not only them, but every holy and noble personage of whom we have
ever heard, as dim likenesses of Christ--even as Christ is the likeness
of Thee. Amen.
_MS. Sermon_.
NOVEMBER 30.
St. Andrew, Apostle and Martyr.
Form your own notions about angels and saints in heaven--as you will, . .
. but bear this in mind: that if the saints in heaven live the
everlasting life, they must be living a life of usefulness, of love, and
of good works. The everlasting life cannot be a selfish, idle life,
spent only in individual happiness.
_Good News of God Sermons_.
December.
It chanced upon the merry, merry Christmas eve,
I went sighing past the Church across the moorland dreary:
"Oh! never sin and want and woe this earth will leave,
And the bells but mock the wailing sound, they sing so cheery.
How long, O Lord! how long before Thou come again?
Still in cellar and in garret, and on moorland dreary,
The orphans moan, and widows weep, and poor men toil in vain:
Till earth is sick of hope deferred, though Christmas bells be
cheery."
Then arose a joyous clamour from the wild-fowl on the mere,
Beneath the stars across the snow, like clear bells ringing,
And a voice within cried, "Listen! Christmas carols even here!
Though thou be dumb, yet o'er their work the stars and snows are
singing.
Blind! I live, I love, I reign, and all the nations through
With the thunder of my judgments even now are ringing;
Do thou fulfil thy work but as yon wild-fowl do,
Thou wilt heed no less the wailing, yet hear through it the angels'
singing."
_A Christmas Carol_.
The Final Victory. December 1.
I believe that the ancient creed, the eternal gospel, will stand and
conquer, and prove its might in this age, as it has in every other for
eighteen hundred years, by claiming and subduing and organising those
young anarchic forces which now, unconscious of their parentage, rebel
against Him to whom they owe their being.
_Yeast_, Preface. 1851.
Drifting away. December 2.
They drift away--Ah, God! they drift for ever.
. . . . . .
I watch them drift--the old familiar faces,
Till ghosts, not men, fill old beloved places.
. . . . . .
Shores, landmarks, beacons drift alike.
Yet overhead the boundless arch of heaven
Still fades to night, still blazes into day.
Ah, God! My God! _Thou_ wilt not drift away!
_A Fragment_. 1867.
Our Father. December 3.
Take your sorrows not to man, but to your Father in heaven. If that
name, Father, mean anything, it must mean that He will not turn away from
His wandering child in a way in which you would be ashamed to turn away
from yours. If there be pity, lasting affection, patience in _man_, they
must have come from Him. They, above all things, must be His likeness.
Believe that God possesses them a million times more fully than any human
being.
_Letters and Memories_.
Circumstance. December 4.
Our wanton accidents take root, and grow
To vaunt themselves God's laws, until our clothes,
Our gems, and gaudy books, and cushioned litters
Become ourselves, and we would fain forget
There live who need them not.
_Saint's Tragedy_, Act ii. Scene v.
1847.
Duty. December 5.
When a man has once said _honestly_ to himself, "It is my duty;" when
that glorious heavenly thought has risen upon his soul, like the sun upon
the earth, warming his heart and enlightening it, and making it bring
forth all good and noble fruits, then that man will feel a strength come
to him and a courage come from God which will conquer all his fears, his
selfish love of ease and pleasure, and enable him to bear pain and
poverty and death itself, provided he can do what is right, and be found
by God working His will where He has put him.
_Sermons_.
Humanity and the Bible. December 6.
He who has an intense perception of humanity must know that Christianity
is divine, because it is the only religion which has a perfect perception
of human relations, wants, and feelings. None but He who made the heart
could have written the Bible.
_MS. Note-book_. 1843.
Music. December 7.
There is music in heaven, because in music there is no self-will. Music
goes on certain laws and rules. Man did not make those laws of music, he
has only found them out, and if he be self-willed and break them, there
is an end of his music instantly; all he brings out is discord and ugly
sounds.
Music is fit for heaven. Music is a pattern and type of heaven, and of
the everlasting life of God which perfect spirits live in heaven; a life
of melody and order in themselves; a life of harmony with each other and
with God.
_Good News of God Sermons_. 1859.
Waiting. December 8.
Ay--stay awhile in peace. The storms are still.
Beneath her eider robe the patient earth
Watches in silence for the sun: we'll sit
And gaze up with her at the changeless heaven,
Until this tyranny be overpast.
_Saint's Tragedy_, Act iii. Scene iii.
1847.
True or False Toleration? December 9.
"One thing at least I have learnt," he said, "in all my experiments on
poor humanity--never to see a man do a wrong thing without feeling I
could do the same in his place. I used to pride myself on that once,
fool that I was, and call it comprehensiveness. I used to make it an
excuse for sitting by and seeing the devil have it all his own way, and
call that toleration. I will see now whether I cannot turn the said
knowledge to a better account, as common sense, patience, and charity,
and yet do work of which neither I nor my country need be ashamed."
_Two Years Ago_, chap. xxiii. 1856.
Success and Defeat. December 10.
In many things success at first is dangerous, and _defeat_ an excellent
medicine for testing people's honesty--for setting them honestly to work
to see what they want, and what are the best modes of attaining it. Our
sound thrashing, as a nation, in the first French war was the making of
our armies; and it is good for an idea, as well as for a man, to bear the
yoke in his youth.
_Lectures on Ancien Regime_. 1867.
Passing Emotions. December 11.
Beware of depending on your own _emotions_, which are often but the
fallings and risings of the frail flesh, and mistaking them for spiritual
feelings and affections!
* * * * *
Think less of what you _feel_--even of trying _to be_ anything. Look out
of yourself at God. Pray and praise, and God will give you His Spirit
often when you feel most dull.
_MS. Letter_. 1842.
Christ's Church. December 12.
. . . What a thought it is that there is a God! a Father, a King! a
Husband not of individuals, that is a Popish fancy, which the Puritans
have adopted--but of the Church--of collective humanity. Let us be
content to be members; let us be, if we may, the feet, lowest, hardest
worked, trodden on, bleeding, brought into harshest contact with the evil
world! Still we are members of Christ's Church! . . .
_Letters and Memories_. 1843.
Confound me not. December 13.
Have charity, have patience, have mercy. Never bring a human being,
however silly, ignorant, or weak, above all, any little child, to shame
and confusion of face. Never by petulance, by suspicion, by ridicule,
even by selfish and silly haste, never, above all, by indulging in the
devilish pleasure of a sneer, crush what is finest, and rouse up what is
coarsest in the heart of any fellow-creature.
_Westminster Sermons_. 1872.
The Divine Hunger and Thirst. December 14.
God grant us to be among "those who really hunger and thirst after
righteousness," and who therefore long to know what righteousness is,
that they may copy it--those who long to be freed not merely from the
punishment of sin after they die, but from sin itself while they live on
earth, and who therefore wish to know what sin is that they may avoid it.
_Preface to Tauler's Sermons_. 1854.
Religion or Godliness? December 15.
This is the especial curse of our day, that religion does not mean, as it
used, the service of God--the being like God and showing forth God's
glory. No, religion means nowadays the art of getting to heaven when we
die, and saving our own miserable souls, and getting God's wages without
doing God's work--as if that was godliness, as if that was anything but
selfishness, as if selfishness was any the better for being everlasting
selfishness!
_Village Sermons_. 1849.
Christ's Coming. December 16.
Christ may come to us when we are fierce and prejudiced, with that still
small voice--so sweet and yet so keen, "Understand those who
misunderstand thee. Be fair to those who are unfair to thee. Be just
and merciful to those whom thou wouldst like to hate. Forgive and thou
shalt be forgiven." He comes to us surely, when we are selfish and
luxurious, in every sufferer who needs our help, and says, "If you do
good to one of these, my brethren, you do it unto Me."
_Last Sermon_. _MS._ 1874.
God's Nature. December 17.
When will men open their eyes to the plain axiom that nothing is
impossible with God, save that He should transgress His own nature by
being unjust and unloving?
_Preface to Tauler_. 1854.
Educators of Men. December 18.
There are those who consider--and I agree with them--that the education
of boys under the age of twelve years ought to be entrusted, as much as
possible, to women. Let me ask--of what period of youth and manhood does
it not hold true? I pity the ignorance and conceit of the man who
fancies that he has nothing left to learn from cultivated women. I
should have thought that the very mission of woman was to be, in the
highest sense, the educator of man, from infancy to old age; that that
was the work towards which all the God-given capacities of women pointed.
_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.
The Earthly Body. December 19.
Let us remember that if the body does feel a burden now (as it must at
moments), what a happiness it is to have a body at all: how lonely, cold,
barren, would it be to be a "disembodied spirit." As St. Paul says, "Not
that we desire to be unclothed, but to be clothed upon"--to have a
spiritual, deathless, griefless life instilled into the body.
_MS. Letter_. 1842.
Home at Last. December 20.
When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown,
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there
You loved when all was young.
_The Water Babies_. 1862.
The Bible. December 21.
The hearts and minds of the sick, the poor, the sorrowing, the truly
human, all demand a living God who has revealed Himself in living acts; a
God who has taught mankind by facts, not left them to discover Him by
theories and sentiments; a Judge, a Father, a Saviour, an Inspirer; in a
word, their hearts demand the historic truth of the Bible--of the Old
Testament no less than the New.
_Sermons on Pentateuch_. 1863.
Shaking of Heaven and Earth. December 22.