Daily Thoughts: selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife

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, & FESTIVALSNOVEMBER 1All Saints’ DayCommemoration 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 30St. 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 4Our wanton accidents take root, and growTo vaunt themselves God’s laws, until our clothes,Our gems, and gaudy books, and cushioned littersBecome ourselves, and we would fain forgetThere 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 8Ay—stay awhile in peace.  The storms are still.Beneath her eider robe the patient earthWatches in silence for the sun: we’ll sitAnd 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 Régime.  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 20When 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

“Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but heaven” (Hebrews xii. 26-29).  This is one of the royal texts of Scripture.  It declares one of those great laws of the kingdom of God which may fulfil itself once and again at many eras and by many methods; which fulfilled itself most gloriously in the first century after Christ; again in the fifth century; again at the time of the Crusades; and again at the great Reformation in the sixteenth century,—and is fulfilling itself again at this very day.

Westminster Sermons.  1872.Self-Respect the Voice of God.  December 23

Never hurt any one’s self-respect.  Never trample on any soul, though it may be lying in the veriest mire; for that last spark of self-respect is as its only hope, its only chance; the last seed of a new and better life; the voice of God which still whispers to it, “You are not what you ought to be, and you are not what you can be.  You are still God’s child, still an immortal soul.  You may rise yet, and fight a good fight yet, and conquer yet, and be a man yet, after the likeness of God who made you, and Christ who died for you.”  Oh! why crush that voice in any heart?  If you do the poor creature is lost, and lies where he or she falls, and never tries to rise again.

Good News of God Sermons.  1859.Christmas Eve.  December 24

We will have no sad forebodings on the eve of the blessed Christmas-tide.  He lives, He loves, He reigns; and all is well; for we are His and He is ours.

Two Years Ago, Introduction.  1856.The Miracle of Christmas Night.  December 25

After the crowning miracle of this most blessed night all miracles are possible.  The miracle of Christmas night was possible because God’s love was absolute, infinite, unconquerable, able to condescend to anything that good might be done. . . .  This Christmas night is the one of all the year which sets a physicist on facing the fact of miracle, and which delivers him from the bonds of sense and custom by reminding him of God made Man.