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Daily Thoughts, a non-fiction book by Charles Kingsley |
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_ Title: Daily Thoughts selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife
Editor: Fanny Kingsley
_F. E. K._ _July_ 10, 1884.
Welcome, wild North-easter! _Ode to North-east Wind_.
New Year's Day. January 1. {3} _The Day of the Lord_. 1847.
The Nineteenth Century. January 2. Now, and at no other time: in this same nineteenth century lies our work. Let us thank God that we are here now, and joyfully try to understand _where_ we are, and what our work is _here_. As for all superstitions about "the good old times," and fancies that _they_ belonged to God, while this age belongs only to man, blind chance, and the evil one, let us cast them from us as the suggestions of an evil lying spirit, as the natural parents of laziness, pedantry, fanaticism, and unbelief. And therefore let us not fear to ask the meaning of this present day, and of all its different voices--the pressing, noisy, complex present, where our workfield lies, the most intricate of all states of society, and of all schools of literature yet known.
Let us forward. God leads us. Though blind, shall we be afraid to follow? I do not see my way: I do not care to: but I know that He sees His way, and that I see Him. _Letters and Memories_. 1848.
The Noble Life. January 4. _A Farewell_. 1856. Live in the present that you may be ready for the future. _MS._
God demands not _sentiment_ but _justice_. The Bible knows nothing of "the religious sentiments and emotions" whereof we hear so much talk nowadays. It speaks of _Duty_. "Beloved, if God so loved us, we _ought_ to love one another." _National Sermons_. 1851.
If thou art living a righteous and useful life, doing thy duty orderly and cheerfully where God has put thee, then thou in thy humble place art humbly copying the everlasting harmony and melody which is in heaven; the everlasting harmony and melody by which God made the world and all that therein is--and behold it was very good--in the day when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy over the new- created earth, which God had made to be a pattern of His own perfection. _Good News of God Sermons_. 1859.
Fear not. Christ has the keys of death and hell. He has been through them and is alive for evermore. Christ is the _first_, and was loving and just and glorious and almighty before there was any death or hell. And Christ is the _last_, and will be loving and just and glorious and almighty as ever, in that great day when all enemies shall be under His feet, and death shall be destroyed, and death and hell shall be cast into the lake of fire. _MS. Sermon_. 1857.
Here and there, among rich and poor, there are those whose heart and flesh, whose conscience and whose intellect, cry out for the _Living_ God, and will know no peace till they have found Him. For till then they can find no explanation of the three great human questions--Where am I? Whither am I going? What must I do? _Sermons on the Pentateuch_. 1862.
Of all the blessings which the study of Nature brings to the patient observer, let none, perhaps, be classed higher than this, that the farther he enters into those fairy gardens of life and birth, which Spenser saw and described in his great poem, the more he learns the awful and yet comfortable truth, that they do not belong to him, but to One greater, wiser, lovelier than he; and as he stands, silent with awe, amid the pomp of Nature's ever-busy rest, hears as of old, The Word of the "Lord God walking among the trees of the garden in the cool of the day." _Glaucus_. 1855.
Oh! Love! Love! Love! the same in peasant and in peer! The more honour to you, then, old Love, to _be_ the same thing in this world which _is_ common to peasant and to peer. They say that you are blind, a dreamer, an exaggerator--a liar, in short! They just know nothing about you, then. You will not see people as they seem--as they have become, no doubt; but why? Because you see them as they ought to be, and are in some deep way eternally, in the sight of Him who conceived and created them! _Two Years Ago_, chap. xiv. 1856.
We must live nobly to love nobly. _MS._
Never was the young Abbot heard to speak harshly of any human being. "When thou hast tried in vain for seven years," he used to say, "to convert a sinner, then only wilt thou have a right to suspect him of being a worse man than thyself." That there is a seed of good in all men, a divine word and spirit striving with all men, a gospel and good news which would turn the hearts of all men, if abbots and priests could but preach it aright, was his favourite doctrine, and one which he used to defend, when at rare intervals he allowed himself to discuss any subject, from the writings of his favourite theologian, Clement of Alexandria. Above all, Abbot Philamon stopped by stern rebuke any attempt to revile either heretics or heathens. "On the Catholic Church alone," he used to say, "lies the blame of all heresy and unbelief; for if she were but for one day that which she ought to be, the world would be converted before nightfall." _Hypatia_, chap. xxx. 1852.
Watch against any fallacies in your ideas which may arise, not from disingenuousness, but from allowing yourself in moments of feeling to think vaguely, and not to attach precise meaning to your words. Without any cold caution of expression, it is a duty we owe to God's truth, and to our own happiness and the happiness of those around us, to think and speak as correctly as we can. Almost all heresy, schism, and misunderstandings, between either churches or individuals who ought to be one, have arisen from this fault of an involved and vague style of thought.
The Possession of Faith. January 14. I don't want to possess a faith, I want a faith which will possess me.
The Eternal Life. January 15. Eternally, and for ever, in heaven, says St. John, Christ says and is and does what prophets prophesied of Him that He would say and be and do. "I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the bright Morning Star. And let him that is athirst, come: and whosoever will, let him take of the Water of Life freely." For ever Christ calls to every anxious soul, every afflicted soul, to every man who is ashamed of himself, and angry with himself, and longs to live a gentler, nobler, purer, truer, and more useful life, "Come, and live for ever the eternal life of righteousness, holiness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, which is the one true and only salvation bought for us by the precious blood of Christ our Lord." Amen. _Water of Life Sermons_. 1865
Ah, glorious twenty-one, with your inexhaustible powers of doing and enjoying, eating and hungering, sleeping and sitting up, reading and playing! Happy are those who still possess you, and can take their fill of your golden cup, steadied, but not saddened, by the remembrance that for all things a good and loving God will bring them to judgment! Happier still those who (like a few) retain in body and soul the health and buoyancy of twenty-one on to the very verge of forty, and, seeming to grow younger-hearted as they grow older-headed, can cast off care and work at a moment's warning, laugh and frolic now as they did twenty years ago, and say with Wordsworth-- _Two Years Ago_, chap. xix. 1856.
If a man is busy, and busy about his duty, what more does he require for time or for eternity? _Chalk Stream Studies_. 1856.
. . . Would you be humble, daughter? . . . Let thyself die-- _Saint's Tragedy_, Act ii. Scene vi.
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful. Beauty is God's handwriting--a way-side sacrament; welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower, and thank Him for it, who is the Fountain of all loveliness, and drink it in simply and earnestly with all your eyes; it is a charmed draught, a cup of blessing. _True Words to Brave Men_. 1844.
With Christianity came in the thought that domination meant responsibility, that responsibility demanded virtue. The words which denoted Rank came to denote, likewise, high moral excellencies. The _nobilis_, or man who was known, and therefore subject to public opinion, was bound to behave nobly. The gentle-man--gentile-man--who respected his own gens, or family, or pedigree, was bound to be gentle. The courtier who had picked up at court some touch of Roman civilisation from Roman ecclesiastics was bound to be courteous. He who held an "honour," or "edel" of land, was bound to be honourable; and he who held a "weorthig," or "worthy," thereof, was bound himself to be worthy. _Lectures on Ancien Regime_. 1866.
A merely indulgent God would be an unjust God, and a cruel God likewise. If God be just, as He is, then He has boundless pity for those who are weak, but boundless wrath for the strong who misuse the weak. Boundless pity for those who are ignorant, misled, and out of the right way; but boundless wrath for those who mislead them and put them out of the right way. _Discipline Sermons_. 1867.
It is such utterances as these which have given for now many hundred years their priceless value to the little Book of Psalms ascribed to the shepherd outlaw of the Judean hills, which have sent the sound of his name into all lands throughout all the world. Every form of human sorrow, doubt, struggle, error, sin--the nun agonising in the cloister; the settler struggling for his life in Transatlantic forests; the pauper shivering over the embers in his hovel and waiting for kind death; the man of business striving to keep his honour pure amid the temptations of commerce; the prodigal son starving in the far country and recollecting the words which he learnt long ago at his mother's knee; the peasant boy trudging afield in the chill dawn and remembering that the Lord is his Shepherd, therefore he will not want--all shapes of humanity have found, and will find to the end of time, a word said here to their inmost hearts. . . . _Sermons on David_. 1866.
Death, beautiful, wise, kind Death, when will you come and tell me what I want to know? I courted you once and many a time, brave old Death, only to give rest to the weary. That was a coward's wish--and so you would not come. . . . I was not worthy of you. And now I will not hunt you any more, old Death. Do you bide your time, and I mine. . . . Only when you come, give me not rest but work. Give work to the idle, freedom to the chained, sight to the blind! _Two Years Ago_, chap. xv. 1856.
Safe! There is no safety but from God, and that comes by prayer and faith. _Hypatia_. 1852.
I believe that the union of those who have loved here will in the next world amount to perfect identity, that they will look back on the expressions of affection here as mere meagre strugglings after and approximation to the union which then will be perfect. Perfect! _Letters and Memories_. 1842.
A friend once won need never be lost, if we will be only trusty and true ourselves. Friends may part, not merely in body, but in spirit, for a while. In the bustle of business and the accidents of life, they may lose sight of each other for years; and more, they may begin to differ in their success in life, in their opinions, in their habits, and there may be, for a time, coldness and estrangement between them, but not for ever if each will be trusty and true. For then they will be like two ships who set sail at morning from the same port, and ere night-fall lose sight of each other, and go each on its own course and at its own pace for many days, through many storms and seas, and yet meet again, and find themselves lying side by side in the same haven when their long voyage is past. _Water of Life Sermons_.
Night and Morning. January 27. It is morning somewhere or other now, and it will be morning here again to-morrow. "Good times and bad times and all times pass over." I learnt that lesson out of old Bewick's Vignettes, and it has stood me in good stead this many a year. _Two Years Ago_, chap. i. 1856.
Communion with the Blessed Dead. January 28. Shall we not recollect the blessed dead above all in Holy Communion, and give thanks for them there--at that holy table at which the Church triumphant and the Church militant meet in the communion of saints? Where Christ is they are; and, therefore, if Christ be there, may not they be there likewise? May not they be near us though unseen? like us claiming their share in the eternal sacrifice, like us partaking of that spiritual body and blood which is as much the life of saints in heaven as it is of penitent sinners on earth? May it not be so? It is a mystery into which we will not look too far. But this at least is true, that they are with Him where He is. _MS. Sermon_.
The Great Law. January 29. True rest can only be attained as Christ attained it, through labour. True glory can only be attained in earth or heaven through self-sacrifice. Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; whosoever will lose his life shall save it. _All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1870.
The Coming Kingdom. January 30. There is a God-appointed theocracy promised to us, and which we must wait for, when all the diseased and false systems of this world shall be swept away, and Christ's feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, and the twelve apostles shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel! All this shall come, and blessed is that servant whom his Lord when He cometh shall find ready! All this we shall not see before we die, but we shall see it when we rise in the perfect material and spiritual ideal, in the kingdom of God! _Letters and Memories_.
Christ's Coming. January 31. Christ may come to us when our thoughts are cleaving to the ground, and ready to grow earthy of the earth--through noble poetry, noble music, noble art--through aught which awakens once more in us the instinct of the true, the beautiful, and the good. He may come to us when our souls are restless and weary, through the repose of Nature--the repose of the lonely snow-peak and of the sleeping forest, of the clouds of sunset and of the summer sea, and whisper Peace. Or He may come, as He comes on winter nights to many a gallant soul--not in the repose of Nature, but in her rage--in howling storm and blinding foam and ruthless rocks and whelming surge--and whisper to them even so--as the sea swallows all of them which _it_ can take--of calm beyond, which this world cannot give and cannot take away. And therefore let us say in utter faith, Come as Thou seest best--but in whatsoever way Thou comest, Even so come, Lord Jesus. Amen. _Last Sermon_. _MS._ 1874. _ |
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