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

This little Volume, selected from the MS. Note-books, Sermons and Private Letters, as well as from the published Works of my Husband, is dedicated to our children, and to all who feel the blessing of his influence on their daily life and thought.

July 10, 1884.

January

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.

Live in the present that you may be ready for the future.

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.”

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.

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.

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?

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.”

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!

We must live nobly to love nobly.

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.”

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.

I don’t want to possess a faith, I want a faith which will possess me.

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.

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—

If a man is busy, and busy about his duty, what more does he require for time or for eternity?

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.

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.

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.

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. . . .

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!

Safe!  There is no safety but from God, and that comes by prayer and faith.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Since we gave up at the Reformation the superstitious practice of praying to the saints, Saints’ Days have sunk—and, indeed, sunk too much—into neglect.  We forget too often still, that though praying to any saint or angel, or other created being, is contrary both to reason and Scripture, yet it is according to reason and to Scripture to commemorate them.  That is, to remember them, to study their characters, and to thank God for them,—both for the virtues He bestowed on them, and the example which He has given us in them.

On this day the Lord Jesus was first shown to the Gentiles.  The word Epiphany means “showing.”  The Wise Men were worshippers of the true God, though in a dim confused way; and they had learnt enough of what true faith, true greatness was, not to be staggered and fall into unbelief when they saw the King of the Jews laid, not in a palace, but in a manger, tended by a poor village maiden.  And therefore God bestowed on them the great honour that they first of all—Gentiles—should see the glory and the love of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  God grant that they may not rise up against us in the Day of Judgment and condemn us!  They had but a small spark, a dim ray, of the Light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world; but they were more faithful to that little than many of us, who live in the full sunshine of the Gospel, with Christ’s Spirit, Christ’s Sacraments, Christ’s Churches,—means of grace and hopes of glory of which they never dreamed.

How did St. Paul look on his past life?  There is no sentimental melancholy in him.  He is saved, and he knows it.  He is an Apostle, and he stands boldly on his dignity.  He is cheerful, hopeful, joyful.  And yet, when he speaks of the past, it is with noble shame and sorrow that he calls himself the chief of sinners, not worthy to be called an Apostle, because he persecuted the Church of Christ.  What he is, he will not deny; what he was, he will not forget; lest he should forget that in him, that is, in his flesh—his natural character—dwelleth no good thing; lest he should forget that the good which he does, he does not, but Christ which dwelleth in him; lest he should grow careless, puffed up, self-indulgent; lest he should neglect to subdue his evil passions; and so, after preaching to others, himself become a castaway.

February

The first and last business of every human being, whatever his station, party, creed, capacities, tastes, duties, is morality; virtue, virtue, always virtue.  Nothing that man will ever invent will absolve him from the universal necessity of being good as God is good, righteous as God is righteous, holy as God is holy.

God has not only made things beautiful; He has made things happy; whatever misery there is in the world there is no denying that.  Misery is the exception; happiness is the rule.  No rational man ever heard a bird sing without feeling that the bird was happy, and that if God made that bird He made it to be happy, and He takes pleasure in its happiness, though no human ear should ever hear its song, no human heart should ever share in its joy.

God grant that the day may come when in front of the dwellings of the poor we may see real fountains—not like the drinking-fountains, useful as they are, which you see here and there about the streets, with a tiny dribble of water to a great deal of expensive stone, but real fountains, which shall leap, and sparkle, and plash, and gurgle, and fill the place with life and light and coolness; and sing in the people’s ears the sweetest of all earthly songs—save the song of a mother over her child—the song of “The Laughing Water.”

Strive all your life to free men from the bondage of custom and self, the two great elements of the world that lieth in wickedness.

There comes a time when we must narrow our sphere of thought much, that we may truly enlarge it! we must, artificialised as we have been, return to the rudiments of life, to children’s pleasures, that we may find easily, through their transparent simplicity, spiritual laws which we may apply to the more intricate spheres of art and science.

The Lord’s Prayer teaches that we are members of a family, when He tells us to pray not “My Father” but “Our Father;” not “my soul be saved,” but “Thy kingdom come;” not “give me” but “give us our daily bread;” not “forgive me,” but “forgive us our trespasses,” and that only as we forgive others; not “lead me not,” but “lead us not into temptation;” not “deliver me,” but “deliver us from evil.”  After that manner our Lord tells us to pray, and in proportion as we pray in that manner, just so far, and no farther, will God hear our prayers.

All the deep things of God are bright, for God is Light.  God’s arbitrary will and almighty power may seem dark by themselves though deep, but that is because they do not involve His moral character.  Join them with the fact that He is a God of mercy as well as justice; remember that His essence is love, and the thunder-cloud will blaze with dewy gold, full of soft rain and pure light.

Science is, I verily believe, like virtue, its own exceeding great reward.  I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom—panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life in the tropic forest—Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of, some law, or even mere hint of a law, explaining one fact: but explaining with it a thousand more, connecting them all with each other and with the mighty whole, till order and meaning shoots through some old chaos of scattered observations.  Is not that a joy, a prize, which wealth cannot give nor poverty take away?  What it may lead to he knows not.  Of what use it may be he knows not.  But this he knows, that somewhere it must lead, of some use it will be.  For it is a truth.