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

Letters and Memories.  1858.Redemption.  December 26

All things are blessed now, but sin; for all things, excepting sin, are redeemed by the life and death of the Son of God.  Blessed are wisdom and courage, joy and health and beauty, love and marriage, childhood and manhood, corn and wine, fruit and flowers, for Christ redeemed them by His life. . . .  Blessed is death, and blest the unknown realms where souls await the Resurrection Day, for Christ redeemed them by His death.  Blessed are all days, dark as well as bright, for all are His, and He is ours; and all are ours, and we are His for ever.

National Sermons.  1848.Fellow-workers with Christ.  December 27

To abolish the superstition, the misrule, the vice, the misery of this world.  That is what Christ will do in the day when He has put all enemies under His feet.  That is what Christ has been doing, step by step, ever since that day when first He came to do His Father’s will on earth in great humility.  Therefore, that is what we must do, each in our place and station, if we be indeed His subjects, fellow-workers with Him in the improvement of the human race, fellow-soldiers with Him in the battle against evil.

All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1867.The bright Pathway.  December 28

There is a healthy ferment of mind in which one struggles through chaos and darkness, by means of a few clues and threads of light—and—of one great bright pathway, which I find more and more to be the only escape from infinite confusion and aberration, the only explanation of a thousand human mysteries—I mean the Incarnation of our Lord—the fact that there really is—a God-Man!

MS. Letter.  1844.New Worship.  December 29

Blessed, thrice blessed, is it to find that hero-worship is not yet passed away! that the heart of man still beats young and fresh; that the old tales of David and Jonathan, Damon and Pythias, Socrates and Alcibiades, Shakespeare and his nameless friend, of love “passing the love of woman,” ennobled by its own humility, deeper than death and mightier than the grave, can still blossom out, if it be but in one heart here and there, to show man still how, sooner or later, “he that loveth knoweth God, for God is love.”

Miscellanies.  1850.Links in the Chain.  December 30

The heart will cry out at times, Oh! blissful future!  Oh, dreary present!  But let us not repine.  What is dreary need not be barren.  Nothing need be barren to those who view all things in their real light, as links in the great chain of progression both for themselves and for the Universe.  To us all Time should seem so full of life: every moment the grave and the father of unnumbered events and designs in heaven and earth, and the mind of our God Himself—all things moving smoothly and surely in spite of apparent checks and disappointments towards the appointed end.

Letters and Memories.  1844.Past, Present, Future.  December 31

Surely as the years pass on they ought to have made us better, more useful, more worthy.  We may have been disappointed in our lofty ideas of what ought to be done, but we may have gained more clear and practical notions of what can be done.  We may have lost in enthusiasm, and yet gained in earnestness.  We may have lost in sensibility, yet gained in charity, activity, and power.  We may be able to do far less, and yet what we do may be far better done.  And our very griefs and disappointments—have they been useless to us?  Surely not.  We shall have gained instead of lost by them if the Spirit of God has been working in us.  Our sorrows will have wrought in us patience, our patience experience, and that experience hope—hope that He who has led us thus far will lead us farther still, that He who has taught us in former days precious lessons—not only by sore temptations but most sacred joys—will teach us in the days to come fresh lessons by temptations, which we shall be more able to endure; and by joys which, though unlike those of old times, are no less sacred, but sent as lessons to our souls by Him from whom all good gifts come.

Water of Life Sermons.

Out of God’s boundless bosom, the fount of life, we came; through selfish, stormy youth, and contrite tears—just not too late; through manhood, not altogether useless; through slow and chill old age, we return whence we came, to the bosom of God once more—to go forth again, it may be, with fresh knowledge and fresh powers, to nobler work.  Amen.

The Air Mothers.  1869.SAINTS’ DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALSDECEMBER 21St. Thomas, Apostle and Martyr

The spirits of just men made perfect, freed from the fetters of the gross animal body, and now somewhere in that boundless universe in which this earth is but a tiny speck, doing God’s will as they longed to do it on earth, with clearer light, fuller faith, deeper love, mightier powers of usefulness!  Ah, that we were like unto them!

All Saints’ Day and other Sermons.DECEMBER 25Christmas DayThank God, that One was born, at this same time,Who did our work for us: we’ll talk of Him:We shall go mad with thinking of ourselves—We’ll talk of Him, and of that new-made star,Which, as He stooped into the Virgin’s side,From off His finger, like a signet-gem,He dropped in the empyrean for a sign.But the first tear He shed at this His birth-hour,When He crept weeping forth to see our woe,Fled up to Heaven in mist, and hid for everOur sins, our works, and that same new-made star. Saint’s Tragedy, Act iv. Scene iv.DECEMBER 26St. Stephen, the Martyr

These are the holy ones—the heroes of mankind, the elect, the aristocracy of grace.  They are those who carry the palm branch of triumph, who have come out of great tribulation, who have dared and fought and suffered for God and truth and right; who have resisted unto blood, striving against sin.  What should easy-going folk like you and me do but place ourselves with all humility, if but for an hour, where we can look afar off upon our betters, and see what they are like and what they do.

All Saints’ Day and other Sermons.DECEMBER 27St. John, Apostle and Evangelist

And what do they do, these blessed beings?  They longed for, toiled for, it may be died for, the true, the beautiful, and the good; they entered while on earth into the mystery and glory of self-sacrifice, and now they find their bliss in gazing on the one perfect and eternal sacrifice, and rejoicing in the thought that it is the cause and ground of the whole universe, even the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

All Saints’ Day and other Sermons.DECEMBER 28Holy Innocents’ Day

Christ comes to us in many ways.  But most surely does Christ come to us, and often most happily, and most clearly does He speak to us—in the face of a little child, fresh out of heaven.  Ah, let us take heed that we despise not one of these little ones, lest we despise our Lord Himself.  For as often as we enter into communion with little children, so often does Christ come to us.  So often, as in Judæa of old, does He take a little child and set him in the midst of us, that from its simplicity, docility, and trust—the restless, the mutinous, and the ambitious may learn the things which belong to their peace—so often does He say to us, “Except ye be changed and become as this little child, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.  Take my yoke upon you and learn of me.  For I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”

MS. Last Sermon, Westminster Abbey, Nov. 30, 1874.

1

The paper edition of this book has blank pages where the owner can write diary notes, etc.  This is why the page numbers in the eText often miss out numbers.—DP.

2

Lines written under a pen and ink drawing of a stormy shoreless sea, with two human beings lashed to a cross floating on the crest of the waves.