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

    All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1871.

How to keep Passion-Week.  April 28

Can we go wrong if we keep our Passion-week as Christ kept His?  And how did He keep it?  Not by shutting Himself up apart, not by the mere thinking over the glory of self-sacrifice.  He taught daily in the temple; instead of giving up His work, He worked more earnestly than ever as the terrible end drew near.  Why should not we keep Passion-week, not by merely hiding in our closets to meditate even about Him, but by going about our work each in his place, dutifully, bravely, as Christ went?

    Town and Country Sermons.  1859.

Self-Sacrifice.  April 29

Without self-sacrifice there can be no blessedness either in earth or in heaven.  He that loveth his life will lose it.  He that hateth his life in this paltry, selfish, luxurious world shall keep it to life eternal.

    All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1870.

Help from our Blessed Dead.  April 30

And so with those who are Christ’s whom we love.  Partakers of His death, they are partakers of His resurrection.  Let us believe the blessed news in all its fulness, and be at peace.  A little while and we see them, and again a little while and we do not see them.  But why?  Because they are gone to the Father, to the Source and Fount of all life and power, all light and love, that they may gain life from His life, power from His power, light from His light, love from His love; and surely not for nought.  Surely not for nought.  For if they were like Christ on earth, and did not use their powers for themselves alone; if they are to be like Christ when they see Him as He is, then, more surely, will they not use their powers for themselves, but as Christ uses His, for those they love.

    MS. Sermon.  1866.

SAINTS’ DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.Passion-tide

From the earliest times the Cross has been the special sign of Christians.  St. Paul tells us his great hope, his great business, what God had sent him into the world to do, was this—to make people know the love of Christ; to look at Christ’s Cross, and take in its breadth and length and depth and height.

And what is the breadth of Christ’s Cross?  My friends, it is as broad as the whole world, for He died for the whole world; as it is written, “He is a propitiation not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.”  And that is the breadth of Christ’s Cross.

And what is the length of Christ’s Cross?  Long enough to last through all time.  As long as there is a sinner to be saved; as long as there is ignorance, sorrow, pain, death, or anything else which is contrary to God and hurtful to man in the universe of God, so long will Christ’s Cross last.  And that is the length of the Cross of Christ.

And how high is Christ’s Cross?  As high as the highest heaven, and the throne of God and the bosom of the Father—that bosom out of which for ever proceed all created things.  Ay, as high as the highest heaven; for, if you will receive it, when Christ hung upon the Cross heaven came down on earth, and earth ascended into heaven.  And that is the height of the Cross of Christ.

And how deep is the Cross of Christ?  This is a great mystery which people are afraid to look into, and darken it of their own will.  But if the Cross of Christ be as high as heaven, then it must be as deep as hell, deep enough to reach the deepest sinner in the deepest pit to which he may fall, for Christ descended into hell, and preached to the spirits in prison.  Let us hope, then, that is the depth of the Cross of Christ.

    “The Measure of the Cross,”
    Sermons (Good News of God).

Good Friday

Listen! and our God shall whisper, as we hang upon the cross, [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.]
“Children! love! and loving, faint not! great your glory, light your loss!
Ye are bound—ye may be loosed—I was nailed upon the tree,
Of the pangs I suffered for you—bear awhile a few for me!
Fear not, though the waters whelm you; fear not, though ye see no land!
Know ye not your God is with you, guiding with a Father’s hand?
Cords may wring, and winds may freeze you, shivering on the sullen sea,
Yet the life that burns within you liveth ever hid with Me!”

    MS.  1842.
Christ must suffer before He entered into His glory.  He must die before He could rise.  He must descend into hell before He could ascend into heaven.  For this is the law of God’s kingdom.  Without a Good Friday there can be no Easter Day.  Without self-sacrifice there can be no blessedness.

My Saviour!  My King!  Infinite, Eternal Love—alone of all beings devoid of self-love!  Glory be to Thee for Thy humiliation, for Thy Cross and Passion!

    MS.

Easter Even

Christ went down into hell and preached to the spirits in prison.  It is written that “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive;” and again, “When the wicked man turns from his wickedness he shall save his soul alive.”  And we know that in the same chapter God tells us that His ways are not unequal.  It is possible, therefore, that He has not one law for this life and another for the life to come.  Let us hope, then, that David’s words may be true after all, when, speaking by the Spirit of God, he says not only “if I ascend up to heaven, thou art there,” but “if I go down to hell, thou art there also.”

    MS. Sermon.

Easter Day

The Creed says, “I believe in the Resurrection of the flesh.”  I believe that we, each of us, as human beings, men and women, shall have a share in that glorious day; not merely as ghosts and disembodied spirits, but as real live human beings, with new bodies of our own, on a new earth, under a new heaven.  “Therefore,” David says, “my flesh shall rest in hope;” not merely my soul, my ghost, but my flesh.  For the Lord, who not only died but rose again with His body, shall raise our bodies according to His mighty working, and then the whole manhood of us—body, soul, and spirit—shall have our perfect consummation and bliss in His eternal and everlasting glory.

    National Sermons.

APRIL 25

St. Mark, Evangelist and Martyr

God’s apostles, saints, and martyrs are our spiritual ancestors.  They spread the Gospel into all lands, and they spread it, remember always, not only by preaching what they knew, but by being what they were.  Their characters, their personal histories, are as important to us as their writings.

    Sermons.

May

Is it merely a fancy that we are losing that love for Spring which among our old forefathers rose almost to worship?  That the perpetual miracle of the budding leaves and the returning song-birds awakes no longer in us the astonishment which it awoke yearly among the dwellers in the old world, when the sun was a god who was sick to death each winter, and returned in spring to life, and health, and glory; when Freya, the goddess of youth and love, went forth over the earth while the flowers broke forth under her tread over the brown moors, and the birds welcomed her with song?  To those simpler children of a simpler age winter and spring were the two great facts of existence; the symbols, the one of death, the other of life; and the battle between the two—the battle of the sun with darkness, of winter with spring, of death with life, of bereavement with love—lay at the root of all their myths and all their creeds.  Surely a change has come over our fancies!  The seasons are little to us now!

    Prose Idylls.

Past and Present.  May 1

Now see the young spring leaves burst out a-maying,
Fill with their ripening hues orchard and glen;
So though old forms pass by, ne’er shall their spirit die,
Look!  England’s bare boughs show green leaf again.

    Poems.  1849.

The Earth is the Lord’s.  May 2

The earth is holy!  Can there be a more glorious truth to carry out—one which will lead us more into all love and beauty and purity in heaven and earth?  One which must have God’s light of love shining on it at every step.  God gives us souls and bodies exquisitely attuned for this very purpose—the æsthetic faculty, our sensibilities to the beautiful.  All events of life, all the workings of our hearts, should point to this one idea.  As I walk the fields, the trees and flowers and birds, and the motes of rack floating in the sky, seem to cry to me: “Thou knowest us!  Thou knowest we have a meaning, and sing a heaven’s harmony by night and day!  Do us justice!  Spell our enigma, and go forth and tell thy fellows that we are their brethren, that their spirit is our spirit, their Saviour our Saviour, their God our God!”

    Letters and Memories.  1842.

The Great Question.  May 3

Is there a living God in the universe, or is there not?  That is the greatest of all questions.  Has our Lord Jesus Christ answered it, or has He not?

    Water of Life Sermons.  1866.