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

Our Father.  May 4

Look at those thousand birds, and without our Father not one of them shall fall to the ground; and art thou not of more value than many sparrows—thou for whom God sent His Son to die? . . .  Ah! my friend, we must look out and around to see what God is like.  It is when we persist in turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over our own imperfections, that we learn to make a god after our own image, and fancy that our own hardness and darkness are the patterns of His light and love.

    Hypatia, chap. xi.

Want of Sympathy.  May 5

If we do not understand our fellow-creatures we shall never love them.  And it is equally true, that if we do not love them we shall never understand them.  Want of charity, want of sympathy, want of good feeling and fellow-feeling—what does it, what can it breed but endless mistakes and ignorances, both of men’s characters and men’s circumstances?

    Westminster Sermons.  1873.

A Religion.  May 6

If all that a man wants is “a religion,” he ought to be able to make a very pretty one for himself, and a fresh one as often as he is tired of the old.  But the heart and soul of man wants more than that; as it is written, “My soul is athirst for God, even for the living God.”  I want a living God, who cares for men, forgives men, saves men from their sins: and Him I have found in the Bible, and nowhere else, save in the facts of life which the Bible alone interprets.

    Sermons on the Pentateuch.  1863.

True Civilisation.  May 7

Do the duty which lies nearest to you; your duty to the man who lives next door, and to the man who lives in the next street.  Do your duty to your parish, that you may do your duty by your country and to all mankind, and prove yourselves thereby civilised men.

    Water of Life Sermons.  1866.

Nature and Grace.  May 8

Why speak of the God of Nature and the God of grace as two antithetical terms?  The Bible never in a single instance makes the distinction, and surely if God be the eternal and unchangeable One, and if all the universe bears the impress of His signet, we have no right, in the present infantile state of science, to put arbitrary limits of our own to the revelation which He may have thought good to make of Himself in Nature.  Nay, rather, let us believe that if our eyes were opened we should fulfil the requirement of genius and see the universal in the particular by seeing God’s whole likeness, His whole glory, reflected as in a mirror in the meanest flower, and that nothing but the dulness of our simple souls prevents them from seeing day and night in all things the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilling His own saying, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”

    Glaucus.  1855.

Wisdom the Child of Goodness.  May 9

Goodness rather than talent had given her a wisdom, and goodness rather than courage a power of using that wisdom, which to those simple folk seemed almost an inspiration.

    Two Years Ago, chap. ii.  1857.

Rule of Life.  May 10

Two great rules for the attainment of heavenly wisdom are simple enough—“Never forget what and where you are,” and “Grieve not the Holy Spirit.”

    MS. Letter.  1841.

Music the Speech of God.  May 11

Music—there is something very wonderful in music.  Words are wonderful enough, but music is more wonderful.  It speaks not to our thoughts as words do, it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls.  Music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble feelings into us; it melts us to tears, we know not how; it is a language by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words; just as divine, just as blessed.  Music has been called the speech of angels; I will go farther, and call it the speech of God Himself.

The old Greeks, the wisest of all the heathen, made a point of teaching their children music, because, they said, it taught them not to be self-willed and fanciful, but to see the beauty of order, the usefulness of rule, the divineness of law.

    Good News of God Sermons.  1859.

Facing Realities.  May 12

The only comfort I can see in the tragedies of war is that they bring us all face to face with the realities of human life, as it has been in all ages, giving us sterner and yet more loving, more human, and more divine thoughts about ourselves, and our business here, and the fate of those who are gone, and awakening us out of the luxurious, frivolous, and unreal dream (full nevertheless of hard judgments) in which we have been living so long, to trust in a living Father who is really and practically governing this world and all worlds, and who willeth that none should perish.

    Letters and Memories.  1855.

Street Arabs.  May 13

One has only to go into the streets of any great city in England to see how we, with all our boast of civilisation, are yet but one step removed from barbarism.  Is that a hard word?  Only there are the barbarians round us at every street corner—grown barbarians, it may be, now all but past saving, but bringing into the world young barbarians whom we may yet save, for God wishes us to save them. . . .  Do not deceive yourselves about the little dirty, offensive children in the street.  If they be offensive to you, they are not to Him who made them.  “Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, their angels do always behold the face of your Father which is in heaven.”

    All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1871.

Fellowship of Sorrow.  May 14

How was He,
The blessed One, made perfect?  Why, by grief—
The fellowship of voluntary grief—
He read the tear-stained book of poor men’s souls,
As we must learn to read it.  Lady! lady!
Wear but one robe the less—forego one meal—
And thou shalt taste the core of many tales,
Which now flit past thee, like a minstrel’s songs,
The sweeter for their sadness.

    Saint’s Tragedy, Act ii. Scene v.
    1847.

Heaven and Hell.  May 15

Heaven and hell—the spiritual world—are they merely invisible places in space which may become visible hereafter? or are they not rather the moral world of right and wrong?  Love and righteousness—is not that the heaven itself wherein God dwells?  Hatred and sin—is not that hell itself, wherein dwells all that is opposed to God?

    Water of Life Sermons.

The Awfulness of Life.  May 16

Our hearts are dull, and hard, and light, God forgive us! and we forget continually what an earnest, awful world we live in—a whole eternity waiting for us to be born, and a whole eternity waiting to see what we shall do now we are born.  Yes, our hearts are dull, and hard, and light.  And therefore Christ sends suffering on us, to teach us what we always gladly forget in comfort and prosperity—what an awful capacity of suffering we have; and more, what an awful capacity of suffering our fellow-creatures have likewise. . . .

We sit at ease too often in a fool’s paradise, till God awakens us and tortures us into pity for the torture of others.  And so, if we will not acknowledge our brotherhood by any other teaching, He knits us together by the brotherhood of suffering.

    All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1871.

Hope and Fear.  May 17

Every gift of God is good, and given for our happiness, and we sin if we abuse it.  To use your fancy to your own misery is to abuse it and to sin.  The realm of the possible was given to man to hope and not to fear in.

    Letters and Memories.  1842.

Cry of the Heart and Reason.  May 18

A living God, a true God, a real God, a God worthy of the name, a God who is working for ever, everywhere, and in all; who hates nothing that He has made, forgets nothing, neglects nothing; a God who satisfies not only the head but the heart, not only the logical intellect but the highest reason—that pure reason which is one with the conscience and moral sense!  For Him we cry out, Him we seek, and if we cannot find Him we know no rest.