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

Christ’s cross says still, and will say to all Eternity, “Wouldst thou be good?  Wouldst thou be like God?  Then work and dare, and if need be, suffer for thy fellow-men.”  On the Cross Christ consecrated, and as it were offered to the Father in His own body, all loving actions, unselfish actions, merciful actions, heroic actions, which man has done or ever will do.  From Him, from His spirit, their strength came; and therefore He is not ashamed to call them brethren.  He is the King of the noble army of martyrs; of all who suffer for love and truth and justice’ sake; and to all such He says, thou hast put on My likeness; thou hast suffered for My sake, and I too have suffered for thy sake, and enabled thee to suffer likewise, and in Me thou too art a Son of God, in whom the Father is well pleased.

    Sermons.

Feast of the Ascension

“Lo, I am with you always,” said the Blessed One before He ascended to the Father.  And this is the Lord who we fancy is gone away far above the stars till the end of time!  Oh, my friends, rather bow your heads before Him at this moment!  For here He is among us now, listening to every thought of our poor simple hearts.  He is where God is, in whom we live, and move, and have our being, and that is everywhere.  Do you wish Him to be any nearer?

    National Sermons.

. . . Oh, my Saviour!
My God! where art Thou?  That’s but a tale about Thee,
That crucifix above—it does but show Thee
As Thou wast once, but not as Thou art now. . . .

    Saint’s Tragedy, Act iv. Scene i.

June

Three o’clock, upon a still, pure, Midsummer morning. . . .  The white glare of dawn, which last night hung high in the north-west, has travelled now to the north-east, and above the wooded wall of the hills the sky is flushing with rose and amber.  A long line of gulls goes wailing inland; the rooks come cawing and sporting round the corner at Landcross, while high above them four or five herons flap solemnly along to find their breakfast on the shallows.  The pheasants and partridges are clucking merrily in the long wet grass; every copse and hedgerow rings with the voice of birds; but the lark, who has been singing since midnight in the “blank height of the dark,” suddenly hushes his carol and drops headlong among the corn, as a broad-winged buzzard swings from some wooded peak into the abyss of the valley, and hangs high-poised above the heavenward songster.  The air is full of perfume; sweet clover, new-mown hay, the fragrant breath of kine, the dainty scent of sea-weed, and fresh wet sand.  Glorious day, glorious place, “bridal of earth and sky,” decked well with bridal garments, bridal perfumes, bridal songs.

    Westward Ho! chap. xii.

Open Thou mine Eyes.  June 1

I have wandered in the mountains mist-bewildered,
And now a breeze comes, and the veil is lifted;
And priceless flowers, o’er which I trod unheeding,
Gleam ready for my grasp.

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

The Spirit of Romance.  June 2

Some say that the spirit of romance is dead.  The spirit of romance will never die as long as there is a man left to see that the world might and can be better, happier, wiser, fairer in all things than it is now.  The spirit of romance will never die as long as a man has faith in God to believe that the world will actually be better and fairer than it is now, as long as men have faith, however weak, to believe in the romance of all romances, in the wonder of all wonders, in that of which all poets’ dreams have been but childish hints and dim forefeelings—even

“That one divine far-off event
Towards which the whole creation moves,

that wonder which our Lord Himself has bade us pray for as for our daily bread, and say, “Father, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.”

    Water of Life Sermons.  1865.

The Everlasting Music.  June 3

All melody and all harmony upon earth, whether in the song of birds, the whisper of the wind, the concourse of voices, or the sounds of those cunning instruments which man has learnt to create, because he is made in the image of Christ, the Word of God, who creates all things; all music upon earth, I say, is beautiful in as far as it is a pattern and type of the everlasting music which is in heaven, which was before all worlds and shall be after them.

    Good News of God Sermons.  1859.

Gifts are Duties.  June 4

Exceeding gifts from God are not blessings, they are duties, and very solemn and heavy duties.  They do not always increase a man’s happiness; they always increase his responsibility, the awful account which he must render at last of the talents committed to his charge.  They increase, too, his danger.

    Water of Life Sermons.

Summer Days.  June 5

Now let the young be glad,
Fair girl and gallant lad,
And sun themselves to-day
By lawn and garden gay;
’Tis play befits the noon
Of rosy-girdled June;
. . . . .
The world before them, and above
The light of Universal Love.

    Installation Ode, Cambridge.  1862.

“Sufficient for the Day.”  June 6

Let us not meddle with the future, and matters which are too high for us, but refrain our souls, and keep them low like little children, content with the day’s food, and the day’s schooling, and the day’s play-hours, sure that the Divine Master knows that all is right, and how to train us, and whither to lead us; though we know not and need not know, save this, that the path by which He is leading each of us, if we will but obey and follow step by step, leads up to everlasting life.

    All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1871.

Secret of Thrift.  June 7

The secret of thrift is knowledge.  The more you know the more you can save yourself and that which belongs to you, and can do more work with less effort.  Knowledge of domestic economy saves income; knowledge of sanitary laws saves health and life: knowledge of the laws of the intellect saves wear and tear of brain, and knowledge of the laws of the spirit—what does it not save?

    Lecture on Thrift.  1869.

Out-door Worship.  June 8

In the forest, every branch and leaf, with the thousand living things which cluster on them, all worship, worship, worship with us!  Let us go up in the evenings and pray there, with nothing but God’s cloud temple between us and His heaven!  And His choir of small birds and night crickets and booming beetles, and all happy things who praise Him all night long!  And in the still summer noon, too, with the lazy-paced clouds above, and the distant sheep-bell, and the bee humming in the beds of thyme, and one bird making the hollies ring a moment, and then all still—hushed—awe-bound, as the great thunder-clouds slide up from the far south!  Then, then, to praise God!  Ay, even when the heaven is black with wind, the thunder crackling over our heads, then to join in the pæan of the storm-spirits to Him whose pageant of power passes over the earth and harms us not in its mercy!

    Letters and Memories.  1844.

God’s Countenance.  June 9

Study nature as the countenance of God!  Try to extract every line of beauty, every association, every moral reflection, every inexpressible feeling from it.

    Letters and Memories.  1842.

Certain and Uncertain.  June 10

“Life is uncertain,” folks say.  Life is certain, say I, because God is educating us thereby.  But this process of education is so far above our sight that it looks often uncertain and utterly lawless; wherefore fools conceive (as does M. Comte) that there is no Living God, because they cannot condense His formulas into their small smelling-bottles.

O glorious thought! that we are under a Father’s education, and that He has promised to develop us, and to make us go on from strength to strength.