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

    Letters and Memories.  1857.

Presentiments.  June 26

“I cannot deny,” said Claude, “that such things as presentiments may be possible.  However miraculous they may seem, are they so very much more so than the daily fact of memory?  I can as little guess why we remember the past, as why we may not at times be able to foresee the future.” . . .

    Two Years Ago, chap. xxviii.

A thing need not be unreasonable—that is, contrary to reason—because it is above and beyond reason, or, at least, our human reason, which at best (as St. Paul says) sees as in a glass darkly.

    MS. Letter.  1856.

Common Duties.  June 27

But after all, what is speculation to practice?  What does God require of us, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him?  The longer I live this seems to me more important, and all other questions less so—if we can but live the simple right life—

Do the work that’s nearest,
Though it’s dull at whiles;
Helping, when we meet them,
Lame dogs over stiles.

    Letters and Memories.  1857.

Lost and Found.  June 28

“My welfare?  It is gone!”
“So much the better.  I never found mine till I lost it.”

    Hypatia, chap. xxvii.  1852.

How to bear Sorrow.  June 29

I believe that the wisest plan is sometimes not to try to bear sorrow—as long as one is not crippled for one’s everyday duties—but to give way to it utterly and freely.  Perhaps sorrow is sent that we may give way to it, and in drinking the cup to the dregs, find some medicine in it itself, which we should not find if we began doctoring ourselves, or letting others doctor us.  If we say simply, “I am wretched—I ought to be wretched;” then we shall perhaps hear a voice, “Who made thee wretched but God?  Then what can He mean but thy good?”  And if the heart answers impatiently, “My good?  I don’t want it, I want my love;” perhaps the voice may answer, “Then thou shalt have both in time.”

    Letters and Memories.  1871.

A certain Hope.  June 30

Let us look forward with quiet certainty of hope, day and night; believing, though we can see but little day, that all this tangled web will resolve itself into golden threads of twined, harmonious life, guiding both us, and those we love, together, through this life to that resurrection of the flesh, when we shall at last know the reality and the fulness of life and love.  Even so come, Lord Jesus!

    Letters and Memories.  1844.

SAINTS’ DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS

Whit Sunday

Think of the Holy Spirit as a Person having a will of His own, who breatheth whither He listeth, and cannot be confined to any feelings or rules of yours or of any man’s, but may meet you in the Sacraments or out of the Sacraments, even as He will, and has methods of comforting and educating you of which you will never dream; One whose will is the same as the will of the Father and of the Son, even a good will.

    Discipline Sermons.

Trinity Sunday

Some things I see clearly and hold with desperate clutch.  A Father in heaven for all, a Son of God incarnate for all, and a Spirit of the Father and the Son—who works to will and to do of His own good pleasure in every human being in whom there is one spark of active good, the least desire to do right or to be of use—the Fountain of all good on earth.

    Letters and Memories.

JUNE 11

St. Barnabas, Apostle and Martyr

. . . Which is Love?
To do God’s will, or merely suffer it?

. . . . .
No!  I must headlong into seas of toil,
Leap far from self, and spend my soul on others.
For contemplation falls upon the spirit,
Like the chill silence of an autumn sun:
While action, like the roaring south-west wind,
Sweeps laden with elixirs, with rich draughts
Quickening the wombed earth.

    Saint’s Tragedy.

JUNE 21

St. John the Baptist

How shall we picture John the Baptist to ourselves?  Great painters have exercised their fancy upon his face, his figure, his actions.  The best which I can recollect is Guido’s—of the magnificent lad sitting on the rock, half clad in his camel’s-hair robe, his stalwart hand lifted up to denounce he hardly knows what, save that things are going all wrong, utterly wrong to him—his beautiful mouth open to preach he hardly knows what, save that he has a message from God, of which he is half conscious as yet—that he is a forerunner, a prophet, a foreteller of something and some one who is to come, and which is very near at hand.  The wild rocks are round him, the clear sky over him, and nothing more, . . . and he, the noble and the priest, has thrown off—not in discontent and desperation (for he was neither democrat nor vulgar demagogue), but in hope and awe—all his family privileges, all that seems to make life worth having; and there aloft and in the mountains, alone with God and Nature, feeding on locusts and wild honey and clothed in skins, he, like Elijah of old, preaches to a generation sunk in covetousness, party spirit, and superstition—preaches what?—The most common—Morality.  Ah, wise politician! ah, clear and rational spirit, who knows and tells others to do the duty which lies nearest to them! . . . who in the hour of his country’s deepest degradation had divine courage to say, our deliverance lies, not in rebellion but in doing right.

    St. John the Baptist,
    All Saints’ Day Sermons.

JUNE 29

St. Peter, Apostle and Martyr

God is revealed in the Crucified;
The Crucified must be revealed in me:—
I must put on His righteousness; show forth
His sorrow’s glory; hunger, weep with Him;
Taste His keen stripes, and let this aching flesh
Sink through His fiery baptism into death.

    Saint’s Tragedy.
St. Peter, as he is drawn in the Gospels and the Acts, is a grand and colossal human figure, every line and feature of which is full of meaning and full of beauty to us.

    Sermons, Discipline.

July