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

It was a day of God.  The earth lay like one great emerald, ringed and roofed with sapphire: blue sea, blue mountain, blue sky overhead.  There she lay, not sleeping, but basking in her quiet Sabbath joy, as though her two great sisters of the sea and air had washed her weary limbs with holy tears, and purged away the stains of last week’s sin and toil, and cooled her hot worn forehead with their pure incense-breath, and folded her within their azure robes, and brooded over her with smiles of pitying love, till she smiled back in answer, and took heart and hope for next week’s weary work.

Heart and hope for next week’s work.—That was the sermon which it preached to Tom Thurnall, as he stood there alone, a stranger and a wanderer like Ulysses of old: but, like him, self-helpful, cheerful, fate defiant.  He was more of a heathen than Ulysses—for he knew not what Ulysses knew, that a heavenly guide was with him in his wanderings; still less that what he called the malicious sport of fortune was, in truth, the earnest education of a Father. . . .  “Brave old world she is after all,” he said; “and right well made; and looks right well to-day in her go-to-meeting clothes, and plenty of room and chance for a brave man to earn his bread, if he will but go right on about his business, as the birds and the flowers do, instead of peaking and pining over what people think of him.”

    Two Years Ago, chap. xiv.

Nature and Grace.  July 1

God is the God of Nature as well as the God of Grace.  For ever He looks down on all things which He has made; and behold they are very good.  And therefore we dare to offer to Him in our churches the most perfect works of naturalistic art, and shape them into copies of whatever beauty He has shown us in man or woman, in cave or mountain-peak, in tree or flower, even in bird or butterfly.  But Himself?  Who can see Him except the humble and the contrite heart, to whom He reveals Himself as a Spirit to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and not in bread nor wood, nor stone nor gold, nor quintessential diamond?

    Lecture on Grots and Groves.  1871.

Love and Book-Learning.  July 2

I see more and more that the knowledge of one human being, such as love alone can give, and the apprehension of our own private duties and relations, is worth more than all the book-learning in the world.

    MS.

The Ancient Creeds.  July 3

Blessed and delightful it is when we find that even in these new ages the Creeds, which so many fancy to be at their last gasp, are still the finest and highest succour, not merely of the peasant and the outcast, but of the subtle artist and the daring speculator.  Blessed it is to find the most cunning poet of our day able to combine the rhythm and melody of modern times with the old truths which gave heart to the martyrs at the stake, to see in the science and the history of the nineteenth century new and living fulfilments of the words which we learnt at our mother’s knee!

    Miscellanies.  1850.

A Master-Truth.  July 4

Every creature of God is good, if it be sanctified with prayer and thanksgiving!  This to me is the master-truth of Christianity, the forgetfulness of which is at the root of almost all error.  It seems to me that it was to redeem man and the earth that Christ was made man and used the earth!—that Christianity has never yet been pure, because it never yet, since St. Paul’s time, has stood on this as the fundamental truth, and that it has been pure or impure, just in proportion as it has practically and really acknowledged this truth.

    Letters and Memories.  1842.

English Women.  July 5

Let those who will sneer at the women of England.  We who have to do the work and fight the battle of life know the inspiration which we derive from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness—and, but too often, from their compassion and their forgiveness.  There is, I doubt not, still left in England many a man with chivalry and patriotism enough to challenge the world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a cultivated British woman.

    Lecture on Thrift.  1869.

Life retouched again.  July 6

Even in the saddest woman’s soul there linger snatches of old music, odours of flowers long dead and turned to dust,—pleasant ghosts, which still keep her mind attuned to that which may be in others, though in her never more; till she can hear her own wedding-hymn re-echoed in the tones of every girl who loves, and see her own wedding-torch re-lighted in the eyes of every bride.

    Westward Ho! chap. xxix.

Mystery of Life.  July 7

“All things begin in some wonder, and in some wonder end,” said St. Augustine, wisest in his day of mortal men.  It is a strange thing, and a mystery, how we ever got into this world; a stranger thing still to me how we shall ever get out of this world again.  Yet they are common things enough—birth and death.

    Good News of God Sermons.

Beauty of Life.  July 8

The Greeks were, as far as we know, the most beautiful race which the world ever saw.  Every educated man knows that they were the cleverest of all nations, and, next to his Bible, thanks God for Greek literature.  Now the Greeks had made physical, as well as intellectual education a science as well as a study.  Their women practised graceful, and in some cases even athletic exercises.  They developed, by a free and healthy life, those figures which remain everlasting and unapproachable models of human beauty.

    Lecture on Thrift.  1869.

Study the human figure, both as intrinsically beautiful and as expressing mind.  It only expresses the broad natural childish emotions, which are just what we want to return to from our over subtlety.  Study “natural language”—I mean the language of attitude.  It is an inexhaustible source of knowledge and delight, and enables one human being to understand another so perfectly.  Therefore learn to draw and paint figures.

    Letters and Memories.  1842.

True Civilisation.  July 9

Civilisation with me shall mean—not more wealth, more finery, more self-indulgence, even more æsthetic and artistic luxury—but more virtue, more knowledge, more self-control, even though I earn scanty bread by heavy toil.

    Lecture on Ancient Civilisation.  1874.

The Church.  July 10

“The Church is a very good thing, and I keep to mine,” said Captain Willis, “having served under her Majesty and her Majesty’s forefathers, and learned to obey orders, I hope; but don’t you think, sir, you’re taking it as the Pharisees took the Sabbath Day?”

“How then?”

“Why, as if man was made for the Church, and not the Church for man.”

    Two Years Ago, chap. ii.  1856.

What does God ask?  July 11

What is this strange thing, without which even the true knowledge of doctrine is of no use? without which either a man or a nation is poor, and blind, and wretched, and naked in soul, notwithstanding all his religion?  Isaiah will tell, “Wash you, make you clean, saith the Lord.  Do justice to the fatherless, relieve the widow.”  Church-building and church-going are well, but they are not repentance.  Churches are not souls.  I ask for your hearts, and you give me fine stones and fine words.  I want souls, I want your souls.

    National Sermons.  1851.

Work or Want.  July 12

Remember that we are in a world where it is not safe to sit under the tree and let the ripe fruit drop into your mouth; where the “competition of species” works with ruthless energy among all ranks of being, from kings upon their thrones to the weed upon the waste; where “he that is not hammer is sure to be anvil;” and “he who will not work neither shall he eat.”

    Ancien Régime.  1867.

True Insight.  July 13

It is easy to see the spiritual beauty of Raffaelle’s Madonnas, but it requires a deeper and more practised, all-embracing, loving, simple spirituality, to see the same beauty in the face of a worn-out, painful, peasant woman haggling about the price of cottons.

Form and colour are but the vehicle for the spirit-meaning.  In the “spiritual body” I fancy they will both be united with the meaning—all and every part and property of man and woman instinct with spirit!

    MS.  1843.

Retribution inevitable.  July 14

Know this—that as surely as God sometimes punishes wholesale, so surely is He always punishing in detail.  By that infinite concatenation of moral causes and effects, which makes the whole world one mass of special Providences, every sin of ours will punish itself, and probably punish itself in kind.  Are we selfish?  We shall call out selfishness in others.  Do we neglect our duty?  Then others will neglect their duty to us.  Do we indulge our passions?  Then others who depend on us will indulge theirs, to our detriment and misery.

    All Saints’ Day Sermons.