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

We sit in a cloud, and sing like pictured angels,
And say the world runs smooth—while right below
Welters the black, fermenting heap of life
On which our State is built.

    Saint’s Tragedy, Act ii. Scene v.

Love and Knowledge.  August 5

He who has never loved, what does he know?

    MS.

Siccum Lumen.  August 6

How shall I get true knowledge?  Knowledge which will be really useful, really worth knowing.  Knowledge which I shall know accurately and practically too, so that I can use it in daily life, for myself and others?  Knowledge too, which shall be clear knowledge, not warped or coloured by my own fancies, passions, prejudices, but pure and calm and sound; Siccum Lumen, “Dry Light,” as the greatest of philosophers called it of old.

To all such who long for light, that by the light they may live, God answers through His only begotten Son: “Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find.”

    Westminster Sermons.  1873.

This World.  August 7

What should the external world be to those who truly love, but the garden in which they are placed, not so much for sustenance or enjoyment of themselves and each other, as to dress it and to keep it—it to be their subject-matter, not they its tools!  In this spirit let us pray “Thy kingdom come.”

    MS.  1842.

The Life of the Spirit.  August 8

The old fairy superstition, the old legends and ballads, the old chronicles of feudal war and chivalry, the earlier moralities and mysteries—these fed Shakespeare’s youth.  Why should they not feed our children’s?  That inborn delight of the young in all that is marvellous and fantastic—has that a merely evil root?  No, surely! it is a most pure part of their spiritual nature; a part of “the heaven which lies about us in our infancy;” angel-wings with which the free child leaps the prison-walls of sense and custom, and the drudgery of earthly life.  It is a God-appointed means for keeping alive what noble Wordsworth calls those

“. . . . obstinate questionings,
. . . . . .
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised.”

    Introductory Lecture, Queen’s College.
    1848.

A Quiet Depth.  August 9

The deepest affections are those of which we are least conscious—that is, which produce least startling emotion, and most easy and involuntary practice.

    MS.  1843.

Acceptable Sacrifices.  August 10

Every time we perform an act of kindness to any human being, ay, even to a dumb animal; every time we conquer our worldliness, love of pleasure, ease, praise, ambition, money, for the sake of doing what our conscience tells us to be our duty,—we are indeed worshipping God the Father in spirit and in truth, and offering Him a sacrifice which He will surely accept for the sake of His beloved Son, by whose Spirit all good deeds and thoughts are inspired.

    All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1871.

Chivalry.  August 11

Chivalry; an idea which, perfect or imperfect, God forbid that mankind should ever forget till it has become the possession—as it is the God-given right—of the poorest slave that ever trudged on foot; and every collier lad shall have become

“A very gentle, perfect knight.”

    Lectures on Ancien Régime.  1867.

God waits for Man.  August 12

Patiently, nobly, magnanimously, God waits; waits for the man who is a fool, to find out his own folly; waits for the heart that has tried to find pleasure in everything else, to find out that everything else disappoints, and to come back to Him, the fountain of all wholesome pleasure, the well-spring of all life, fit for a man to live.

God condescends to wait for His creature; because what He wants is not His creature’s fear, but His creature’s love; not only his obedience, but his heart; because He wants him not to come back as a trembling slave to his master, but as a son who has found out at last what a father he has still left him, when all beside has played him false.  Let him come back thus.

    Discipline and other Sermons.

Thrift.  August 13

The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much work as possible done with the least expenditure of power, the least jar and obstruction, the least wear and tear.  And the secret of thrift is knowledge.  In proportion as you know the laws and nature of a subject, you will be able to work at it easily, surely, rapidly, successfully, instead of wasting your money or your energies in mistaken schemes, irregular efforts, which end in disappointment and exhaustion.

    Lecture on Thrift.  1869.

Revelations.  August 14

Only second-rate hearts and minds are melancholy.  When we become like little children, our very playfulness tells that we are seeing deep, when we see that God is love in His works as well as in Himself, and we look at Nature as a baby does, as a beautiful mystery which we scarcely wish to solve.  And therefore deep things, which the intellect in vain struggles after, will reveal themselves to us.

    MS.  1842.

Christ comes in many ways.  August 15

Often Christ comes to us in ways in which the world would never recognise Him—in which perhaps neither you nor I shall recognise Him; but it will be enough, I hope, if we but hear His message, and obey His gracious inspiration, let Him speak through whatever means He will.  He may come to us by some crisis in our life, either for sorrow or for bliss.  He may come to us by a great failure; by a great disappointment—to teach the wilful and ambitious soul that not in that direction lies the path of peace; or He may come in some unexpected happiness to teach that same soul that He is able and willing to give abundantly beyond all that we can ask or think.

    MS. Sermon.  1874.

Lesson of the Cross.  August 16

On the Cross God has sanctified suffering, pain, and sorrow, and made them holy; as holy as health and strength and happiness are.

    National Sermons.  1851.

The Ideal Unity.  August 17

“Oh, make us one.”  All the world-generations have but one voice!  “How can we become One? at harmony with God and God’s universe!  Tell us this, and the dreary, dark mystery of life, the bright, sparkling mystery of life, the cloud-chequered, sun-and-shower mystery of life, is solved! for we shall have found one home and one brotherhood, and happy faces will greet us wherever we move, and we shall see God! see Him everywhere, and be ready to wait for the Renewal, for the Kingdom of Christ perfected!  We came from Eden, all of us: show us how we may return, hand in hand, husband and wife, parent and child, gathered together from the past and the future, from one creed and another, and take our journey into a far country, which is yet this earth—a world-migration to the heavenly Canaan, through the Red Sea of Death, back again to the land which was given to our forefathers, and is ours even now, could we but find it!”

    Letters and Memories.  1843.

Body and Soul.  August 18