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

St. Bartholomew, Apostle and Martyr

Blessed are they who once were persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Great indeed is their reward, for it is no less than the very beatific vision to contemplate and adore that supreme moral beauty, of which all earthly beauty, all nature, all art, all poetry, all music, are but phantoms and parables, hints and hopes, dim reflected rays of the clear light of everlasting day.

    All Saints’ Day Sermons.

September

That poet knew but little of either streams or hearts who wrote—

“Nor ever had the breeze of passion
Stirred her heart’s clear depths.”

The lonely fisher, the lover of streams and living fountains, knows that when the stream stops it is turbid.  The deep pools and still flats are always brown—always dark—the mud lies in them, the trout sleep in them.  When they are clearest they are still tinged brown or gray with some foreign matter held in solution—the brown of selfish sensuality or the gray of morbid melancholy.  But when they are free again! when they hurry over rock and weed and sparkling pebble-shallow, then they are clear!  Then all the foreign matter, the defilement which earth pours into them, falls to the ground, and into them the trout work up for life and health and food; and through their swift yet yielding eddies—moulding themselves to every accident, yet separate and undefiled—shine up the delicate beauties of the subaqueous world, the Spirit-glories which we can only see in this life through the medium of another human soul, but which we can never see unless that soul is stirred by circumstance into passion and motion and action strong and swift.  Only the streams which have undergone long and severe struggles from their very fountain-head have clear pools.

    MS.  1843.

Goodness.  September 1

Always say to yourself this one thing, “Good I will become, whatever it cost me; and in God’s goodness I trust to make me good, for I am sure He wishes to see me good more than I do myself.”  And you will find that, because you have confessed in that best and most honest of ways that God is good, and have so given Him real glory, and real honour, and real praise, He will save you from the sins which torment you, and you shall never come, either in this world or the world to come, to that worst misery, the being ashamed of yourself.

    Sermons for the Times.  1855.

Be good to do Good.  September 2

What we wish to do for our fellow-creatures we must do first for ourselves.  We can give them nothing save what God has already given us.  We must become good before we can make them good, and wise before we can make them wise.

    All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1867.

The Undying I.  September 3

The youngest child, by faith in God his Father, may look upon all heaven and earth and say, “Great and wonderful and awful as this earth and those skies may be, I am more precious in the sight of God than sun and moon and stars; for they are things, but I am a person, a spirit, an immortal soul, made in the likeness of God, redeemed into the likeness of God.  This great earth was here thousands and thousands of years before I was born, and it will be here perhaps millions of years after I am dead.  But it cannot harm Me, it cannot kill Me.  When earth, and sun, and stars have passed away I shall live for ever, for I am the immortal child of an immortal Father, the child of the everlasting God.”

    Sermons for the Times.  1855.

Love and Time.  September 4

Love proves its spiritual origin by rising above time and space and circumstance, wealth and age, and even temporary beauty, at the same time that it alone can perfectly use all those material adjuncts.  Being spiritual, it is Lord of matter, and can give and receive from it glory and beauty when it will, and yet live without it.

    MS.  1843.

Common Duties.  September 5

The only way to regenerate the world is to do the duty which lies nearest us, and not to hunt after grand, far-fetched ones for ourselves.  If each drop of rain chose where it should fall, God’s showers would not fall as they do now, on the evil and the good alike.  I know from the experience of my own heart how galling this doctrine is—how, like Naaman, one goes away in a rage, because the prophet has not bid us do some great thing, but only to go wash in the nearest brook and be clean.

    Letters and Memories.  1854.

Despair—Hope.  September 6

Does the age seem to you dark?  Do you feel, as I do at times, the awful sadness of that text, “The time shall come when you shall desire to see one of the days of the Lord, and shall not see it”?  Then remember that

The night is never so long
But at last it ringeth for matin song.

. . . Even now the dawn is gilding the highest souls, and we are in the night only because we crawl below.

    Prose Idylls.  1850.

The Critical Spirit.  September 7

“Judge nothing before the time.”  This is a hard saying.  Who can hear it?  There never was a time in which the critical spirit was more thoroughly in the ascendant.  Every man now is an independent critic.  To accept fully, or as it is now called, to follow blindly; to admire heartily, or as it is now called, fanatically—these are considered signs of weakness or credulity.  To believe intensely; to act unhesitatingly; to admire passionately; all this, as the latest slang phrases it, is “bad form”; a proof that a man is not likely to win in the race of this world the prize whereof is, the greatest possible enjoyment with the least possible work.

    The Critical Spirit.  1871.

Toil and Rest.  September 8

Remember always, toil is the condition of our being.  Our sentence is to labour from the cradle to the grave.  But there are Sabbaths allowed for the mind as well as the body, when the intellect is stilled, and the emotions alone perform their gentle and involuntary functions.

    Letters and Memories.  1842.

Storm and Calm.  September 9

Then Amyas told the last scene; how, when they were off the Azores, the storms came on heavier than ever, with terrible seas breaking short and pyramid-wise, till, on the 9th of September, the tiny Squirrel nearly foundered, and yet recovered, and the General (Sir Humphrey Gilbert), sitting abaft with a book in his hand, cried out to us in the Hind, “We are as near heaven by sea as by land,” reiterating the same speech well be-seeming a soldier resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testify he was.

    Westward Ho! chap. xiii.

On the Heights.  September 10

It is good for a man to have holy and quiet thoughts, and at moments to see into the very deepest meaning of God’s word and God’s earth, and to have, as it were, heaven opened before his eyes; and it is good for a man sometimes actually to feel his heart overpowered with the glorious majesty of God—to feel it gushing out with love to his blessed Saviour; but it is not good for him to stop there any more than for the Apostles in the Mount of Transfiguration.

    Village Sermons.  1849.

In the Valley.  September 11

The disciples had to come down from the Mount and do Christ’s work, and so have we.  Believe me, one word of warning spoken to keep a little child out of sin,—one crust of bread given to a beggar-man because he is your brother, for whom Christ died,—one angry word checked on your lips for the sake of Him who was meek and lowly of heart; any the smallest endeavour to lessen the amount of evil which is in yourselves and those around you,—is worth all the speculations, and raptures, and visions, and frames, and feelings in the world; for these are the good fruits of faith, whereby alone the tree shall be known whether it be good or evil.

    Village Sermons.  1849.

Self-Conceit.  September 12

Self-conceit is the very daughter of self-will, and of that loud crying out about I, and me, and mine, which is the very bird-call for all devils, and the broad road which leads to death.

    Westward Ho! chap. i.

Facing Fact.  September 13

It is good for a man to be brought once, at least, in his life, face to face with fact, ultimate fact, however horrible it may be, and to have to confess to himself shuddering, what things are possible on God’s earth, when man has forgotten that his only welfare is in living after the likeness of God.

    Miscellanies.  1858.