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

God reserves many a sinner for that most awful of all punishments (here)—impunity.

    Sermons.

The Divine Order.  September 29

Ah, that God’s will were but done on earth as it is in the material heaven overhead, in perfect order and obedience, as the stars roll in their courses, without rest, yet without haste—as all created things, even the most awful, fire and hail, snow and vapour, wind and storm, fulfil God’s word, who hath made them sure for ever and ever, and given them a law which shall not be broken.  But above them; above the divine and wonderful order of the material universe, and the winds which are God’s angels, and the flames of fire which are His messengers; above all, the prophets and apostles have caught sight of another divine and wonderful order of rational beings, of races loftier and purer than man—angels and archangels, thrones and dominions, principalities and powers, fulfilling God’s will in heaven as it is not, alas! fulfilled on earth.

    All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1867.

True Resignation.  September 30

. . . Christianity heightens as well as deepens the human as well as the divine affections.  I am happy, for the less hope, the more faith. . . .  God knows what is best for us; we do not.  Continual resignation, at last I begin to find, is the secret of continual strength.  “Daily dying,” as Bœhmen interprets it, is the path of daily living. . . .

    Letters and Memories.  1843.

SAINTS’ DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS

SEPTEMBER 21

St. Matthew, Apostle, Evangelist, and Martyr

There is something higher than happiness.  There is blessedness; the blessedness of being good and doing good, of being right and doing right.  That blessedness we may have at all times; we may be blest even in anxiety and in sadness; we may be blest, even as the martyrs of old were blest, in agony and death.

    Water of Life Sermons.

SEPTEMBER 29

Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

The eternal moral law which held good for the sinless Christ, who, though He were a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered, must hold good of you and me, and all moral and rational beings—yea, for the very angels in heaven.  They have not sinned.  That we know; and we do not know that they have ever suffered.  But this at least we know, that they have submitted.  They have obeyed, and have given up their own wills to be ministers of God’s will.  In them is neither self-will nor selfishness; and, therefore, by faith, that is, by trust and loyalty, they stand.  And so, by consenting to lose their individual life of selfishness, they have saved their eternal life in God, the life of blessedness and holiness, just as all evil spirits have lost their eternal life by trying to save their selfish life and be something in themselves and of themselves without respect to God.

    All Saints’ Day Sermons.

October

A beautiful October morning it was; one of those in which Dame Nature, healthily tired with the revelry of summer, is composing herself, with a quiet satisfied smile, for her winter’s sleep.  Sheets of dappled cloud were sliding slowly from the west; long bars of hazy blue hung over the southern chalk downs, which gleamed pearly gray beneath the low south-eastern sun.  In the vale below, soft white flakes of mist still hung over the water meadows, and barred the dark trunks of the huge elms and poplars, whose fast-yellowing leaves came showering down at every rustle of the western breeze, spotting the grass below.  The river swirled along, glassy no more, but dingy gray with autumn rains and rotting leaves.  All beyond the garden told of autumn, bright and peaceful even in decay; but up the sunny slope of the garden itself, and to the very window-sill, summer still lingered.  The beds of red verbena and geranium were still brilliant, though choked with fallen leaves of acacia and plane; the canary plant, still untouched by frost, twined its delicate green leaves, and more delicate yellow blossoms, through the crimson lace-work of the Virginia creeper; and the great yellow noisette swung its long canes across the window, filling all the air with fruity fragrance.

    Two Years Ago, chap. i.

Blessing of Daily Work.  October 1

Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day which must be done whether you like it or not.  Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know.

    Town and Country Sermons.  1861.

The Forming Form.  October 2

As the acorn, because God has given it “a forming form,” and life after its kind, bears within it not only the builder oak but shade for many a herd, food for countless animals, and at last the gallant ship itself, and the materials of every use to which Nature or Art can put it, and its descendants after it, throughout all time, so does every good deed contain within itself endless and unexpected possibilities of other good, which may and will grow and multiply for ever, in the genial light of Him whose eternal mind conceived it, and whose eternal spirit will for ever quicken it, with that life of which He is the Giver and the Lord.

    Preface to Tauler’s Sermons.  1854.

Special Providences.  October 3

And as for special Providences.  I believe that every step I take, every person I meet, every thought which comes into my mind—which is not sinful—comes and happens by the perpetual Providence of God watching for ever with Fatherly care over me, and each separate thing that He has made.

    MS. Letter.

Virtue.  October 4

Nothing, nothing can be a substitute for purity and virtue.  Man will always try to find substitutes for it.  He will try to find a substitute in superstition, in forms and ceremonies, in voluntary humility and worship of angels, in using vain repetitions, and fancying he will be heard for his much speaking; he will try to find a substitute in intellect, and the worship of intellect and art and poetry, . . . but let no man lay that flattering unction to his soul.

    Sermons on David.  1866.

God-likeness.  October 5

“We can become like God—only in proportion as we are of use,” said –.  “I did not see this once.  I tried to be good, not knowing what good meant.  I tried to be good, because I thought it would pay me in the world to come.  But at last I saw that all life, all devotion, all piety, were only worth anything, only Divine, and God-like and God-beloved, as they were means to that one end—to be of use.”

    Two Years Ago, chap. xix.  1856.

The Refiner’s Fire.  October 6

“Not quite that,” said Amyas.  “He was a meeker man latterly than he used to be.  As he said himself once, a better refiner than any whom he had on board had followed him close all the seas over, and purified him in the fire.  And gold seven times tried he was when God, having done His work in him, took him home at last.”

    Westward Ho! chap. xiii.

The Prayer of Faith.  October 7

With the prayer of faith we can do anything.  Look at Mark xi. 24—a text that has saved more than one soul from madness in the hour of sorrow; and it is so simple and wide—wide as eternity, simple as light, true as God Himself.  If we are to do great things it must be in the spirit of that text.  Verily, when the Son of God cometh shall He find faith in the earth?

    Letters and Memories.  1843.

Mountain-Ranges.  October 8

We fancy there are many independent sciences, because we stand half-way up on different mountain-peaks, calling to each other from isolated stations.  The mists hide from us the foot of the range beneath us, the depths of primary analysis to which none can reach, or we should see that all the peaks were but offsets of one vast mountain-base, and in their inmost root but One!  And the clouds which float between us and the heaven shroud from us the sun-lighted caps themselves—the perfect issues of synthetic science, on which the Sun of Righteousness shines with undimmed lustre—and keep us from perceiving that the complete practical details of our applied knowledge is all holy and radiant with God’s smile.  And so, half-way up, on the hillside, beneath a cloudy sky, we build up little earthy hill-cairns of our own petty synthesis, and fancy them Babel-towers whose top shall reach to heaven!

    MS. Note-book.  1843.

The Temper for Success in Life.  October 9

The men whom I have seen succeed best in life have always been cheerful and hopeful men, who went about their business with a smile on their faces, and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men, facing rough and smooth alike as it came, and so found the truth of the old proverb that “good times and bad times and all times pass over.”

    MS.

Want of Simplicity.  October 10

Faith and prayer are simple things, . . . but when we begin to want faith, and to assist prayer by our own inventions and to explain away God’s providence, then faith and prayer become intricate and uncertain.  We cannot serve God and mammon.  We must either utterly depend on God (and therefore on our own reason enlightened by His spirit after prayer), or we must utterly depend on the empirical maxims of the world.  Choose!

    MS. Letter.