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

Have patience, have faith, have hope, as thou standest at the foot of Christ’s Cross, and holdest fast to it, the anchor of the soul and reason, as well as of the heart.  For, however ill the world may go, or seem to go, the Cross is the everlasting token that God so loved the world that He spared not His only-begotten Son, but freely gave Him for it.  Whatsoever else is doubtful, that at least is sure—that good must conquer, because God is good, that evil must perish, because God hates evil, even to the death.

    Westminster Sermons.  1870.

The True Self-Sacrifice.  October 25

What can a man do more than die for his countrymen?

Live for them.  It is a longer work, and therefore a more difficult and a nobler one.

    Two Years Ago, chap. xix.  1856.

Now as Then.  October 26

Men can be as original now as ever, if they had but the courage, even the insight.  Heroic souls in old times had no more opportunities than we have; but they used them.  There were daring deeds to be done then—are there none now?  Sacrifices to be made—are there none now?  Wrongs to be redrest—are there none now?  Let any one set his heart in these days to do what is right, and nothing else; and it will not be long ere his brow is stamped with all that goes to make up the heroical expression—with noble indignation, noble self-restraint, great hopes, great sorrows; perhaps even with the print of the martyr’s crown of thorns.

    Two Years Ago, chap. vii.  1856.

One Anchor.  October 27

In such a world as this, with such ugly possibilities hanging over us all, there is but one anchor which will hold, and that is utter trust in God; let us keep that, and we may yet get to our graves without misery though not without sorrow.

    Letters and Memories.  1871.

Self-Control.  October 28

Settle it in your minds, young people, that the first and the last of all virtues and graces which God can give is Self-Control, as necessary for the saint and the sage lest they become fanatics and pedants, as for the young in the hey-day of youth and health.

    Sermons on David.  1866.

Nature’s Permanence.  October 29

We abolish many things, good and evil, wisely and foolishly, in these fast-going times; but, happily for us, we cannot abolish the blue sky, and the green sea, and the white foam, and the everlasting hills, and the rivers which flow out of their bosoms.  They will abolish themselves when their work is done, but not before.  And we, who, with all our boasted scientific mastery over Nature, are, from a merely mechanical and carnal point of view, no more than a race of minute parasitic animals burrowing in the fair Earth’s skin, had better, instead of boasting of our empire over Nature, take care lest we become too troublesome to Nature, by creating, in our haste and greed, too many great black countries, and too many great dirty warrens of houses, miscalled cities, peopled with savages and imps of our own mis-creation; in which case Nature, so far from allowing us to abolish her, will by her inexorable laws abolish us.

    MS. Presidential Address.  1871.

The Only Refuge.  October 30

Prayer is the only refuge against the Walpurgis-dance of the witches and the fiends, which at hapless moments whirl unbidden through a mortal brain.

    Two Years Ago, chap. xix.  1856.

England’s Forgotten Worthies.  October 31

Among the higher-hearted of the early voyagers, the grandeur and glory around them had attuned their spirits to itself and kept them in a lofty, heroical, reverent frame of mind; while they knew as little about what they saw in an “artistic” or “critical” point of view as in a scientific one. . . .  They gave God thanks and were not astonished.  God was great: but that they had discovered long before they came into the tropics.

Noble old child-hearted heroes, with just romance and superstition enough about them to keep from that prurient hysterical wonder and enthusiasm which is simply, one often fears, a product of our scepticism!  We do not trust enough in God, we do not really believe His power enough, to be ready, as they were, as every one ought to be on a God-made earth, for anything and everything being possible; and then when a wonder is discovered we go into ecstasies and shrieks over it, and take to ourselves credit for being susceptible of so lofty a feeling—true index, forsooth, of a refined and cultivated mind!!

Smile if you will: but those were days (and there never were less superstitious ones) in which Englishmen believed in the living God, and were not ashamed to acknowledge, as a matter of course, His help, and providence, and calling, in the matters of daily life, which we now, in our covert atheism, term “secular and carnal.”

    Westward Ho! chap. xxiii.

SAINTS’ DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS

OCTOBER 18

St. Luke, Physician and Evangelist

It is good to follow Christ in one thing and to follow Him utterly in that.  And the physician has set his mind to do one thing—to hate calmly, but with an internecine hatred, disease and death, and to fight against them to the end.  In his exclusive care for the body the physician witnesses unconsciously yet mightily for the soul, for God, for the Bible, for immortality.  Is he not witnessing for God when he shows by his acts that he believes God to be a God of life, not of death; of health, not of disease; of order, not of disorder; of joy and strength, not of misery and weakness?  Is he not witnessing for Christ when, like Christ, he heals all manner of sickness and disease among the people, and attacks physical evil as the natural foe of man and of the Creator of man?

    “Water of Life,” and other Sermons.

OCTOBER 28

St. Simon and St. Jude, Apostles and Martyrs

He that loseth his life shall save it.  The end and aim of our life is not happiness but goodness.  If goodness comes first, then happiness may come after; but if not, something better than happiness may come, even blessedness.

Oh! sad hearts and suffering! look to the Cross.  There hung your King!  The King of sorrowing souls; and more, the King of Sorrows.  Ay, pain and grief, tyranny and desertion, death and hell,—He has faced them one and all, and tried their strength and taught them His, and conquered them right royally.  And since He hung upon that torturing Cross sorrow is divine,—godlike, as joy itself.  All that man’s fallen nature dreads and despises God honoured on the Cross, and took unto Himself, and blest and consecrated for ever. . . .  And now—Blessed are tears and shame, blessed are agony and pain; blessed is death, and blest the unknown realms where souls await the Resurrection-day.

    National Sermons.

November

“The giant trees are black and still, the tearful sky is dreary gray.  All Nature is like the grief of manhood in its soft and thoughtful sternness.  Shall I lend myself to its influence, and as the heaven settles down into one misty shroud of ‘shrill yet silent tears,’ as if veiling her shame in a cloudy mantle, shall I, too, lie down and weep?  Why not? for am I not ‘a part of all I see’?  And even now, in fasting and mortification, am I not sorrowing for my sin and for its dreary chastisement?  But shall I then despond and die?

“No! Mother Earth, for then I were unworthy of thee and thy God!  We may weep, Mother Earth, but we have Faith—faith which tells us that above the cloudy sky the bright clear sun is shining, and will shine.  And we have Hope, Mother Earth—hope, that as bright days have been, so bright days soon shall be once more!  And we have Charity, Mother Earth, and by it we can love all tender things—ay, and all rugged rocks and dreary moors, for the sake of the glow which has gilded them, and the fertility which will spring even from their sorrow.  We will smile through our tears, Mother Earth, for we are not forsaken!  We have still light and heat, and till we can bear the sunshine we will glory in the shade!”

    MS.  1842.

Sympathy of the Dead.  November 1

Believe that those who are gone are nearer us than ever; and that if (as I surely believe) they do sorrow over the mishaps and misdeeds of those whom they leave behind, they do not sorrow in vain.  Their sympathy is a further education for them, and a pledge, too, of help—I believe of final deliverance—for those on whom they look down in love.

    Letters and Memories.  1852.

Nature’s Parable.  November 2

There is a devil’s meaning to everything in nature, and a God’s meaning too.  As I read nature’s parable to-night I find nothing in it but hope.  What if there be darkness, the sun will rise to-morrow; what if there seem chaos, the great organic world is still living and growing and feeding, unseen by us all the night through; and every phosphoric atom there below is a sign that in the darkest night there is still the power of light, ready to flash out wherever and however it is stirred.

    Prose Idylls.  1849.

Passing Onward.  November 3

Liturgies are but temporary expressions of the Church’s heart.  The Bible is the immutable story of her husband’s love.  She must go on from grace to grace, and her song must vary from age to age, and her ancient melodies become unfitted to express her feelings; but He is the same for ever.

    MS.  1842.

See how the autumn leaves float by decaying,