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

Down the wild swirls of the dark-brimming stream;
So fleet the works of men back to their earth again—
Ancient and holy things pass like a dream.

    A Parable.  1848.

The Divine Intention.  November 4

I am superstitious enough, thank God, to believe that not a stone or a handful of mud gravitates into its place without the will of God; that it was ordained, ages since, into what particular spot each grain of gold should be washed down from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man might find it at a certain moment and crisis of his life.

    Science Lectures.

Christ Weeping over Jerusalem.  November 5

That which is true of nations is true of individuals, of each separate human brother of the Son of man.  Is there one young life ruined by its own folly—one young heart broken by its own wilfulness—or one older life fast losing the finer instincts, the nobler aims of youth, in the restlessness of covetousness, of fashion, of ambition?  Is there one such poor soul over whom Christ does not grieve?  One to whom, at some supreme crisis of their lives, He does not whisper—“Ah, beautiful organism—thou too art a thought of God—thou too, if thou wert but in harmony with thyself and God, a microcosmic City of God!  Ah! that thou hadst known—even thou—at least in this thy day—the things which belong to thy peace”?

    MS. Sermon.  1874.

Love Expansive.  November 6

The mystics think it wrong to love any created thing, because our whole love should be given to God.  But as flame increases by being applied to many objects, so does love.  He who loves God most loves God’s creatures most, and them for God’s sake, and God for their sake.

    MS. Note-book.  1843.

Still the same.  November 7

Those who die in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ do not really taste death; to them there is no death, but only a change of place, a change of state; they pass at once into some new life, with all their powers, all their feelings, unchanged; still the same living, thinking, active beings which they were here on earth.  I say active.  Rest they may, rest they will, if they need rest.  But what is true rest?  Not idleness, but peace of mind.

    Water of Life Sermons.  1862.

An absolutely Good God.  November 8

Fix in your minds—or rather ask God to fix in your minds—this one idea of an absolutely good God; good with all forms of goodness which you respect and love in man; good, as you, and I, and every honest man, understand the plain word good.  Slowly you will acquire that grand and all-illuminating idea; slowly and most imperfectly at best: for who is mortal man that he should conceive and comprehend the goodness of the infinitely good God!  But see, then, whether, in the light of that one idea, all the old-fashioned Christian ideas about the relation of God to man—whether Providence, Prayer, Inspiration, Revelation, the Incarnation, the Passion, and the final triumph of the Son of God—do not seem to you, not merely beautiful, not merely probable, but rational, and logical, and necessary, moral consequences from the one idea of an Absolute and Eternal Goodness, the Living Parent of the universe?

    Westminster Sermons.  1873.

Nature’s Lesson.  November 9

Learn what feelings every object in Nature expresses, but do not let them mould the tone of your mind; else, by allowing a melancholy day to make you melancholy, you worship the creature more than the Creator.

    MS. Letter.  1842.

Morals and Mind.  November 10

Not upon mind, not upon mind, but upon morals, is human welfare founded.  The true subjective history of man is not the history of his thought, but of his conscience: the true objective history of man is not that of his inventions, but of his vices and his virtues.  So far from morals depending upon thought, thought, I believe, depends on morals.  In proportion as a nation is righteous—in proportion as common justice is done between man and man, will thought grow rapidly, securely, triumphantly; will its discoveries be cheerfully accepted and faithfully obeyed, to the welfare of the whole common weal.

    Inaugural Lecture, Cambridge.  1860.

Fastidiousness.  November 11

Do not let us provoke God (though that is really impossible) by complaining of His gifts because they do not come just in the form we should have wished. . . .

    MS. Letter.  1844.

Unconscious Faith.  November 12

For the rest, Amyas never thought about thinking or felt about feeling; and had no ambition whatsoever beyond pleasing his father and mother, getting by honest means the maximum of “red quarrenders” and mazard cherries, and going to sea when he was big enough.  Neither was he what would be nowadays called by many a pious child, for though he said his Creed and Lord’s Prayer night and morning, and went to service at the church every forenoon, and read the day’s Psalms with his mother every evening, and had learnt from her and his father that it was infinitely noble to do right and infinitely base to do wrong, yet he knew nothing more of theology or of his own soul than is contained in the Church Catechism.

    Westward Ho! chap. i.  1855.

Silence.  November 13

There are silences more pathetic than all words.

    MS.

The Nineteenth Century.  November 14

. . . What so maddening as the new motion of our age—the rush of the express train, when the live iron pants and leaps and roars through the long chalk cutting, and white mounds gleam cold a moment against the sky and vanish; and rocks and grass and bushes fleet by in dim blended lines; and the long hedges revolve like the spokes of a gigantic wheel; and far below meadows and streams and homesteads, with all their lazy old-world life, open for an instant, and then flee away; while awestruck, silent, choked with the mingled sense of pride and helplessness, we are swept on by that great pulse of England’s life-blood rushing down her iron veins; and dimly out of the future looms the fulfilment of our primeval mission to conquer and subdue the earth, and space too, and time, and all things—even hardest of all tasks, yourselves, my cunning brothers; ever learning some fresh lesson, except the hardest one of all, that it is the Spirit of God which giveth you understanding?

Yes, great railroads, and great railroad age, who would exchange you, with all your sins, for any other time?  For swiftly as rushes matter, more swiftly rushes mind; more swiftly still rushes the heavenly dawn up the eastern sky.  “The night is far spent, the day is at hand.”  “Blessed is the servant whom his Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching.”

    Prose Idylls.

Unreality.  November 15

Those who have had no real sorrows can afford to play with imaginary ones.

    MS.

The indwelling Light.  November 16

The doctrine of Christ in every man, as the indwelling Word of God, the Light who lights every one who comes into the world, is no peculiar tenet of the Quakers, but one which runs through the whole of the Old and New Testaments, and without which they would both be unintelligible, just as the same doctrine runs through the whole history of the Early Church for the first two centuries, and is the only explanation of them.

    Theologica Germanica.  1854.

Woman’s Calling.  November 17

What surely is a woman’s calling but to teach man? and to teach him what?  To temper his fiercer, coarser, more self-assertive nature by the contact of her gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice.  To make him see that not by blare of trumpets, not by noise, wrath, greed, ambition, intrigue, puffery, is good and lasting work to be done on earth; but by wise self-distrust, by silent labour, by lofty self-control, by that charity which hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things; by such an example, in short, as women now in tens of thousands set to those around them; such as they will show more and more, the more their whole womanhood is educated to employ its powers without waste and without haste in harmonious unity.

    Lecture on Thrift.  1869.

Waste.  November 18

Thrift of the heart, thrift of the emotions—how are they wasted in these days in reading sensation novels! while British literature—all that the best hearts and intellects among our forefathers have bequeathed to us—is neglected for light fiction, the reading of which is the worst form of intemperance—dram-drinking and opium-eating, intellectual and moral.

    Lecture on Thrift.

True Penance.  November 19