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

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Think less of what you feel—even of trying to be anything.  Look out of yourself at God.  Pray and praise, and God will give you His Spirit often when you feel most dull.

    MS. Letter.  1842.

Christ’s Church.  December 12

. . . What a thought it is that there is a God! a Father, a King! a Husband not of individuals, that is a Popish fancy, which the Puritans have adopted—but of the Church—of collective humanity.  Let us be content to be members; let us be, if we may, the feet, lowest, hardest worked, trodden on, bleeding, brought into harshest contact with the evil world!  Still we are members of Christ’s Church! . . .

    Letters and Memories.  1843.

Confound me not.  December 13

Have charity, have patience, have mercy.  Never bring a human being, however silly, ignorant, or weak, above all, any little child, to shame and confusion of face.  Never by petulance, by suspicion, by ridicule, even by selfish and silly haste, never, above all, by indulging in the devilish pleasure of a sneer, crush what is finest, and rouse up what is coarsest in the heart of any fellow-creature.

    Westminster Sermons.  1872.

The Divine Hunger and Thirst.  December 14

God grant us to be among “those who really hunger and thirst after righteousness,” and who therefore long to know what righteousness is, that they may copy it—those who long to be freed not merely from the punishment of sin after they die, but from sin itself while they live on earth, and who therefore wish to know what sin is that they may avoid it.

    Preface to Tauler’s Sermons.  1854.

Religion or Godliness?  December 15

This is the especial curse of our day, that religion does not mean, as it used, the service of God—the being like God and showing forth God’s glory.  No, religion means nowadays the art of getting to heaven when we die, and saving our own miserable souls, and getting God’s wages without doing God’s work—as if that was godliness, as if that was anything but selfishness, as if selfishness was any the better for being everlasting selfishness!

    Village Sermons.  1849.

Christ’s Coming.  December 16

Christ may come to us when we are fierce and prejudiced, with that still small voice—so sweet and yet so keen, “Understand those who misunderstand thee.  Be fair to those who are unfair to thee.  Be just and merciful to those whom thou wouldst like to hate.  Forgive and thou shalt be forgiven.”  He comes to us surely, when we are selfish and luxurious, in every sufferer who needs our help, and says, “If you do good to one of these, my brethren, you do it unto Me.”

    Last Sermon.  MS.  1874.

God’s Nature.  December 17

When will men open their eyes to the plain axiom that nothing is impossible with God, save that He should transgress His own nature by being unjust and unloving?

    Preface to Tauler.  1854.

Educators of Men.  December 18

There are those who consider—and I agree with them—that the education of boys under the age of twelve years ought to be entrusted, as much as possible, to women.  Let me ask—of what period of youth and manhood does it not hold true?  I pity the ignorance and conceit of the man who fancies that he has nothing left to learn from cultivated women.  I should have thought that the very mission of woman was to be, in the highest sense, the educator of man, from infancy to old age; that that was the work towards which all the God-given capacities of women pointed.

    Lecture on Thrift.  1869.

The Earthly Body.  December 19

Let us remember that if the body does feel a burden now (as it must at moments), what a happiness it is to have a body at all: how lonely, cold, barren, would it be to be a “disembodied spirit.”  As St. Paul says, “Not that we desire to be unclothed, but to be clothed upon”—to have a spiritual, deathless, griefless life instilled into the body.

    MS. Letter.  1842.

Home at Last.  December 20

When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown,
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there
You loved when all was young.

    The Water Babies.  1862.

The Bible.  December 21

The hearts and minds of the sick, the poor, the sorrowing, the truly human, all demand a living God who has revealed Himself in living acts; a God who has taught mankind by facts, not left them to discover Him by theories and sentiments; a Judge, a Father, a Saviour, an Inspirer; in a word, their hearts demand the historic truth of the Bible—of the Old Testament no less than the New.

    Sermons on Pentateuch.  1863.

Shaking of Heaven and Earth.  December 22

“Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but heaven” (Hebrews xii. 26-29).  This is one of the royal texts of Scripture.  It declares one of those great laws of the kingdom of God which may fulfil itself once and again at many eras and by many methods; which fulfilled itself most gloriously in the first century after Christ; again in the fifth century; again at the time of the Crusades; and again at the great Reformation in the sixteenth century,—and is fulfilling itself again at this very day.

    Westminster Sermons.  1872.

Self-Respect the Voice of God.  December 23

Never hurt any one’s self-respect.  Never trample on any soul, though it may be lying in the veriest mire; for that last spark of self-respect is as its only hope, its only chance; the last seed of a new and better life; the voice of God which still whispers to it, “You are not what you ought to be, and you are not what you can be.  You are still God’s child, still an immortal soul.  You may rise yet, and fight a good fight yet, and conquer yet, and be a man yet, after the likeness of God who made you, and Christ who died for you.”  Oh! why crush that voice in any heart?  If you do the poor creature is lost, and lies where he or she falls, and never tries to rise again.

    Good News of God Sermons.  1859.

Christmas Eve.  December 24

We will have no sad forebodings on the eve of the blessed Christmas-tide.  He lives, He loves, He reigns; and all is well; for we are His and He is ours.

    Two Years Ago, Introduction.  1856.

The Miracle of Christmas Night.  December 25

After the crowning miracle of this most blessed night all miracles are possible.  The miracle of Christmas night was possible because God’s love was absolute, infinite, unconquerable, able to condescend to anything that good might be done. . . .  This Christmas night is the one of all the year which sets a physicist on facing the fact of miracle, and which delivers him from the bonds of sense and custom by reminding him of God made Man.

    Letters and Memories.  1858.

Redemption.  December 26

All things are blessed now, but sin; for all things, excepting sin, are redeemed by the life and death of the Son of God.  Blessed are wisdom and courage, joy and health and beauty, love and marriage, childhood and manhood, corn and wine, fruit and flowers, for Christ redeemed them by His life. . . .  Blessed is death, and blest the unknown realms where souls await the Resurrection Day, for Christ redeemed them by His death.  Blessed are all days, dark as well as bright, for all are His, and He is ours; and all are ours, and we are His for ever.