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

The Higher Education.  February 26

In teaching women we must try to make our deepest lessons bear on the great purpose of unfolding Woman’s own calling in all ages—her especial calling in this one.  We must incite them to realise the chivalrous belief of our old forefathers among their Saxon forests, that something Divine dwelt in the counsels of woman: but, on the other hand, we must continually remind them that they will attain that divine instinct, not by renouncing their sex, but by fulfilling it; by becoming true women, and not bad imitations of men; by educating their heads for the sake of their hearts, not their hearts for the sake of their heads; by claiming woman’s divine vocation as the priestess of purity, of beauty, and of love.

    Introductory Lecture, Queen’s College.
    1848.

God’s Kingdom.  February 27

Philamon had gone forth to see the world, and he had seen it; and he had learnt that God’s kingdom was not a kingdom of fanatics yelling for a doctrine, but of willing, loving, obedient hearts.

    Hypatia, chap. xxiii.  1852.

Sowing and Reaping.  February 28

So it is, that by every crime, folly, even neglect of theirs, men drive a thorn into their own flesh, which will trouble them for years to come, it may be to their dying day—

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all—

as those who neglect their fellow-creatures will discover, by the most patent, undeniable proofs, in that last great day, when the rich and poor shall meet together, and then, at last, discover too that the Lord is the Maker of them all.

    All Saints’ Day Sermons.  1871.

The Church Catechism.  February 29

Did it ever strike you that the simple, noble, old Church Catechism, without one word about rewards and punishments, heaven or hell, begins to talk to the child, like a true English Catechism as it is, about that glorious old English key-word Duty?  It calls on the child to confess its own duty, and teaches it that its duty is something most human, simple, everyday—commonplace, if you will call it so.  And I rejoice in the thought that the Church Catechism teaches that the child’s duty is commonplace.  I rejoice that in what it says about our duty to God and our neighbour, it says not one word about counsels of perfection, or those frames and feelings which depend, believe me, principally on the state of people’s bodily health, on the constitution of their nerves, and the temper of their brain; but that it requires nothing except what a little child can do as well as a grown person, a labouring man as well as a divine, a plain farmer as well as the most refined, devout, imaginative lady.

    Sermons for the Times.  1855.

SAINTS’ DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS

FEBRUARY 2

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple,

commonly called

The Purification of the Virgin Mary

Little children may think of Christ as a child now and always.  For to them He is always the Babe of Bethlehem.  Let them not say to themselves, “Christ is grown up long ago.”  He is, and yet He is not.  His life is eternal in the heavens, above all change of time and space. . . .  Such is the sacred heart of Jesus—all things to all.  To the strong He can be strongest, to the weak weakest of all.  With the aged and dying He goes down for ever to the grave; and yet with you children Christ lies for ever on His mother’s bosom, and looks up for ever into His mother’s face, full of young life and happiness and innocence, the Everlasting Christ-child, in whom you must believe, whom you must love, to whom you must offer up your childish prayers.

    The Christ-child,
    Sermons, (Good News of God).

FEBRUARY 24.St. Matthias, Apostle and Martyr

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.  They rest from their labours—all their struggles, failures, past and over for ever.  But their works follow them.  The good which they did on earth—that is not past and over.  It cannot die.  It lives and grows for ever, following on in their path long after they are dead, and bearing fruit unto everlasting life, not only in them, but in men whom they never saw, and in generations yet unborn.

    Sermons (Good News of God).

Ash Wednesday

There is a repentance too deep for words—too deep for all confessionals, penances, and emotions or acts of contrition; the repentance, not of the excitable, theatric Southern, unstable as water even in his most violent remorse, but of the still, deep-hearted Northern, whose pride breaks slowly and silently, but breaks once for all; who tells to God what he will never tell to man, and having told it, is a new creature from that day forth for ever.

    Two Years Ago, chap. xviii.

The True Fast

The rationale of Fasting is to give up habitual indulgences for a time, lest they become our masters—artificial necessities.

    MS.

March

Early in the Springtime, on raw and windy mornings,
Beneath the freezing house-eaves, I heard the starlings sing—
Ah! dreary March month, is this then a time for building wearily?
Sad, sad, to think that the year is but begun!

Late in the Autumn, on still and cloudless evenings,
Among the golden reed-beds I heard the starlings sing—
Ah! that sweet March month, when we and our mates were courting merrily;
Sad, sad, to think that the year is all but done.

    The Starlings.

Knowledge and Love.  March 1

Knowledge and Love are reciprocal.  He who loves knows.  He who knows loves.  Saint John is the example of the first; Saint Paul of the second.

    Letters and Memories.  1842.

A Charm of Birds.  March 2

Little do most people know how much there is to learn—what variety of character, as well as variety of motion, may be distinguished by the practised ear in a “charm of birds”—from the wild cry of the missel-thrush, ringing from afar in the first bright days of March a passage of one or two bars repeated three or four times, and then another and another, clear and sweet and yet defiant—for the great “storm-cock” loves to sing when rain and wind is coming on, and faces the elements as boldly as he faces hawk and crow—down to the delicate warble of the wren, who slips out of his hole in the brown bank where he has huddled through the frost with wife and children, all folded in each other’s arms like human beings.  Yet even he, sitting at his house-door in the low sunlight, says grace for all mercies in a song so rapid, so shrill, so loud, and yet so delicately modulated, that you wonder at the amount of soul within that tiny body; and then stops suddenly, like a child that has said its lesson or got to the end of a sermon, gives a self-satisfied flirt of his tail, and goes in again to sleep.

    Prose Idylls.  1866.

Tact of the Heart.  March 3

Random shots are dangerous and cruel, likely to hit the wrong person and hurt his feelings unnecessarily.  It is very easy to say a hard thing, but not so easy to say it to the right person at the right time.

    MS.

Special Providences.  March 4

I believe not only in “special providences,” but in the whole universe as one infinite complexity of special providences.

    Letters and Memories.