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

The grain of dust is a thought of God; God’s power made it; God’s wisdom gave it whatsoever properties or qualities it may possess.  God’s providence has put it in the place where it is now, and has ordained that it should be in that place at that moment, by a train of causes and effects which reaches back to the very creation of the universe.  The grain of dust can no more go from God’s presence or flee from God’s Spirit than you or I can.

    Town Geology.  1871.

Be Calm.  March 5

Strive daily and hourly to be calm; to stop yourself forcibly and recall your mind to a sense of what you are, where you are going, and whither you ought to be tending.  This is most painful discipline, but most wholesome.

    MS. Letter.  1842.

Self-sacrifice and Personality.  March 6

What a strange mystery is that of mutual self-sacrifice! to exist for one moment for another! the perfection of human bliss!  And does not love teach us two things?  First, that self-sacrifice, the living for others, is the law of our perfect being, and next, that by and in self-sacrifice alone can we attain to the perfect apprehension of ourselves, our own personality, our own duty, our own bliss.  So that the mystics are utterly wrong when they fancy that self-sacrifice can be attained by self-annihilation.  Self-sacrifice, instead of destroying the sense of personality, perfects it.

    MS. Letter.  1843.

Follow your Star.  March 7

I believe with Dante, “se tu segui la tua Stella,” that He who ordained my star will not lead me into temptation but through it.  Without Him all places and methods of life are equally dangerous, with Him all equally safe.

    Letters and Memories.  1848.

Reverence for Books.  March 8

This is the age of books.  And we should reverence books.  Consider! except a living man there is nothing more wonderful than a book—a message to us from the dead, from human souls whom we never saw, who lived perhaps thousands of miles away, and yet in those little sheets of paper speak to us, amuse us, terrify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers!

We ought to reverence books, to look at them as awful and mighty things.  If they are good and true, whether they are about religion or politics, trade or medicine, they are the message of Christ, the Maker of all things, the Teacher of all truth, which He has put into the heart of some men to speak.  And at the last day, be sure of it, we shall have to render an account—a strict account—of the books which we have read, and of the way in which we have obeyed what we read, just as if we had had so many prophets or angels sent to us.

    Village Sermons.  1849.

The Unknown Future.  March 9

As for the things which God has prepared for those who love Him, the Bible tells me that no man can conceive them, and therefore I believe that I cannot conceive them.  God has conceived them; God has prepared them; God is our Father.  That is enough.

    Sermons for the Times.  1855.

Secular and Sacred.  March 10

I grudge the epithet of “secular” to any matter whatsoever.  But more; I deny it to anything which God has made, even to the tiniest of insects, the most insignificant grain of dust.  To those who believe in God, and try to see all things in God, the most minute natural phenomenon cannot be secular.  It must be divine, I say deliberately, divine, and I can use no less lofty word.

    Town Geology.  1871.

Content or Happy?  March 11

My friends, whether you will be the happier for any knowledge of physical science, or for any other knowledge whatsoever, I cannot tell.  That lies in the decision of a higher Power than I; and, indeed, to speak honestly, I do not think that any branch of physical science is likely, at first at least, to make you happy.  Neither is the study of your fellow-men.  Neither is religion itself.  We were not sent into the world to be happy, but to be right—at least, poor creatures that we are—as right as we can be, and we must be content with being right, and not happy. . . .  And we shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not only with what we can understand, but content with what we do not understand—the habit of mind which theologians call (and rightly) faith in God, true and solid faith, which comes often out of sadness and out of doubt.

    Lecture on Bio-geology.  1869.

Duty of Man to Man.  March 12

Each man can learn something from his neighbour; at least he can learn this—to have patience with his neighbour, to live and let live.

Peace! peace!  Anything which is not wrong for the sake of heaven-born Peace!

    Town and Country Sermons.  1861.

Blessing of a True Friend.  March 13

A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend, one human soul whom we can trust utterly, who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults; who will speak the honest truth to us, while the world flatters us to our face, and laughs at us behind our back; who will give us counsel and reproof in the days of prosperity and self-conceit; but who, again, will comfort and encourage us in the day of difficulty and sorrow, when the world leaves us alone to fight our battle as we can.

It is only the great-hearted who can be true friends: the mean and cowardly can never know what true friendship means.

    Sermons on David.  1866.

True Heroines.  March 14

What is the commonest, and yet the least remembered form of heroism?  The heroism of an average mother.  Ah! when I think of that broad fact I gather hope again for poor humanity, and this dark world looks bright, this diseased world looks wholesome to me once more, because, whatever else it is or is not full of, it is at least full of mothers.

    Lecture on Heroism.  1873.

Secret Atheism.  March 15

There is little hope that we shall learn the lessons God is for ever teaching us in the events of life till we get rid of our secret Atheism, till we give up the notion that God only visits now and then to disorder and destroy His own handiwork, and take back the old scriptural notion that God is visiting all day long for ever, to give order and life to His own work, to set it right where it goes wrong, and re-create it whenever it decays.

    Water of Life Sermons.  1866.

Tolerance.  March 16

If we really love God and long to do good and work for God, if we really love our neighbours and wish to help them, we shall have no heart to quarrel about how the good is to be done, provided it is done.  “Master,” said St. John, “we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, and he followeth not us; wilt Thou that we forbid him?  And Jesus said, Forbid him not.”

    Sermons.

The Hopes of Old Age.  March 17

Christianity alone deprives old age of its bitterness, making it the gate of heaven.  Our bodies will fade and grow weak and shapeless, just when we shall not want them, being ready and in close expectation of that resurrection of the flesh which is the great promise of Christianity (no miserable fancies about “pure souls” escaped from matter, but)—of bodies, our bodies, beloved, beautiful, ministers to us in all our joys, sufferers with us in all our sorrows—yea, our very own selves raised up again to live and love in a manner inconceivable from its perfection.

    MS.  1842.

. . . No!  I can wait:
Another body!—Ah, new limbs are ready,
Free, pure, instinct with soul through every nerve,
Kept for us in the treasuries of God!

    Santa Maura.  1852.

The Highest Study for Man, March 18

Man is not, as the poet said, “the noblest study of mankind.”  God is the noblest study of man, and Him we can study in three ways.  1st. From His image as developed in Christ the Ideal, and in all good men—great good men.  2dly. From His works.  3dly. From His dealings in history; this is the real philosophy of history.