Daily Thoughts: selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife. Charles Kingsley
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fruit unto everlasting life, not only in them, but in men whom they never saw, and in generations yet unborn.
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.
The rationale of Fasting is to give up habitual indulgences for a time, lest they become our masters—artificial necessities.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I believe not only in “special providences,” but in the whole universe as one infinite complexity of special providences.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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