Daily Thoughts: selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife. Charles Kingsley
and sing in the people’s ears the sweetest of all earthly songs—save the song of a mother over her child—the song of “The Laughing Water.”
Strive all your life to free men from the bondage of custom and self, the two great elements of the world that lieth in wickedness.
Henceforth let no man peering down
Through the dim glittering mine of future years
Say to himself, “Too much! this cannot be!”
To-day and custom wall up our horizon:
Before the hourly miracle of life
Blindfold we stand, and sigh, as though God were not.
There comes a time when we must narrow our sphere of thought much, that we may truly enlarge it! we must, artificialised as we have been, return to the rudiments of life, to children’s pleasures, that we may find easily, through their transparent simplicity, spiritual laws which we may apply to the more intricate spheres of art and science.
The Lord’s Prayer teaches that we are members of a family, when He tells us to pray not “My Father” but “Our Father;” not “my soul be saved,” but “Thy kingdom come;” not “give me” but “give us our daily bread;” not “forgive me,” but “forgive us our trespasses,” and that only as we forgive others; not “lead me not,” but “lead us not into temptation;” not “deliver me,” but “deliver us from evil.” After that manner our Lord tells us to pray, and in proportion as we pray in that manner, just so far, and no farther, will God hear our prayers.
All the deep things of God are bright, for God is Light. God’s arbitrary will and almighty power may seem dark by themselves though deep, but that is because they do not involve His moral character. Join them with the fact that He is a God of mercy as well as justice; remember that His essence is love, and the thunder-cloud will blaze with dewy gold, full of soft rain and pure light.
Science is, I verily believe, like virtue, its own exceeding great reward. I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom—panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life in the tropic forest—Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of, some law, or even mere hint of a law, explaining one fact: but explaining with it a thousand more, connecting them all with each other and with the mighty whole, till order and meaning shoots through some old chaos of scattered observations. Is not that a joy, a prize, which wealth cannot give nor poverty take away? What it may lead to he knows not. Of what use it may be he knows not. But this he knows, that somewhere it must lead, of some use it will be. For it is a truth.
Physical and spiritual science seem to the world to be distinct. One sight of God as we shall some day see Him will show us that they are indissolubly and eternally the same.
Passion and reason in a healthy mind ought to be inseparable. We need not be passionless because we reason correctly. Strange to say, one’s feelings will often sharpen one’s knowledge of the truth, as they do one’s powers of action.
. . . People smile at the “enthusiasm of youth”—that enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever lost it. . . . Do not fear being considered an enthusiast. What matter? But pray for tact, the true tact which love alone can give, to prevent scandalising a weak brother.
Be earnest, earnest, earnest; mad, if thou wilt:
Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven, And that thy last deed ere the judgment-day.
When all’s done, nothing’s done. There’s rest above—
Below let work be death, if work be love!
“God hath showed thee what is good,” . . . what is good in itself, and of itself—the one very eternal and absolute good, which was with God and in God and from God, before all worlds, and will be for ever, without changing, or growing less or greater, eternally the same good—the good which would be just as good and just and right and lovely and glorious if there were no world, no men, no angels, no heaven, no hell, and God were alone in His own abyss.
A difference in words is a very awful and important difference; a difference in words is a difference in things. Words are very awful and wonderful things, for they come from the most awful and wonderful of all beings, Jesus Christ, The Word. He puts words into men’s minds. He made all things, and He made words to express those things. And woe to those who use the wrong words about anything.
What wisdom she had she did not pick off the hedge, like blackberries. God is too kind to give away wisdom after that useless fashion. So she had to earn her wisdom, and to work hard, and suffer much ere she attained it. And in attaining she endured strange adventures and great sorrows; and yet they would not have given her the wisdom had she not had something in herself which gave her wit to understand her lessons, and skill and courage to do what they taught her. There had been many names for that something before she was born, there have been many names for it since, but her father and mother called it the Grace of God.
The older we grow, the more we understand our own lives and histories, the more we shall see that the spirit of wisdom is the spirit of love; that the true way to gain influence over our fellow-men is to have charity towards them. That is a hard lesson to learn; and all those who learn it generally learn it late; almost—God forgive us—too late.
We owe much (notwithstanding their partial and Manichean idea of beauty) to the early ascetic painters. Their works are a possession for ever. No future school of religious art will be able to rise to eminence without learning from them their secret. They taught artists, and priests, and laymen, too, that beauty is only worthy of admiration when it is the outward sacrament of the beauty of the soul within; they helped to deliver men from that idolatry to merely animal strength and loveliness into which they were in danger of falling in ferocious ages, and among the relics of Roman luxury.
Beware of giving way to reveries. Have always some employment in your hands. Look forward to the future with hope. Build castles if you will, but only bright ones, and not too many.
It is the glory of woman that she was sent into the world to live for others rather than for herself; and therefore, I should say, let her smallest rights be respected,