Charles Kingsley

“ Whatever else I cannot trust, there is One whom I can trust utterly. Whatever else I am dissatisfied with, there is One whom I can contemplate with utter satisfaction, and bathe my stained soul in that eternal fount of purity. And who is He? Who save the Cause and Maker, and Ruler of all things, past, present, and to come? Ah, Gospel of all gospels, that God Himself, the Almighty God, is the eternal and unchangeable realisation of all that I and all mankind, in our purest and our noblest moments, have ever dreamed concerning the true, the beautiful, and the good. ”

“ That when we walk across the field, or look out into the garden, we could have the wisdom to remember, Whither, O God, can I go from Thy presence? For Thou art looking down on the opening of every bud and flower, and without Thee not a sparrow falls to the ground. Whither can I flee from Thy Spirit? For Thy Spirit is giving life perpetually, alike to me and to the insect at my feet; without Thy Spirit my lungs could not breathe one breath, my heart could not beat one pulse. In Thee, I and all things live, move, and have our being. ”

“ Our true knowledge is to know our own ignorance. Our true strength is to know our own weakness. Our true dignity is to confess that we have no dignity, and are nobody, and nothing in ourselves, and to cast ourselves down before the Dignity of God, under the shadow of whose wings, and in the smile of whose countenance, alone, is any created being safe. Let us cling to our Father in Heaven, as a child, walking in the night, clings to his father’s hand. Let us take refuge on the lowest step of the throne of Christ our Lord, and humble ourselves under His mighty hand ”

“ Is there a luxury in which a respectable man could safely indulge, which I have denied myself? What have I been after all, with all my philanthropy and charity, but a selfish, luxurious, pompous personage? an actor doing my alms to be seen of men? I did my good works as unto Christ?—No; I did them as unto myself—to get honour from men while I lived, and to save my selfish soul when I died. God be merciful to me a sinner! That such thoughts ought to pass through too many persons’ hearts in this generation, I fear is too certain. ”

“ I know that the man’s body dies as the beast’s body dies; but I know that the body is not the man, but only the husk, the shell of the man; that the true man, the true woman, lives on after the loss of his mortal body; and that there is an eternal law of life, which conquers the law of death; and by that law a fresh body will grow up round the true man, the immortal spirit, and will be as fit—ay, far fitter—to do his work, than this poor mortal body which has turned to death on earth. ”

“ Merely to be comfortable?—To be free from pain, anxiety, sorrow?—To have only pleasant faces round us, and pleasant things said to us? If we want that comfort, we shall very seldom have it. It will be very seldom good for us to have it. The comfort which poor human beings want in such a world as this, is not the comfort of ease, but the comfort of strength. The comforter whom we need is not one who will merely say kind things, but give help—help to the weary and heavy laden heart which has no time to rest. We need not the sunny and smiling face, but the strong and helping arm. ”

“ Ay, most, perhaps, in the smallest, when one considers the utterly inconceivable wisdom, which can make the smallest animal—so made as to be almost invisible under the strongest microscope—as perfect in all its organs as the hugest elephant. Ay, more, which can not only make these tiny living things, but, more wonderful still, make them make themselves? For what is growth, but a thing making itself? What is the seed growing into a plant, the plant into a flower, the flower to a seed again, but that thing making itself, transforming itself, by an inward law of life which God’s Spirit gives it. ”

“ Were you never not merely puzzled—all thinking men are that—but crushed and sickened at moments by the mystery of evil? Sickened by the follies, the failures, the ferocities, the foulnesses of mankind, for ages upon ages past? Sickened by the sins of the unholy many—sickened, alas! by the imperfections even of the holiest few? And have you never cried in your hearts with longing, almost with impatience, Surely, surely, there is an ideal Holy One somewhere, or else how could have arisen in my mind the conception, however faint, of an ideal holiness? ”

“ There is the root and beginning of all Christianity,—of all true religion. We are the sons of God, and the infinite, absolute, eternal Being who made this world, and all worlds, is our Father. We are the children of God. It is not for us to say who are not God’s children. That is God’s concern, not ours. All that we have to do with, is the awful and blessed fact that we are. We were baptised into God’s kingdom, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ Let us consider this noble text, and see something, at least, of what it has to tell us. It is, like all God’s messages, all God’s laws, ay, like God’s world in which we live and breathe, at once beautiful and awful; full of life-giving hope; but full, too, of chastening fear. Hope for the glorious future which it opens to poor human beings like us; fear, lest so great a promise being left us, we should fall short of it by our own fault. Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons of God. ”

“ Let our hearts be bowed as the heart of one man, to say—that so far as we have power, so help us God, no man, woman, or child in Britain, be he prince or be he beggar, shall die henceforth of preventable disease. Let us repent of and amend that scandalous neglect of the now well-known laws of health and cleanliness which destroys thousands of lives yearly in this kingdom, without need and reason; in defiance alike of science, of humanity, and of our Christian profession. Two hundred thousand persons, I am told, have died of preventable fever since the Prince Consort’s death ten years ago. ”

“ I can never see a child picking a nosegay, much less a little London child, born and bred and shut up among bricks and mortar, when it gets for the first time into a green field, and throws itself instinctively upon the buttercups and daisies, as if they were precious jewels and gold;—I never can see that sight, I say, without feeling that there are such things as final causes—I mean that the great Father in heaven put those flowers into that field on purpose to give pleasure to His human children. ”

“ Ah! my friends, if we offered that sacrifice oftener, we should have more seldom need to offer the first sacrifice of repentance. I am astonished when I look at my own heart, by which alone I can judge the hearts of others, to see how unthankful one is. How one takes as a matter of course, without one aspiration of gratitude to our Father in heaven—how one takes, as a matter of course, I say, life, health, reason, freedom, education, comfort, safety, and all the blessings of humanity, and of this favoured land. ”

“ That man, I insist, was indeed recompensed on the earth, when music, which is to the ungodly and unrighteous the most earthly of all arts, which to the heathens and the savages, to frivolous and profligate persons, only tempts to silly excitement or to brutal passion, was to him as the speech of angels, a remembrancer to him of that eternal and ever-present heaven, from which all beauty, truth, and goodness are shed forth over the universe, from the glory of the ever-blessed Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. ”

“ On the mercy and the love of the ever blessed Trinity, shown forth in Christ upon His cross, we can cast ourselves with all our sins; we can cry to Him, and not in vain, for forgiveness and for sanctification; for a clean heart and a right spirit; and that we may become holy and humble men of heart. We can join our feeble praises to that hymn of praise which goes up for ever to God from suns and stars, clouds and showers, beasts and birds, and every living thing, giving Him thanks for ever for His great glory. ”

“ Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for their’s is the kingdom of heaven.” Great indeed is their reward, for it is no less than the very beatific vision to contemplate and adore. That supreme moral beauty, of which all earthly beauty, all nature, all art, all poetry, all music, are but phantoms and parables, hints and hopes, dim reflected rays of the clear light of that everlasting day, of which it is written—that “the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” ”

“ And shall there be no noble indignation in God when He beholds all the wrong which is done on earth? Shall the just and holy God look on carelessly and satisfied at injustice and unholiness which vexes even poor sinful man? God forbid! To think that, would, to my mind, be to fancy God less just, less merciful, than man. And if any one says, Anger is a passion, a suffering from something outside oneself, and God can have no passions; God cannot be moved by the sins and follies of such paltry atoms as we human beings are: the answer is, Man’s anger—even just anger—is, too often, a passion ”

“ Let us believe the Gospel and good news which baptism brings us, and say each of us;—Not for our own goodness and deserving; not for our own faith or assurance; not for anything which we have thought, felt, or done, but simply out of the free grace and love of God, seeking out us unconscious infants, we are children of God. “Beloved now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” It doth not yet appear what the next life will be like, or what we shall be like in it. That there will be a next life,—that death does not end all for us, the New Testament tells us. ”

“ What proverb more common, what proverb more true, than that after pride comes a fall? Do we not know (if we do not, we shall know sooner or later) that the surest way to fail in any undertaking is to set about it in self-will and self-conceit; that the surest way to do a foolish thing, is to fancy that we are going to do a very wise one; that the surest way to make ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of our fellow-men, is to assume airs, and boast, shew ourselves off, and end by shewing off only our own folly? ”

“ Who will be the comforter, and give us not mere kind words, but strength? Who will give us the faith to say with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him?” Who will give us the firm reason to look steadily at our grief, and learn the lesson it was meant to teach? Who will give us the temperate will, to keep sober and calm amid the shocks and changes of mortal life? Above all, I may say—Who will lead us into all truth? How much is our sorrow increased—how much of it is caused by simple ignorance! Why has our anxiety come? ”

“ Yes, if you will receive it;—when we love our neighbours, it is God in them, Christ in them, whom we love,—Christ in them, the hope of glory.
What, some one will ask, when a man loves a fair face, does he love Christ then? Ah! my friends, that is not true love, as all know well enough if they will let their own hearts tell them truth. True love is when two people love each other for the goodness which is in them. True love is the love which endures after beauty has faded, and youth, and health, and all that seems to make life worth having is gone. ”

“ They have hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and now they are filled. They have longed for, toiled for, it may be died for, the true, the beautiful, and the good; and now they can gaze upward at the perfect reality of that which they saw on earth, only as in a glass darkly, dimly, and afar; and can contemplate the utterly free, the utterly beautiful, and the utterly good in the character of God and the face of Jesus Christ. They entered while on earth into the mystery and the glory of self-sacrifice ”

“ A tile falling off the roof, a little powder and lead in the hands of a careless child, can blast us out of this world in a moment—whither, who can tell? What is our cleverness—our strength of mind? A tiny blood vessel bursting on the brain, will make us in one moment paralytic, helpless, babblers, and idiots. What is our knowledge of the world? That of a man, who is forcing his way alone through a thick and pathless wood, where he has never been before, to a place which he has never seen. What is our wisdom—What does a wise man say of his? ”

“ All the grace of this world comes from Him—health, and youth, and happiness, and all the innocent pleasures of life, and He delights in giving you them. But, over and above that, comes a deeper and nobler grace—spiritual grace, the grace of the immortal soul, which will last on, and make you loving and loveable, pure and true, gracious and generous, honourable and worthy of respect, when the grace of the body is gone, and the eye is grown dim, and the hair is grey, and the limbs, feeble ”

“ So noble, that the noblest souls on earth delight most in worshipping; that the angels, and archangels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, find no nobler occupation, no higher enjoyment, in the heavenly world than worshipping for ever Him whose glory fills all earth and heaven. To worship. That power of worship, that longing to worship, that instinct that it is his duty to worship something, is—if you will receive it—the true distinction between men and brutes. Philosophers have tried to define man as this sort of animal and that sort of animal. ”

“ Do you not see a whole heaven of new hope and new duty is opened to mankind in that one fact—God has spoken to man. He, the I Am, the Self-Existent, who needs no one, and no thing, has turned aside, as it were, and stooped from the throne of heaven, again and again, during thousands of years, to say to you, and me, and millions of mankind, I Am your God. ”