Charles Kingsley

“ This alone will give us calm, patience, faith, and hope, though the heavens and the earth be shaken around us. For so only shall we see that the kingdom, of which we are citizens, is a kingdom of light, and not of darkness; of truth, and not of falsehood; of freedom, and not of slavery; of bounty and mercy, and not of wrath and fear; that we live and move and have our being, not in a “Deus quidam deceptor,” who grudges His children wisdom, but in a Father of Light, from whom comes every good and perfect gift; who willeth that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth. ”

“ Death is not death, if it joins the child to the mother who was gone before. Death is not death, if it takes away from that mother for ever all a mother’s anxieties, a mother’s fears, and lets her see, in the gracious countenance of her Saviour, a sure and certain pledge that those whom she has left behind are safe, safe with Christ and in Christ, through all the chances and dangers of this mortal life. Death is not death, if it rids us of doubt and fear, of chance and change, of space and time, and all which space and time bring forth, and then destroy. ”

“ And did you ever find those thoughts, that slavish terror of God’s wrath, that dread of hell make you better men? I never did. Unless you go beyond them—as far beyond them as heaven is beyond hell, as far above them as a free son is above a miserable crouching slave, they will do you more harm than good. This spirit of bondage, this slavish terror, instead of bringing us nearer to God, only drives us farther from Him. It does not make us hate what is wrong, it only makes us dread the punishment of it. ”

“ It is not that they are afraid of the pain of dying. It is not that they are afraid of going to hell. Neither is it that they are afraid of not going to heaven. But when they think of actually dying, they feel as if to go into the next world was to be turned out into the dark night, into an unknown land, away from house and home, and all they have known and loved; and so they shrink from death. ”

“ The Cross says, Have faith in God. Ask no more of Him, “Why hast thou made me thus?” Ask no more, “Why do the wicked prosper on the earth?” Ask no more, “Whence pain and death, war and famine, earthquake and tempest, and all the ills to which flesh is heir?” All fruitless questioning, all peevish repinings are precluded henceforth by the death and passion of Christ.
Dost thou suffer? Thou canst not suffer more than the Son of God. Dost thou sympathise with thy fellow-sufferers? Thou canst not sympathise more than the Son of God. ”

“ Rejoice and trust on, for after sorrow shall come joy. Trust on; for in man’s weakness God’s strength shall be made perfect. Trust on; for death is the gate of life. Endure on to the end, and possess your souls in patience for a little while, and that, perhaps, a very little while. Death comes swiftly, and more swiftly still perhaps, the day of the Lord. The deeper the sorrow, the nearer the salvation:—
The night is darkest before the dawn ”

“ Therefore, says David, my flesh shall rest in hope; not merely my soul, my ghost, but my flesh. For the Lord, who not only died, but rose again with His body, shall raise our bodies, according to the mighty working by which He subdues all things to Himself; and then the whole manhood of each of us, body, soul, and spirit, shall have our perfect consummation and bliss in His eternal and everlasting glory. ”

“ God is not a tyrant who must be appeased with gifts, or a task-master who must be satisfied with the labour of his slaves. He is a Father, who loves His children, who gives and loveth to give, who gives to all freely, and upbraideth not. He truly willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live. His will is a good will, and howsoever much men’s sin and folly may resist it, and seem for a time to mar it, yet He is too great and good to owe any man, even the worst, the smallest spite or grudge. ”

“ Happy are they who have writhed awhile in the fierce fire of God, and have had burned out of them the chaff, and the dross, and all which offends and makes them vain and light, yet makes them dull, and drags them down at the same time; till only the pure gold of God’s righteousness is left, seven times tried in the fire, incorruptible, precious in the sight of God and man. ”

“ Oh! for a comforter who will help us to drink the bitter cup—who will give us 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 is meant to teach—who will give us the temperate will to keep sober and calm amid the shocks and changes of mortal life! ”

“ I am a very weak, insufficient scholar, sitting on the lowest form in Thy great school-house, which is the whole world, and trying to spell out the mere letters of Thy alphabet, in hope that hereafter I may be able to make out whole words and whole sentences of Thy commandments, and having learnt them, to do them. If Thou wilt but teach me Thy statutes, O Lord, then I will try to keep them to the end; for I long to be on Thy side, and about Thy work. I long to help, be it ever so little, in making myself better, and my neighbour better. I long to be useful, and not useless ”

“ Whatever may be the mysteries of life and death, there is one mystery which the Cross of Christ reveals to us, and that is the infinite and absolute goodness of God. Let all the rest remain a mystery so long as the mystery of the Cross of Christ gives us faith for all the rest. Faith, I say. The mystery of evil, of terror, of death, the gospel does not pretend to solve, but it tells us that the mystery is proved to be soluble; for God Himself has taken upon Himself the task of solving it ”

“ The religion of terror is the most superficial of all religions. God’s arbitrary will and almighty power may seem dark by themselves though deep, as they do to the Calvinists, 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. All the deep things of God are bright, for God is light. ”

“ Sorrow, though dreary, is not barren. Nothing need be barren to those who view all things in their real light, as links in the great chain of progression, both for themselves and for the universe. To us, all Time should seem so full of life ”

“ Believe that the sun will conquer the clouds, warmth will conquer cold, calm will conquer storm, fair will conquer foul, light will conquer darkness, joy will conquer sorrow, life conquer death, love conquer destruction and the devouring floods ”

“ Thou feedest my body with daily bread. How much more wilt Thou feed my mind and my heart, more precious by far than my body. Lord, I will trust Thee for soul and body alike; and if I need correcting for my sins, I know this, at least, that the worst thing that can happen to me, or to any man, is to do wrong and not to be corrected ”

“ Ask God’s Spirit to humble your proud heart, to soften your hard heart; and you will find to your surprise that when your pride is gone, when you are utterly ashamed of yourself, and see your sins in their true blackness, and feel unworthy to look up to God, that then will come a nobler, holier, manlier feeling—self-respect, and a clear conscience, and the thought that, weak and simple as you are, you are in the right way ”

“ Christ has conquered death for Himself, and He will conquer it for me. Christ took His man’s body and soul with Him from the tomb to God’s right hand, and He will raise my body and soul at the last day, that I may be with Him for ever, and see Him where He is.” In life and in death this is the only thing which will save us from sin, from terror, from the dread of the hereafter. ”

“ And blessed, too, are tears and shame, blessed are weakness and ugliness, blessed are agony and sickness, blessed the sad remembrance of our sins, and a broken heart and a repentant spirit. Blessed is death, and blest the unknown realms, where souls await the resurrection day, for Christ redeemed them by His death. Blessed are all things, weak as well as strong. Blessed are all days, dark as well as bright, for all are His, and He is ours ”

“ Dumb, not from despair, but from faith; dumb, not like a wretch weary with calling for help which does not come, but dumb like a child sitting at its mother’s feet, and looking up into her face and watching her doings, understanding none of them as yet, but certain that they are all done in love. ”

“ Out of the deep, however deep, cry unto God, unto God Himself. If David the Jew of old could do so, much more we who are baptized into Christ; much more can we who have access by one Spirit unto the Father; much more can we who, if we know who we are and where we are, should come boldly to the Throne of Grace, to find mercy and grace to help us in the time of need. Hath He promised, and shall He not do it? To every one of you—however weak, however ignorant, aye, however sinful, if you desire to be delivered from those sins—this grace is given ”

“ But the day will come when the veil shall be taken from our eyes and we shall see them as they are—with Christ and in Christ for ever—and remember no more our anguish, for joy that another human being has entered into that one true, real, and eternal world, wherein is neither disease, disorder, change, decay, nor death, for it is none other than the bosom of the Father. ”

“ When that day comes, let him think of God’s covenant and take heart. Is the sun’s warmth perished out of the sky because the storm is cold with hail and bitter winds? Is God’s love changed because we cannot feel it in our trouble? ”

“ And if it be so, what comfort for us who must die, what comfort for us who have seen others die, if death be but a new birth into some higher life; if all that it changes in us is our body—the mere husk and shell of us—such a change as comes over the snake when he casts his old skin, and comes out fresh and gay, or even the crawling caterpillar, which breaks its prison, and spreads its wings to the sun as a fair butterfly? Where is the sting of death then, if death can sting, and poison, and corrupt nothing p. ”

“ Rejoice that there is a fire of God the Father whose name is Love, burning for ever unquenchably, to destroy out of every man’s heart and out of the hearts of all nations, and of the physical and moral world, all which offends and makes a lie ”

“ In every human being in whom there is one spark of active good, the least desire to do right, or to be of use. Beyond that I see little save that Right is divine and all-conquering—Wrong utterly infernal, and yet weak, foolish, a mere bullying phantom, which will flee at each brave blow, had we courage to strike at it in God’s name. ”

“ In the hour of darkness, when there is no comfort nor help in man, when he has no place to flee unto, and no man careth for his soul, then the most awful, if most blessed of all questions is, But is there no One higher than man to whom I can flee? ”

“ Art thou robbed, wounded, deserted, left to die, worsted in the battle of life, and fallen in its rugged road, with no counsel, no strength, no hope, no purpose left? Then remember that there is One walking to and fro in this world unseen, but ever present, whose form is as the form of the Son of Man. ”

“ O Lamb that liest slain eternally in the midst of the throne of God! Let the blood of life, which flows from Thee, procure me pardon for the past; let the water of life, which flows from Thee, give me strength for the future. ”

“ But seek Thy servant, O Lord, for I do not forget Thy commandments. I am trying to learn my duty. I am trying to do my duty. I have stuck unto Thy testimonies. O Lord, have mercy and confound me not. Man may confound me. But do not Thou of Thy mercy and pity, O Lord. Let me not find when I die, or before I die, that all my labour has been in vain; that I am not wiser, not more useful after all. Let not p. 183my gray hairs go down with sorrow to the grave. Let me not die with the miserable thought that in spite of all my struggles to do my duty, my life has been a failure and I a fool. ”

“ Let your sins and wickedness be to you not a reason for hiding from Christ, who stands by; but a reason, the reason of all reasons, for crying to Christ, who stands by. And then, whether He delivers you by gentle means or by sharp ones, deliver you He will, and set your feet on firm ground, and order your goings, that you may run with patience the race which is set before you along the road of life and the pathway of God’s commandments wherein there is no death. ”

“ They sleep in Jesus; and He is the Light, and therefore they sleep in Light. They sleep in Jesus; and He is Love, and therefore they sleep in Love. And what better? This is better—that they who sleep in Jesus must surely awaken. For, as it is written, His is a quickening, awakening, life-giving Spirit, and so to sleep in Him is to sleep in the very fount and core of life and power. If from Jesus all our powers and talents come here on earth, surely He will give us more and nobler, when we sleep in Him, and wake in Him to a risen and eternal life. ”

“ And it shall be with every soul of man who, being in the deep, cries out of the deep to God, as it was with Moses when he went up alone into the Mount of God, and fasted forty days and forty nights amid the earthquake and the thunderstorm, and the rocks which melted before the Lord. ”

“ What does the promise of your Baptism say? “Be you poor, tempted, ignorant, stupid, be you what you will, you are God’s child—your Father’s love is over you, His mercy ready for you.” You feel too weak to change. Ask God’s Spirit to give you a strength of will you never felt before. ”

“ Blessed are those who are ashamed of themselves, and hate themselves, and humble themselves before God, for on the cross Jesus humbled Himself; and they shall be exalted. Blessed are the forsaken and despised; did not all men forsake Jesus in His hour of need? And why not thee, too, thou poor deserted one? Shall the disciple be above his Master? No. Every one that is perfect must be as his Master. ”

“ Does not God hate and despise me? Will He not take from me all I love best? Will He not hurl me into endless torment when I die? How can I escape from Him? Wretched man that I am, I cannot escape from Him! ”

“ What is the true everlasting life—the life of God and Christ—but a life of love, a life of perfect active, self-sacrificing goodness, which is the one only true life for all rational beings, whether on earth or in heaven—in heaven as well as on earth. ”

“ And if any one shall say that the souls of good men in heaven cannot help us who are here on earth, I answer—When did they ascend into heaven to find out that? If they had ever been there, let us be sure they would have had better news to bring home than this, that those whom we have honoured and loved on earth have lost the power which they used once to have of comforting us who are struggling below. ”

“ What a thought was that for the blessed martyrs, for poor creatures in the agony of fear and shame, expecting presently to be torn to pieces or burnt alive. “Death, this horrible death, cannot conquer me, weak and fearful as I am, for my Lord and Master, p. 146for whom I am going to suffer, has conquered death, and He will not let it conquer me. He is stronger than hell and death, and He will not suffer me in my last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from Him. He is King of Heaven and Earth, and He will care for His own.” ”