Charles Kingsley

“ In after life, that child may settle far away from his father’s home. He may go up into the temptations and bustle of some great city. He may cross to far lands beyond the sea. But need he love his parents less? need the bond between them be broken, though he may never set eyes on them again? God forbid. He may be settled far away, with children, business, interests of his own; and yet he may be doing all the while his father’s will. The lessons of God which he learnt at his mother’s knee may be still a lamp to his feet and a light to his path. ”

“ And now, my friends, if we pray—as we are bound to pray—for that great Prince who is just entering on the cares and the duties, as well as the joys and blessings of family life—what better prayer can we offer up for him, than that God would put into his heart that spirit which he put into the heart of Joseph of old—the spirit to see how divine and God-appointed is family life? God grant that that spirit may dwell in him, and possess him more and more day by day. That it may keep him true to his wife, true to his mother, true to his family, true, like Joseph, to all with whom he has to deal. ”

“ The hearts and minds of the sick, the poor, the sorrowing, the truly human, all demand a living God, who has revealed himself in living acts; a God who has taught mankind by facts, not left them to discover him by theories and sentiments; a Judge, a Father, a Saviour, and an Inspirer; in a word, their hearts and minds demand the historic truth of the Bible—of the Old Testament no less than of the New. ”

“ If we have learnt something more of who God is; if we have learnt that he is a God in whom we can trust through joy and sorrow, through light and darkness, through life and death, have we not learnt enough for ourselves? Yes, if even those poor and weak words about God which I have just spoken, could go home into all your hearts, and take root, and bear fruit there, they would give you a peace of mind, a comfort, a courage among all the chances and changes of this mortal life, and a hope for the life to come, such as no other news which man can tell you will ever give. ”

“ One has no right to fancy for a moment that God was arbitrary or hard upon him. Esau is not the sort of man to be the father of a great nation, or of anything else great. Greedy, passionate, reckless people like him, without due feeling of religion or of the unseen world, are not the men to govern the world, or help it forward, or be of use to mankind, or train up their families in justice and wisdom and piety. If there had been no people in the world but people like Esau, we should be savages at this day, without religion or civilization of any kind. ”

“ Moreover, it is curious to watch how as Balaam is forced step by step to be an honest man, so step by step he rises. A weight falls off his mind and heart, and the Spirit of God comes upon him.
He feels for once that he must speak his mind, that he must obey God. As he looks down from off the mountain top, and sees the vast encampment of the Israelites spread over the vale below, for miles and miles, as far as the eye can see, all ordered, disciplined, arranged according to their tribes, the Spirit of God comes upon him, and he gives way to it and speaks. ”

“ If that be so, if man can know nothing really of God, he is indeed most miserable of all the beasts of the field, for I will warrant that he can know nothing really of anything else. And what is left for him, but to remain for this life, and the life to come, in the outer darkness of ignorance and confusion, misrule and misery, wherein is most literally—as one may see in the history of every heathen nation upon earth—wailing and gnashing of teeth.
‘If God’s goodness be not like man’s goodness, there is no rule of morality left, no eternal standard of right and wrong. ”

“ So our human feelings, like those of the Jews, are satisfied. But Moses is not to be worshipped by them or by us; no splendid temple is to rise over his bones; no lamps are to burn, or priest to chant round his shrine; no miracles are to be worked by his relics; no man is to invoke his patronage and intercession in their prayers. The people whom he has brought out of Egypt are to be free—free from the slavery of the body, free from the more degrading slavery of the soul. ”

“ For in a dead god—a god who does nothing, but lets mankind and the world go their own way—no man nor nation ever will care to believe.
And now, nay dear friends, remember that a nation is, after all, only the people in that nation: you, and I, and our neighbours, and our neighbours’ neighbours, and so forth; and that therefore, in as far as we are wrong, we do our worst to make the British nation wrong. If we give way to ungodly pride and self-sufficiency, then we are injuring ourselves; and not only that, but injuring our neighbours and our children after us, as far as we can. ”

“ My friends, if this be the education which is natural and necessary from our earthly parents, made in God’s image, appointed by God’s eternal laws for each of us, why should it not be the education which God himself has appointed for mankind? All which is truly human (not sinful or fallen) is an image and pattern of something Divine. May not therefore the training which we find, by the very facts of nature, fit and necessary for our children, be the same as God’s training, by which he fashioneth the hearts of the children of men? ”

“ Do you not see now what a comfort—what a spring of hope, and courage, and peace of mind, and patient industry—it must have been to the men of old time to be told, by this story of the flood, that the God who sends the flood sends the rainbow also? There are not two gods, nor many gods, but one God, of whom are all things. Light and darkness, storm or sunshine, barrenness or wealth, come alike from him. Diseases, storm, flood, blight, all these show that there is in God an awfulness, a sternness, an anger if need be—a power of destroying his own work, of altering his own order ”

“ They tell us he is a God whose will is to love, to bless, to make his creatures happy, if they will allow him. They tell us that his anger is not a capricious, revengeful, proud, selfish anger, such as that of the heathen gods: but that it is an orderly anger, a just anger, a loving anger, and therefore an anger which in its wrath can remember mercy. Out of God’s wrath shineth love, as the rainbow out of the storm; if it repenteth him that he hath made man, it is only because man is spoiling and ruining himself, and wasting the gifts of the good world by his wickedness. ”

“ Nothing. Conceive the terror and horror of the Jews coming out of that quiet land of Egypt, the first time they felt the ground rocking and rolling; the first time they heard the roar of the earthquake beneath their feet; the first time they saw, in the magnificent words of Micah, the mountains molten and the valleys cleft as wax before the fire, like water poured down a steep place; and discovered that beneath their very feet was Tophet, the pit of fire and brimstone, ready to burst up and overwhelm them they knew not when. ”

“ Him we can trust, I say, because him we can know, and can say of him, Let the Infinite and the Absolute mean what they may, I know in whom I have believed—God the Good. Whatever else I cannot understand, I can at least ‘understand the lovingkindness of the Lord;’ however high his dwelling may be, I know that he humbleth himself to behold the things in heaven and earth, to take the simple out of the dust, and the poor out of the mire. ”

“ I say, the history of the Jews is the history of the whole Church, and of every nation in Christendom.
As with the Jews, so with the nations of Europe; whenever they have trusted in themselves, their own power and wisdom, they have ended in weakness and folly. Whenever they have trusted in Christ the living God, and said, ‘It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves,’ they have risen to strength and wisdom. When they have forgotten the living God, national life and patriotism have died in them, as they died in the Jews. ”

“ That false notion springs out of men’s selfishness. They think of sin as something which only hurts themselves; when they do wrong they think merely, ‘What punishment will God inflict on me for doing wrong?’ They are wrapt up in themselves. They forget that their sins are not merely a matter between them and Christ, but between them and their neighbours; that every wrong action they commit, every wrong word they speak, every wrong habit in which they indulge themselves, sooner or later, more or less hurts their neighbours—ay, hurts all mankind. ”

“ Then would not Joseph’s story be worthy of being in the Bible? Would it not, as I said it would, reveal something fresh to us concerning God and the character of God?
Consider now, my friends: Is it not one great difference—one of the very greatest—between men and beasts, that men live in families, and beasts do not? That men have the sacred family feeling, and beasts have not? They have the beginnings of it, no doubt. The mother, among beasts, feels love to her children, but only for a while. God has implanted in her something of that deepest, holiest, purest of all feelings—a mother’s love. ”

“ When you read of God’s love, justice, anger, and so forth, you must not think that they are anything like man’s love, man’s justice, man’s anger; but something quite different, not only in degree, but in kind: so that what might be unjust and cruel in man, would not be so in God.
My dear friends, beware of that doctrine; for out of it have sprung half the fanaticism and superstition which has disgraced and tormented the earth. Beware of ever thinking that a wrong thing would be right if God did it, and not you. And mind, that is flatly contrary to the letter of the Bible. ”

“ Will it make us better men merely to know that there was once a flood of waters on the earth? I cannot see that. If we look at the hills of sand and gravel round us, a little common sense will show us that there have been many floods of waters on the earth, long, long before the one of which the Bible speaks: but shall we be better men for knowing that either? I cannot see why we should. Now the Bible was sent to make us better men. How then will the history of the flood do that? ”

“ This little nation of the Jews, inhabiting a country not as large as Wales, without sea-port towns and commerce, without colonies or conquests—and at last, for its own sins, conquered itself, and scattered abroad over the whole civilized world—has taught the whole civilized world, has converted the whole civilized world, has influenced all the good and all the wise unto this day so enormously, that the world has actually gone beyond them, and become Christian by fully understanding their teaching and their Bible, while they have remained mere Jews by not fully understanding it. ”

“ This one story of Joseph, which we have been reading again this Sunday, I do not doubt that it has taught thousands who had no other story-book to read—who could not even read themselves, but had to listen to others’ reading; that it has taught them to be good sons, to be good brothers; that it has taught them to keep pure in temptation, and patient and honest under oppression and wrong; that it has stirred in them a noble ambition to raise themselves in life; and taught them, at the same time, that the only safe and sure way of rising is to fear God and keep his commandments ”

“ There is no use trying to hide from ourselves that awful truth—God is not weakly indulgent. Our God can be, if he will, a consuming fire. Upon the sinner he will surely rain fire and brimstone, storm and tempest of some kind or other. This shall be their portion too surely. Vengeance is his, and vengeance he will take. But upon whom? On the proud and the tyrannical, on the cruel, the false, the unjust. So say the Psalms again and again, and so says the history of these plagues of Egypt. ”

“ When thou openest thy hand they are filled with good. When thou hidest thy face they are troubled. When thou takest away their breath they die, and are turned again to their dust. When thou lettest thy breath go forth they shall be made, and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.’
So again, in the world of man, God is the living Judge, the living overlooker, rewarder, punisher of every man, not only in the life to come, but in this life. His providence is a special providence. ”

“ Then our Father in heaven is merciful with the same sort of mercy as we ought to show. We are bidden to forgive others, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us: then if our forgiveness is to be like God’s, God’s forgiveness is like ours. We are to be true, because God is true: just, because God is just. How can we be that, if God’s truth is not like what men call truth, God’s justice not like what men call justice? ”

“ What deliverance was there for them from these abominable superstitions, except to know that the fire-kingdom was God’s kingdom, and not Moloch’s at all; to know with Micah and with David that the hills were molten like wax before the presence of the Lord; that it was the blast of his breath which discovered the foundations of the world; that it was he who made the sea flee and drove back the Jordan stream; that it was before him that the mountains skipped like rams and the little hills like young sheep; that the battles of shaking were God’s battles, with which he could fight for his people ”

“ He has not promised me, as he promised Abraham, to make of me a great nation; but he has promised that the righteous man shall never be deserted, or his children beg their bread. He has promised to keep his covenant and mercy to a thousand generations with those who keep his commandments and do them; and that is enough for me. In God have I put my trust, and I will not fear what man, or earth, or heaven, or any created thing can do unto me.’
Blessed is that man, whether he inherit honourably great estates from his ancestors, or whether he make honourably great wealth and station for himself ”

“ If all that a man wants is a ‘religion,’ he ought to be able to make a very pretty one for himself, and a fresh one as often as he is tired of the old. But the heart and soul of man wants more than that, as it is written, ‘My soul is athirst for God, even for the living God.’ Those whom I have to teach want a living God, who cares for men, works for men, teaches men, punishes men, forgives men, saves men from their sins; and Him I have found in the Bible, and nowhere else, save in the facts of life which the Bible alone interprets.
In the power of man to find out God I will never believe. ”

“ And those who fancy that it is so, will find out their mistake bitterly enough. Infinite love and forgiveness to those who repent and amend and do right; but infinite rigour and punishment to those who will not amend and do right. This is the everlasting law of God’s universe; and every soul of man will find it out at last, and find that the Lord Jesus Christ is not a Being to be trifled with, and that the precious blood which he shed on the cross is of no avail to those who are not minded to be righteous even as he is righteous. ”

“ But we ourselves shall begin—indeed we are doing it too much already—worshipping the so-called laws of nature, instead of God who made the laws, and so honouring the creature above the creator; or else we shall worship the pomps and vanities of this world, pride and power, money and pleasure, and say in our hearts, ‘These are our only gods which can help us—these must we obey.’ Which if we do, this land of England will come to ruin and shame, as surely as did the land of Israel in old time.
If we do not believe in the living God, we shall believe in something worse than even a dead god. ”

“ What grace, what virtue is there higher than condescension? Then if God be, as he is, perfectly good, must he not be perfectly condescending—ready and willing to stoop to man, and all the more ready and the more willing, the more weak, ignorant, and sinful this man is? In fact, the greater need man has of God, the more certain is it that God will help him in that need.
Yes, my friends, the Bible is the revelation of a God who condescends to men, and therefore descends to men. ”

“ To become, according to the book of Judges, just what Moses foretold—an ignorant, selfish, often profligate and disorderly people, doing each what is right in his own eyes, falling continually into idolatry, civil war, and slavery to the heathens round about. Nothing more shows the truth of this history than its humility, its continual confession of sin, its readiness to confess the ugly truth that the Jews are a foolish, ignorant, unmanageable, lawless, sensual race, stiffnecked and rebellious, always resisting the Holy Spirit. ”