Charles Kingsley

“ O God and Saviour, Thou hast blest me, and I have cursed myself. Thou didst die to deliver me from the curse of sin, and I have brought it back on myself by my own folly. Thou livest for ever to make me good, and I, ungrateful and foolish, have made myself bad. In spite of my ingratitude, in spite of my folly, take me back into Thy service. I trust utterly in Thy unchangeable goodness and mercy. I trust that Thy blood will still wash away the past, that Thy spirit will still give me a clean heart and a right spirit. I believe that though I have cursed myself, yet Thou wilt still bless me ”

“ And mind, all this while I have not said one word about the greatest debt of all which you owe to the Lord Jesus Christ, even His own life, which He gave for you! Only think but once that for your sakes the Lord was crucified—for your sakes He died the most horrible, painful, shameful death. And then say, Are you not in debt to Him? “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” If any mere man had died for your sake, would you not love him—would you not feel yourself in debt to him, a deeper debt than you can ever repay? ”

“ And that second death may begin in this life, and if it be not stopped and cured in time, may go on for ever. The black horse of which I spoke just now, may get the mastery and drag us down, down, into bogs out of which we can never rise—over cliffs which we can never climb again—down lower and lower—more and more foolish, more and more reckless, more and more base, more and more wretched. And then there will be no more use in saying, “The Lord have mercy on my soul,” for we shall have no soul left to have mercy on. ”

“ Now this is the reason of our carefulness, of our many troubles, that God is educating and training us English; that He will not have us be savages, but Christian citizens; He will have us not merely happy, but blessed through all eternity. He will not have us to be like the poor Indians, slaves to our flesh and our appetites—slaves to the pleasant things around us; but He will have us fill the earth and subdue it; He will have England the light of the nations—and Englishmen preach freedom, and wisdom, and prudence, and the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the nations of the earth. ”

“ Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? Thou stretchedst out thy right hand, the earth swallowed them. Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed: thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed; the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold upon them; all the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away. Fear and dread shall fall upon them ”

“ That is the beginning and end of all—you must be humble; you must confess that you are foolish, and God alone is wise; that you are weak, and God alone is strong; that you are poor fishermen, whom any squall may drown, and that God is the Great, Loving, Almighty God, who made heaven and earth, and the sea and all that is therein, and who helps all those who put their trust in Him. This is what God asks you to do in return for all He has done for you! To pray to Him, to praise Him, to put your trust in Him, to keep His commandments like thankful, humble, obedient, loving children. ”

“ We are not like that traitorous soldier. If an English soldier went over to the enemy, and fought against the English, and killed Englishmen, that of course would be too bad; but we do not wish to harm any one, much less our neighbours. If we do wrong, it is ourselves at most that we harm. If we do wrong, it is only we that shall suffer for it. Why does he talk as if we were robbers or murderers, or had a spite against our neighbours? We do not wish to hurt any one, we do not want to help the devil. ”

“ Christ’s light burden is the burden and obligation laid on every one of us, to forgive others, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us. And the rest which shall come to our souls is the rest which David found, when he listened to the voice of God speaking by the lips of Abigail; the true and divine rest of heart and peace of mind—rest and peace from the inward storm of fretfulness, suspicion, jealousy, pride, wrath, revenge, which blackens the light of heaven to a man, and turns to gall and wormwood every blessing which God sends. ”

“ Nature is infinitely more wonderful than the highest art; and in the commonest hedgeside leaf lies a mystery and beauty greater than that of the greatest picture, the noblest statue—as infinitely greater as God’s work is infinitely greater than man’s. But to those who have no leisure to study nature in the green fields (and there are now-a-days too many such, though the time may come when all will have that blessing) , to such I say, go to the British Museum, Bloomsbury Square; there at least, if you cannot go to nature’s wonders, some of nature’s wonders are brought to you. ”

“ It is better to die like a man than to live like a slave, and a wretch, and a sinner. Who told you that, I ask again? Not God’s Bible, surely. Not the example of great and good men. If Moses had thought that, do you think he would have gone back from Midian, when he was in safety and comfort, with a wife and home, and children at his knee, and leave all he had on earth to face Pharaoh and the Egyptians, to face danger, perhaps a cruel death in shame and torture, and all to deliver his countrymen out of Egypt? ”

“ To Him all power is given in heaven and earth, and He is our covenant God and Saviour, He is our King. He is ours; and He will have us put on His likeness, and with Him be made perfect through sufferings—through sufferings, for sorrow is the gate of life. Through much tribulation we enter into the kingdom of God; without weary pain none of us is born into the world; without weary labour not a harvest in England is grown and reaped; without weary thought, and teaching, and correction, not a child among us is educated to be a man ”

“ My Friend, if God was the devil, you might be afraid indeed. But He is the loving, righteous Father, who knows your weakness, and remembers that you are but dust. Can you not trust Him to pardon your mistakes about the Sacrament, which you do not wilfully intend to commit, when He has borne with, and pardoned all the sins from your youth up until now, which you have wilfully committed? Surely, you may trust Him in such a thing as this,—He who has had long-suffering enough to keep you alive, with a chance of salvation all this time? ”

“ Now, for God’s sake and your own sakes consider. Are not all young people, when they are old enough to choose between right and wrong, if they choose what is wrong and live bad lives instead of good ones, very like this same deserter and traitor?
For are you not all Christ’s soldiers, every one of you? Did not Christ enlist every one of you into His army, that, as the baptism service says, you might fight manfully under His banner against sin, the world, and the devil,—in one word, against all that is wrong and bad? ”

“ When I consider Thy Heavens, even the work of Thine hands, I say, What is man? and yet Thou madest man to have dominion over the works of Thine hands, and hast put all things in subjection under his feet—the fowl of the air and the fishes of the sea, and whatsoever walketh through the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Governor, how excellent is Thy name in all the world. In comparison of Thee what is man’s wisdom? What is man’s power? ”

“ They made the most beautiful dresses out of the feathers of birds—parrots, humming birds, and such like, which fill the forests in hot countries. And what was more, their country abounded in gold and jewels, and they knew how to work them, just as well as we do. They could work gold into the likeness of flowers, of birds with every feather like life, and into a thousand trinkets. Their soil was most fruitful of all that man can want—there was enough of the best for all to eat; and altogether there never was a richer, and need never have been a happier people, if they had but been good. ”

“ Who gives the loving heart, and the clear eye, and the graceful taste to see beauty and to copy it, and to set forth on canvas, or in stone, the noble deeds of patriots dying for their country? To paint truly patriotic pictures well, a man must have his heart in his work—he must be a true patriot himself, as John Bellini was (if I mistake not, he had fought for his country himself in more than one shrewd fight) . And what makes men patriots, or artists, or anything noble at all, but the spirit of the living God? ”

“ Ay, nearer to them, more able, I firmly believe, to help and comfort them, now that he is alive for ever, in the heaven of God, than he would if he were only alive here on the earth of God—more able perhaps to help them now by his prayers than he ever would have been by the labour of his hands. Be that as it may, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them. A fearful labour is the soldier’s, and an ugly work ”

“ Remember the parable of the old heathen, about the two horses who draw your soul. Choose in time whether the better horse shall win, or the worse; whether your better self, or your worse, the Spirit of God or your own flesh, shall be your master—whether you will rise step by step to heaven, or sink step by step to death and hell? And let no one tell you. That is not the question. That is not what we care about. We know we shall do a great many wrong things before we die. Every one does that; but we hope we shall be able to make our peace with God before we die, and so be forgiven at last. ”

“ And now, let us take home this one lesson—That the secret of David’s success is not his beauty, his courage, his eloquence, his genius; other men have had gifts from God as great as David’s, and have misused them to their own ruin, and to the misery of their fellow-men. No; the secret of David’s success is his faith in the Living God; and that will be the secret of our success. Without faith in God, the most splendid talents may lead a man to be a curse to himself and to his neighbours. ”

“ The Jews were cowards when they cried, “Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians.” While a man is in that pitiful mood he cannot rise, he cannot serve God—for he must remain the slave of his own body, of which he is so mightily careful, the slave of his own fears, the slave of his own love of bodily comfort. Such a man does not dare serve God. He dare not obey God, when obeying God is dangerous and unpleasant. ”

“ If they are sound, you may go back to a happy home, and see wife and children coming to meet you when you run on shore at morning from your honest labour; and if they fail—if that weak cordage, and these planks, and thinner canvas, on which your lives depend, do but give way, what is left for you the next moment? what but a grave in the deep, deep sea, and your wives widows and your children orphans, and your bodies devoured by ugly creeping things, and your souls gone—gone where? ”

“ And those, let me say, who without giving way to those grosser vices, let their minds be swallowed up with vanity, love of admiration, always longing to be seen and looked at, and wondering what folks will say of them, they too give way to the flesh, and lower themselves to the likeness of animals. As vain as a peacock, says the old proverb. And shame it is to any human being so far to forget his true humanity, as to have that said of him. And what shall we say of them who like the swine live only for eating and drinking, and enjoyment? ”

“ How discontented with ourselves it makes us, how ashamed of ourselves, how angry with ourselves. We all understand too well—or ought to understand, St. Paul’s words: How often the good which he wished to do, he did not do, but the evil which he did not wish to do, he did. How he delighted in the law of God in his inward man; but he found another law in him, in his body, warring against the law of his mind—that is his conscience and reason, and making a slave of him till he was ready at times to cry, “Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” ”

“ If you want to rule, you must obey. If you want to rise to be a master, you must stoop to be a servant. If you want to be master of anything in earth or heaven, you must, as that great Lord Verulam used to say, obey God’s will revealed in that thing; and the man who will go his own way, and follow his own fancy, will understand nothing, and master nothing, and get comfort out of nothing in earth or heaven.
Well—when Lord Verulam told men his new wisdom, they laughed and scoffed, as fools always will at anything new. ”

“ Again, such lawless times are certain to raise up bold and adventurous men, more or less like David. Men of blood—who are yet not altogether bad men—who are forced to take the law into their own hands, to try and keep their countrymen together, to put down tyrants and robbers, and to drive out invaders. And men, too, suffering from deep and cruel wrongs, who are forced for their lives’ sake, and their honour’s sake, to escape—to flee to the mountains and the forests, and to foreign lands, and there live as they can till times shall be better. ”

“ I pray thee forgive the trespass of thine handmaid: for the Lord will certainly make my lord a sure house; because my lord fighteth the battles of the Lord, and evil hath not been found in thee all thy days.”
And she conquers. The dark shadow passes off David’s soul, and he is again the true, chivalrous, God-fearing David, who has never drawn sword yet in his own private quarrel, but has committed his cause to God who judgeth righteously, and will, if a man abide patiently in Him, make his righteousness as clear as the light, and his just-dealing as the noonday. ”

“ There goes more than mere bull-dog pluck to the making of a soldier; and to make a good soldier, I hold that a man, though he be afraid of nothing else, must be horribly afraid of the devil, and that the better and braver soldier he is, the more afraid of the devil he will be.
Of course that depends upon who the devil is. I will tell you. He is what his name means, the accuser and the divider—the evil spirit who sets men against each other—men against officers, and officers against men; who sets men grumbling, puts hard suspicious thoughts into their minds ”

“ If they dreaded the waste howling wilderness of sand, with its pillars of cloud and fire, its stifling winds which burn the life out of man and beast, God could make the sand storms and the fire pillars and the deadly east wind of the desert work for their deliverance. And so He taught them to fear Himself, to trust in Him, to look up to Him as their deliverer whose strength was shown most gloriously when they were weakest and most despairing. ”

“ But the peculiarity of David’s psalms, after all, is from his intense faith in God. God is in all his thoughts. God is near him, guiding him, trying him, educating him, punishing him, sometimes he thinks for a moment, deserting him. But even then his mind is still full of God. It is God he wants, and the light of God’s countenance, without which he cannot live, and leaving him in misery, and shame, and darkness, and out of the darkness he cries—My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? ”

“ Unto us a child is born—the Prince of Peace is ours—to His kingdom we belong—He has borne about on Him a man’s body, a man’s soul and spirit—He was born like us—like us He grew—like us He rejoiced and sorrowed—tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin—able to the uttermost to understand and help all who come to God by Him. ”

“ They see not only flames, but real lightning, real thunder playing about the burning mouths of the fiery mountains—they hear the roaring, the thundering of the fire-kingdom miles beneath their feet, under the solid crust of the earth. And they see, too, whole hills, ay, whole counties, sometimes, heaved up many feet in a single night, by this thunder under ground—and islands thrown up in the midst of the sea—so that where there was once deep water is now dry land. ”

“ Who could dare or bear to look on God if we saw Him as He is face to face? Our souls would be dazzled blind, as our eyes are by the sun at noonday. But now, light is a pattern to us of God’s glory; and therefore it is written, that light is God’s garment, that God dwells in the light which no man can approach unto. As a wise old heathen nobly said, “Light is the shadow of God;” and so, as the text says, He stretches out those glorious blue heavens above us as a curtain and shield, to hide our eyes from His unutterable splendour, and yet to lift our souls up to Him. ”