Nothing is more expensive than penuriousness; nothing more anxious than carelessness; and every duty which is bidden to wait returns with seven fresh duties at its back.
Sermons for the Times. 1855.
We talk of education now. Are we more educated than were the ancient Greeks? Do we know anything about education, physical, intellectual, æsthetic (religious education in our sense of the word of course they had none), of which they have not taught us at least the rudiments? Are there not some branches of education which they perfected once and for ever, leaving us northern barbarians to follow or not to follow their example? To produce health, that is, harmony and sympathy, proportion and grace, in every faculty of mind and body—that was their notion of education.
Ah! the waste of health and strength in the young! The waste, too, of anxiety and misery in those who love and tend them! How much of it might be saved by a little rational education in those laws of nature which are the will of God about the welfare of our bodies, and which, therefore, we are as much bound to know and to obey as we are bound to know and to obey the spiritual laws whereon depend the welfare of our souls.
Lecture on Thrift. 1869.
Exalt me with Thee, O Lord, to know the mystery of life, that I may use the earthly as the appointed expression and type of the heavenly, and, by using to Thy glory the natural body, may be fit to be exalted to the use of the spiritual body. Amen.
MS.1842.
Let us pray for that great—I had almost said that crowning grace and virtue of Moderation, what St. Paul calls sobriety and a sound mind. Let us pray for moderate appetites, moderate passions, moderate honours, moderate gains, moderate joys; and if sorrows be needed to chasten us, moderate sorrows. Let us not long violently after, or wish too eagerly to rise in life.
Water of Life Sermons. 1869.
“True poetry, like true charity, my laddie, begins at home. . . . Hech! is there no the heaven above them there, and the hell beneath them? and God frowning, and the devil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra idea of the classic tragedy defined to be man conquered by circumstance? canna ye see it there? And the verra idea of the modern tragedy, man conquering circumstance? and I’ll show ye that too—in many a garret where no eye but the good God’s enters to see the patience, and the fortitude, and the self-sacrifice, and the love stronger than death, that’s shining in those dark places of the earth.”
“Ah, poetry’s grand—but fact is grander; God and Satan are grander. All around ye, in every gin-shop and costermonger’s cellar, are God and Satan at death-grips; every garret is a haill Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained.”
Alton Locke, chap. viii. 1849.
. . . Our life’s floorIs laid upon Eternity; no crack in itBut shows the underlying heaven.
Saint’s Tragedy, Act iii. Scene ii.
Yes. Life is meant for work, and not for ease; to labour in danger and in dread, to do a little good ere the night comes when no man can work, instead of trying to realise for oneself a paradise; not even Bunyan’s shepherd-paradise, much less Fourier’s casino-paradise, and perhaps, least of all, because most selfish and isolated of all, our own art-paradise, the apotheosis of loafing, as Claude calls it.
Prose Idylls. 1849.
Pictures raise blessed thoughts in me. Why not in you, my toiling brother? Those landscapes painted by loving, wise, old Claude two hundred years ago, are still as fresh as ever. How still the meadows are! How pure and free that vault of deep blue sky! No wonder that thy worn heart, as thou lookest, sighs aloud, “Oh, that I had wings as a dove, then would I flee away and be at rest.” Ah! but gayer meadows and bluer skies await theein the world to come—that fairyland made real—“the new heavens and the new earth” which God hath prepared for the pure and the loving, the just, and the brave, who have conquered in this sore fight of life.
True Words for Brave Men. 1849.
Any man or woman, in any age and under any circumstances, whowill,canlive the heroic life and exercise heroic influences.
It is of the essence of self-sacrifice, and therefore of heroism, that it should be voluntary; a work of supererogation, at least, towards society and man; an act to which the hero or heroine is not bound by duty, but which is above though not against duty.
Lecture on Heroism. 1872.
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? But where? oh, where? Not in the world around strewn with unholiness. Not in myself, unholy too, without and within. Is there a Holy One, whom I may contemplate with utter delight? and if so, where is He? Oh, that I might behold, if but for a moment, His perfect beauty, even though, as in the fable of Semele of old, ‘the lightning of His glance were death.’” . . .
And then, oh, then—has there not come that for which our spirit was athirst—the very breath of pure air, the very gleam of pure light, the very strain of pure music—for it is the very music of the spheres—in those words, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come”?
Yes, whatever else is unholy, there is a Holy One—spotless and undefiled, serene and self-contained. 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?
Sermon on All Saints’ Day. 1874.
Charles Kingsley’s Dying Words,“HOW BEAUTIFUL GOD IS.”
It is one of the glories of our holy religion, and one of the ways by which the Gospel takes such hold on our hearts, that, mixed up with the grandest and most mysterious and most divine matters, are the simplest, the most tender, the most human. What more grand, or deep, or divine words can we say than, “I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,”—and yet what more simple, human, and tender words can we say than, “Who was born of the Virgin Mary”? For what more beautiful sight on earth than a young mother with her babe upon her knee? Beautiful in itself; but doubly beautiful to those who can say, “I believe in Him who was born of the Virgin Mary.”
For since He was born of woman, and thereby took the manhood into God, birth is holy, and childhood holy, and all a mother’s joys and a mother’s cares are holy to the Lord; and every Christian mother with her babe in her arms is a token and a sign from God, a pledge of His good-will towards men, a type and pattern of her who was highly-favoured and blessed above all women. Everything has its time, and Lady-Day is the time for our remembering the Blessed Virgin. For our hearts and reasons tell us (and have told all Christians in all ages), that she must have been holier, nobler, fairer in body and soul, than all women upon earth.
MS. Sermon.
Wild, wild wind, wilt thou never cease thy sighing?Dark, dark night, wilt thou never wear away?Cold, cold Church, in thy death sleep lying,Thy Lent is past, thy Passion here, but not thine Easter Day.
Peace, faint heart, though the night be dark and sighing,Rest fair corpse, where thy Lord Himself hath lain.Weep, dear Lord, above Thy bride low lying,Thy tears shall wake her frozen limbs to life and health again.
The Dead Church.
St. Francis called the birds his brothers. Perfectly sure that he himself was a spiritual being, he thought it at least possible that the birds might be spiritual beings likewise, incarnate like himself in mortal flesh, and saw no degradation to the dignity of human nature in claiming kindred lovingly with creatures so beautiful, so wonderful, who (as he fancied in his old-fashioned way) praised God in the forest even as angels did in heaven.
Prose Idylls. 1867.
It is not the many who reform the world; but the few who rise superior to that Public Opinion which crucified our Lord many years ago.
MS. Lecture at Cambridge. 1866.
What if a man’s idea of “The Church” be somewhat too narrow for the year of grace 18--, is it no honour to him that he has such an idea at all? that there has risen up before him the vision of a perfect polity, a “divine and wonderful order,” linking earth to heaven, and to the very throne of Him who died for men; witnessing to each of its citizens what the world tries to make him forget, namely, that he is the child of God Himself; and guiding and strengthening him from the cradle to the grave to do his Father’s work? Is it no honour to him that he has seen that such a polity must exist, that he believes that it does exist, or that he thinks he finds it in its highest, if not in its most perfect form, in the most ancient and august traditions of his native land? True, he may have much still to learn. . . .
Two Years Ago, chap. iv. 1856.
That glorious wordknow—it is God’s attribute, and includes in itself all others. Love, truth—all are parts of that awful power ofknowingat a single glance, from and to all eternity, what a thing is in its essence, its properties, and its relations to the whole universe through all Time. I feel awestruck whenever I see that word used rightly, and I never, if I can remember, use it myself of myself.
Letters and Memories. 1842.
The story of Ruth is the consecration of woman’s love. I do not mean of the love of wife to husband, divine and blessed as that is. I mean that depth and strength of devotion, tenderness, and self-sacrifice, which God has put into the heart of all true women; and which they spend so strangely, and so nobly often, on persons who have no claim on them, and from whom they can receive no earthly reward—the affection which made women minister of their substance to our Lord Jesus Christ, which brought Mary Magdalene to the foot of the cross and to the door of the tomb—the affection which made a wise man say that as long as women and sorrow are left in the world, so long will the gospel of our Lord Jesus live and conquer therein.
Water of Life Sermons.
Live a life offeeling, not ofexcitement. Let your religion, your duties, every thought and word, be ruled by theaffections, not by theemotions, which are the expressions of them. Do not consider whether you are glad, sorry, dull, or spiritual at any moment, but be yourself—what God makes you.
MS. Letter. 1842.
St. Paul says that he himself saw through a glass darkly. But this he seems to have seen, that the Lord, when He rose from the dead, brought a blessing even for the dumb beasts and the earth on which we live. He says the whole creation is now groaning in the pangs of labour, about to bring forth something, and that the whole creation will rise again—how and when and into what new state we cannot tell; but that when the Lord shall destroy death the whole creation shall be renewed.
National Sermons. 1851.
Reverence for age is a fair test of the vigour of youth; and, conversely, insolence towards the old and the past, whether in individuals or in nations, is a sign rather of weakness than of strength.
Lecture on Westminster Abbey.1874.
We do not in the Church of England now pray for the dead. We are not absolutely forbidden by Scripture to do so. But we believe they are where they ought to be—that they are gone to a perfectly just world, in which is none of the confusion, mistakes, wrong, and oppression of this world; in which they will therefore receive the due reward of their deeds done in the body; and that they are in the hands of a perfectly just God, who rewardeth every man according to his work. It seems therefore unnecessary, and, so to speak, an impertinence towards God, to pray for them who are in the unseen world of spirits exactly in the state which they have deserved.
MS. Sermon.
Why expectWisdom with love in all? Each has his gift—Our souls are organ pipes of diverse stopAnd various pitch: each with its proper notesThrilling beneath the self-same breath of God.Though poor alone, yet joined, they’re harmony.
Saints’ Tragedy, Act ii. Scene v.1847.
HowChrist’s death takes away thy sins thou wilt never know on earth—perhaps not in heaven. It is a mystery which thou must believe and adore. ButwhyHe died thou canst see at the first glance, if thou hast a human heart and will look at what God means thee to look at—Christ upon His Cross. He died because He wasLove—love itself, love boundless, unconquerable, unchangeable—love which inhabits eternity, and therefore could not be hardened or foiled by any sin or rebellion of man, but must love men still—must go out to seek and save them, must dare, suffer any misery, shame, death itself, for their sake—just because it is absolute and perfect Love which inhabits eternity.
Good News of God Sermons.
Make a rule, and pray to God to help you to keep it, never, if possible, to lie down at night without being able to say, I have made one human being at least a little wiser, a little happier, or a little better this day. You will find it easier than you think, and pleasanter.
Sermons for the Times. 1855.
A well-educated moral sense, a well-educated character, saves from idleness and ennui, alternating with sentimentality and excitement, those tenderer emotions, those deeper passions, those nobler aspirations of humanity, which are the heritage of the woman far more than of the man, and which are potent in her, for evil or for good, in proportion as they are left to run wild and undisciplined, or are trained and developed into graceful, harmonious, self-restraining strength, beautiful in themselves, and a blessing to all who come under their influence.
Lecture on Thrift. 1869.
Novels will be read; but that is all the more reason why women should be trained, by the perusal of a higher, broader, deeper literature, to distinguish the good novel from the bad, the moral from the immoral, the noble from the base, the true work of art from the sham which hides its shallowness and vulgarity under a tangled plot and a melodramatic situation. They should learn—and that they can only learn by cultivation—to discern with joy and drink in with reverence, the good, the beautiful, and the true, and to turn with the fine scorn of a pure and strong womanhood from the bad, the ugly, and the false.
Lecture on Thrift. 1869.
Expect great things from God, and also expect the least things, for the great test of faith is shown about the least matters. People will believe their soul is sure to be saved who have not the heart to expect that God will take away some small burden.
MS. Letter. 1842.
Theology signifies the knowledge of God as He is. And it is dying out among us in these days. Much of what is called theology now is nothing but experimental religion, which is most important and useful when it is founded on the right knowledge of God, but which is not itself theology. For theology begins with God, but experimental religion, right or wrong, begins with a man’s own soul.
Discipline and other Sermons.
Ah, that we could believe that God is love, and that he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him! Then we should have no need to be told to cultivate sweetness and light, for they would seem to us the only temper which could make life tolerable in any corner of the universe.
Essay on the Critical Spirit. 1871.
“Woman is no more capable than man of living on mere contemplation. We must have an object to whom we may devote the fruits of thought, and unless we have a real one in active life we shall be sure to coin one for ourselves, and spend our spirits on a dream.”
“True, true,” chimed in the counsellor, “spirit is little use without body, and a body it will find; and therefore, unless you let people’s brains grow healthy plants, they will grow mushrooms.”
MS. unfinished Story. 1843.
“What better can the Lord do for a man, than take him home when he has done his work?”
“But, Master Yeo, a sudden death?”
“And why not a sudden death, Sir John? Even fools long for a short life and a merry one, and shall not the Lord’s people pray for a short death and a merry one? Let it come as it will to old Yeo!”
Westward Ho! chap. xxxii. 1855.
Pray night and day, very quietly, like a little weary child, to the good and loving God, for everything you want, in body as well as soul—the least thing as well as the greatest. Nothing is too much to ask God for—nothing too great for Him to grant: glory be to Thee, O Lord! And try to thank Him for everything . . . I sometimes feel that eternity will be too short to praise God in, if it was only for making us live at all! And then not making us idiots or cripples, or even only ugly and stupid! What blessings we have! Let us work in return for them—not under the enslaving sense of paying off an infinite debt, but with the delight of gratitude, glorying that we are God’s debtors.
Letters. 1843.
Man? I am a man, thou art a woman—not by reason of bones and muscles, nerves and brain, which I have in common with apes, and dogs, and horses—I am a man, thou art a man or woman, not because we have a flesh, God forbid! but because there is a spirit in us, a divine spark and ray which nature did not give, and which nature cannot take away. And therefore, while I live on earth, I will live to the spirit, not to the flesh, that I may be indeed a man.
Lecture on Ancient Civilisation.1873.
The very worst calamity, I should say, which could befall any human being would be this—to have his own way from his cradle to his grave; to have everything he liked for the asking, or even for the buying; never to be forced to say, “I should like that, but I cannot afford it. I should like this, but I must not do it.” Never to deny himself, never to exert himself, never to work, and never to want—that man’s soul would be in as great danger as if he were committing great crimes.
All Saints’ Day Sermons.
“The Lord be with you, dearest lady,” said Adrian Gilbert. “Strange how you women sit at home to love and suffer, while we men rush forth to break our hearts and yours against rocks of our own seeking! Ah! hech! were it not for Scripture I should have thought that Adam, rather than Eve, had been the one who plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree.”
Westward Ho! chap. xiii. 1855.
He was not one of those “ungodly” men of whom David speaks in his Psalms, who rob the widow and the fatherless. His morality was as high as that of the average, his honour higher. But of “godliness” in its true sense—of belief that any Being above cared for him, and was helping him in the daily business of life: that it was worth while asking that Being’s advice, or that any advice would be given if asked for—of any practical notion of a heavenly Father or a Divine educator—he was as ignorant as thousands of persons who go to church every Sunday, and read good books, and believe firmly that the Pope is Antichrist.
Two Years Ago, chap. i. 1856.
As we rose to go, my eye caught a highly-finished drawing of the Resurrection painted above the place where the desk and faldstool and lectern, holding an open missal book, stood. I should have rather expected, I thought to myself, a picture of the Crucifixion. She seemed to guess my thought, and said, “There is enough in an abode of heavy hearts, and in daily labours among poverty and suffering, to keep in our minds the Prince of Sufferers. We need rather to be reminded that pain is not the law but the disease of our existence, and that it has been conquered for us in body and soul by Him in whose eternity of bliss a few years of sadness were but as a mote within the sunbeam’s blaze.”
MS. unfinished Story. l843.
Woman is the teacher, the natural and therefore divine guide, purifier, inspirer of man.
MS.
Good Friday, Easter Day, and Ascension, are set as great lights in the firmament of the spiritual year;—to remind us that we are not animals born to do what we like, and fulfil the simple lusts of the flesh—but that we are rational moral beings, members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, and that, therefore, like Christ, we must die in order to live, stoop in order to conquer. They remind us that honour must grow out of humility; that freedom must grow out of discipline; that sure conquest must be born of heavy struggles; righteous joy out of righteous sorrow; pure laughter out of pure tears; true strength out of the true knowledge of our own weakness; sound peace of mind out of sound contrition.
All Saints’ Day Sermons. 1871.
Can we go wrong if we keep our Passion-week as Christ kept His? And how did He keep it? Not by shutting Himself up apart, not by the mere thinking over the glory of self-sacrifice. He taught daily in the temple; instead of giving up His work, He worked more earnestly than ever as the terrible end drew near. Why should not we keep Passion-week, not by merely hiding in our closets to meditate even about Him, but by going about our work each in his place, dutifully, bravely, as Christ went?
Town and Country Sermons. 1859.
Without self-sacrifice there can be no blessedness either in earth or in heaven. He that loveth his life will lose it. He that hateth his life in this paltry, selfish, luxurious world shall keep it to life eternal.
All Saints’ Day Sermons. 1870.
And so with those who are Christ’s whom we love. Partakers of His death, they are partakers of His resurrection. Let us believe the blessed news in all its fulness, and be at peace. A little while and we see them, and again a little while and we do not see them. But why? Because they are gone to the Father, to the Source and Fount of all life and power, all light and love, that they may gain life from His life, power from His power, light from His light, love from His love; and surely not for nought. Surely not for nought. For if they were like Christ on earth, and did not use their powers for themselves alone; if they are to be like Christ when they see Him as He is, then, more surely, will they not use their powers for themselves, but as Christ uses His, for those they love.
MS. Sermon. 1866.
From the earliest times the Cross has been the special sign of Christians. St. Paul tells us his great hope, his great business, what God had sent him into the world to do, was this—to make people know the love of Christ; to look at Christ’s Cross, and take in its breadth and length and depth and height.
And what is thebreadthof Christ’s Cross? My friends, it is as broad as the whole world, for He died for the whole world; as it is written, “He is a propitiation not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.” And that is thebreadthof Christ’s Cross.
And what is thelengthof Christ’s Cross? Long enough to last through all time. As long as there is a sinner to be saved; as long as there is ignorance, sorrow, pain, death, or anything else which is contrary to God and hurtful to man in the universe of God, so long will Christ’s Cross last. And that is thelengthof the Cross of Christ.
And howhighis Christ’s Cross? As high as the highest heaven, and the throne of God and the bosom of the Father—that bosom out of which for ever proceed all created things. Ay, as high as the highest heaven; for, if you will receive it, when Christ hung upon the Cross heaven came down on earth, and earth ascended into heaven. And that is theheightof the Cross of Christ.
And howdeepis the Cross of Christ? This is a great mystery which people are afraid to look into, and darken it of their own will. But if the Cross of Christ be as high as heaven, then it must be as deep as hell, deep enough to reach the deepest sinner in the deepest pit to which he may fall, for Christ descended into hell, and preached to the spirits in prison. Let us hope, then, that is thedepthof the Cross of Christ.
“The Measure of the Cross,”Sermons(Good News of God).
Listen! and our God shall whisper, as we hang upon the cross,[97]“Children! love! and loving, faint not! great your glory, light your loss!Yeare bound—ye may be loosed—Iwas nailed upon the tree,Of the pangs I suffered for you—bear awhile a few for me!Fear not, though the waters whelm you; fear not, though ye see no land!Know ye not your God is with you, guiding with a Father’s hand?Cords may wring, and winds may freeze you, shivering on the sullen sea,Yet the life that burns within you liveth ever hid with Me!”
MS.1842.
Christ must suffer before He entered into His glory. He must die before He could rise. He must descend into hell before He could ascend into heaven. For this is the law of God’s kingdom. Without a Good Friday there can be no Easter Day. Without self-sacrifice there can be no blessedness.
My Saviour! My King! Infinite, Eternal Love—alone of all beings devoid of self-love! Glory be to Thee for Thy humiliation, for Thy Cross and Passion!
MS.
Christ went down into hell and preached to the spirits in prison. It is written that “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive;” and again, “When the wicked man turns from his wickedness he shall save his soul alive.” And we know that in the same chapter God tells us that His ways are not unequal. It is possible, therefore, that He has not one law for this life and another for the life to come. Let us hope, then, that David’s words may be true after all, when, speaking by the Spirit of God, he says not only “if I ascend up to heaven, thou art there,” but “if I go down to hell, thou art there also.”
MS. Sermon.
The Creed says, “I believe in the Resurrection of the flesh.” I believe that we, each of us, as human beings, men and women, shall have a share in that glorious day; not merely as ghosts and disembodied spirits, but as real live human beings, with new bodies of our own, on a new earth, under a new heaven. “Therefore,” David says, “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 His mighty working, and then the whole manhood of us—body, soul, and spirit—shall have our perfect consummation and bliss in His eternal and everlasting glory.
National Sermons.
God’s apostles, saints, and martyrs are our spiritual ancestors. They spread the Gospel into all lands, and they spread it, remember always, not only by preaching what they knew, but by being what they were. Their characters, their personal histories, are as important to us as their writings.
Sermons.
Is it merely a fancy that we are losing that love for Spring which among our old forefathers rose almost to worship? That the perpetual miracle of the budding leaves and the returning song-birds awakes no longer in us the astonishment which it awoke yearly among the dwellers in the old world, when the sun was a god who was sick to death each winter, and returned in spring to life, and health, and glory; when Freya, the goddess of youth and love, went forth over the earth while the flowers broke forth under her tread over the brown moors, and the birds welcomed her with song? To those simpler children of a simpler age winter and spring were the two great facts of existence; the symbols, the one of death, the other of life; and the battle between the two—the battle of the sun with darkness, of winter with spring, of death with life, of bereavement with love—lay at the root of all their myths and all their creeds. Surely a change has come over our fancies! The seasons are little to us now!
Prose Idylls.
Now see the young spring leaves burst out a-maying,Fill with their ripening hues orchard and glen;So though old forms pass by, ne’er shall their spirit die,Look! England’s bare boughs show green leaf again.
Poems. 1849.
The earth is holy! Can there be a more glorious truth to carry out—one which will lead us more into all love and beauty and purity in heaven and earth? One which must have God’s light of love shining on it at every step. God gives us souls and bodies exquisitely attuned for this very purpose—the æsthetic faculty, our sensibilities to the beautiful. All events of life, all the workings of our hearts, should point to this one idea. As I walk the fields, the trees and flowers and birds, and the motes of rack floating in the sky, seem to cry to me: “Thou knowest us! Thou knowest we have a meaning, and sing a heaven’s harmony by night and day! Do us justice! Spell our enigma, and go forth and tell thy fellows that we are their brethren, that their spirit is our spirit, their Saviour our Saviour, their God our God!”
Letters and Memories. 1842.
Is there a living God in the universe, or is there not? That is the greatest of all questions. Has our Lord Jesus Christ answered it, or has He not?
Water of Life Sermons. 1866.
Look at those thousand birds, and without our Father not one of them shall fall to the ground; and art thou not of more value than many sparrows—thou for whom God sent His Son to die? . . . Ah! my friend, we must look out and around to see what God is like. It is when we persist in turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over our own imperfections, that we learn to make a god after our own image, and fancy that our own hardness and darkness are the patterns of His light and love.
Hypatia, chap. xi.
If we do not understand our fellow-creatures we shall never love them. And it is equally true, that if we do not love them we shall never understand them. Want of charity, want of sympathy, want of good feeling and fellow-feeling—what does it, what can it breed but endless mistakes and ignorances, both of men’s characters and men’s circumstances?
Westminster Sermons. 1873.
If all that a man wants is “areligion,” 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 forGod, even for the living God.” I want a living God, who cares for 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.
Sermons on the Pentateuch. 1863.
Do the duty which lies nearest to you; your duty to the man who lives next door, and to the man who lives in the next street. Do your duty to your parish, that you may do your duty by your country and to all mankind, and prove yourselves thereby civilised men.
Water of Life Sermons. 1866.
Why speak of the God of Nature and the God of grace as two antithetical terms? The Bible never in a single instance makes the distinction, and surely if God be the eternal and unchangeable One, and if all the universe bears the impress of His signet, we have no right, in the present infantile state of science, to put arbitrary limits of our own to the revelation which He may have thought good to make of Himself in Nature. Nay, rather, let us believe that if our eyes were opened we should fulfil the requirement of genius and see the universal in the particular by seeing God’s whole likeness, His whole glory, reflected as in a mirror in the meanest flower, and that nothing but the dulness of our simple souls prevents them from seeing day and night in all things the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilling His own saying, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”
Glaucus. 1855.
Goodness rather than talent had given her a wisdom, and goodness rather than courage a power of using that wisdom, which to those simple folk seemed almost an inspiration.
Two Years Ago, chap. ii. 1857.
Two great rules for the attainment of heavenly wisdom are simple enough—“Never forget what and where you are,” and “Grieve not the Holy Spirit.”
MS. Letter. 1841.
Music—there is something very wonderful in music. Words are wonderful enough, but music is more wonderful. It speaks not to our thoughts as words do, it speaks straight to our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. Music soothes us, stirs us up; it puts noble feelings into us; it melts us to tears, we know not how; it is a language by itself, just as perfect, in its way, as speech, as words; just as divine, just as blessed. Music has been called the speech of angels; I will go farther, and call it the speech of God Himself.
The old Greeks, the wisest of all the heathen, made a point of teaching their children music, because, they said, it taught them not to be self-willed and fanciful, but to see the beauty of order, the usefulness of rule, the divineness of law.
Good News of God Sermons. 1859.
The only comfort I can see in the tragedies of war is that they bring us all face to face with the realities of human life, as it has been in all ages, giving us sterner and yet more loving, more human, and more divine thoughts about ourselves, and our business here, and the fate of those who are gone, and awakening us out of the luxurious, frivolous, and unreal dream (full nevertheless of hard judgments) in which we have been living so long, to trust in a living Father who is really and practically governing this world and all worlds, and who willeth that none should perish.
Letters and Memories. 1855.
One has only to go into the streets of any great city in England to see how we, with all our boast of civilisation, are yet but one step removed from barbarism. Is that a hard word? Only therearethe barbarians round us at every street corner—grown barbarians, it may be, now all but past saving, but bringing into the world young barbarians whom we may yet save, for God wishes us to save them. . . . Do not deceive yourselves about the little dirty, offensive children in the street. If they be offensive to you, they are not to Him who made them. “Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, their angels do always behold the face of your Father which is in heaven.”
All Saints’ Day Sermons. 1871.
How was He,The blessed One, made perfect? Why, by grief—The fellowship of voluntary grief—He read the tear-stained book of poor men’s souls,As we must learn to read it. Lady! lady!Wear but one robe the less—forego one meal—And thou shalt taste the core of many tales,Which now flit past thee, like a minstrel’s songs,The sweeter for their sadness.
Saint’s Tragedy, Act ii. Scene v.1847.
Heaven and hell—the spiritual world—are they merely invisible places in space which may become visible hereafter? or are they not rather the moral world of right and wrong? Love and righteousness—is not that the heaven itself wherein God dwells? Hatred and sin—is not that hell itself, wherein dwells all that is opposed to God?
Water of Life Sermons.
Our hearts are dull, and hard, and light, God forgive us! and we forget continually what an earnest, awful world we live in—a whole eternity waiting for us to be born, and a whole eternity waiting to see what we shall do now we are born. Yes, our hearts are dull, and hard, and light. And therefore Christ sends suffering on us, to teach us what we always gladly forget in comfort and prosperity—what an awful capacity of suffering we have; and more, what an awful capacity of suffering our fellow-creatures have likewise. . . .
We sit at ease too often in a fool’s paradise, till God awakens us and tortures us into pity for the torture of others. And so, if we will not acknowledge our brotherhood by any other teaching, He knits us together by the brotherhood of suffering.
All Saints’ Day Sermons. 1871.
Every gift of God is good, and given for our happiness, and we sin if we abuse it. To use your fancy to your own misery is to abuse it and to sin. The realm of the possible was given to man tohopeand not tofearin.
Letters and Memories. 1842.
A living God, a true God, a real God, a God worthy of the name, a God who is working for ever, everywhere, and in all; who hates nothing that He has made, forgets nothing, neglects nothing; a God who satisfies not only the head but the heart, not only the logical intellect but the highest reason—that pure reason which is one with the conscience and moral sense! For Him we cry out, Him we seek, and if we cannot find Him we know no rest.
Water of Life Sermons. 1867.
Whenever we are tempted to say more than is needful, let us remember St. John’s words (in the only sermon we have on record of his), “Little children, love one another,” and ask God for His Holy Spirit, the spirit of love, which, instead of weakening a man’s words, makes them all the stronger in the cause of truth, because they are spoken in love.
How difficult it is to distinguish between the lovingtact, which avoids giving offence to a weaker brother, and the fear of man, which bringeth a snare!
MS. Letter. 1842.
. . . Dull boorsSee deeper than we think, and hide withinThose leathern hulls unfathomable truths,Which we amid thought’s glittering mazes lose.They grind among the iron facts of life,And have no time for self-deception.
Saint’s Tragedy, Act iii. Scene ii.1847.
Do not rashly count on some sudden radical change happening to you as soon as you die to make you fit for heaven. There is not one word in the Bible which gives us reason to suppose that we shall not be in the next world the same persons that we have made ourselves in this world. . . . What we sow here we shall reap there. And it is good for us to know and face this. Anything is good for us, however unpleasant it may be, which drives us from the only real misery, which is sin and selfishness, to the only true happiness, which is the everlasting life of Christ, a pure, loving, just, generous, useful life of goodness.
Good News of God Sermons.
Science is great; but she is not the greatest. She is an instrument and not a power—beneficent or deadly, according as she is wielded by the hand of virtue or vice. But her lawful mistress, the only one which can use her aright, the only one under whom she can truly grow and prosper and prove her divine descent, is Virtue, the likeness of Almighty God.
Roman and Teuton. 1860.
“I saw at last! I found out that I had been trying for years which was stronger, God or I; I found out I had been trying whether I could not do well enough without Him; and there I found that I could not—could not! I felt like a child who had marched off from home, fancying it can find its way, and is lost at once. I did not know that I had a Father in heaven who had been looking after me, when I fancied I was looking after myself. I don’t half believe it now.” . . . And so the old heart passed away from Thomas Thurnall, and instead of it grew up the heart of a little child.
Two Years Ago, chap. xxviii. 1857.
Strange it is how mortal man, “who cometh up and is cut down like the flower,” can harden himself into a stoical security, and count on the morrow which may never come. Yet so it is, and perhaps if it were not so no work would get done on earth—at least by the many who know not that God is guiding them, while they fancy they are guiding themselves.
Two Years Ago, chap. i.
There is a Providence which rules this earth, whose name is neither Political Economy nor Expediency, but the Living God, who makes every right action reward, and every wrong action punish,itself.
History Lecture,Cambridge. 1866.
“He has yet to learn what losing his life to save it means, Amyas. Bad men have taught him (and I fear these Anabaptists and Puritans at home teach little else) that it is the one great business of every man to save his own soul after he dies; every one for himself; and that that, and not divine self-sacrifice, is the one thing needful, and the better part which Mary chose.”
“I think,” said Amyas, “men are enough inclined to be selfish without being taught that.”
Westward Ho! chap. vii. 1854.
What if I had discovered that one law of the spiritual world, in which all others were contained, was Righteousness? and that disharmony with that law, which we call unspirituality, was not being vulgar, or clumsy, or ill-taught, or unimaginative, or dull; but simply being unrighteous? that righteousness, and it alone, was the beautiful, righteousness the sublime, the heavenly, the God-like—ay, God Himself?
Hypatia, chap. xxvii. 1852.
Believe me that he who has been led by love to a human being to understand the mystery of that divine love which fills all heaven and earth, and concentrates itself into an articulate manifestation in the person of Christ, will soon begin to find that he cannot enter into the perfect bliss of that truth without going further, and seeing that the human heart requires some standing-ground for its affection, even for the love of wife and child, deeper and surer than that love, namely, in utter loyalty, resignation, adoring affection to Him in whom all loveliness is concentrated. It is a great mystery. It is a hard lesson.
Letters and Memories. 1847.
A high artistic finish is important for more reasons than for the mere pleasure it gives. There is something sacramental in perfect metre and rhythm. They are outward and visible signs (most seriously we speak as we say it) of an inward and spiritual grace, namely, of the self-possessed and victorious temper of one who has so far subdued nature as to be able to hear that universal sphere-music of hers, speaking of which Mr. Carlyle says, that “all deepest thoughts instinctively vent themselves in song.”
Miscellanies. 1849.
There can be no objection to praying for certain special things. God forbid! I cannot help doing it, any more than a child in the dark can help calling for its mother. Only it seems to me that when we pray, “Grant this day that we run into no kind of danger,” we ought to lay our stress on the “run” rather than on the “danger,” to ask God not to take away the danger by altering the course of nature, but to give us light and guidance whereby to avoid it.
Letters and Memories. 1860.
When a stream is swelled by a flood, a shower of rainclearsit. So in trouble, when the heart is turbid from the world’s admixtures, and the stirring up of the foul particles which will lie at the bottom, nothing but the pure dew of heaven can restore its purity, when God’s spirit comes down upon it like a gentle rain!
MS.1843.
Look at the rows of vines, or what will be vines when the summer comes, but are now black, knotted and gnarled clubs, without a sign of life in the seemingly dead stick. One who sees that sight may find a new beauty and meaning in the mystic words, “I am the Vine, ye are the branches.” It is not merely the connection between branch and stem common to all trees; not merely the exhilarating and seemingly inspiring properties of the grape, which made the very heathen look upon it as the sacred and miraculous fruit, the special gift of God; not merely the pruning out of the unfruitful branches, to be burned as firewood—not merely these, but the seeming death of the Vine, shorn of all its beauty, its fruitfulness, of every branch and twig which it had borne the year before, and left unsightly and seemingly ruined, to its winter sleep; and then bursting forth again by an irresistible inward life into fresh branches, spreading and trailing far and wide, and tossing their golden tendrils to the sky. This thought surely—the emblem of the living Church, springing from the corpse of the dead Christ, who yet should rise to be alive for evermore—enters into, it may be forms an integral part of, the meaning of that prophecy of all prophecies.
Prose Idylls. 1864.
Christ’s cross says still, and will say to all Eternity, “Wouldst thou be good? Wouldst thou be like God? Then work and dare, and if need be, suffer for thy fellow-men.” On the Cross Christ consecrated, and as it were offered to the Father in His own body, all loving actions, unselfish actions, merciful actions, heroic actions, which man has done or ever will do. From Him, from His spirit, their strength came; and therefore He is not ashamed to call them brethren. He is the King of the noble army of martyrs; of all who suffer for love and truth and justice’ sake; and to all such He says, thou hast put on My likeness; thou hast suffered for My sake, and I too have suffered for thy sake, and enabled thee to suffer likewise, and in Me thou too art a Son of God, in whom the Father is well pleased.
Sermons.
“Lo, I am with you always,” said the Blessed One before He ascended to the Father. And this is the Lord who we fancy is gone away far above the stars till the end of time! Oh, my friends, rather bow your heads before Him at this moment! For here He is among us now, listening to every thought of our poor simple hearts. He is where God is, in whom we live, and move, and have our being, and that is everywhere. Do you wish Him to be any nearer?
National Sermons.
. . . Oh, my Saviour!My God! where art Thou? That’s but a tale about Thee,That crucifix above—it does but show TheeAs Thou wast once, but not as Thou art now. . . .
Saint’s Tragedy, Act iv. Scene i.
Three o’clock, upon a still, pure, Midsummer morning. . . . The white glare of dawn, which last night hung high in the north-west, has travelled now to the north-east, and above the wooded wall of the hills the sky is flushing with rose and amber. A long line of gulls goes wailing inland; the rooks come cawing and sporting round the corner at Landcross, while high above them four or five herons flap solemnly along to find their breakfast on the shallows. The pheasants and partridges are clucking merrily in the long wet grass; every copse and hedgerow rings with the voice of birds; but the lark, who has been singing since midnight in the “blank height of the dark,” suddenly hushes his carol and drops headlong among the corn, as a broad-winged buzzard swings from some wooded peak into the abyss of the valley, and hangs high-poised above the heavenward songster. The air is full of perfume; sweet clover, new-mown hay, the fragrant breath of kine, the dainty scent of sea-weed, and fresh wet sand. Glorious day, glorious place, “bridal of earth and sky,” decked well with bridal garments, bridal perfumes, bridal songs.
Westward Ho! chap. xii.
I have wandered in the mountains mist-bewildered,And now a breeze comes, and the veil is lifted;And priceless flowers, o’er which I trod unheeding,Gleam ready for my grasp.
Saint’s Tragedy, Act i. Scene ii.1847.
Some say that the spirit of romance is dead. The spirit of romance will never die as long as there is a man left to see that the world might and can be better, happier, wiser, fairer in all things than it is now. The spirit of romance will never die as long as a man has faith in God to believe that the world will actually be better and fairer than it is now, as long as men have faith, however weak, to believe in the romance of all romances, in the wonder of all wonders, in that of which all poets’ dreams have been but childish hints and dim forefeelings—even
“That one divine far-off eventTowards which the whole creation moves,
“That one divine far-off eventTowards which the whole creation moves,
that wonder which our Lord Himself has bade us pray for as for our daily bread, and say, “Father, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.”
Water of Life Sermons. 1865.
All melody and all harmony upon earth, whether in the song of birds, the whisper of the wind, the concourse of voices, or the sounds of those cunning instruments which man has learnt to create, because he is made in the image of Christ, the Word of God, who creates all things; all music upon earth, I say, is beautiful in as far as it is a pattern and type of the everlasting music which is in heaven, which was before all worlds and shall be after them.
Good News of God Sermons. 1859.
Exceeding gifts from God are not blessings, they are duties, and very solemn and heavy duties. They do not always increase a man’s happiness; they always increase his responsibility, the awful account which he must render at last of the talents committed to his charge. They increase, too, his danger.
Water of Life Sermons.
Now let the young be glad,Fair girl and gallant lad,And sun themselves to-dayBy lawn and garden gay;’Tis play befits the noonOf rosy-girdled June;. . . . .The world before them, and aboveThe light of Universal Love.
Installation Ode,Cambridge. 1862.
Let us not meddle with the future, and matters which are too high for us, but refrain our souls, and keep them low like little children, content with the day’s food, and the day’s schooling, and the day’s play-hours, sure that the Divine Master knows that all is right, and how to train us, and whither to lead us; though we know not and need not know, save this, that the path by which He is leading each of us, if we will but obey and follow step by step, leads up to everlasting life.
All Saints’ Day Sermons. 1871.
The secret of thrift is knowledge. The more you know the more you can save yourself and that which belongs to you, and can do more work with less effort. Knowledge of domestic economy saves income; knowledge of sanitary laws saves health and life: knowledge of the laws of the intellect saves wear and tear of brain, and knowledge of the laws of the spirit—what does it not save?
Lecture on Thrift. 1869.
In the forest, every branch and leaf, with the thousand living things which cluster on them, all worship, worship, worship with us! Let us go up in the evenings and pray there, with nothing but God’s cloud temple between us and His heaven! And His choir of small birds and night crickets and booming beetles, and all happy things who praise Him all night long! And in the still summer noon, too, with the lazy-paced clouds above, and the distant sheep-bell, and the bee humming in the beds of thyme, and one bird making the hollies ring a moment, and then all still—hushed—awe-bound, as the great thunder-clouds slide up from the far south! Then, then, to praise God! Ay, even when the heaven is black with wind, the thunder crackling over our heads, then to join in the pæan of the storm-spirits to Him whose pageant of power passes over the earth and harms us not in its mercy!
Letters and Memories. 1844.