Part 9

Noble old child-hearted heroes, with just romance and superstition enough about them to keep from that prurient hysterical wonder and enthusiasm which is simply, one often fears, a product of our scepticism! We do not trust enough in God, we do not really believe His power enough, to be ready, as they were, as every one ought to be on a God-made earth, for anything and everything being possible; and then when a wonder is discovered we go into ecstasies and shrieks over it, and take to ourselves credit for being susceptible of so lofty a feeling--true index, forsooth, of a refined and cultivated mind!!

Smile if you will: but those were days (and there never were less superstitious ones) in which Englishmen believed in the living God, and were not ashamed to acknowledge, as a matter of course, His help, and providence, and calling, in the matters of daily life, which we now, in our covert atheism, term "secular and carnal."

_Westward Ho_! chap. xxiii.

SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.

OCTOBER 18. St. Luke, Physician and Evangelist.

It is good to follow Christ in one thing and to follow Him utterly in that. And the physician has set his mind to do one thing--to hate calmly, but with an internecine hatred, disease and death, and to fight against them to the end. In his exclusive care for the body the physician witnesses unconsciously yet mightily for the soul, for God, for the Bible, for immortality. Is he not witnessing for God when he shows by his acts that he believes God to be a God of life, not of death; of health, not of disease; of order, not of disorder; of joy and strength, not of misery and weakness? Is he not witnessing for Christ when, like Christ, he heals all manner of sickness and disease among the people, and attacks physical evil as the natural foe of man and of the Creator of man?

"_Water of Life_," _and other Sermons_.

OCTOBER 28. St. Simon and St. Jude, Apostles and Martyrs.

He that loseth his life shall save it. The end and aim of our life is not happiness but goodness. If goodness comes first, then happiness may come after; but if not, something better than happiness may come, even blessedness.

Oh! sad hearts and suffering! look to the Cross. There hung your King! The King of sorrowing souls; and more, the King of Sorrows. Ay, pain and grief, tyranny and desertion, death and hell,--He has faced them one and all, and tried their strength and taught them His, and conquered them right royally. And since He hung upon that torturing Cross sorrow is divine,--godlike, as joy itself. All that man's fallen nature dreads and despises God honoured on the Cross, and took unto Himself, and blest and consecrated for ever. . . . And now--Blessed are tears and shame, blessed are agony and pain; blessed is death, and blest the unknown realms where souls await the Resurrection-day.

_National Sermons_.

November.

"The giant trees are black and still, the tearful sky is dreary gray. All Nature is like the grief of manhood in its soft and thoughtful sternness. Shall I lend myself to its influence, and as the heaven settles down into one misty shroud of 'shrill yet silent tears,' as if veiling her shame in a cloudy mantle, shall I, too, lie down and weep? Why not? for am I not 'a part of all I see'? And even now, in fasting and mortification, am I not sorrowing for my sin and for its dreary chastisement? But shall I then despond and die?

"No! Mother Earth, for then I were unworthy of thee and thy God! We may weep, Mother Earth, but we have Faith--faith which tells us that above the cloudy sky the bright clear sun is shining, and will shine. And we have Hope, Mother Earth--hope, that as bright days have been, so bright days soon shall be once more! And we have Charity, Mother Earth, and by it we can love all tender things--ay, and all rugged rocks and dreary moors, for the sake of the glow which _has_ gilded them, and the fertility which will spring even from their sorrow. We will smile through our tears, Mother Earth, for we are not forsaken! We have still light and heat, and till we can bear the sunshine we will glory in the shade!"

_MS._ 1842.

Sympathy of the Dead. November 1.

Believe that those who are gone are nearer us than ever; and that if (as I surely believe) they do sorrow over the mishaps and misdeeds of those whom they leave behind, they do not sorrow in vain. Their sympathy is a further education for them, and a pledge, too, of help--I believe of final deliverance--for those on whom they look down in love.

_Letters and Memories_. 1852.

Nature's Parable. November 2.

There is a devil's meaning to everything in nature, and a God's meaning too. As I read nature's parable to-night I find nothing in it but hope. What if there be darkness, the sun will rise to-morrow; what if there seem chaos, the great organic world is still living and growing and feeding, unseen by us all the night through; and every phosphoric atom there below is a sign that in the darkest night there is still the power of light, ready to flash out wherever and however it is stirred.

_Prose Idylls_. 1849.

Passing Onward. November 3.

Liturgies are but temporary expressions of the Church's heart. The Bible is the immutable story of her husband's love. _She_ must go on from grace to grace, and her song must vary from age to age, and her ancient melodies become unfitted to express her feelings; but He is the same for ever.

_MS._ 1842.

See how the autumn leaves float by decaying, Down the wild swirls of the dark-brimming stream; So fleet the works of men back to their earth again-- Ancient and holy things pass like a dream.

_A Parable_. 1848.

The Divine Intention. November 4.

I am superstitious enough, thank God, to believe that not a stone or a handful of mud gravitates into its place without the will of God; that it was ordained, ages since, into what particular spot each grain of gold should be washed down from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man might find it at a certain moment and crisis of his life.

_Science Lectures_.

Christ Weeping over Jerusalem. November 5.

That which is true of nations is true of individuals, of each separate human brother of the Son of man. Is there one young life ruined by its own folly--one young heart broken by its own wilfulness--or one older life fast losing the finer instincts, the nobler aims of youth, in the restlessness of covetousness, of fashion, of ambition? Is there one such poor soul over whom Christ does not grieve? One to whom, at some supreme crisis of their lives, He does not whisper--"Ah, beautiful organism--thou too art a thought of God--thou too, if thou wert but in harmony with thyself and God, a microcosmic _City of God_! Ah! that thou hadst known--even thou--at least in this thy day--the things which belong to thy peace"?

_MS. Sermon_. 1874.

Love Expansive. November 6.

The mystics think it wrong to love any created thing, because our whole love should be given to God. But as flame increases by being applied to many objects, so does love. He who loves God most loves God's creatures most, and them for God's sake, and God for their sake.

_MS. Note-book_. 1843.

Still the same. November 7.

Those who die in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ do not really taste death; to them there is no death, but only a change of place, a change of state; they pass at once into some new life, with all their powers, all their feelings, unchanged; still the same living, thinking, active beings which they were here on earth. I say active. Rest they may, rest they will, if they need rest. But what is true rest? Not idleness, but peace of mind.

_Water of Life Sermons_. 1862.

An absolutely Good God. November 8.

Fix in your minds--or rather ask God to fix in your minds--this one idea of an absolutely good God; good with all forms of goodness which you respect and love in man; good, as you, and I, and every honest man, understand the plain word good. Slowly you will acquire that grand and all-illuminating idea; slowly and most imperfectly at best: for who is mortal man that he should conceive and comprehend the goodness of the infinitely good God! But see, then, whether, in the light of that one idea, all the old-fashioned Christian ideas about the relation of God to man--whether Providence, Prayer, Inspiration, Revelation, the Incarnation, the Passion, and the final triumph of the Son of God--do not seem to you, not merely beautiful, not merely probable, but rational, and logical, and necessary, moral consequences from the one idea of an Absolute and Eternal Goodness, the Living Parent of the universe?

_Westminster Sermons_. 1873.

Nature's Lesson. November 9.

Learn what feelings every object in Nature expresses, but do not let them mould the tone of your mind; else, by allowing a melancholy day to make you melancholy, you worship the creature more than the Creator.

_MS. Letter_. 1842.

Morals and Mind. November 10.

Not upon mind, not upon mind, but upon morals, is human welfare founded. The true subjective history of man is not the history of his thought, but of his conscience: the true objective history of man is not that of his inventions, but of his vices and his virtues. So far from morals depending upon thought, thought, I believe, depends on morals. In proportion as a nation is righteous--in proportion as common justice is done between man and man, will thought grow rapidly, securely, triumphantly; will its discoveries be cheerfully accepted and faithfully obeyed, to the welfare of the whole common weal.

_Inaugural Lecture_, _Cambridge_. 1860.

Fastidiousness. November 11.

Do not let us provoke God (though that is _really_ impossible) by complaining of His gifts because they do not come just in the form _we_ should have wished. . . .

_MS. Letter_. 1844.

Unconscious Faith. November 12.

For the rest, Amyas never thought about thinking or felt about feeling; and had no ambition whatsoever beyond pleasing his father and mother, getting by honest means the maximum of "red quarrenders" and mazard cherries, and going to sea when he was big enough. Neither was he what would be nowadays called by many a pious child, for though he said his Creed and Lord's Prayer night and morning, and went to service at the church every forenoon, and read the day's Psalms with his mother every evening, and had learnt from her and his father that it was infinitely noble to do right and infinitely base to do wrong, yet he knew nothing more of theology or of his own soul than is contained in the Church Catechism.

_Westward Ho_! chap. i. 1855.

Silence. November 13.

There are silences more pathetic than all words.

_MS._

The Nineteenth Century. November 14.

. . . What so maddening as the new motion of our age--the rush of the express train, when the live iron pants and leaps and roars through the long chalk cutting, and white mounds gleam cold a moment against the sky and vanish; and rocks and grass and bushes fleet by in dim blended lines; and the long hedges revolve like the spokes of a gigantic wheel; and far below meadows and streams and homesteads, with all their lazy old-world life, open for an instant, and then flee away; while awestruck, silent, choked with the mingled sense of pride and helplessness, we are swept on by that great pulse of England's life-blood rushing down her iron veins; and dimly out of the future looms the fulfilment of our primeval mission to conquer and subdue the earth, and space too, and time, and all things--even hardest of all tasks, yourselves, my cunning brothers; ever learning some fresh lesson, except the hardest one of all, that it is the Spirit of God which giveth you understanding?

Yes, great railroads, and great railroad age, who would exchange you, with all your sins, for any other time? For swiftly as rushes matter, more swiftly rushes mind; more swiftly still rushes the heavenly dawn up the eastern sky. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." "Blessed is the servant whom his Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching."

_Prose Idylls_.

Unreality. November 15.

Those who have had no real sorrows can afford to play with imaginary ones.

_MS._

The indwelling Light. November 16.

The doctrine of Christ in every man, as the indwelling Word of God, the Light who lights every one who comes into the world, is no peculiar tenet of the Quakers, but one which runs through the whole of the Old and New Testaments, and without which they would both be unintelligible, just as the same doctrine runs through the whole history of the Early Church for the first two centuries, and is the only explanation of them.

_Theologica Germanica_. 1854.

Woman's Calling. November 17.

What surely is a woman's calling but to teach man? and to teach him what? To temper his fiercer, coarser, more self-assertive nature by the contact of her gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice. To make him see that not by blare of trumpets, not by noise, wrath, greed, ambition, intrigue, puffery, is good and lasting work to be done on earth; but by wise self- distrust, by silent labour, by lofty self-control, by that charity which hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things; by such an example, in short, as women now in tens of thousands set to those around them; such as they will show more and more, the more their whole womanhood is educated to employ its powers without waste and without haste in harmonious unity.

_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.

Waste. November 18.

Thrift of the heart, thrift of the emotions--how are they wasted in these days in reading sensation novels! while British literature--all that the best hearts and intellects among our forefathers have bequeathed to us--is neglected for light fiction, the reading of which is the worst form of intemperance--dram-drinking and opium-eating, intellectual and moral.

_Lecture on Thrift_.

True Penance. November 19.

"Senor," said Brimblecombe, "the best way to punish oneself for doing ill seems to me to go and do good; and the best way to find out whether God means you well is to find out whether He will help you to do well."

_Westward Ho_! chap. xxv.

Political Economy of the Future. November 20.

I can conceive a time when, by improved chemical science, every foul vapour which now escapes from the chimney of a manufactory, polluting the air, destroying the vegetation, shall be seized, utilised, converted into some profitable substance, till the black country shall be black no longer, the streams once more crystal clear, the trees once more luxuriant, and the desert, which man has created in his haste and greed, shall in literal fact once more blossom as the rose. And just so can I conceive a time when by a higher civilisation, formed on a political economy more truly scientific, because more truly according to the will of God, our human refuse shall be utilised like our material refuse; when man as man, down to the weakest and most ignorant, shall be found (as he really is) so valuable that it will be worth while to preserve his health, to develop his capabilities, to save him alive, body, intellect, and character, at any cost; because men will see that a man is, after all, the most precious and useful thing on the earth, and that no cost spent on the development of human beings can possibly be thrown away.

_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1870.

God's Pleasure. November 21.

The world was not made for man: but man, like all the world, was made for God. Not for man's pleasure merely, not for man's use, but for God's pleasure all things are, and for God's pleasure they were, created.

_All Saints' Day Sermons_. 1869.

The Hospital Nurse. November 22.

Fearless, uncomplaining, she "trusted in God and made no haste." She did her work and read her Bible; and read, too, again and again at stolen moments of rest, a book which was to her as the finding of an unknown sister--Longfellow's "Evangeline."

_Two Years Ago_, chap. xxviii.

Let us learn to look on hospitals not as acts of charity, supererogatory benevolences of ours towards those to whom we owe nothing, but as confessions of sin, and worthy fruits of penitence; as poor and late and partial compensation for misery which _we_ might have prevented.

_National Sermons_. 1851.

No Work Lost. November 23.

If you lose heart about your work, remember that none of it is _lost_--that the good of every good deed remains and breeds and works on for ever, and that all that fails and is lost is the outside shell of the thing, which, perhaps, might have been better done; but better or worse has nothing to do with the real spiritual good which you have done to men's hearts.

_Letters and Memories_. 1862.

True Temperance. November 24.

What we all want is inward rest; rest of heart and brain; the calm, strong, self-contained, self-denying character, which needs no stimulants, for it has no fits of depression; which needs no narcotics, for it has no fits of excitement; which needs no ascetic restraints, for it is strong enough to use God's gifts without abusing them; the character, in a word, which is truly temperate, not in drink and food merely, but in all desires, thoughts, and actions.

_Essays_. 1873.

A Present Veil. November 25.

What is there in this world worth having without religion? Do you not feel that true religion, even in its most imperfect stage, is not merely an escape from hell after death but the only _real state_ for a man--the only position to live in in this world--the only frame of mind which will give anything like happiness here. I cannot help feeling at moments--if there were _no Christ_, everything, even the very flowers and insects, and every beautiful object, would be hell _now_--dark, blank, hopeless.

_MS. Letter_. 1843.

Cowardice. November 26.

There is but one thing which you have to fear in earth or heaven--being untrue to your better selves, and therefore untrue to God. If you will not do the thing you know to be right, and say the thing you know to be true, then indeed you are weak. You are a coward; you desert God.

_True Words for Brave Men_.

Blind Faith. November 27.

In Him--"The Father"--I can trust, in spite of the horrible things I see happen, in spite of the fact that my own prayers are not answered. I believe that He makes all things work together for the good of the human race, and of me among the rest, as long as I obey His will. I believe He will answer my prayer, not according to the letter, but according to the spirit of it; that if I desire good, I shall find good, though not _the_ good I longed for.

_MS. Letter_. 1862.

Small and Great. November 28.

Begin with small things--you cannot enter into the presence of another human being without finding there more to do than you or I or any soul will ever learn to do perfectly before we die. Let us be content to do little if God sets us little tasks. It is but pride and self-will which says, "Give me something huge to fight and I shall enjoy that--but why make me sweep the dust?"

_Letters and Memories_. 1854.

True and False. November 29.

We must remember that dissatisfaction at existing evil (the feeling of all young and ardent minds), the struggle to escape from the "circumstance" of the evil world, has a carnal counterfeit--the love of novelty, and self-will, and self-conceit, which may thrust us down into the abysses of misrule and uncertainty; as it has done such men as Shelley and Byron; trying vainly every loophole, beating against the prison bars of an imperfect system; neither degraded enough to make themselves a fool's paradise within it, nor wise enough to escape from it through Christ, "the door into the sheepfold," to return when they will, and bring others with them into the serene empyrean of spiritual truth--truth which explains, and arranges, and hallows, and subdues everything.

_Letters and Memories_. 1842.

The Mind of Christ. November 30.

How can we attain to the blessed and noble state of mind--the mind of Christ, who must needs be about His Father's business, which is doing good? Only by prayer and practice. There is no more use in praying without practising than there is in practising without praying. You cannot learn to walk without walking; no more can you learn to do good without trying to do good.

_Sermons for the Times_. 1855.

SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.

NOVEMBER 1. All Saints' Day. Commemoration of the Blessed Dead.

"If any man serve Me, him will My Father honour," said the Blessed One. And if God honours His servants, shall not we honour them likewise? We may not, as our forefathers did blindly, though lovingly, worship them as mediators and lesser gods, and pray to them instead of to their Father in heaven to whose throne of grace we may all come boldly through Christ Jesus, or believe that their relics will work miracles in our behalf, thus honouring the creature instead of the Creator. This we may not do, but we may honour the Creator in His creature, and honour God in those who have lived godly and God-like lives; and when they have passed away from among us--souls endued by God with manifold virtues and precious gifts of grace--we may give thanks and say, These, O God, are the fruits of Thy Spirit. Thou honourest them in heaven with Thy approving smile. We will honour them on earth, not merely with our lips, but in our lives. What they were we too might be, if we were as true as they to the inspiration of Thy Spirit. Help us to honour their memories, as Thou and they would have us do, by following their example; by setting them before us, and not only them, but every holy and noble personage of whom we have ever heard, as dim likenesses of Christ--even as Christ is the likeness of Thee. Amen.

_MS. Sermon_.

NOVEMBER 30. St. Andrew, Apostle and Martyr.

Form your own notions about angels and saints in heaven--as you will, . . . but bear this in mind: that if the saints in heaven live the everlasting life, they must be living a life of usefulness, of love, and of good works. The everlasting life cannot be a selfish, idle life, spent only in individual happiness.

_Good News of God Sermons_.

December.

It chanced upon the merry, merry Christmas eve, I went sighing past the Church across the moorland dreary: "Oh! never sin and want and woe this earth will leave, And the bells but mock the wailing sound, they sing so cheery. How long, O Lord! how long before Thou come again? Still in cellar and in garret, and on moorland dreary, The orphans moan, and widows weep, and poor men toil in vain: Till earth is sick of hope deferred, though Christmas bells be cheery."

Then arose a joyous clamour from the wild-fowl on the mere, Beneath the stars across the snow, like clear bells ringing, And a voice within cried, "Listen! Christmas carols even here! Though thou be dumb, yet o'er their work the stars and snows are singing. Blind! I live, I love, I reign, and all the nations through With the thunder of my judgments even now are ringing; Do thou fulfil thy work but as yon wild-fowl do, Thou wilt heed no less the wailing, yet hear through it the angels' singing."

_A Christmas Carol_.

The Final Victory. December 1.

I believe that the ancient creed, the eternal gospel, will stand and conquer, and prove its might in this age, as it has in every other for eighteen hundred years, by claiming and subduing and organising those young anarchic forces which now, unconscious of their parentage, rebel against Him to whom they owe their being.

_Yeast_, Preface. 1851.

Drifting away. December 2.