Chapter 5

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.

Clearing Showers. May 30.

When a stream is swelled by a flood, a shower of rain _clears_ it. 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.

Vineyards in Spring. May 31.

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.

SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.

MAY 1. St. Philip and St. James, Apostles and Martyrs.

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_.

Feast of the Ascension.

"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 Thee As Thou wast once, but not as Thou art now. . . .

_Saint's Tragedy_, Act iv. Scene i.

June.

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.

Open Thou mine Eyes. June 1.

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.

The Spirit of Romance. June 2.

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 event Towards 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.

The Everlasting Music. June 3.

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.

Gifts are Duties. June 4.

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_.

Summer Days. June 5.

Now let the young be glad, Fair girl and gallant lad, And sun themselves to-day By lawn and garden gay; 'Tis play befits the noon Of rosy-girdled June; . . . . . The world before them, and above The light of Universal Love.

_Installation Ode_, _Cambridge_. 1862.

"Sufficient for the Day." June 6.

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.

Secret of Thrift. June 7.

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.

Out-door Worship. June 8.

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 paean 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.

God's Countenance. June 9.

Study nature as the countenance of God! Try to extract every line of beauty, every association, every moral reflection, every inexpressible feeling from it.

_Letters and Memories_. 1842.

Certain and Uncertain. June 10.

"Life is uncertain," folks say. Life is certain, say I, because God is educating us thereby. But this process of education is so far above our sight that it looks often uncertain and utterly lawless; wherefore fools conceive (as does M. Comte) that there is no Living God, because they cannot condense His formulas into their small smelling-bottles.

O glorious thought! that we are under a Father's education, and that _He_ has promised to develop us, and to make us go on from strength to strength.

_Letters and Memories_. 1868.

Sensuality. June 11.

What is sensuality? Not the enjoyment of holy glorious matter, but blindness to its meaning.

_MS._ 1842.

The Journey's End. June 12.

Let us live hard, work hard, go a good pace, get to our journey's end as soon as possible--then let the post-horse get his shoulder out of the collar. . . . I have lived long enough to feel, like the old post-horse, very thankful as the end draws near. . . . Long life is the last thing that I desire. It may be that, as one grows older, one acquires more and more the painful consciousness of the difference between what _ought_ to be done and what _can_ be done, and sits down more quietly when one gets the wrong side of fifty, to let others start up to do for us things we cannot do for ourselves. But it is the highest pleasure that a man can have who has (to his own exceeding comfort) turned down the hill at last, to believe that younger spirits will rise up after him, and catch the lamp of Truth, as in the old lamp-bearing race of Greece, out of his hand before it expires, and carry it on to the goal with swifter and more even feet.

_Speech at Lotus Club_, _New York_. 1874.

Punishment Inevitable. June 13.

It is a fact that God does punish here, in this life. He does not, as false preachers say, give over this life to impunity and this world to the devil, and only resume the reigns of moral government and the right of retribution when men die and go into the next world. Here in this life He punishes sin. Slowly but surely God punishes. If any of you doubt my words you have only to commit sin and then see whether your sin will find you out.

_Sermons on David_. 1866.

The Problem Solved. June l4.

After all, the problem of life is not a difficult one, for it solves itself so very soon at best--by death. Do what is right the best way you can, and wait to the end to _know_.

_MS. Letter_.

But remember that though death may alter our place, it cannot alter our character--though it may alter our circumstances, it cannot alter ourselves.

_Discipline and other Sermons_.

The Father's Education. June 15.

Sin, [Greek text], is the missing of a mark, the falling short of an ideal; . . . and that each miss brings a penalty, or rather is itself the penalty, is to me the best of news and gives me hope for myself and every human being past, present, and future, for it makes me look on them all as children under a paternal education, who are being taught to become aware of, and use their own powers in God's house, the universe, and for God's work in it; and, in proportion as they do that, they attain salvation, _Letters and Memories_. 1852.

Parent and Child. June 16.

Superstition is the child of fear, and fear is the child of ignorance.

_Lectures on Science and Superstition_. 1866.

A Charm of Birds. June 17.

Listen to the charm of birds in any sequestered woodland on a bright forenoon in early summer. As you try to disentangle the medley of sounds, the first, perhaps, which will strike your ear will be the loud, harsh, monotonous, flippant song of the chaffinch, and the metallic clinking of two or three sorts of titmice. But above the tree-tops, rising, hovering, sinking, the woodlark is fluting tender and low. Above the pastures outside the skylark sings--as he alone can sing; and close by from the hollies rings out the blackbird's tenor--rollicking, audacious, humorous, all but articulate. From the tree above him rises the treble of the thrush, pure as the song of angels; more pure, perhaps, in tone, though neither so varied nor so rich as the song of the nightingale. And there, in the next holly, is the nightingale himself; now croaking like a frog, now talking aside to his wife, and now bursting out into that song, or cycle of songs, in which if any man find sorrow, he himself surely finds none. . . . In Nature there is nothing melancholy.

_Prose Idylls_. 1866.

Notes of Character. June 18.

Without softness, without repose, and therefore without dignity.

_MS._

Our Blessed Dead. June 19.

Why should not those who are gone be actually nearer us, not farther from us, in the heavenly world, praying for us, and it may be influencing and guiding us in a hundred ways of which we, in our prison-house of mortality, cannot dream? Yes! Do not be afraid to believe that he whom you have lost is near you, and you near him, and both of you near God, who died on the cross for you.

_Letters and Memories_. 1871.

Silent Influence. June 20.

Violence is not strength, noisiness is not earnestness. Noise is a sign of want of faith, and violence is a sign of weakness.

By quiet, modest, silent, private influence we shall win. "Neither strive nor cry nor let your voice be heard in the streets," was good advice of old, and is still. I have seen many a movement succeed by it. I have seen many a movement tried by the other method of striving and crying and making a noise in the streets, but I have never seen one succeed thereby, and never shall.

_Letters and Memories_. 1870.

Chivalry. June 21.

Some say that the age of chivalry is past. The age of chivalry is never past as long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth, and a man or woman left to say, "I will redress that wrong, or spend my life in the attempt." The age of chivalry is never past as long as men have faith enough in God to say, "God will help me to redress that wrong; or if not me, surely He will help those that come after me. For His eternal will is to overcome evil with good."

_Water of Life Sermons_. 1865.

Nature and Art. June 22.

When once you have learnt the beauty of little mossy banks, and tiny leaves, and flecks of cloud, with what a fulness the glories of Claude, or Ruysdael, or Berghem, will unfold themselves to you! You must know Nature or you cannot know Art. And when you do know Nature you will only prize Art for being like Nature.

_MS. Letter_. 1842.

Simple and Sincere. June 23.

There are those, and, thanks to Almighty God, they are to be numbered by tens of thousands, who will not perplex themselves with questionings; simple, genial hearts, who try to do what good they can in the world, and meddle not with matters too high for them; people whose religion is not abstruse but deep, not noisy but intense, not aggressive but laboriously useful; people who have the same habit of mind as the early Christians seem to have worn, ere yet Catholic truth had been defined in formulae, when the Apostles' Creed was symbol enough for the Church, and men were orthodox in heart rather than exact in head.

For such it is enough if a fellow-creature loves Him whom they love, and serves Him whom they serve. Personal affection and loyalty to the same unseen Being is to them a communion of saints both real and actual, in the genial warmth of which all minor differences of opinion vanish. . . .

_Preface to Tauler's Sermons_. 1854.

God's Words. June 24.

Do I mean, then, that this or any text has nothing to do with us? God forbid! I believe that every word of our Lord's has to do with us, and with every human being, for their meaning is infinite, eternal, and inexhaustible.

_MS. Letter_.

Taught by Failure. June 25.

So I am content to have failed. I have learned in the experiment priceless truths concerning myself, my fellow-men, and the city of God, which is eternal in the heavens, for ever coming down among men, and actualising itself more and more in every succeeding age. I only know that I know nothing, but with a hope that Christ, who is the Son of Man, will tell me piecemeal, if I be patient and watchful, what I am and what man is.

_Letters and Memories_. 1857.

Presentiments. June 26.

"I cannot deny," said Claude, "that such things as presentiments may be possible. However miraculous they may seem, are they so very much more so than the daily fact of memory? I can as little guess why we remember the past, as why we may not at times be able to foresee the future." . . .

_Two Years Ago_, chap. xxviii.

A thing need not be unreasonable--that is, contrary to reason--because it is above and beyond reason, or, at least, our human reason, which at best (as St. Paul says) sees as in a glass darkly.

_MS. Letter_. 1856.

Common Duties. June 27.

But after all, what is speculation to practice? What does God require of us, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him? The longer I live this seems to me more important, and all other questions less so--if we can but live the simple right life--

Do the work that's nearest, Though it's dull at whiles; Helping, when we meet them, Lame dogs over stiles.

_Letters and Memories_. 1857.

Lost and Found. June 28.

"My welfare? It is gone!"

"So much the better. I never found mine till I lost it."

_Hypatia_, chap. xxvii. 1852.

How to bear Sorrow. June 29.

I believe that the wisest plan is sometimes not to try to bear sorrow--as long as one is not crippled for one's everyday duties--but to give way to it utterly and freely. Perhaps sorrow is sent that we _may_ give way to it, and in drinking the cup to the dregs, find some medicine in it itself, which we should not find if we began doctoring ourselves, or letting others doctor us. If we say simply, "I am wretched--I ought to be wretched;" then we shall perhaps hear a voice, "Who made thee wretched but God? Then what can He mean but thy good?" And if the heart answers impatiently, "My good? I don't want it, I want my love;" perhaps the voice may answer, "Then thou shalt have both in time."

_Letters and Memories_. 1871.

A certain Hope. June 30.

Let us look forward with quiet certainty of hope, day and night; believing, though we can see but little day, that all this tangled web will resolve itself into golden threads of twined, harmonious life, guiding both us, and those we love, together, through this life to that resurrection of the flesh, when we shall at last know the reality and the fulness of life and love. Even so come, Lord Jesus!

_Letters and Memories_. 1844.

SAINTS' DAYS, FASTS, & FESTIVALS.

Whit Sunday.

Think of the Holy Spirit as a Person having a will of His own, who breatheth whither He listeth, and cannot be confined to any feelings or rules of yours or of any man's, but may meet you in the Sacraments or out of the Sacraments, even as He will, and has methods of comforting and educating you of which you will never dream; One whose will is the same as the will of the Father and of the Son, even a good will.

_Discipline Sermons_.

Trinity Sunday.

Some things I see clearly and hold with desperate clutch. A Father in heaven for all, a Son of God incarnate for all, and a Spirit of the Father _and_ the Son--who works to will and to do of His own good pleasure in every human being in whom there is one spark of active good, the least desire to do right or to be of use--the Fountain of all good on earth.

_Letters and Memories_.

JUNE 11. St. Barnabas, Apostle and Martyr.

. . . Which is Love? To do God's will, or merely suffer it? . . . . . No! I must headlong into seas of toil, Leap far from self, and spend my soul on others. For contemplation falls upon the spirit, Like the chill silence of an autumn sun: While action, like the roaring south-west wind, Sweeps laden with elixirs, with rich draughts Quickening the wombed earth.

_Saint's Tragedy_.

JUNE 21. St. John the Baptist.

How shall we picture John the Baptist to ourselves? Great painters have exercised their fancy upon his face, his figure, his actions. The best which I can recollect is Guido's--of the magnificent lad sitting on the rock, half clad in his camel's-hair robe, his stalwart hand lifted up to denounce he hardly knows what, save that things are going all wrong, utterly wrong to him--his beautiful mouth open to preach he hardly knows what, save that he has a message from God, of which he is half conscious as yet--that he is a forerunner, a prophet, a foreteller of something and some one who is to come, and which is very near at hand. The wild rocks are round him, the clear sky over him, and nothing more, . . . and he, the noble and the priest, has thrown off--not in discontent and desperation (for he was neither democrat nor vulgar demagogue), but in hope and awe--all his family privileges, all that seems to make life worth having; and there aloft and in the mountains, alone with God and Nature, feeding on locusts and wild honey and clothed in skins, he, like Elijah of old, preaches to a generation sunk in covetousness, party spirit, and superstition--preaches what?--The most common--Morality. Ah, wise politician! ah, clear and rational spirit, who knows and tells others to do the duty which lies nearest to them! . . . who in the hour of his country's deepest degradation had divine courage to say, our deliverance lies, not in rebellion but in _doing right_.

_St. John the Baptist_, _All Saints' Day Sermons_.

JUNE 29. St. Peter, Apostle and Martyr.

God is revealed in the Crucified; The Crucified must be revealed in me:-- I must put on His righteousness; show forth His sorrow's glory; hunger, weep with Him; Taste His keen stripes, and let this aching flesh Sink through His fiery baptism into death.

_Saint's Tragedy_.

St. Peter, as he is drawn in the Gospels and the Acts, is a grand and colossal human figure, every line and feature of which is full of meaning and full of beauty to us.

_Sermons_, _Discipline_.

July.