  “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.
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, A Parable. 1848.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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