Daily Thoughts Part 9

Duty. March 20.

Duty, be it in a small matter or a great, is duty still; the command of Heaven; the eldest voice of G.o.d. And it is only they who are faithful in a few things who will be faithful over many things; only they who do their duty in everyday and trivial matters who will fulfil them on great occasions.

_Sermons for the Times_. 1855.

The Great Unknown. March 21.

"Brother," said the abbot, "make ready for me the divine elements, that I may consecrate them." And he asking the reason therefor, the saint replied, "That I may partake thereof with all my brethren before I depart hence. For know a.s.suredly that within the seventh day I shall migrate to the celestial mansions. For this night stood by me in a dream those two women whom I love, and for whom I pray, the one clothed in a white, the other in a ruby-coloured garment, and holding each other by the hand, who said to me, '_That life after death is not such a one as you fancy_: come, therefore, and behold what it is like.'"

_Hypatia_, chap. x.x.x. 1852.

Loss nor Gain, March 22.

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.

Ancient Greek Education, March 23.

We talk of education now. Are we more educated than were the ancient Greeks? Do we know anything about education, physical, intellectual, aesthetic (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 G.o.d 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.

Body and Soul. March 24.

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.

Moderation. March 25.

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 appet.i.tes, moderate pa.s.sions, 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.

Poetry in the Slums. March 26.

"True poetry, like true charity, my laddie, begins at home. . . . Hech!

is there no the heaven above them there, and the h.e.l.l beneath them? and G.o.d frowning, and the devil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra idea of the cla.s.sic tragedy defined to be man conquered by circ.u.mstance?

canna ye see it there? And the verra idea of the modern tragedy, man conquering circ.u.mstance? and I'll show ye that too--in many a garret where no eye but the good G.o.d's enters to see the patience, and the fort.i.tude, 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; G.o.d and Satan are grander. All around ye, in every gin-shop and costermonger's cellar, are G.o.d and Satan at death-grips; every garret is a haill Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained."

_Alton Locke_, chap. viii. 1849.

Time and Eternity. March 27.

. . . Our life's floor Is laid upon Eternity; no crack in it But shows the underlying heaven.

_Saint's Tragedy_, Act iii. Scene ii.

Work. March 28.

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.

Teaching of Pictures. March 29.

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 thee _in the world to come_--that fairyland made real--"the new heavens and the new earth" which G.o.d 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.

Voluntary Heroism. March 30.