Daily Thoughts Part 21

July.

It was a day of G.o.d. The earth lay like one great emerald, ringed and roofed with sapphire: blue sea, blue mountain, blue sky overhead. There she lay, not sleeping, but basking in her quiet Sabbath joy, as though her two great sisters of the sea and air had washed her weary limbs with holy tears, and purged away the stains of last week's sin and toil, and cooled her hot worn forehead with their pure incense-breath, and folded her within their azure robes, and brooded over her with smiles of pitying love, till she smiled back in answer, and took heart and hope for next week's weary work.

Heart and hope for next week's work.--That was the sermon which it preached to Tom Thurnall, as he stood there alone, a stranger and a wanderer like Ulysses of old: but, like him, self-helpful, cheerful, fate defiant. He was more of a heathen than Ulysses--for he knew not what Ulysses knew, that a heavenly guide was with him in his wanderings; still less that what he called the malicious sport of fortune was, in truth, the earnest education of a Father. . . . "Brave old world she is after all," he said; "and right well made; and looks right well to-day in her go-to-meeting clothes, and plenty of room and chance for a brave man to earn his bread, if he will but go right on about his business, as the birds and the flowers do, instead of peaking and pining over what people think of him."

_Two Years Ago_, chap. xiv.

Nature and Grace. July 1.

G.o.d is the G.o.d of Nature as well as the G.o.d of Grace. For ever He looks down on all things which He has made; and behold they are very good. And therefore we dare to offer to Him in our churches the most perfect works of naturalistic art, and shape them into copies of whatever beauty He has shown us in man or woman, in cave or mountain-peak, in tree or flower, even in bird or b.u.t.terfly. But Himself? Who can see Him except the humble and the contrite heart, to whom He reveals Himself as a Spirit to be wors.h.i.+pped in spirit and in truth, and not in bread nor wood, nor stone nor gold, nor quintessential diamond?

_Lecture on Grots and Groves_. 1871.

Love and Book-Learning. July 2.

I see more and more that the knowledge of one human being, such as love alone can give, and the apprehension of our own private duties and relations, is worth more than all the book-learning in the world.

_MS._

The Ancient Creeds. July 3.

Blessed and delightful it is when we find that even in these new ages the Creeds, which so many fancy to be at their last gasp, are still the finest and highest succour, not merely of the peasant and the outcast, but of the subtle artist and the daring speculator. Blessed it is to find the most cunning poet of our day able to combine the rhythm and melody of modern times with the old truths which gave heart to the martyrs at the stake, to see in the science and the history of the nineteenth century new and living fulfilments of the words which we learnt at our mother's knee!

_Miscellanies_. 1850.

A Master-Truth. July 4.

Every creature of G.o.d is good, if it be sanctified with prayer and thanksgiving! This to me is the master-truth of Christianity, the forgetfulness of which is at the root of almost all error. It seems to me that it was to redeem man and the earth that Christ was made man and used the earth!--that Christianity has never yet been pure, because it never yet, since St. Paul's time, has stood on _this_ as the fundamental truth, and that it has been pure or impure, just in proportion as it has _practically_ and _really_ acknowledged this truth.

_Letters and Memories_. 1842.

English Women. July 5.

Let those who will sneer at the women of England. We who have to do the work and fight the battle of life know the inspiration which we derive from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness--and, but too often, from their compa.s.sion and their forgiveness. There is, I doubt not, still left in England many a man with chivalry and patriotism enough to challenge the world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a cultivated British woman.

_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.

Life retouched again. July 6.

Even in the saddest woman's soul there linger s.n.a.t.c.hes of old music, odours of flowers long dead and turned to dust,--pleasant ghosts, which still keep her mind attuned to that which may be in others, though in her never more; till she can hear her own wedding-hymn re-echoed in the tones of every girl who loves, and see her own wedding-torch re-lighted in the eyes of every bride.

_Westward Ho_! chap. xxix.

Mystery of Life. July 7.

"All things begin in some wonder, and in some wonder end," said St.

Augustine, wisest in his day of mortal men. It is a strange thing, and a mystery, how we ever got into this world; a stranger thing still to me how we shall ever get out of this world again. Yet they are common things enough--birth and death.

_Good News of G.o.d Sermons_.

Beauty of Life. July 8.

The Greeks were, as far as we know, the most beautiful race which the world ever saw. Every educated man knows that they were the cleverest of all nations, and, next to his Bible, thanks G.o.d for Greek literature. Now the Greeks had made physical, as well as intellectual education a science as well as a study. Their women practised graceful, and in some cases even athletic exercises. They developed, by a free and healthy life, those figures which remain everlasting and unapproachable models of human beauty.

_Lecture on Thrift_. 1869.

Study the human figure, both as intrinsically beautiful and as expressing mind. It only expresses the broad natural childish emotions, which are just what we want to return to from our over subtlety. Study "natural language"--I mean the language of att.i.tude. It is an inexhaustible source of knowledge and delight, and enables one human being to understand another so perfectly. Therefore learn to draw and paint figures.

_Letters and Memories_. 1842.

True Civilisation. July 9.

Civilisation with me shall mean--not more wealth, more finery, more self- indulgence, even more aesthetic and artistic luxury--but more virtue, more knowledge, more self-control, even though I earn scanty bread by heavy toil.

_Lecture on Ancient Civilisation_. 1874.

The Church. July 10.