Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)
Liberty acting without motive is no more liberty, it is chance, and chance is another name for ignorance.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
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The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Man and God being placed face to face, one as contingent, the other as absolute, the contingent lives as contingent and the absolute as absolute. To live as absolute, is to be at once the power and principle of life; to live as contingent is to live as effect, without ever being able to live as principle.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
If God, placing the attributes of each man under the seal of an eternal limit, had said to him," Thus far shalt thou go, and no further," each man, enclosed within this insurmountable barrier, might have questioned the Divine Justice for having refused to him what was given to another. But God has, on the contrary, made the talents of one to be the property of all, so that "none of us liveth or dieth to himself," and has given to all an unlimited power of acquisition, for the purpose of perpetually assimilating the gifts of others.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Every religion is the expression of a want of man's spiritual nature, however uncouth or exaggerated may be the form it assumes. This uncouthness or exaggeration is due to negation of correlative wants. The want itself is the strain after a truth, the hunger of the spiritual nature. The Incarnation assumes to satisfy every one of these wants, and therefore must become a web, of which all philosophies are the warp, and all religions are the woof.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Our parents were then driven out of Paradise, and one leaf alone was given to each, wherewith to hide their nakedness.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
Evil is the rejection of the infinite for the finite.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Love is the rule of rules, the key to all mysteries.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Before the Fall, wheat grew to a tree with leaves like emeralds. The ears were red as rubies and the grains white as snow, sweet as honey, and fragrant as musk. Eve ate one of the grains and found it more delicious than anything she had hitherto tasted, so she gave a second grain to Adam. Adam resisted at first, according to some authorities for a whole hour, but an hour in Paradise was eighty years of our earthly reckoning. But when he saw that Eve remained well and cheerful, he yielded to her persuasions, and ate of the second grain which Eve had offered him daily, three times a day, during the hour of eighty years.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
Destroy the idea of God, and you destroy the idea of moral authority.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Deny God, and authority rests on force alone; we relapse into despotism.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!
SABINE BARING-GOULD
"Onward Christian Soldiers"
Take a man, place him outside of all society, leave him to his own inspirations; he will do a little more than will an animal born at the same time, but he will not advance far in the study of the world and the appropriation of material for his use. He will begin like the first man, by taking the first step in civilization. If men were to succeed one another in isolation, each would be learning the alphabet of experimental truths, and none would be able to put the letters together into practical rules.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Time commences with mutable things; if they perish, it perishes with them.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The narrative of the Gospels may carry conviction to some minds, the testimony of the Church may take hold of and satisfy others, but if so, what is it that really convinces? It is the fact, or, if the expression be preferred, the idea of the Incarnation commending itself to the soul of man. That idea, looking upon the soul of man, bears its own guarantee with it, and thus, and thus only, through the head or through the heart, enchains consent.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Reason is a faculty for extracting truth out of materials provided by the sentiment.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
What is all creation but an aspiration towards what it presupposes, the Infinite, from the atom to the globes that revolve in space, from the mineral to the man?
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Man has no knowledge of things except by the thoughts present to his mind; that is, he can only know what is thinkable.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
In considering the right of man, we have had to treat him as an unit, but the state of separation is not that of the primitive existence of men. On the contrary, the first man alone could have risen into being outside of all social relations; every other man has been born in the bosom of a family, and therefore finds himself in the midst of a society already shaped; and, being unable to grow up without assistance, the association has maintained itself, and the ideas of those educated in it have been moulded by the organization.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
As the animal life has its law of progress, so has the spiritual life; as the former has its wants, so has the latter; as the accomplishment of the animal wants is attended by complete satisfaction, so is the realization of the spiritual wants signalized by contentment.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Power is the exercise of superior force against a body that resists. Suppress the idea of resistance, and the idea of power disappears.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity