British activist & theosophist (1847-1933)
The various classes of orthodox Christian doctrines should be attacked in very different styles by the champions of the great army of free-thinkers, who are at the present day besieging the venerable superstitions of the past. Around the Deity of Jesus cluster many hallowed memories and fond associations; the worship of centuries has shed around his figure a halo of light, and he has been made into the ideal of Humanity; the noblest conceptions of morality, the highest flights of enlightened minds, have been enshrined in a human personality and called by the name of Christ; the Christ-idea has risen and expanded with every development of human progress, and the Christ of the highest Christianity of the day is far other than the Christ of Augustine, of Thomas à Kempis, of Luther, or Knox; the strivings after light, after knowledge, after holiness, of the noblest sons of men have been called by them a following of Jesus; Jesus is baptized in human tears, crucified in human pains, glorified in human hopes. Because of all this, because he is dear to human hearts and identified with human struggles, therefore he should be gently spoken of by all who feel the bonds of the brotherhood of man; the dogma of his Deity must be assailed, must be overthrown, because it is false, because it destroys the unity of God, because it veils from us the Eternal Spirit, the source of all things, but he himself should be reverently spoken of, so far as truthfulness permits, and this dogma, although persistently battled against, should be attacked without anger and without scorn.
ANNIE BESANT
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My Path to Atheism
Christian reader, do not be afraid to realise the future in which you say you believe, and which the God of Love has prepared for the home of some of his children. Imagine yourself, or any dear to you, plunged into guilt from which there is no redeemer, and where the voice cannot penetrate of him that speaks in righteousness, mighty to save. In the well-weighed words of a champion of Christian orthodoxy, think there is no reason to believe that hell is only a punishment for past offences; in that dark world sin and misery reproduce each other in infinite succession.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
To the savage everything is divine; he hears one God's voice in the clap of the thunder, another's in the roar of the earthquake, he sees a divinity in the trees, a deity smiles at him from the clear depths of the river and the lake; every natural phenomenon is the abode of a god; every event is controlled by a god; divine volition is at the root of every incident. To him the rule of the gods is a stern reality; if he offends them they turn the forces of nature against him; the flood, the famine, the pestilence, are the ministers of the avenging anger of the gods.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
Wise men, in modern times, are striving earnestly and zealously to, as far as possible, free religion from the cramping and deadening effect of creeds and formularies, in order that it may be able to expand with the expanding thought of the day.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
Control of the tongue! Vital for the man who would try to tread the Noble Eightfold Path, for no harsh or unkind word, no hasty impatient phrase, may escape from the tongue which is consecrated to service, and which must not injure even an enemy; for that which wounds has no place in the Kingdom of Love.
ANNIE BESANT
The Theosophist, vol. 33
The Nature of God, what is it? Infinite and Absolute, he evades our touch; without human will, without human intelligence, without human love, where can his faculties—the very word is a misnomer—find a meeting-place with ours? Is he everything or nothing? one or many? We know not. We know nothing. Such is the conclusion into which we are driven by orthodoxy, with its pretended faith, which is credulity, with its pretended proofs, which are presumptions.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
All man needs for his guidance in this world he can gain through the use of his natural faculties, and the right guidance of his conduct in this world must, in all reasonableness, be the best preparation for whatever lies beyond the grave.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
Most liberal thinkers agree in recognizing the fact that the duties of the State in the matter of education must, in the nature of things, be purely "secular:" that is to say, that while the State insists that the future citizen shall be taught at least the elements of learning, so as to fit him or her for fulfilling the duties of that citizenship, it has no right to insist on impressing on the mind of its pupil any set of religious dogmas or any form of religious creed. The abdication by the State of the pretended right of enforcing on its citizens any special form of religion, is not at all identical with the opposition by the State to religious teaching; It is merely a development of the very wise maxim of the great Jewish Teacher, to render the things of Caesar to Caesar, and the things of God to God. To teach reading, writing, honesty, regard for law, these things are Caesar's duties; to teach religious dogma, creed, or article, is entirely the province of the teachers who claim to hold the truth of God.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
That is one reason for thinking hard—in order to think better. And the harder you think, the more will your thinking instrument improve.
ANNIE BESANT
lecture delivered in the smaller Queen's Hall, London, "Psychism and Spirituality", June 16, 1907
For so reverent is God to that Spirit which is Himself in man, that He will not even pour into the human soul a flood of strength and life unless that soul is willing to receive it.
ANNIE BESANT
Esoteric Christianity
Unmarried women of all ages suffer under comparatively few disabilities; it is marriage which brings with it the weight of injustice and of legal degradation.
ANNIE BESANT
Marriage, As It Was, As It Is, and As It Should Be
In savage times marriage was a matter either of force, fraud, or purchase. Women were merchandise, by the sale of whom their male relatives profited, or they were captives in war, the spoil of the conqueror, or they were stolen away from the paternal home. In all cases, however, the possession once obtained, they became the property of the men who married them, and the husband was their "lord," their "master."
ANNIE BESANT
Marriage, As It Was, As It Is, and As It Should Be
A married woman loses control over her own body; it belongs to her owner, not to herself; no force, no violence, on the husband's part in conjugal relations is regarded as possible by the law; she may be suffering, ill, it matters not; force or constraint is recognized by the law as rape, in all cases save that of marriage; the law "holds, it to be felony to force even a concubine or harlot", but no rape can be committed by a husband on a wife; the consent given in marriage is held to cover the life, and if—as sometimes occurs—a miscarriage or premature confinement be brought on by the husband's selfish passions, no offence is committed in the eye of the law, for the wife is the husband's property, and by marriage she has lost the right of control over her own body. The English marriage law sweeps away all the tenderness, all the grace, all the generosity of love, and transforms conjugal affection into a hard and brutal legal right.
ANNIE BESANT
Marriage, As It Was, As It Is, and As It Should Be
There is one obvious fact that throws into bright relief the absurdity of Prayer. Two people pray for exactly opposite things; whose Prayers are to be answered? Two armies ask for victory; which is to be crowned? Amongst ourselves, now, the Church is divided into two opposing camps, and while the Ritualists appeal to God for protection, the Evangelical clamour also for his aid. To which is he to bend his ear? which Prayer is he to answer? Both appeal to his promises; both urge that his honour is pledged to them by the word he has given; yet it is simply impossible that he should grant the Prayer of both, because the Prayer of the one is the direct contradiction of the prayer of the other.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
In concentration, the consciousness is held to a single image; the whole attention of the Knower is fixed on a single point, without wavering or swerving.
ANNIE BESANT
Thought Power: Its Control and Culture
The feudal system did much, of course, to perpetuate the subjection of women, it being to the interest of the lord paramount that the fiefs should descend in the male line in those rough ages, when wars and civil feuds were almost perpetual, it was inevitable that the sex with the biggest body and strongest sinews should have the upper hand; the pity is that English gentlemen to-day are content to allow the law to remain unaltered, when the whole face of society has changed.
ANNIE BESANT
Marriage, As It Was, As It Is, and As It Should Be
One vast advantage of this humanitarian philosophy is that it endeavours to train men into unselfishness, instead of following the popular Christian plan of making self the central thought. Self is appealed to at every step in the New Testament: if we are bidden to rejoice under persecution, it is because "great is your reward in heaven;" if urged to pray, it is because "thy Father, which seeth in secret, himself shall reward thee openly;" if to be charitable, it is because at the judgment it will bring a kingdom as the recompense; if to resign home or wealth, it is because we shall receive "a hundredfold in this present life, and in the world to come life everlasting;" even the giver of a cup of cold water "shall in no wise lose his reward." It is one system of bribes, mingling the thought of personal pain with every effort of human improvement and human happiness, and thereby directly fostering and encouraging selfishness and gilding it over with the name of religion and piety. Humanitarian morality, on the other hand, while utilising the natural and rightful craving for individual happiness as a motive-power, endeavours to accustom each to look to, and to labour for, the happiness of all, making that general happiness the aim of life.
ANNIE BESANT
My Path to Atheism
Any advantage which married women may possess through the supposition that they are acting under the coercion of their husbands ought to be summarily taken away from them. It is not for the safety of society that criminals should escape punishment simply because they happen to be married women; a criminal husband becomes much more dangerous to the community if he is to have an irresponsible fellow-conspirator beside him; two people—although the law regards them as one—can often commit a crime that a single person could not accomplish, and it is not even impossible that an unscrupulous woman, desiring to get rid easily for awhile of an unpleasant husband, might actually be the secret prompter of an offence, in the commission of which she might share, but in the punishment of which she would have no part. For the sake of wives, as well as of husbands, this irresponsibility should be put an end to, for if a husband is to be held accountable for his wife's misdeeds and debts, it is impossible for the law to refuse him control over her actions; freedom and responsibility must go hand in hand, and women who obtain the rights of freedom must accept the duties of responsibility.
ANNIE BESANT
Marriage, As It Was, As It Is, and As It Should Be
All Nature was sacred. God expressed Himself in every object, in every form. All that could be said was that through one form more of His glory came than through another. The form might be more or less transparent, but the inner radiant light was the same in all.
ANNIE BESANT
lecture delivered in the smaller Queen's Hall, London, "The Place of Masters in Religions", June 23, 1907
Yet that is the most splendid privilege of man, that the true birthright of the human Spirit, to know his own Divinity, and then to realise it, to know his own Divinity and then to manifest it.
ANNIE BESANT
The Theosophist, vol. 33