"Religious belief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... muse: "Cain," and "Heaven and Earth." Both were admirably suited to his pen. He naturally treated them as a philosopher, but without any preconceived notion of making any religious converts. His enemies nevertheless seized hold of these pieces, to incriminate him and impugn his religious belief. I have spoken elsewhere[19] of that truly scandalous persecution. I will only add here that Moore, timid as he usually was when he had to face an unpopularity which came from high quarters, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... was a man of literary culture, and we went deeply into books. The next day he sent me a charming work which he had written on the religious belief of Shakespeare, in which it was fairly proved that the immortal bard had none. And I was so well pleased with England, that I liked it better than any country I ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... woman more secure. So far as she has gone to help the home, and because of love of it, such causes have not hurt the family life, and will not. But when we come to Suffrage we have met a different matter. The vote is not an affair of feeling or opinion, like religious belief. The fact that the men of the family are the natural defenders of law, and the women are not, is seen at close quarters in the home, and in case of opposite votes and any serious resulting action, the father and son must stand in the attitude of actual physical as well as political ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... undermining and refuting those laws, there may be every expectation that the attitude of scientific men will be perennially hostile to the idea of guidance or control, and so to the efficacy of prayer, and to many another practical outcome of religious belief. It becomes therefore an important question to consider whether it is true that life or mind is incompetent to disarrange or interfere with matter at all, except as itself an automatic part of the machine,—whether in fact it is merely an ornamental appendage or phantasmal accessory ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... Ramabai, in a very eloquent chapter, proposes to solve the problem in a different way. Her suggestion is that houses should be opened for the young and high-caste child-widows, where they can take shelter without the fear of losing their caste, or of being disturbed in their religious belief, and where they may have entire freedom of action as regards caste rules. The whole account given by the Pundita of the life of the high-caste Hindu lady is full of suggestion for the social reformer and the student of progress, and her book, which is wonderfully well written, is likely to ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... friend, the Emperor there, is Pontiff of three hundred million men; who do all live and work, these many centuries now; authentically patronised by Heaven so far; and therefore must have some 'religion' of a kind. This Emperor-Pontiff has, in fact, a religious belief of certain Laws of Heaven; observes, with a religious rigour, his 'three thousand punctualities,' given out by men of insight, some sixty generations since, as a legible transcript of the same,—the Heavens do seem to say, not totally an incorrect one. He has not ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... the intellectual as the house rests upon the foundation. Its mental pictures, its concepts, its beliefs, come out of it, and are marred, misshapen, untrue, just to the extent to which that is faulty. Intelligence is necessary to religious belief and religious life. And the intellectual, in its foundation laying, can not stop short at that point any more than a plant can stop growing when its roots are well developed. The process once well begun is pushed on by the force from behind ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... theory—much discussed at that time, but almost forgotten now—was formed in 1875 with the aim of harmonising the results of evolution and ever-advancing Darwinism with religious belief. The spirited struggle that Darwin had occasioned by the reformation of the theory of descent in 1859, and that lasted for a decade with varying fortunes in every branch of biology, was drawing to a close in 1870-1872, and soon ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... shall, within limits not prejudicial to peace and order, and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, enjoy freedom of religious belief. ...
— The Constitution of the Empire of Japan, 1889 • Japan
... subjoined the Varangian. "With the mask of apparent good-humour he conceals his pandering to the vices of others; with the specious jargon of philosophy, he has argued himself out of religious belief and moral principle; and, with the appearance of the most devoted loyalty, he will, if he is not checked in time, either argue his too confiding master out of life and empire, or, if he fails in this, reason his simple associates into death ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... those who embraced it became known as Puritans. Through the Puritans who settled New England, and later through the Huguenots in the Carolinas, the Scotch Presbyterians in the central colonies, and the Dutch in New York, Calvinism was carried to America, was for long the dominant religious belief, and profoundly colored all early American education. Lutheranism also came in through the Swedes along the Delaware and the Germans in Pennsylvania, while the Anglican Church, known in America as the Episcopalian, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... common sense that any attempt on the part of the clergy or the laity of Upper Canada to crush the free exercise of religious belief, would be met not only with difficulties absolutely insurmountable, but by the withdrawal of all support from the home government; for, as the Queen of England is alike queen of the Presbyterian ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... from the pleasant, unsatisfied craving, are each a result of individuality. This is a deeper generalization than that which says, "A man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." But it is put forward as a mere statement of fact. And the previous history of religious belief in India would tend to show that emphasis was laid on the fact, less as an explanation of the origin of evil, than as a protest against a then current pessimistic idea that salvation could not be reached on earth, and must therefore be sought for in a rebirth in heaven, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... more of the reflective in this utterance than the parson was in the habit of displaying; but he liked the doctor, and, although as well as every one else he knew him to be no friend to the church, or to Christianity, or even to religious belief of any sort, his liking, coupled with a vague sense of duty, had urged him to this most unassuming attempt to cast the friendly arm ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... were constantly little skirmishes of wit, and any one who tacked a thesis on the door had to fight for it. Luther Burbank rightly says that children should not be taught religious dogma. The souls of the Rossettis were not water-logged by religious belief formulated by men with less insight ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... France and Spain sent out a fleet and army, which captured the principal seaport, and continued the war for about four years, when a treaty of peace was concluded. Annam was compelled to pay 25,000,000 francs for the expense of the war, and permit every person to enjoy his own religious belief. The missionaries were to be protected, commercial relations were established, and in 1886 a treaty was ratified at Hue, by which the country was placed under the protection of France, though the native princes were nominally continued in power. This was the beginning ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... and the roller, is concerned finally with the seeding and with the sound development towards still better seeding of plants. The private and personal motive of the seedsman in procuring and using these tools may be avarice, ambition, a religious belief in the saving efficacy of nursery keeping or a simple passion for bettering flowers, that does not affect the definite final purpose ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... English cities and towns, the minister of religion has been tamed: so many weapons are bared against him when he obtrudes his office in a dictatory manner, that, as a rule, there is no more quiet and modest member of society than the urban clergyman. Domination over religious belief is reserved for the exclusive use of those who admit the right: the rare exception to this mode of behavior is laughed at as a bigot, or shunned as a nuisance. But the overbearing minister of nature, who snaps you with unphilosophical ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... deserving of study. Its antiquity.] The system of religious belief which is generally called Hinduism is, on many accounts, eminently deserving of study. If we desire to trace the history of the ancient religions of the widely extended Aryan or Indo-European race, to which ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... I kept at least to the form of religious belief, although I missed the substance, namely, that any life can be made happy, even glorious, if it is founded on purity of soul and unselfish love and service. I was selfish—even in my love; therefore I brought upon ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... not confined to those arising from variety of origin. The English in New England presented a very marked contrast to the English in New York and in Virginia. The settlements of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay comprised communities of zealous Calvinists, rigid in their religious belief and ceremonies, codifying their religious principles into political law, and adhering resolutely, through thick and thin, to the idea expressed, by one of the early Puritans, that "our New England was originally a plantation of religion, and not ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... of the Salvation Army fell under the laws of the municipalities against nuisances. The final judicial decision in this case was in effect that while persons of every religious belief are free to worship in Switzerland, none in doing so are free seriously to ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... accepted, and feeling that his religious belief would be in the way of his advancement, when he changed his master he changed his Church. He was given the command of the valley of Barcelonnette, whence he made many excursions against the Barbets; then he was transferred to the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... such a man came over to be the guardian of a people who knew not when they were to be tomahawked by the savages or driven into further exile by the zealots who were disturbed at the nature of their religious belief. ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... position of chancellor of the university, was not less bold in stigmatizing the same evils, while the weight of his authority was even greater. So far, however, was he from grasping the nature and need of a substantial renovation of the existing religious belief, that to his influence in no inconsiderable measure was due the perfidious condemnation and execution of the great Bohemian forerunner of the Reformation, John Huss. The student of mediaeval history may be ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... civil practices, our political creed, are all imitation. How many men are there, that have examined the evidences of their religious belief, and can give a sound "reason of the faith that is in them?" When I was a child, I was taught that there were four religions in the world, the Popish, the Protestant, the Mahometan, the Pagan. It is a phenomenon to find the man, who has held the balance steadily, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... whether to admire more the spiritual logic of the literary art of the writer and self-confessor. We may take, as two instances of Newman's power, the delightful account in Part III. of his childhood and the first growth of his religious belief; and the remarkable opening to Part IV., where he uses the figure of the death-bed with that finer reality which is born of the creative communion of thought and word in a poet's brain. Something of this power was felt, it is clear, in his sermons at Oxford. Dr. ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Four years later, the religious belief of the English Church, which had been first formulated under Edward VI (S362), was revised and reduced to the Thirty-Nine Articles which constitute it at the present time.[1] But the real value of the religious revolution which was taking place did not lie in the substitution of one creed for ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... he who sat by the maiden's side, "I would that we lived beyond the sea from whence, come those ships that bear the stars and stripes, for I am told that in America, religious belief is no bar to the union of heart, as it is in the ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... for a while. They had been reared by devout parents. Life in the forest deepens religious belief, and it seemed to them that there had been a special interposition in ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... their resolution, they would after this minimum interval signify as much to the local official and the necessary entry would be made in the registers. These formalities would be quite independent of any religious ceremonial the contracting parties might choose, for with religious belief and procedure the modern ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... must stop; for volumes would not contain all that might be said of the likeness of legend to legend in all the branches of the Aryan family, or of the meaning of these stories, and of the lessons they teach—lessons of history, and religious belief, and customs, and morals and ways of thought, and poetic fancies, and of well-nigh all things, heavenly and human— stretching back to the very spring and cradle of our race, older than the oldest writings, and yet so ever fresh and new that while great scholars ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... inhabitants, which, according to the Greek custom of paying reverence to all gods, known or unknown, they readily adopted, selecting and appropriating those divinities which had the greatest affinity to their own, and thus they formed a religious belief which naturally bore the impress of its ancient Greek source. As the primitive Celts, however, were a less civilized people than the Greeks, their mythology was of a more barbarous character, and this circumstance, combined with the fact that the Romans were not ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... from that in which the glands of the mouth secrete saliva and the tubules of the stomach gastric juice. Some of my readers may say this is pure materialism, or at least leads to materialism. No inquirer who pauses to think how his investigation is going to affect his religious belief is worthy to be called scientific. The scientist, rightly so called, is a searcher after truth, whatever may be the results of the discovery of the truth. Modern science, however, has not proved the truth of materialism. It has shown that the human organism is a wonderful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... freethought advocate and politician. His efforts were especially directed toward maintaining the freedom of the press in issuing criticisms on religious belief and sociological questions. In 1880 he became a Member of Parliament, and began a long and finally successful struggle for the right to take his seat in Parliament without the customary oath ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... grouped along the shores, the most conspicuous feature in each being the large Catholic church, showing the religious belief of the people. Curious little stores were perched behind the now high banks of the levee. The signs over the doors bore such inscriptions as, "The Red Store," "The White Store," "St. John's Store," "Poor Family Store," &c. Busy life was seen on every side, but here, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... and New Testaments were not anecdotes; faith and ignorance had raised them above the anecdote, and they had become epics, whether by intensity of religious belief—as in the case of the monk of Fiesole—or by being given sublime artistic form—for paganism was not yet dead in the world to witness Leonardo, Raphael, and Andrea del Sarto. To these painters Biblical subjects were a mere pretext for representing man in all his attributes; and when the same ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... putting fetters on the mind, by drawing up a creed and punishing those that disbelieved it, was but the beginning of theological difficulties. These in Egypt arose as much from the difference of blood and language of the races that inhabited the country as from their religious belief; and Constantine must soon have seen that if as a theologian he had decided right, yet as a statesman he had been helping the Egyptians against the friends of his own Greek ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... only philosophical explanation of the instinctive reverence of man for woman which we have been talking about to-night. It was given to me, of course, as a doctrine peculiar to Positivism; but I don't know of any form of religious belief, inconsistent with the recognition of the sacred quality of womanhood on the grounds given by Regnier. Indeed, I am by no means sure whether the doctrine as I received it is orthodox Positivism at all. I have reason to think that Regnier was quite too original a character ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... to be discovered. They had turned their backs upon it so forcibly that they hid even the history of their depredations. And one of their last acts must have been the capture of a large colony of Idealists who were forced into servitude. Now the Ids compensated their enslavement by the religious belief that service made them masters over the ex-pirates, convincing themselves that they had changed the Markovians, taming them like wild dogs, saddling ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... grandfather Susan B., ancestry, marriage, military service, 4; political record, religious belief, 5; literary taste, business matters, 6; sideboard well supplied, 15; military rec. makes ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... to control caprice. Instead of law men obeyed the instincts of their several characters, swayed by artistic taste or tyrannous appetite, or by the splendid heroism of extinct antiquity. The Church had alienated the people from true piety. Yet no new form of religious belief arose; and partly through respect for the past, partly through the convenience of clinging to existing institutions, Catholicism was indulgently tolerated. At the same time the humanists introduced an ideal ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... races. He had no regard nor sympathy for them, and looked upon even the highly intelligent Polynesian peoples with whom he had had much dealing as mere "niggers"—to study whose feelings, sentiments, opinions or religious belief, was beneath the consideration of an European. But although he thus despised the natives generally from one end of the Pacific to the other, he had enough sense to keep his opinions reasonably well to himself, only expressing his contempt for them to his fellow traders, or ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... Tartars cannot unconsciously imbibe Christianity as the Finns have done. Their religion is not a rude, simple paganism without theology in the scholastic sense of the term, but a monotheism as exclusive as Christianity itself. Enter into conversation with an intelligent man who has no higher religious belief than a rude sort of paganism, and you may, if you know him well and make a judicious use of your knowledge, easily interest him in the touching story of Christ's life and teaching. And in these unsophisticated natures there is but one step from interest and sympathy ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... house they separated at the door. It would have been thought a very improper thing, even for a married couple, to take a seat side by side. Indeed I am inclined to think that the good brothers and sisters would have put them out of doors. So deeply rooted are the prejudices in matters of religious belief. That they are the most difficult to remove, the history of the past confirms through all ages. This custom prevailed for many years after. When meeting was over it was customary to go to some friend's to dinner, and make, as used to be said, a visit, or, what was equally ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... by the munificence of one of their communion while the youth of all other religious bodies may, in the discretion of themselves and their parents, resort to it for instruction in the several branches of Science, with the assurance that no attempt will be suffered to be made to bias their religious belief; and with the satisfaction at the same time of knowing, that whenever instruction in Religion may be desired, it cannot be uncertain in what form ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... evolution have changed them, and have originated their earliest beginnings at the very outset of human history. It has been stated above that every race of mankind, however primitive or advanced it may be, holds some form of religious belief based upon some conception of the supernatural powers back of the world; and what the universe is conceived to be must largely determine the particular characteristics of a theology, and through this the special form of its attendant religion. We have before ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... a shred of belief in anything but what he called the Universal Law of Necessity; perhaps this was why all his pictures lacked inspiration. I accepted his theories without thinking much about them, and I had managed to live respectably without any religious belief. But NOW—now with the horrible phantom of madness rising before me—my firm nerves quailed. I tried, I longed to PRAY. Yet to whom? To what? To the Universal Law of Necessity? In that there could be no hearing or answering of human petitions. I meditated on this with ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... in the course of the existence of a nation, at which the ancient customs of a people are changed, public morality destroyed, religious belief disturbed, and the spell of tradition broken, whilst the diffusion of knowledge is yet imperfect, and the civil rights of the community are ill secured, or confined within very narrow limits. The ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... 1644 to Roger Williams. The charter was very liberal, and in religion and politics the people were absolutely free. The general assembly, in a code of laws adopted in 1647, declared that "all men might walk as their conscience permitted them—every one in the name of his God." Almost every religious belief might have been encountered there; "so if a man lost his religious opinions, he might have been sure to find them in some village in Rhode Island." Society was kept in a continual healthful agitation, and though the disputes ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... alone, with all its forces, could fight and triumph. But the Christian faith was obscured and enfeebled, it clung to the vessel's rigging instead of defending its powerful hull; the flood was rising meanwhile, and the dikes were breaking one after, another. The religious belief of the Savoyard vicar, imperfect and inconsistent, such as it is set forth in Emile, and that sincere love of nature which was recovered by Rousseau in his solitude, remained powerless to guide the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... coasts of England. Yet he was rapidly alienating the loyalty of his subjects by hypocrisy, by infidelity to the laws of England, and by unmitigated persecution of those who differed from him in religious belief. In this state of affairs England looked to the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... say it! Be converted, and be happy. Be happy, and you will be a good husband. I speak in your wife 's interest as well as in yours. People who are happy in each other's society, will yield a little on either side, even on questions of religious belief. And perhaps there may follow a more profitable result still. So far as I have observed, a good husband's example is gladly followed by his wife. Don't think that I am trying to persuade you against your will! I am only telling you, in my own justification, from what motives ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... the Hebrews, those, for example, which may be traced to the days of Moses, of Samuel, and of David, we cannot hesitate to pronounce that they are distinguished by a remarkable peculiarity, indicating by the most unambiguous tokens, that, in all things pertaining to religious belief, the descendants of Jacob were placed under a special ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... fighting non-Christians; Germany, Austria, Russia, England, Belgium, Servia, Italy, and the United States are all Christian nations. They all worship the same God, they are all brothers in Christ, but that did not prevent their cutting each other's throats on the battlefield. Their common religious belief did not render the war less ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... ship going back to England. When Mr. Williams knew this, he fled to the Indian chief, Massasoit. In 1636 Roger Williams began building Providence. Providence was the first settlement in America which offered a home to all men without asking them anything whatever about their religious belief. ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... very simple moral code, and Paul lived by it both at school and college; and before his college course was ended his father had died. Christianity had not appealed to him in any way; he regarded it as a worn-out system of religious belief that had been a moral force in the world, but was dying now, slowly perhaps, but surely. Perhaps in a remote village like this, where a Rector of strong personality was at the head of affairs, it might be fanned ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... equanimity that seemed to him unaccountable. Then occurred one of those revelations of character with which Nature is always ready to trip up merely human judgment. Aunt Viney, an unrelenting widow of calm but unshaken Dutch prejudices, high but narrow in religious belief, merged without a murmur into the position of chatelaine of this unconventional, half-Latin household. Accepting the situation without exaltation or criticism, placid but unresponsive amidst the youthful enthusiasm of Dick and Cecily over each quaint detail, her influence was, nevertheless, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... which formed the links between the Israel of the present and its better future. Over against the vain confidence of the multitude Isaiah had hitherto brought into prominence the darker obverse of his religious belief, but now he confronted their present depression with its bright reverse; faint-heartedness was still more alien to his nature than temerity. In the name of Jehovah he bade King Hezekiah be of good courage, and urged that he should by ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... out as forcibly and exactly as possible the religious belief of the writer. That belief is not orthodox Christianity; it is not, indeed, Christianity at all; its core nevertheless is a profound belief in a personal and intimate God. There is nothing in its statements that need shock ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... mission of the Christian was to "go, disciple all nations," they were soon brought, in their endeavors to fulfil this command, into contact with those who not only denied the authority of their Teacher, but who were sceptical about the very fundamentals of religious belief. For the sake of these, then, and occasionally for the further confirmation of the faith of believers, and for purposes of illustration, the patristic writers return again to the discussion of those elements of belief for which they themselves felt no need, ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... about intervals of too long duration when men have faltered in their allegiance to God. Such ascendency as we have over our flocks to-day depends entirely on our personal influence with them; is it not deplorable that the existence of religious belief in a commune should be dependent on the esteem in which a single man is held? When the preservative force of Christianity permeating all classes of society shall have put life into the new order of things, ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Arabian arch, of the horseshoe form, which springs to half the height of the tower. On the keystone of this arch, is engraven a gigantic hand. Within the vestibule, on the keystone of the portal, is sculptured, in like manner, a gigantic key," emblems, say the learned, of Moorish superstition and religious belief. ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... even though she had dared to declare to herself that in her stress of misery she would throw overboard all consideration of her soul's welfare. Though she intended no longer to live in accordance with her religious belief, she feared what religion could say to her,—dreaded to the very marrow of her bones the threats of God's anger and of Satan's power with which her aunt would harass her. If only she could rid herself of it all! Therefore, though she perceived that the story which she had told of herself had filled ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... As to religious belief, everything was a chaos. What might be to him the ultimate forms and condition of thought, the tired mind was quite incapable of divining. To every stage in the process of destruction it was feverishly alive. But ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... early struggle against the Oligarchy, when accused of hostility to the Church of England, he had said, and said with deep sincerity: 'I wish to see Nova Scotians one happy family worshipping one God, it may be in different modes at different altars, yet feeling that their religious belief makes no distinction in their civil privileges, but that the government and the law are as universal as the atmosphere, pressing upon yet invigorating all alike.' A few years later, in his struggle for one undenominational college, he had taken the same generous stand. ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... elderly wrangles as to whether the gospels are credible as matter-of-fact narratives, that I have hardly raised this question, and have accepted the credible and incredible with equal complacency. I have done this because credibility is a subjective condition, as the evolution of religious belief clearly shows. Belief is not dependent on evidence and reason. There is as much evidence that the miracles occurred as that the battle of Waterloo occurred, or that a large body of Russian troops passed through England in 1914 to take part in ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... was once unhinged, he found a congenial expression for the tortures of his soul in the imagery provided by the sternest of Christian sects. But neither can this circumstance be alleged as in itself disparaging to the doctrines thus misapplied. A religious belief which does not provide language for the darkest moods of the human mind, for profound melancholy, torturing remorse and gloomy foreboding, is a religion not calculated to lay a powerful grasp upon the imaginations of mankind. Had Cowper been a Roman Catholic, the same anguish ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... seemed just and right, but its effect on Puritan character was hardly softening, and was another unconscious factor in that increasing ratio of hatred against all who opposed them, whether in religious belief, or in the general administration of affairs. In these affairs every woman was interested to a degree that has had no parallel since, unless it may be, on the Southern side during our civil war. Politics and religion were one, and removal to Ipswich had not deadened the interest with ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... not a religion. He who makes of it a religious belief, falsifies and denaturalizes it. The Brahmin, the Jew, the Mahometan, the Catholic, the Protestant, each professing his peculiar religion, sanctioned by the laws, by time, and by climate, must needs retain ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... or probable, have in matter of fact an indirect bearing upon religious opinions, and the question arises how are the respective claims of revelation and of natural science to be adjusted. Few minds in earnest can remain at ease without some sort of rational grounds for their religious belief; to reconcile theory and fact is almost an instinct of the mind. When then a flood of facts, ascertained or suspected, comes pouring in upon us, with a multitude of others in prospect, all believers in Revelation, be they Catholic or not, are roused ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... that the form of a new oath had been established, which each civil and military officer was to take, according to his own religious belief. An acknowledgment of the independence, liberty, and sovereignty of the United States; an eternal renunciation of George III., his successors, and heirs, and every King of England; a promise to defend the said states against the said George III.; this was the purport of the ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... dying out, or rather, is gradually intermingling with, and being absorbed by, the neighbouring races. With neither written memorials nor a historic past to cling to, nor any particular religious belief, they are all of the Orthodox Faith. In assuming the customs and civilization of the Russians, the Lapps often abandon their own tribe, and assimilate with the stronger race. I have often heard such sayings as the following from Lapps who have more or less settled down: "I'm not a Lapp ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... between them and the men of later days. How far are those differences exhibitions of inferiority or of superiority? How far do they result from the influence of secondary causes? how far from the change in religious belief? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... not be forgotten, however, that the absolutism prevailing in the patriarchal family has its justification in a religious belief,—in the conviction that everything should be sacrificed for the sake [72] of the cult, and every member of the family should be ready to give up even life, if necessary, to assure the perpetuity of the succession. Remembering this, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... re-establish Mormonism to-morrow so far as the Federal Constitution is concerned. Whether it would be permitted by a strenuous president having public sentiment at his back may indeed be questioned. In like manner, Christian Science practitioners have invoked the constitutional right of religious belief against the common law requiring that those offering themselves to practise medicine should be reasonably skilled in their trade. Legislation permitting Christian Scientists to practise freely has been attempted in nearly all the States, but has not, so far as I am informed, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... Empire—an empire that extends over every possible variety of country and climate, and includes under its powerful, yet mild and beneficent sway, tribes of every colour of skin, and of every shade of religious belief. Such a survey, in fact, tends to impress one more fully and immediately than could well be fancied, with the magnitude of the business of the British legislature, and the consequent weighty responsibilities imposed upon its members. But, great as the burden ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... whoever has once met his eyes does not easily forget him. He does indeed rule over mysterious powers, and he used them in his intercourse with the young princess. It is his work if she cleaves to the religious belief of her people, if she who is a Hellene to the last drop of blood loves Egypt, and is ready to make any sacrifice for her independence and grandeur. She is called 'the new Isis,' but Isis presides over the magic arts of the Egyptians, and Anubis initiated Cleopatra into this ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... credulity with such pity and contempt. The case admits of an argument, though not that which she made use of. Many people are right in what they do, but without knowing why; some wrong, with very fair reasons. She, however, is wrong both ways, but she had been brought up in principles of strong religious belief, and she belongs to a church which teaches that miracles have never ceased from the days of the Apostles till now. Those who believe that a miracle ever was performed cannot doubt that another may be performed now; the only question is as to the fact. We believe that miracles ceased with ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... religious belief. It often decides to what church we shall go, and what religious tenets we shall adopt. It goes into the pulpit, and decides the gown, and the surplice, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... politics are the bane of the west. It is singularly free from religious rancour or animosity. The religious belief of the other man, or if he has any at all, concerns no one. So long as a clergyman does not hold that playing cricket or football on Sunday is wrong, even if he is not popular, he is ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... world—and such a man is always very much of a humanist. My grandmother, alert, clear, decided on all doctrinal points, argumentative, with all her wits fine-edged by the Shorter Catechism, could not abide the least haziness of outline in religious belief. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... needful.' Mark, 'how, with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; how, without it, worldlings puke up their sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury.' Of how much else, 'for a pure moral nature, is not the loss of Religious Belief the loss?' 'All wounds, the crush of long-continued Destitution, the stab of false Friendship and of false Love, all wounds in the so genial heart would have healed again had not the life-warmth of Faith been withdrawn.' ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... prevent and punish the publication of views commonly regarded as blasphemous. I deny Mr. Buckle's statement, that all belief is involuntary. I say that in a country like this, every man of education is responsible for his religious belief; but of course responsible only to his Maker. Thus, on totally different grounds from Mr. Buckle, I agree with him in thinking that no human law should interfere with a man's belief. I am not prepared, without much ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of the process of embalming has been variously accounted for. The real origin appears to be this: it was a part of the religious belief of the Egyptians that, as a reward of a well-spent and virtuous life, their bodies after death should exist and remain undecayed forever in their tombs, for we find in the "Book of the Dead" the following inscription placed over the spirits who have found favor in the eyes of the Great God: "The ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... enough from his incoherent talk to clear up what had seemed a mystery. The scandalous reports concerning Olaf Gueldmar were incorrect,—he had evidently laid the remains of his wife in the shell-cavern, for some reason connected with his religious belief, and Thelma's visits to the sacred spot were now easy of comprehension. No doubt it was she who placed fresh flowers there every day, and kept the little lamp burning before the crucifix as a sign of the faith her departed mother had professed, and which she herself followed. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... risk of never really knowing that he possesses an immortal soul. But as religion furnishes a check upon the passions, it should be taught to the boy when eighteen years of age. He is not to be instructed in the doctrines of any particular sect, but should be allowed to select that religious belief which most strongly appeals to his reason. Modern investigation has proven the utter fallacy of Rousseau's teachings in this respect. Indeed, it seems to be established that the most orthodox period of the child's life occurs before the fifteenth year, the time when Rousseau ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... of those they have been sent to convert; they have introduced their own language amongst them, which enables them to have intercourse with strangers; and, however we may differ in some tenets of religious belief, we must acknowledge the success of their mission. They have brought nearly the whole of the Indian population in South America into the bosom of their church; and their converts form the greater part ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... to live in this world with no religion at all or with a narrow and violent form of religious belief? People will judge the deceased teacher and chief, in respect of his theological and propagandist work, in accordance with the views which they hold upon this alternative. As regards his social labours, his passionate ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... "creed"—derived from the Latin "credo, I believe"—is, in its ecclesiastical sense, used to denote a summary or concise statement of doctrines formulated and accepted by a church. Although usually connected with religious belief, it has a wider meaning, and designates the principles which an individual or an associated body so holds that they become the springs and guides of conduct. Some sects of Christians reject formal creeds and profess to find the Scriptures sufficient for all purposes ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... 1830 that the revelations of a celebrated chief, whose life was spared on condition of his denouncing his accomplices, laid bare the whole system. The basis of the Thuggee Society is a religious belief—the worship of Bowanee, a gloomy divinity, who is only pleased with carnage, and detests above all things the human race. Her most agreeable sacrifices are human victims, and the more of these her disciple may have offered up in this world the more he will be recompensed ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... as at the twentieth; and you know him as well at the end of a week as you are likely to at the end of a year. He is a product of the past, be he gentleman or peasant. A few hundred years of necessary reserve concerning articles of political and religious belief have bred caution and prudence in stronger natures, cunning and hypocrisy in ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fundamental principle of the Reformation is "private judgment" in matters of Faith. The divine message of Revelation is to be interpreted as each one sees best. This principle makes, "de jure," every Protestant independent in his religious belief, and opens the door to the most conflicting interpretations of the Divine Message. "The High Church clergyman to-day," writes A. Birrell, "is no theologian, he is an opportunist." Dogma degenerates into religious emotionalism. Doctrine becomes ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... free to confess my almost entire inability to gratify any curiosity that may be felt with regard to the theology of the valley. I doubt whether the inhabitants themselves could do so. They are either too lazy or too sensible to worry themselves about abstract points of religious belief. While I was among them, they never held any synods or councils to settle the principles of their faith by agitating them. An unbounded liberty of conscience seemed to prevail. Those who pleased ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... things that are small as small, it is even more truly the end of Christian preaching. What we are most in need of today is a corrected perspective of our faith; without it we darken counsel as we talk in confusion. So, while we may not attempt here a detailed and reasoned statement of religious belief, we may try to say what is the fundamental attitude, both toward nature and toward man, that lies underneath the religious experience. We have seen that we are not stating that attitude very clearly nowadays ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... did believe, Mr. Sheldon was entirely right in thinking that the main purpose of a newspaper should be the salvation of souls. If his religious belief is true that should be the main purpose, not only of a newspaper, but of everything that has a purpose, or can be given one. If we have immortal souls and the consequences of our deeds in the body reach over ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... influence of the heart upon the intellect and scholarship, let us hasten to confess that the heart determines the religious belief and creed. It is often said that belief is a matter of pure reason determined wholly by evidence. And doubtless it is true that in approaching mathematical proofs man is to discharge his mind of all color. That two and two are four is true for the poet and ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Any form of religious belief was a subject that never had been touched upon or talked of in the Bates family. Money was their God, work their religion; Kate looked ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... is supposed to be under divine patronage, criticism of the social order savours of impiety, while criticism of the religious belief is a direct challenge to the ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... healing, had never read the textbook or heard of the Journal or Sentinel, but I would sometimes see people going into the Christian Science church. I was tired of trying to find anything satisfactory in religious belief, for it seemed as if God either could not or would not bring into harmony the terrible conditions existing in human society. I had quit using any form of prayer except the Lord's Prayer, and even then omitted the words "lead us not into ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... philosophy is mystical— but so is all philosophy. We must beware of any attempts to run Bergson's thought into moulds for which it was never intended, and guard against its being strained and falsely interpreted in the interests of some special form of religious belief. Intuition is not what the religious mind means by Faith, in the accepted sense of belief in a doctrine or a deity, which is to be neither criticized nor reasoned about. Religion demands "what passeth knowledge." Furthermore, it seeks a reality that abides ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... temptations of the world." A strong ascetic tendency in human nature, particularly active in the Orient, undoubtedly explains in a general way the origin and growth of the institution. Various forms of philosophy and religious belief fostered this monastic inclination from time to time by imparting fresh impetus to the desire for soul-purity or by deepening the sense of disgust with ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... about to exclude Southern institutions from the territories, and to make the Supreme Court sectional. "All hope of redress is rendered vain by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of a more erroneous religious belief." So, from a partnership of which the letter has been broken and the spirit ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... travelers in the interior of the New World received the impression that the Indians had no religious belief; they saw neither priests, temples, idols, nor sacrifices among any of the various and numerous tribes. A further knowledge of this strange people disproved the hastily-formed opinion, and showed that their whole life and all their actions were influenced by a belief in the spiritual ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... one to linger over. It was odd that I should have scrupled to deceive, on one small point, a girl already so hugely cheated; perhaps it was the completeness of her delusion that gave it the sanctity of a religious belief. At any rate, a distinct sense of discomfort tempered the satisfaction with which, a day or two later, I heard from her that her father had consented to ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... clergymen, the Reverend Dr. Burchard spoke of the Democratic party as "the party of rum, Romanism, and rebellion." Unfortunately Blaine did not hear him distinctly enough to repudiate this slur upon the religious belief of millions of American citizens, and alienation of sentiment caused by the tactless and intolerant remark could easily account for Blaine's defeat by a small margin. He was only 1149 votes behind Cleveland in New York ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... the Church was to inaugurate a fundamental revolution in many of the habits and customs of the people. It was not merely a change of religious belief, for the Church permeated every occupation and dominated every social interest. For centuries it had directed and largely controlled education, high and low. Each and every important act in the home, in the guild, in the town, was accompanied by religious ceremonies. The clergy ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... that the religious aspect of his character came to be emphasised. In common acts of life, public and private, the depths of his religious convictions very visibly appeared. And while it is impossible to understand his religious belief except through the knowledge of his life and writings on ordinary subjects, it is impossible on the other hand, to understand his life and writings without bearing in mind how vivid was his realisation of those truths of religion ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... England, attributed the fact to the meat-eating habits of the English people, the natives of India being almost strictly vegetarian in diet, partly from force of circumstances doubtless, but largely also, no doubt, as the result of their religious belief, the larger proportion of the population being more or less strict adherents to the doctrines of Buddha, which strictly prohibit the use of ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... change, and one that affected them both, Mavis did not altogether attribute to the revival of her husband's religious belief; but she thought that this had accelerated its progress and confirmed its finality. It had begun after the birth of her second child. Then it was that the love between husband and wife purified itself still further; and the refining process had continued; they had passed onward ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... whatever religious belief born or residing in the territories annexed to the Kingdom of—— in virtue of the Treaties of London and Bucharest, and who do not claim a foreign nationality and cannot be shown to be claimed as nationals of a foreign ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... amuse but never satisfy the higher intellect, became disgusted betimes with mere legal dialectics. Those grand and absorbing mysteries connected with the Christian faith and the Roman Church (grand and absorbing in proportion as their premises are taken by religious belief as mathematical axioms already proven) seized hold of his imagination, and tasked to the depth his inquisitive reason. The Chronicle of Knyghton cites an interesting anecdote of his life at this, its important, crisis. He had retired ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sects from former complicity with this iniquity, we heartily rejoice that those liberal men who intelligently encourage and direct the noblest instinct of the time are the exclusive possession of no form of religious belief. From every ritual of worship, from every variety of speculative creed, earnest minds have reached the same practical ground of labor for the freedom of man. Such minds realize that Christianity can approximate its exact application only as the machinery of human society is rightly comprehended. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... theological sentiments, but he certainly has the right to have and express his own views. If the Republicans of Ohio have made up their minds to disfranchise the Liberals, the sooner they are beaten the better. Why should the Republican party be so particular about religious belief? Was Lincoln an orthodox Christian? Were the founders of the party—the men who gave it heart and brain—conspicuous for piety? Were the abolitionists all believers in the inspiration of the Bible? Is Judge Hoadly to be attacked because he exercises the liberty that he gives to others? ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... knowledge and capacity; the duration and grandeur of his glory, pure, clean, without spot or envy, and that long after his death it was a religious belief that his very medals brought good fortune to all who carried them about them; and that more kings and princes have written his actions than other historians have written the actions of any other king or prince whatever; and that ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... hold to the principle that a man's loyalty to the state should be judged, like his loyalty to God, from his actions only - namely, from his charity towards his neighbours; we cannot doubt that the best government will allow freedom of philosophical speculation no less than of religious belief. (38) I confess that from such freedom inconveniences may sometimes arise, but what question was ever settled so wisely that no abuses could possibly spring therefrom? (39) He who seeks to regulate everything by law, is more likely to arouse vices ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... Mrs. Craven, "I want to say a word. I hope each one of you will respect the other's religious belief. Our country has been founded on the corner-stone of liberty in this matter, and one ought to be noble enough not to ridicule or sneer at any honest, sincere faith, remembering that we cannot all ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... this rule. Humour, which is seasoned with profanity, is most telling when there is not too large an amount either of faith or scepticism; very few could find any amusement in the sneers of an utter infidel. Diogenes was almost as deficient in ordinary religious belief as in most other kinds of veneration. Sometimes he may have had the good effect of checking the abuse of sacerdotal power, as when he observed to some who were admiring the thank offerings at Samothracia, "There would have been many more, had those made them, who had not been cured." ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the one thing needful; how, with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; and without it, worldlings puke-up their sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury': to such it will be clear that, for a pure moral nature, the loss of his religious Belief was the loss of everything. Unhappy young man! All wounds, the crush of long-continued Destitution, the stab of false Friendship and of false Love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again, had not its life-warmth ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... use of in a moment of levity in your presence, without sufficient regard to your feelings—do not conclude that I am an inveterate enemy to all religion. I have had a time of seriousness, and I have known the importance and reality of a religious belief. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... history has been marked by contradictory facts and appearances; and how hard it is for any one to keep all, according to their real importance, simultaneously in view; when we remember also what are the temptations of human nature in great collisions of religious belief, the excitement and passion of the time, the mixed character of all religious zeal, the natural inevitable anger which accompanies it when resisted, the fervour which welcomes self-sacrifice for the truth; and when we think of all ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... total oblivion. And even now it is with great difficulty that genuine information can be obtained of them. Their aged men are fast falling into their graves, and they carry with them the records of the past history of their people; they are the initiators of the grand rite of religious belief which they believe the Great Spirit has granted to his red children to secure them long life on earth and life hereafter; and in the bosoms of these old men are locked up the original secrets of this their most ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... assent went round the meeting. "The terms are set forth in the memorandum before us, which you have already signed. Only one other point—a minor one—remains to be considered. I refer to the doctrines or the religious belief of ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... Jastrow: Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, New York, 1911, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... been discussion as to Mr. Lincoln's religious belief. He was silent as to his own preference among creeds. Prejudice against any particular denomination he did not entertain. Allied all his life with Protestant Christianity, he thankfully availed himself of the services of an eminent ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... religious freedom. Perfect religious liberty is guaranteed to everyone in the United States. There is equal religious liberty in England, but the King is compelled to belong to a particular section of the Christian Church, whereas in the United States no restriction is placed on the religious belief of the President; thus one President was a Baptist, another a Unitarian, and a third a Congregationalist; and, if elected, a Jew, a Mohammedan, or a Confucianist could become the President. Several Jews have held high Federal offices; they have even been Cabinet Ministers. Article VI ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... for such men in such circumstances. A recent writer [Footnote: W.E.H. Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe.] of great fairness and impartiality has described so admirably the character of the Siberian Koraks, and the origin and nature of their religious belief, that I cannot do better than ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... plaudits of the population, and followed by the prayers of France. She was but seventeen years old, still a mere girl, yet her coming had filled her countrymen with hope and depressed their foes with dread. Such was the power of religious belief in ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... metaphysical law, the materialistic conception of history has a very large measure of truth. Take, as an instance of its truth, the influence of industrialism upon ideas. It is industrialism, rather than the arguments of Darwinians and Biblical critics, that has led to the decay of religious belief in the urban working class. At the same time, industrialism has revived religious belief among the rich. In the eighteenth century French aristocrats mostly became free-thinkers; now their descendants ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... various evil customs and abuses. Again, there had been repeated efforts to clothe the king, who was at the head of all civil government, with extensive control and oversight of church affairs also. Men holding different views on questions of church government and religious belief from those held by the general Christian church in the Middle Ages, had written and taught and found many to agree with them. Thus efforts to bring about changes in the established church had not been wanting, but they ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... of his philosophical doctrine. This was the essay Nature, which was published in 1836. By its conception of external Nature as an incarnation of the Divine Mind it struck the fundamental principle of Emerson's religious belief. The essay had a very small circulation at first, though ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... eulogist. After observing that the treatise shows the narrow limits of Addison's classical knowledge, Lord Macaulay adds: 'It is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his way from blunder to blunder. He assigns as grounds for his religious belief stories as absurd as that of the Cock Lane Ghost, and forgeries as rank as Ireland's Vortigern; puts faith in the lie about the Thundering Legion; is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to admit Jesus among the gods, and pronounces the letter ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... proposal leading to the First Amendment was introduced into the House of Representatives by James Madison, and read as follows: "The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretence, infringed."[7] This was altered in the House to read: "Congress shall make no law establishing ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... whether at bottom I was not after all on their side. I try to do without hope; but it is possible that I have no longer the strength for it, and that, like other men, I must be sustained and consoled by a belief, by the belief in pardon and immortality—that is to say, by religious belief of the Christian type. Reason and thought grow tired, like muscles and nerves. They must have their sleep, and this sleep is the relapse into the tradition of childhood, into the common hope. It takes so much effort to maintain one's ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have their hair shaved off their heads, with the exception of a tuft on the top, by which they expect Mohammed will draw them up to paradise. I have seen it remarked that Mohammed, who had very erroneous notions on scientific subjects, fixed the articles for the religious belief of his followers according to them, thereby entirely disproving their divine origin; whereas the writers of the Bible, guided by inspiration, made numerous statements which, with the knowledge then possessed ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... attachment of all classes to their national unity. The same had been found among the Armenians and Greeks. Men objected to the examination of evangelical doctrines, lest the result should be a schism in the nation; not being able to see how a change in religious belief could consist with national loyalty. Yet, though the progress of the work had not equaled the expectations awakened at the outset, it was obvious that increasing acquaintance with the missionaries was perceptibly removing prejudice. The conviction ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... and superstitious race of black men should have invented and founded, in the dim obscurity of past ages, a system of religious belief that still enthralls the minds and clouds the intellects of the leading representatives of modern theology,—that still clings to the thoughts, and tinges with its potential influence the literature and faith of the civilized and cultured nations of Europe and America, is indeed a strange illustration ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... he said, "of inclining the heart of this woman to religious belief, before it is too late. Will you read my report, and say if you ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... of religion which distinguished the aborigines from their conquerors, the attention of Wijayo was not diverted from his projects of colonisation by any anxiety to make converts to his own religious belief. The earliest cares of himself and his followers were directed to implant civilisation, and two centuries were permitted to elapse before the first effort was made to supersede the popular worship by the inculcation of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... against the Spaniards. This they most readily undertook, and sent messages by some of the Indians to the neighbouring caciques, three of whom came to Culiacan attended by thirty Indians, bringing presents of feathers and emeralds. In conversation with these Indians about their religious belief, they said they believed in a being named Aguar, the lord of all things, who resided in heaven and sent them rain when they prayed to him for it; such being the tradition they had learnt from their fathers. Cabeza told them that Aguar ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Congregationalists resisted Arianism, but they, also, felt its influence, as well as that of Arminianism, and they began to attach less importance to creeds, and to develop a broader tolerance of many shades of religious belief. New England sympathized more with the Congregational movement, but, as interest in both was awakened, English thought came to have great influence in the religious development of New England during the next half-century. ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... their instincts. The violence of the Revolution, its massacres, its need of propaganda, its declarations of war upon all things, are only to be properly explained by reflecting that the Revolution was merely the establishment of a new religious belief in the mind of the masses. The Reformation, the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, the French religious wars, the Inquisition, the Reign of Terror are phenomena of an identical kind, brought about by crowds animated by those religious sentiments which necessarily lead those imbued ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... execution of the laws to which I have alluded; nor was any one ever condemned by the head of the church for putting Protestants to death. Until, therefore, Rome repeals her exterminating decrees, she must submit to the heavy charge of maintaining the right to persecute men for their religious belief. ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... know that every man has a religious belief peculiar to himself? Smith is always a Smithite. He takes in exactly Smith's-worth of knowledge, Smith's-worth of truth, of beauty, of divinity. And Brown has from time immemorial been trying to burn him, to excommunicate him, to anonymous-article ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... mother kissed him and his father said, "It is for this, son, that mother and I have held the old hill yonder. It is a part of our religious belief that God put the wealth in the mountains, not for us alone, but for all men. So it has been to us a sacred trust, which we have never felt that we were fitted to administer. We have always hoped that our first born would accept it as his life ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... modern systems of Pagan religion, Mr. Hardwick had tried to address his arguments to such a person, we believe he would himself have felt a more human, real, and hearty interest in his subject. He would more earnestly have endeavoured to find out the good elements in every form of religious belief. No sensible missionary could bring himself to tell a man who has done all that he could do, and more than many who have received the true light of the Gospel, that he was excluded from all hope of salvation, and by his very birth and ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... boundless self-confidence. But, as the historian remarks, 'a man who is superstitious is capable of any crime, for he believes that his gods can be conciliated by prayers and presents. The greatest crimes have not been committed by men who have no religious belief.' No doubt to his mind there was a sort of judicial retribution in all this bloodshed; and, as he tried to make himself out the favourite of the gods, so by formally announcing the close of the proscription lists for June 1, 81 B.C., he spread some veil of legality over his shameless ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... in the religious belief and ceremonies of the Indians that I propose showing some of the evidences of their being, as it is believed, the descendants of the dispersed tribes. The ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... not,' Julia replied, 'think that her faith in Judaism is of much avail to her. She has found pleasure in reading the sacred books of the Jews, and has often expressed warmly her admiration of the great principles of moral living and of religious belief found in them; but I do not think that she has derived from them that which she conceives to be the sum of all religion and philosophy, a firm belief and hope of immortality. I am sure she has not. She has sometimes spoken as if such a belief possessed likelihood, but never as if ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... result would be, first Atheism, next Republicanism, and finally Anarchy and Ruin. If these evils,—which like birds of prey continually hover about all great kingdoms,—are to be averted, we must, for the welfare of the country and people, hold fast to some stated form and outward observance of religious belief." ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... birth-rate is very much higher than in the former. Furthermore, a New York paper [40] investigated the birth-rate in that city with special reference to religious belief, and concluded that the different bodies could be graded as follows with respect to the number of children per marriage: (1) Jews, (2) Catholics, (3) Protestants (Orthodox), (4) Protestants (Liberal), and (5) Agnostic. Professor ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... her art was interesting. Her father was a rigid Calvinist, and endeavored to influence his daughter to adopt his religious belief; but her mother, who was a fervent Roman Catholic, persuaded Elizabeth to pass a year in a convent, during which time she ardently embraced the faith of her mother. She was an affectionate daughter to both her parents and ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... new faith; for the purity of its teachings, the universal and eternal character of its moral precepts, had given it a name to live. Equally in vain were his efforts to restore the worship of the old Grecian and Roman divinities. Polytheism was a transitional form of religious belief which the world had now outgrown: Great Pan ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers |
