The form of act or thought mattered nothing. The hymns of David, the plays of Shakespeare, the metaphysics of Descartes, the crime...s of Borgia, the virtues of Antonine, the atheism of yesterday and the materialism of to-day, were all emanation of divine thought, doing their appointed work. It was the duty of the church to deal with them all, not as though they existed through a power hostile to the deity, but as instruments of the deity to work out his unrevealed ends.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The scientific mind is atrophied, and suffers under inherited cerebral weakness, when it comes in contact with the eternal woman--...Astarte, Isis, Demeter, Aphrodite, and the last and greatest deity of all, the Virgin.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A kind of Pythagorean terror, as though the irrationality of pi were an offence against the deity, not to mention his creature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very... few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Old Testament teems with prophecies of the Messiah, but nowhere is it intimated that that Messiah is to stand as a God to be w...orshipped. He is to bring peace on earth, to build up the waste places--to comfort the broken-hearted, but nowhere is he spoken of as a deity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think it saves much confusion to regard religion as quite distinct from morality, or the right conduct of life--as having necess...arily nothing to do with these, but as a system of faith and worship, a belief in something extranatural.... Indeed, the most religious people are by no means the most moral. Hence it is that religion so rarely changes the man, or makes him practically any better. Let us keep things separated, religion by itself, and morality by itself. Religion implies a belief in the supernatural; in a personal deity who takes sides with or against us. A man may be pure, noble, virtuous, high-minded, spiritual, and not have a religion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What an antithetical mind!--tenderness, roughness--delicacy, coarseness--sentiment, sensuality--soaring and grovelling, dirt and d...eity--all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »