In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God's existence, God's ...justice, God's love. The love of God is essentially a thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this love in every act of living.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a mode of perception that often becomes a style of life, paranoia weaves around the vulnerable self or group an air-tight metap...hysic and world view. Paranoia is an antireligious mysticism based on the feeling or perception that the world in general, and others in particular, are against me or us. Reality is perceived as hostile. By contrast, the religious mystic experiences the ground of being as basically friendly to the deepest needs of the self. That which is unknown, strange, or beyond our comprehension is with and for rather than against us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or... snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thing... that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of conscience is held by the same ...tenure with all our rights. [The legislature] are bound to leave this particular right untouched and sacred, [or] we must say, that they may control freedom of the press, may abolish the trial by jury, may swallow the Executive and the Judiciary Powers of the State; nay that they may despoil us of our very right of suffrage ... or we must say, that they have no authority to enact [a religious assessment].LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Religious liberty was] in its nature an inalienable right ... because the opinions of men, depending only upon the evidence conte...mplated by their minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Religious establishment] is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity ... [because] with an ignoble and unchristian t...imidity it would [be] circumscribed, with a wall of defence, against the encroachments of error.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Is it not singular that, while the religious world is gradually picking to pieces its old testaments, here are some coming slowly ...after, on the seashore, picking up the durable relics of perhaps older books, and putting them together again?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually c...rushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »