in Quotes & Aphorisms (Religion)
The Gospel is not a religious message to inform mankind of their divinity or to tell them how they may become divine. The Gospel proclaims a God utterly distinct from men.
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Religion
My opinion concerning God differs widely from that which is ordinarily defended by modern Christians. For I hold that God is of all things the cause immanent, as the phrase is, not transient. I say that all things are in God and move in God, thus agreeing with Paul, and, perhaps, with all the ancient philosophers, though the phraseology may be different; I will even venture to affirm that I agree with all the ancient Hebrews, in so far as one may judge from their traditions, though these are in many ways corrupted. The supposition of some, that I endeavour to prove in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus the unity of God and Nature (meaning by the latter a certain mass or corporeal matter), is wholly erroneous.
As regards miracles, I am of opinion that the revelation of God can only be established by the wisdom of the doctrine, not by miracles, or in other words by ignorance.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Religion)
Nothing has happened to change the fact that Christians – even in the middle of their supposedly and perhaps even very consciously Christian environment, will always be strange and threatened creatures. In any case, they will not be going with the flow. For them the great truths of conventional wisdom will never have absolute validity. Nor, certainly, will their absolute negation, and thus they will also hardly be able to count on the applause of current revolutionaries. And they will cultivate their freedom not only in free thoughts in private, but also in free and open deeds and modes of behaviour that will never find public approval.
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Miss Sands told me that Queen Victoria, who was latterly éprise with Disraeli, one day asked him what was his real religion. "Madam," he replied, "I am the blank page between the Old Testament and the New."
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Religion)
Eternity is here (in the stable at Bethlehem and on the cross of Calvary) in time.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Religion)
Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Religion)
Mahomet established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ, by commanding his followers to lay down their own lives.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Religion)
Scientific dogmatics must devote itself to the criticism and correction of Church proclamation and not just to a repetitive exposition of it.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Religion)
The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like. So that the spirit of man (according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance. Whence it was well observed by Heraclitus that men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Religion)
Religion is the most gentlemanly thing of the world. It alone will gentilize, if unmixed with cant.
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