Religious enthusiasm

“ The perfectness of his own religious enthusiasm, his absolute certainty that he was inspired of God, as a leader and deliverer, gave him an ascendency over the minds of those who followed him, which nothing but religious enthusiasm ever can give. ”

“ So far, however, even the strictest of theologians, priests, and religious writers had employed the language of religious enthusiasm, had proclaimed the message of love along with the doctrines of the faith, and striven not merely to further the cause of authority, but also to win souls. ”

“ Or, while {44} the rising and falling temperature of the spirit is watched and recorded, the common principles of honor and integrity are so completely lost sight of, that, without explicit ill-intention, grievous delinquencies are fallen into, which fail not to bring a deluge of reproach upon religion. These melancholy perversions of Christian piety might seem not to belong, with strict propriety, to our subject; but, in fact, religious despondency is the child of religious enthusiasm. Exhaustion and dejection succeed to excitement, just as debility follows fever. ”

“ Christians, amid many contrarieties of opinion, are, with a tacit or an explicit expectation, looking for movement and progression, to be effected either by a quickened energy of existing means, or by the sudden operation of new causes. This probable opinion, if held in the spirit of Christian modesty, affords, under the sanction of the coolest reason, a new and strong excitement to religious hope. ”

“ THE WORSHIP OF GOD THERE are those who in religious matters, as well as in all other departments of life, are content to walk unquestioningly the path which the footsteps of previous generations have made easy and familiar. But there are others and these among the more thoughtful and earnest minds to whom it is not enough to utter earnest words concerning enthusiasm and devotion, consecration and worship. ”

“ No one can doubt the enthusiasm with which he has thrown himself into that devotion, an enthusiasm which, if it was at one time more vehement and defiant than it is now, is still a most intense element in his religious convictions. ”

“ That the error of the enthusiast does not consist in an excess merely of the religious emotions, might be argued conclusively on the ground that the Scriptures, our only safe guide on such points, while they are replete with the language of impassioned devotion, and while they contain a multitude of urgent and explicit exhortations, tending to stimulate the fervency of prayer, offer no cautions against any such supposed excesses of piety. ”

“ It is only in exaltation, in quiet enthusiasm, that religious feelings can come to life and become pervasive, and religious truth can only become a possession available for everyday use in proportion as it is possible to make this non-secular and exalted state of mind permanent, and to maintain enthusiasm as the enduring mood of life and conduct. ”

“ In fact, whoever has really practised a religion knows very well that it is the cult which gives rise to these impressions of joy, of interior peace, of serenity, of enthusiasm which are, for the believer, an experimental proof of his beliefs. The cult is not simply a system of signs by which the faith is outwardly translated; ”

“ Indeed, in all countries and in all ages, some form of physical enlargement—singing, dancing, drinking, sexual excitement—has been intimately associated with worship. Even the momentary expansion of the soul in laughter is, to however slight an extent, a religious exercise.... Whenever an impulse from the world strikes against the organism, and the resultant is not discomfort or pain, not even the muscular contraction of strenuous manhood, but a joyous expansion or aspiration of the whole soul—there is religion. ”

“ There is a mysterious influence in our religious service—a mixture of heavenly aspirations and earth-born delights, which powerfully awakens the better feelings of our nature; softening the heart and rendering it more sensitive to tender and lasting impressions. ”

“ They are the hope of the future Church. To them all eyes are turned. Are our young men and women growing in sober-mindedness and reverence, and in all those graces which have their root in the renewed heart, which mark solid and permanent advance in the Divine life? If we are not growing in holiness, then we are doing nothing religious nor abiding. ”

“ No one will wrong another. The religious faith may best be defined as a pure Theism and the worship is mostly musical and full of praise and thanksgiving. It is catered into by all with great heartiness. ”

“ In the press and stir of life we sometimes forget that the highest emotions of which we are capable are those of joy, praise, and prayer. Joy is a heavenward uplift of life—deep happiness of spirit. Praise is an appreciation of the greatness and mercy of the Infinite. Worship is the outpouring of the whole nature, an ascription of blessing, glory, honor, and power and majesty to God. It flows from the religious imagination, and is the supreme offering of the intellectual as well as of the emotional life.
The Church is a body ministrant: it has received the accolade of spiritual service. ”

“ Use every means which either reason or scripture recommends, as conducive (thro’ the free love of God in Christ) either to the obtaining, or increasing any of the gifts of God. Thus expect a daily growth in that pure and holy religion, which the world always did, and always will call Enthusiasm: but which, to all who are saved from real Enthusiasm, from merely nominal Christianity, is the wisdom of God and the power of God, the glorious image of the Most High: righteousness and peace: a fountain of living water, springing up into everlasting life! ”

“ That sort of plain and practical religion which adapts itself to the circumstances of common life—the religion taught by the apostles, a religion of love, sobriety, temperance, justice, fit for the use of master and servant, of husband and wife, of parent and child, by no means satisfied the wishes of those who sought in Christianity a delicious dream of unearthly excitements. ”

“ Oh! how different were those religions of the passions and the senses from that of the sentiments and pure affections of the Christian heart; which, as it rises to heaven in sublime devotion, expands in charity towards its kind, until it comprehends all [294] humanity in the bond of universal benevolence. To ameliorate the temporal, as well as elevate the spiritual state of man, is its distinguishing excellence, the sublime peculiarity of its character as a religious dispensation. ”

“ If there is any subject calculated to move our souls to their very centres, and to call out the enthusiasm of our nature, surely it is religion, if it be the real thing. Why should we not be enthusiastic? I have never seen a good reason yet. Why should we not shout and sing the praises of our King, as we expect to do it in glory? Why should not a man cry out, and groan, and be in anguish of soul, as the Psalmist says, as if he were crying out of the belly of hell, when he is convinced of sin, and realizes his danger, and is expecting, unless God have mercy, to be damned? ”

“ Let us worship, and bow down, and kneel before him, as becomes those who know what an infinite distance there is between us and God, how much we are in danger of his wrath and in need of his mercy." Though bodily exercise, alone, profits little, yet certainly it is our duty to glorify God with our bodies by the outward expressions of reverence, seriousness, and humility, in the duties of religious worship. 3. We must praise God with our voice; we must speak forth, sing forth, his praises out of the abundance of a heart filled with love, and joy, and thankfulness— Sing to the Lord ”

“ Religion was held to be something quite incompatible with any sort of indulgence in worldly pleasures, and more closely allied to austerity and gloom than to cheerfulness and joy. All kinds of amusements—even dancing and the drama—were held to be positively sinful, and unfit, therefore, for religious people to indulge in. ”

“ Such religious mummery as this is painful to witness, and to see the saint borne round in procession, with men carrying candles, and white-clad girls with large birds' wings fastened to their shoulders, dispels the idea of its being Christianity at all. ”

“ The world sooner pardons the breaking ten commandments of God, than even a china dish of its own.
"After some cross or opposition, worldly men, as I said before, begin to think how much content and cheerfulness they remember to have seen in religious people. They therefore begin to fancy that religion must be an easy and delightful, as well as a good thing. ”

“ Religion is the daughter of heaven, parent of our virtues, and source of all true felicity; she alone give peace and contentment, divests the heart of anxious cares, bursts on the mind a flood of joy, and sheds unmingled and perpetual sunshine in the pious breast. ”

“ THOMAS KEN, D.D., A SKETCH.
There is a soothing as well as a saving influence in religion; and when godliness finds appropriate utterance in poetry, no matter how modest and simple those utterances may be, doctrines find their way to the heart so readily, and sympathy and affection are so easily awakened and secured, it is not wonderful that so many devout persons should have embodied their religious hopes and fears, their opinions and sentiments, as well as their experience, in sacred song. ”

“ But to be religious in the world—to be pious and holy and earnest-minded in the counting-room, the manufactory, the market-place, the field, the farm—to cany our good and solemn thoughts and feelings into the throng and thoroughfare of daily life,—this is the great difficulty of our Christian calling. ”

“ But for religion, in its strong and fully developed manifestations, the service of the highest never is felt as a yoke. Dull submission is left far behind, and a mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place.
It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accept the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints. ”

“ Religion, as introduced to us by our Saviour, attracts our attention and enlists our affections, not by any solemn pomp or formal parade, but by her beautiful and interesting simplicity, her real and intrinsic worth. ”

“ The aspect of religion, when thus amalgamated with the enthusiasm or the superstitions of a country, is always in accordance with the direction which that enthusiasm has taken, or with the peculiar cast of these superstitions, or with the nature of the circumstances and events by which they were modified or produced. ”

“ For this is like the gentile Romans branding the Jewish religion with the hated name of superstition; and if this work is truly enthusiasm, then we have been wholly mistaken in the meaning of the word: and what they call enthusiasm, is a glorious and blessed work of God, most powerfully and suddenly changing the very hearts and lives of men; making them in a great degree like to Christ in love, and righteousness, and holiness, and meekness, and humility; filling their hearts with holy joy, and their mouths with praises. ”

“ Blessed be God, I have reason to think, that my religion is become more spiritual, by means of my late inward conflicts. May I always be willing that God should use his own methods with me!—I felt much of the sweetness of religion, and the tenderness of the gospel-temper: I found a dear love to all mankind, and I was afraid of scarcely any thing so much as lest some motion of anger or resentment should, some time or other, creep into my heart. ”

“ Through abounding grace they learn Christian development in spite of, and by means of, those external things which cause the spiritual shipwreck of multitudes.
Let the spirit of the Saviour, dwelling in us richly, sanctify all commerce, all learning, all politics, all art. May religion dignify our every act. Religion was not simply designed for the dying hour. "Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death." "For to me to live is Christ."
Dear Lord Jesus, thou hast showed me "the path of life," and by thy presence, even on earth, thou hast given me "fullness of joy." ”

“ And hence it is that amongst ungodly, worldly men, the impression and saying are so prevalent, that religion is melancholy. While the heart continues at enmity with God, all outward conformity to the will and worship of God can be nothing better than vexation,—harassing and fretting to the spirit and drawing forth the exclamation, What a weariness is it! ”

“ In the intermediate term of the religious experience, that felt communion with a Person which is the clou of the devotional life, we get as it were the link between the extreme apprehensions of transcendence and of immanence, and their expression in the lives of contemplation and of action; and also a focus for that religious-emotion which is the most powerful stimulus to spiritual growth. ”

“ They are usually connected with emotion or neural excitement, and may even take the guise of sense-manifestations. Through such convictions, religious minds are assured of God and the soul’s communion with Him. ”

“ Religion alone (and this, of course, was inevitable) is the one imaginative and enthusiastic element in their existence, and that alone becomes the source of vehement feeling and passionate excitement which ought least to admit of fanciful interpretations and exaggerated and morbid sentiment. ”

“ We are to ‘worship Him in the beauty of holiness,’ ‘to sing praise at the remembrance of His Holiness;’ it is only in the spirit of worship and praise and joy that we fully can know God as holy. Much more, it is only under the inspiration of adoring love and joy that we can ourselves be made holy. It is as we cease from all fear and anxiety, from all strain and effort, and rest with singing in what Jesus is in His finished work as our sanctification, as we rest and rejoice in Him, that we shall be made partakers of His Holiness. ”