Religious group

“ Here in our isolated position, we feel how trifling are many of the distinctions which divide religious communities, and that we could gladly give the right hand of fellowship to any denomination of Christians who hold the main truths of the Gospel. ”

“ True, the Church is or should be at each moment of its career such a living spiritual society or household of faith. It is, essentially, a community of persons, who have or should have a common sentiment—belief in, and reverence for, their God—and a common defined aim, the furtherance of the spiritual life under the special religious sanctions which they accept. ”

“ How many concern themselves as to where their clerks go after business hours, what associations they form, whether they have a place of worship or not? How many of you business men, here to-day, are in the habit of asking the young men in your employ to accompany you to church, or to Bible class, or to prayer-meeting?
Take the community at large. Its influence, if exerted in this direction, must be chiefly confined to furnishing some counter attraction, moral, but not necessarily religious, to the attractions of the haunts of sin. ”

“ The word 'religion,' as ordinarily used, is equivocal. A survey of history shows us that, as a rule, religious geniuses attract disciples, and produce groups of sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough to 'organize' themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with corporate ambitions of their own. ”

“ Christian belief, Christian morality, the Christian view of the world, of which the church as a religious society and institution is the focus, as fluid spiritual elements permeate humanity as it becomes Christian, far beyond the sphere of the church proper ”

“ And we cannot help believing that there are multitudes in all religions and religious sects, whose ruling desire and purpose is to know and do the will of the Lord, and whom the angels must, therefore, love and fellowship. ”

“ They were men of sterling character, of deep religious convictions, of willingness to make painful sacrifices for the sake of principle, of great reverence for the Bible and the institutions of religion, of purity of life in the home and in their social relations. They believed that religion was the supreme thing and that the commandments of God were of binding obligation upon all intelligent moral beings. ”

“ We invite you to our Churches, because we desire you to be religious; to be more than religious; we urge you to be godly. We entreat you to never be content until you are emancipated from sin, from sin without, and from sin within you. ”

“ The name ‘religion’ should be reserved for the fully organized system of feeling, thought, and institution, for the Church, in short, of which this personal religion, so called, is but a fractional element. ”

“ It is along that way and that alone—the affectionate, respectful, and sympathetic interest in the religious life and worship of those who differ from us and those not in communion with us, that unity lies, and I feel sure there is no other. The religious life of a man, or people, is his life as it is influenced by the creed he professes and the worship he offers. ”

“ Three or four can neither read nor write.
But how can such men find admission into a religious order? This question is answered by considering how these communities are formed. Men do not always join them from religious motives. ”

“ From the various churches and religious denominations, into which you Christians are divided, there arises a new unifying element, a noble aspiration, restraining too great impulsiveness, leveling dividing barriers, and working for the realization of the one holy church through all the children of redemption. ”

“ When you compare the systems, creeds, and governing principles among the sects and religious denominations in the world, where will you find one that is perfect, or that is calculated to lead men back to a unity of the faith and to God? Where will you find a system or a denomination of religious people in the world who have such principles embodied in their faith? ”

“ To be sure, the gatherings of God’s people for worship and instruction are indispensable to the life of the church, but unless we translate our worship and instruction into action, our religious observances will be idolatrous and sinful, and will separate men from each other and from God. ”

“ The results of religious work must appear in the lives of the people, in the Christian sentiment of the community, in the upward trend of all things that make for righteousness and for the establishment and prevalence of the kingdom of God. ”

“ Worship and sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials of religion in the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it, we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods. In the more personal branch of religion it is on the contrary the inner dispositions of man himself which form the centre of interest, his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, his incompleteness. ”

“ It will be unnecessary to go through the whole catalogue of beliefs finding expression in the dogma of practically all religious organizations, and in times past dividing the followers of Christianity into denominational groups. ”

“ In our own country, it is seen how the forms of worship, and even the doctrines believed, and certainly the modes of religious thought and feeling, depend on the natural character, and the natural character on the local situation of the respective sections of the community. ”

“ If the foregoing lectures had indeed exhausted the account of the accessible sources of religious insight, we should be hopeless of finding any religion that could satisfy at once the individual need for salvation, the social requirement that we should seek for salvation through union with our brethren, the rational demand for a coherent view of truth, and the aim of the will to conform itself to the laws of the master of life with whom we need to be united. ”

“ Thus we see for the first time in history bodies of men and women banded together, irrespective of nationality and social rank, for the purpose of religious observances, and religion becoming recognized as the affair of the individual rather than of the state, while each member of the association was directly interested in its extension. ”

“ It is rather as a register of the well-being of the community that the church is here studied. The condition of the church is regarded as an index of the social and economic condition of the people. The sources of religion are believed by the writer to be in the vital experiences of the people themselves. In the process of religious experience the church, the Bible, the ministry and other religious methods and organizations are means of disciplining the forces of religion, but they are not the sources of religion. ”

“ And the full discussion even of the highest subjects, which takes place in the different churches of this country, as well as in the pages of their public organs (for every one of the more considerable religious sects has its own publication, which diffuses its own doctrines as well as reports the transactions of its body) are of infinite importance for the development of the religious mind of the people. ”

“ Divines of all denominations, Protestant and Catholic, have also their 'At homes' and their 'Congregations,' and innocent amusement is not unseldom mixed with religious teaching at their meetings. In this way, too, a helpful, restraining influence is exerted upon youth. ”

“ There are about a hundred so- called religious denominations, from the orthodox bodies and their subdivisions to those professing the lawless fanaticism of Mormonism, or the chilling dogmas of Atheism. ”

“ And in that place, religion, religious system, its claim to overpower one, presented itself in a way of which even the least serious by nature could not be unaware. Their great church, its customs and traditions, formed an element in that esprit de corps into which the boyish mind throws itself so readily. ”

“ Religious rites are, first, rites of approach, whereby the community draws nigh to its god; and, afterwards, rites of sacramental meals whereby the community celebrates its reconciliation and enjoys communion with its god. ”

“ Nevertheless, it embodies a significant fact: in the course of the history of the world the three religions above-named have come to divide the civilized world among them, that is, they have been selected as best responding to the religious needs of men. ”

“ Protestants who have attended their worship, have observed greater appearances of fervor, and greater moving of the passions, than are usual in the religious assembles of other denominations of Christians. ”

“ And although the favor of the God, as forfeited or gained, is still an essential feature of the story, and theology plays a vital part therein, yet the acts to which this sort of religion prompts are personal not ritual acts, the individual transacts the business by himself alone, and the ecclesiastical organization, with its priests and sacraments and other go-betweens, sinks to an altogether secondary place. ”

“ No sharp line can be drawn sundering the brotherhoods and partnerships, and other social organisations which men devise, into those which for the men concerned are consciously religious, and those which, by virtue of their absence of interest in the larger and deeper loyalties are secular. ”

“ Naturally the relative predominance of one or other motive varies from one case to another, both as regards the religious life of individuals and as regards the beliefs and forms of worship adopted by various races, nations, sects or denominations. ”

“ We may define, then, the religious object as the sacred, and the corresponding religious attitude as consisting in such manifestation of feeling, thought and action in regard to the sacred as is held to conduce to the welfare of the community or to that of individuals considered as members of the community. ”

“ And where religion has taken a strong hold on the mind of a community, especially if doctrine or ritual is more thought of than the spirit and life of religion, there you will find those of similar beliefs and ecclesiastical preferences, drawn into the same society. ”

“ We recognize the fact that throughout Christendom there are various religious societies, composed in the main of good people, and having among them very talented men, some of whom minister in the name of the Lord without authority, {62} while others explain the Gospel according to their understanding of it—which is very limited; and that there are people of all sects and denominations who desire to serve the Lord and walk in His ways, but who cling to the notions and ideas which have been handed down to them by tradition. ”

“ And what is more, quite superior, virtuous people, religious in the best sense of the word, are apt to have, besides the ostensible and perhaps rather obsolete one of churches and meeting-houses, another cultus, esoteric, unspoken but acted upon, of which the priests and casuists are ladies'-maids and butlers. ”

“ A vast change of heart is now taking place in the religious world, by reason of an exchange of thought and courtesy, and a closer personal touch, and the various sects, so long estranged, are learning to unite upon the things most worth while and the least open to debate. ”

“ The Faith’s growth meant that members of Spiritual Assemblies, whose experience had been limited to confirming the understanding of the Faith of individual applicants raised in cultures of doubt or religious fanaticism, had to adjust to expressions of belief on the part of whole groups of people to whom religious awareness and response were normal features of daily life. ”

“ Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow. ”

“ What, then, is the Church? It is the product of the collective conscience, that is to say of the society of individual consciences which by virtue of the principle of vital permanence, all depend on one first believer, who for Catholics is Christ. ”

“ As to myself, my religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of religion, which is the same in all religions; while in that branch which consists of dogmas, all differ, all have a different set. ”

“ Aspirations and ideals, connected especially with man's religious life, spring from the long line of experiences with which men have always been struggling. The central fact of the higher religious experience is communion and union with the deity, and the roots of this conception are found in all the religious ideas and usages that have been formulated and practiced in human history. ”

“ Small though is the attendance of the working classes at Mass, and hostile though they are to the practice of confession, they are none the less deeply religious—firm believers in the efficacy of prayer, and loyal to the fundamental tenets of their faith, such as dependence on the will of God, gratitude for small mercies vouchsafed by a good Providence, and devotion to the Virgin and the saints. ”

“ If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion. ”

“ Can we enjoy the Holy Spirit when we are finding fault with our neighbors? No, we cannot. God has set in His Church, firstly, Apostles; secondarily, Prophets; then pastors, teachers, helps, governments, and spiritual gifts; for the perfecting of the Saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, and to prevent the members thereof from being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine; and they are to continue until we all come to a unity of the faith. ”

“ Differences of Church, albeit in each the same word, God, is spoken, have built a dividing wall between two throbbing hearts. I often ask myself uneasily: is religion indeed a blessing to mankind? Religion, which is meant to save us from our sins, how many sins are committed in thy name? ”