Rite (religion)

“ And the true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion. ”

“ Religion descends from heaven to break our chains. She alone raises me from degradation, and bids me lift my drooping head, and look up to heaven. Yes; it is that very gospel which by some is supposed to present such dark, degrading, gloomy views of man and his destiny, which lifts me from the dust to set me among princes—on a level with angels—in a sense above them. To say nothing of the divine nobility grace imparts to a soul which is stamped anew with the likeness and image of God, how sacred and venerable does even this body appear in the eye of piety! ”

“ 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! ”

“ And then, feeling, as he did, that in faith in God, in worship, in a right and graceful spirit of love, and in righteousness of conduct, was the true foundation of life, he devoted himself, in prose, to clear away from religion those forms of it which violated intellectual or moral truth, and to establish what was eternal in it, beyond controversy, and fitted for God to be, and for man to believe and love. ”

“ Religion to him—as to how many others!—was a thin philosophy which amused his intellect, a sentimental poetry which tickled his aesthetic instincts; it was not a life. Of that vital Christianity which comprehends the whole relationship between God and man, which is both a creed, a worship, and the very essence of devout life, his heart seems to have been void. ”

“ That is, their religion consisted not chiefly in reading the letter, disputing about it, accepting things in literal constructions, but in the things declared of the substance itself, bringing things nearer to the mind, soul, and spirit, and pressing into a more hidden and heavenly sense; making religion to consist in the temperance and sanctity of the mind, and not in the formal bodily worship, so much now-a-days in repute, fitter to please comedians than Christians. ”

“ Therefore the religious sentiment, which through the agency of vital immanence emerges from the lurking places of the subconsciousness, is the germ of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has been or ever will be in any religion. ”

“ Do you think it possible that [174] we can love God too much; that we can love the Redeemer too much; that we can be too much attached to the great principles of justice, benevolence, or moral purity?"
"O no, certainly not; but then I think it possible for us to think and talk so much about religion as to render ourselves uncomfortable. ”

“ See what leads in sin— the imagination of our own evil hearts; and what sin is—it is walking after that imagination, being governed by fancy and humour; and what converting grace does—it takes us off from walking after our own inventions and brings us to be governed by religion and right reason. ”

“ Thou art not of those who, denying a life to come, are the victims of the Inexorable Horror. Oh, when shall men learn, at last, that if the Great Religion inculcates so rigidly the necessity of FAITH, it is not alone that FAITH leads to the world to be; but that without faith there is no excellence in this,—faith in something wiser, happier, diviner, than we see on earth!—the artist calls it the Ideal,—the priest, Faith. The Ideal and Faith are one and the same. Return, O wanderer, return! Feel what beauty and holiness dwell in the Customary and the Old. Back to thy gateway glide, thou Horror! ”

“ As you state the case of religion as emotion versus reason, it doesn't exist. Religion is reason plus emotion, and when you combine the two the eyes of your soul are open, whereas they had been closed. ”

“ But in all that pertains to the emotional, the devotional, and especially to the moral side of religion, we are far behind them. The animating spirit of life, under the predominating influence of the religious sentiment, was, as we have seen, a conscientious endeavor to live, in all ways, a life of purity, of virtue, and of implicit obedience to the highest dictates of truth, according to the understanding of truth which then prevailed. ”

“ The spirit of poetry, which bade him follow on in spite of discouragement, touched all on which it hovered with a mystic light, "moving him to melody". It was the soul of religion, binding the spirit of man to nature and to "human faces" in themselves, and to the Supreme, in whom all is One. ”

“ For as the life of religion was lost, and the generality lived and worshipped God after their own wills, and not after the will of God, nor the mind of Christ, which stood in the works and fruits of the Holy Spirit; so that which these pressed, was not notion, but experience; not formality, but godliness; as being sensible in themselves, through the work of God’s righteous judgments, that without holiness no man shall ever see the Lord with comfort. ”

“ Added to this power of pathos and sentiment is the deep religious feeling which pervades every work of his pencil, whatever be its outward form. His religion is of no dogma or sect, but the inflowing of a life which makes all things holy and full of infinite meaning. ”

“ Conceit of knowledge, whenever asserted, in church or state, in everyday consciousness or in science, was declared idolatry and held up to constant ridicule. Could man's wisdom at its best be anything more than a blinding folly?
2. And religion, the religion of a few, as if in acknowledged sympathy with these sceptics, surrendered everything but God—God being more a longing than an actual fact; a spirit than a positive thing or person. ”

“ I have no fear of philosophy. I am willing to look a doubt fairly in the face, and think reason is sacred as conscience, affection, or the religious faculty in man. I see a profound piety in modern science. I have aimed to set forth absolute religion, the ideal religion of human nature, free piety, free goodness, free thought. ”

“ From the age of fifteen dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion; I know no other religion. I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. As well can there be filial love without the fact of a father, as devotion without the fact of a Supreme Being. ”

“ Is it not true that we need a higher standard of personal holiness in this day? Where is our patience? Where is our zeal? Where is our love? Where are our works? Where is the power of religion to be seen, as it was in times gone by? Where is that unmistakable tone which used to distinguish the saints of old and shake the world? ”

“ They who accustom themselves to the impostures of the vulgar, are left to practise them—for those like you, whose higher natures demand higher pursuit, religion opens more god-like secrets. I am pleased to find in you the character I had expected. ”

“ Sin and selfishness carry a man below the noble Creation which God made in him, and Religion is the return to the true nature and capacity of God's Creation in man: "The Gospel, inwardly received, dyes and colours the soul, settles the Temper and Constitution of it and is restorative of our Nature. ”

“ Religion never operates on the human mind without stamping upon it the more prominent traits of its own character, and very rarely without being impressed in turn (if I may so speak) with some of the peculiar traits of every individual mind on which it acts. ”

“ What is this but to say that Religion, in her fullest exercise of function, is not a mere illumination of facts already elsewhere given, not a mere passion, like love, which views things in a rosier light. ”

“ It is by its highest manifestations that we most correctly judge either morality or art, and it is only through them that we can be properly said even to understand what either art or morality is. So, too, taking the religious ideal as love of God and man, we must judge religion not by its imperfect manifestations [245] in imperfect beings, but by its perfect revelation and realisation in Christ. ”

“ Conclude, then, with me, that the Christian virtues are chimerical, always useless, and sometimes pernicious to men, and attended with advantage to none but priests. Conclude that this religion, with all the boasted beauty of its morality, recommends to us a set of virtues, and enjoins a line of conduct, at variance with good sense. ”

“ So here it must be that the extreme examples let us more deeply into the secrets of the religious life, explain why the tamer ones value their religion so much, tame though it be, because it is so continuous with a so much acuter ideal. ”

“ But the best among them, as no one who has had opportunities of really knowing them will hesitate to affirm, are more genuinely religious, in the best sense of the word religion, than those who exclusively arrogate to themselves the title. ”

“ While I would not for a moment have you think that religion brings into my life gloom and restraint—quite the reverse—still it gives me great pain when anything connected with my faith is made a matter of jest. ”

“ The religious idealist sincerely believes himself, perhaps, to be eminently devout; and those who witness his abstraction, his elevation, his enjoyments, may reverence his piety; meanwhile, this fictitious happiness creeps as a lethargy through the moral system, and is rendering him, continually, less and less susceptible of those emotions in which true religion consists. ”

“ I have learned of a certainty that there is no virtue or utility whatever in that religion which we have been following. None of your thanes has slaved in the worship of our gods more zealously than I. Yet many have had greater rewards and dignities from you, and in every way have prospered more. ”

“ I can attest from experience that this supernatural illumination of the mind is the great secret in personal religion. Without it we are in darkness, while encompassed by the light of revelation; may admit the inspiration of the Bible, while the veil of mystery hangs over its sacred pages; may condemn, as Puritanical or Methodistical, the very principles we theoretically acknowledge to be divine; and, amidst all our professions of reverence for the character of God, and love to the person of the Redeemer, may be destitute of that mental peace which arises from a scriptural belief of the truth. ”

“ And there is here no necessary conflict with the claim of Tradition. It is true that all real, actual Religion is ever an act of submission to some fact or truth conceived as not only true but as obligatory, as coming from God, and hence as beyond and above our purely subjective fancies, opinings, and wishes. ”

“ Whenever the voice of Reason and the dictates of Religion are resisted, and ultimately disregarded, some prominent passion from the vicious side of human nature is sure to gain and to retain the mastery. ”

“ If the spectacle of Christian virtues exerted the powerful influence over the heathens blinded, as they were, by inveterate superstition, which the records of history attest, shall we think it powerless to eradicate error in the case of those who have been initiated into the Christian religion? ”

“ No wonder that the popular religion at last was held in contempt by philosophers, since it was not only impotent to save, but did not stimulate to ordinary morality, to virtue, or to lofty sentiments. A religion which was held sacred in one place and ridiculed in another, before the eyes of the same people, could not in the end but yield to what was better. ”

“ The form of religion first proclaimed by the greatest religious genius that ever lit the world, and sealed by his martyrdom, is now officially represented by men of vulgar talents, of vulgar aspirations,—to be rich, respectable, and fat,—and of vulgar lives. ”

“ With this honesty, this self-denial, there comes a total energy of character which nothing else can give. You see what strength religion gives; what energy and continual persistence in their cause it gave to men like the Apostles, like the martyrs and great saint sof the Christian Church, of the Hebrew, the Mohammedan, and the Pagan Church. ”

“ Be fair—be just in all that concerns religion. Take the best—the most moral, if the word can be used—the most enlightened Sceptic, and the true Christian, and compare their deathbeds. That of the Sceptic will be disturbed or disconsolate—that of the Christian confiding or blessed. ”

“ Their religion, therefore, if it has no influence upon their morals, is at least disinterested; and their expressions of adoration and reverence, whether by words or actions, arise only from a humble sense of their own inferiority, and the ineffable excellence of divine perfection. ”

“ The outer world, the Secularists and the Positivists, of course regard Spiritualism with the same scorn and unbelief with which they regard all religion, whether true or false, whether old as the hills or but yesterday’s creation. ”

“ Is there any cross in your Christianity? Are there any sharp corners in your religion, anything that ever jars and comes in collision with the earthly–mindedness around you? Or is all smooth and rounded off and comfortably fitted into custom and fashion? Do you know anything of the afflictions of the gospel? Is your faith and practice ever a subject of scorn and reproach? Are you thought a fool by anyone because of your soul? Have you left Pharaoh’s daughter and heartily joined the people of God? ”

“ From the point of view of practical religion, the metaphysical monster which they offer to our worship is an absolutely worthless invention of the scholarly mind.
What shall we now say of the attributes called moral? Pragmatically, they stand on an entirely different footing. They positively determine fear and hope and expectation, and are foundations for the saintly life. It needs but a glance at them to show how great is their significance.
God's holiness, for example: being holy, God can will nothing but the good. Being omnipotent, he can secure its triumph. ”