SABINE BARING-GOULD QUOTES IV

Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)

The method by which Nature proceeds is invariable. First she watches over the conservation of the individualities she has called out, then she takes care of the species to which they belong, and lastly, she assigns to all their places and their functions in the scale of creatures. Thus, she introduces into the world duration, stability, and unity.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: nature


Man is double, having an animal and a spiritual nature, at war with one another.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: nature


Life is not a mere exterior movement, the movement of the being in its relations to other beings, but it is also, and especially, an internal movement from the visible to the invisible, from the real to the ideal, from the finite to the infinite.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity


If meditation be the affirmation of the existence of God--and meditation need not be lengthy, one rapid flash of thought is sufficient--to neglect it is practically to deny God.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: God


If God, placing the attributes of each man under the seal of an eternal limit, had said to him," Thus far shalt thou go, and no further," each man, enclosed within this insurmountable barrier, might have questioned the Divine Justice for having refused to him what was given to another. But God has, on the contrary, made the talents of one to be the property of all, so that "none of us liveth or dieth to himself," and has given to all an unlimited power of acquisition, for the purpose of perpetually assimilating the gifts of others.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: God


Worship is the language of belief.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: belief


Curiosity, is a movement of the soul towards Truth, which it seeks to assimilate by Knowledge. It is the first step in the direction of Certainty.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: knowledge


Consequently our idea of the Deity is that of the archetype of our own minds.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity


Christ, comprehending in one the two natures, human and divine, being the union of the relative and the absolute, is therefore the living realization of that Ideal, infinite in itself, and infinite in each of its terms, which marks the phases of His eternal work. Mediator between the create and the uncreate, which are united in Himself, He is, in His Church, which is His body, the eternal harmonizer of all individual reasons in the unity of the Divine reason, or the Word made flesh, conceived and realized by the Spirit of infinite love, in whom all love is also universalized.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: love


And as we perceive that virtue assumes a multitude of diverse forms, this variety discovered in intelligent beings convinces us that the most perfect Being is He who unites in Himself the greatest number, or the sum total, of all these perfections.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: variety


Time is duration; but duration without something to endure is an absurdity. There can be no time without something existing, whose relation to something else it expresses. Time has no proper existence, and separated from beings, is annihilated. Hence it follows that the infinity we attribute to time has no rational foundation. Infinite time is impossible, indefinite duration is possible.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: time


My dear sir, if we only talked about what we understood, our conversation would be extremely limited.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Only a Ghost

Tags: conversation


Love is the rule of rules, the key to all mysteries.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: mysteries


In vain is it argued that we are to give up our private judgment to a revelation; we can only admit the authority of the revelation by an act of our individual judgment.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: authority


God wills man to be free, but the emancipation of himself is in man's own hands.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity


There is not a single right to be discovered without a duty from which it springs.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: duty


The times have been bad, the hay was black with rain, the corn did not kern well, the mottled cow dropped her calf, the tenants have not paid, and so my poor boy gets nothing but advice in bushels and exhortations in yards.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Urith

Tags: advice


That Eve was Adam's second wife was a common Rabbinic speculation; certain of the commentators on Genesis having adopted this view to account for the double account of the creation of woman in the sacred text--first in Genesis i. 27, and secondly in Genesis ii. 18; and they say that Adam's first wife was named Lilith, but she was expelled from Eden, and after her expulsion Eve was created.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters


Religion! you should have seen his face, he started at the word as if he had been shot.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

Only a Ghost


If prayer be the affirmation of the link between God and man, to neglect prayer is to disallow the link; and the link severed, the two personalities are opposed and become actively hostile, so that the idea of God is destroyed or at least is passively ignored.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: God