HOSEA BALLOU QUOTES
American clergyman and author (1771-1852)
I know of no fact on which Jesus called the people to rest their faith, that they could not as easily judge of, through the medium of their senses as of any facts in nature.
HOSEA BALLOU
A Series of Letters in Defense of Divine Revelation
A revelation from God, if it were written only in the Hebrew or Greek, would be considered of sufficient value to recompense the labor of learning the language.
HOSEA BALLOU
A Series of Letters in Defense of Divine Revelation
It is but a step from companionship to slavery when one associates with vice.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
Experience is retrospect knowledge.
HOSEA BALLOU
Edge-Tools of Speech
It becomes the philosopher and perhaps more the Christian to exercise patience, but patience is sometimes tried with the bigotry and nonsense of the self-righteous, self-wise, and self-knowing, who profess the religion of Christ, yet stand tiptoe, like James and John, to call fire from heaven to consume all who do not receive their master. But the true spirit of our religion rebukes such blind zeal and foolish arrogance, by showing that such a disposition is the malady which the gospel is designed to cure. While the Christian clergy have spent their breath and wore out their lungs in anathematising with eternal vengeance, those whom they call infidels, have been worse than infidels, and brought a greater stigma on the name of Jesus, than his open enemies from Celsus down to T. Paine. I would by all means except from the above remark a goodly number who have done honor to our religion by treating its opposers, as its spirit dictates, with candor and sound argument well mingled with divine charity.
HOSEA BALLOU
A Series of Letters in Defense of Divine Revelation
A religion which requires persecution to sustain it is of the devil's propagation.
HOSEA BALLOU
Edge-Tools of Speech
If our heavenly Father had from all eternity predestinated far the greatest part of mankind to a state of endless un-reconciliation, the revelation of this to them who were thus destined, could have no effect in reconciling them to God. What had Jesus or his apostles to do with such doctrine as this? Nothing. They make no mention of any such thing. If according to the vain traditions received from the wisdom of this world that cometh to nought, our tender babes were doomed to everlasting wrath for the sin of the first man who lived on earth, the manifestation of such a truth could reconcile none of those victims to this God of unmerciful vengeance. But what had Jesus to do with such blasphemous doctrine? See him as the representative of God, as the great apostle of heaven to man, notice what he does and what he says. He takes young children in his arms and blesses them, he says suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. If our Creator was full of wrath and vindictive vengeance towards sinners, the manifestation of such a truth would by no means reconcile sinners to God; but when God commendeth his love towards the sinner through the mission, ministry, or dispensation of Jesus Christ, such truth when revealed, naturally reconciles the sinner to God. God is eternally the same, his love is the same, his will to do his creatures good is always the same, and his means to carry his good will into effect are always at his command.
HOSEA BALLOU
A Series of Letters in Defense of Divine Revelation
The evidences of our religion are like the religion itself, infinitely superior to any thing ever contrived by human wisdom. And it is an opinion in which I am the more confirmed, the more I examine it, that if the wisest set of philosophers which ever lived on earth had been a council to contrive a method by which Christianity could have been perpetuated in the world, that scheme which they would have projected, would of itself defeated the object.
HOSEA BALLOU
A Series of Letters in Defense of Divine Revelation
No reproof or denunciation is so potent as the silent influence of a good example.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
Hatred is self-punishment.
HOSEA BALLOU
Edge-Tools of Speech
We, sir, do certainly know as well as we know any thing which ancient history records, that the testimony of the miracles and resurrection of Jesus was believed in the age to which these things are referred, and that this testimony was sealed by the sufferings and death of vast multitudes of believers. It should be noticed, that according to all accounts which have come to us, there were no worldly motives of any sort by which the propagators of the gospel were induced to labor in this cause. But on the contrary, every earthly consideration was direct against them; and furthermore let us remember, that the whole hierarchy of the Jews and all the superstition of the Gentiles were in arms against this religion, as I have before observed, nearly 300 years.
HOSEA BALLOU
A Series of Letters in Defense of Divine Revelation
That alone can be called true refinement which elevates the soul of man, purifying the manners by improving the intellect.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
There is one inevitable criterion of judgment touching religious faith in doctrinal matters. Can you reduce it to practice? If not, have none of it.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
But as even the internal evidences of scripture would be insufficient to support their authority without the concurrence of external evidence, so would the external be found wanting without the internal. But these together are abundantly sufficient to establish the credibility of this gospel, which is, like every thing else of the work and wisdom of God, the wonder and admiration of the believing soul.
HOSEA BALLOU
A Series of Letters in Defense of Divine Revelation
Unless we find repose within ourselves, it is vain to seek it elsewhere.
HOSEA BALLOU
Edge-Tools of Speech
A true religious instinct never deprived man of one single joy; mournful faces and a sombre aspect are the conventional affectations of the weak-minded.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
Tradition makes the most horrible things acceptable to the mind which becomes blind to their deformity, and even the most detestable things, desirable, by a certain feigned sanctity which it attaches to them. But the charm once broken, the rational mind becomes transformed into another image, totally different, and entirely repugnant to the things which it before venerated as divine.
HOSEA BALLOU
A Series of Letters in Defense of Divine Revelation
Too many people embrace religion from the same motives that they take a companion in wedlock, not from true love of the person, but because of a large dowry.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought