Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)
Justice cannot be exerted in a vacuum where there is neither good nor evil, right nor wrong.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
To consider reason to be hostile to revelation is to regard God as divided against Himself, labouring to destroy His own work. Reason is a gift of God and faith is a gift of God. Each has its own sphere.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Time commences with mutable things; if they perish, it perishes with them.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Between the essential infinity and the realized finality there is opposition of natures; they are radically inverse. Nevertheless the finite is possible, because the infinite is.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!
SABINE BARING-GOULD
"Onward Christian Soldiers"
I was fairly puzzled as I thought over all the divisions of the most learned Church in the most religious country in the world.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Only a Ghost
Every religious revolution has been the struggle of thought to gain another step in the ladder that reaches to heaven.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The good, the true, and the beautiful, are three faces of the same ideal of perfection, the Infinite.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
All things tend to unity. It is the universal law of life.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
That we may be able to profit by the experience of others, we are endowed with an instinct adapted to the purpose of drawing us into the company of our fellows--this is the social instinct.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
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
The narrative of the Gospels may carry conviction to some minds, the testimony of the Church may take hold of and satisfy others, but if so, what is it that really convinces? It is the fact, or, if the expression be preferred, the idea of the Incarnation commending itself to the soul of man. That idea, looking upon the soul of man, bears its own guarantee with it, and thus, and thus only, through the head or through the heart, enchains consent.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
It is not the place or authority of Church or Bible to strangle reason, defy criticism, and fetter inquiry, for reason is a faculty given to man by God for the purpose of criticizing, and thereby distinguishing error, so that he may reject it; and of inquiring, so that he may find truth under the veil which ignorance or error has cast over it. The place of the Church is to declare authoritatively to every man that his own partial view and individual judgment are not the whole truth, and the complete measure of truth, but that the whole truth is the syncretism of all partial aspects.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Hell's foundations quiver
At the shout of praise;
Brothers, lift your voices,
Loud your anthems raise.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
"Onward Christian Soldiers"
The cravings of the soul of man before music and painting were discovered must have resembled the stutterings for impossible utterance in the dumb.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
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
Therefore science and religion are each necessary, the one to distinguish individualities, the other to bring individualities into unity.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
If reason has never been able to found a religion which will bear criticism, it is because of this, that it begins with an undemonstrable hypothesis and ends in an hypothesis. Consequently, all attempts to prove the existence of God are convincing only to those already convinced.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
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
I have no intention of arguing for liberty, because I believe it to be an irrational verity, one which must be assumed, and which can never be demonstrated. Every one, the veriest sceptic included, believes in liberty, and believes in it naturally and invincibly. He cannot emancipate himself from the belief that he has a power of option between two courses of action, though he may have created a system in which he has demonstrated that liberty is impossible.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity