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True religion is a life unfolded within, not something forced on us from abroad.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING, Thoughts
There's a deal in a man's inward life as you can't measure by the square, and say, 'Do this and that'll follow,' and, 'Do that and this'll follow.' There's things go on in the soul, and times when feelings come into you like a rushing mighty wind, as the scripture says, and part your life in two a'most, so as you look back on yourself as if you was somebody else. Those are things as you can't bottle up in a 'do this' and 'do that;' and I'll go so far with the strongest Methodist ever you'll find. That shows me there's deep speritial things in religion. You can't make much out wi' talking about it, but you feel it.
Indifference in religion is more fatal than skepticism. There is no pulse in indifference; skepticism may have warm blood.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Religion sows within us the seeds of an undying joy that fails not when outward means of happiness fail, and sorrows darken, and cares appall. It sheds abroad a holy serenity in the heart, and imparts a calm lustre to the brow.... It reveals new sorces of happiness. It makes the spire of grass and the star beautiful ministers of delight.
E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words
The fact that I despise religion doesn't mean I don't esteem it highly.
EUGENE IONESCO, Rhinoceros
What is religion if not a guide to happiness, to bliss? Every religion instructs followers in the ways of happiness, be it in this life or the next, be it through submission, meditation, devotion, or, if you happen to belong to the Jewish or Catholic faith, guilt.
ERIC WEINER, The Geography of Bliss
I began to see all this weighing and sifting what this text means and that text means, and whether folks are saved all by God's grace, or whether there goes an ounce o' their own will to't, was no part o' real religion at all. You may talk o' these things for hours on end, and you'll only be all the more coxy and conceited for't.
That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization.
SAM HARRIS, Letter to a Christian Nation
Religion is a living process. When the Spirit takes hold of a man to transform him into a child of grace, working faith in him, and opening his eyes to see the boundless riches of grace, the work goes on continually. There is growth of knowledge, faith, and hope. The more the spiritual process advances, the more does religion become distinguished from all its outward forms, and attain likeness to the infinite benevolence of God.
JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER, Faith
Religion is the whole soul marching heavenward to the music of joy and love, with well-ranked faculties, every one of them beating time and keeping tune.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Religion is the most substantial thing in the world; it can take more hard knocks than anything else. Geology has jammed great boulders against it, and it is not even scratched; astronomy has assailed it, yet amid the bright spheres of heaven it lifts its glorious head. It has stood all the wear and tear of all sciences and all discussion; it is the most substantial thing you can think of; it is the most robust thing in existence. Do not think you can hurt it by taking it into your workshop. Let it out of your clothes pocket; it will suffer there. The only thing that religion dreads is lack of room, lack of freedom, lack of breath. Take it out of your pocket and bring it into everything. Do not fear that it will desecrate religion to bring it into contact with the world. It will consecrate the world; it will consecrate every deed and every act, and make them glorious.
E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words
Religion is only another word for the right use of a man's whole self, instead of a wrong use of himself.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
I am terrified of what seems to me to be a bottleneck that civilization is passing through. On the one hand we have 21st-century disruptive technology proliferating, and on the other we have first-century superstition. A civilization is going to either pass through this bottleneck more or less intact or it won't. And perhaps that fear sounds grandiose, but civilizations end. On any number of occasions, some generation has witnessed the ruination of everything they and their ancestors had built. What especially terrifies me about religious thinking is the expectation on the part of many that civilization is bound to end based on prophecy and its ending is going to be glorious.
SAM HARRIS, debate with Rick Warren, April, 2007
The very religion given to exalt human nature, has been used to make it abject. The very religion which was given to create a generous hope, has been made in instrument of servile and torturing fear. The very religion which came from God's goodness to enlarge the soul with a kindred goodness, has been employed to narrow it to a sect, to rear the Inquisition, and to kindle fires for the martyr. The very religion given to make the understanding and conscience free, has, by a criminal perversion, served to break them into a subjection to priests, ministers, and human creeds. Ambition and craft have seized on the solemn doctrines of an omnipotent God and of future punishment, and turned them into engines against the child, the trembling female, the ignorant adult, until the skeptic has been imboldened to charge on religion the chief miseries and degradation of human nature.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING, Thoughts
Some men want to have religion like a dark lantern, and carry it in their pocket, where nobody but themselves can get any good from it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Religion can only change when the emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.
GEORGE ELIOT, Middlemarch
Religion, like the law of gravity, binds each element of our nature to its own orbit. It gives the peace of a harmonious character, where the moral and intellectual powers hold their lawful spheres, and the appetites fill their restricted place, and the law of purity and holiness reigns supreme.
E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words
No matter how fallacious a religion may be, its destruction never satisfies unless replaced by another.
A man whose religion is dominated by overhanging gloom or fear misrepresents religion as much as a cloudy day would misrepresent a sunshiny day, or as much as January would misrepresent June.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Religion, as it has been generally taught, is anything but an elevating principle. It has been used to scare the child, and appal the adult. Men have been virtually taught to glorify God by flattery, rather than by becoming excellent and glorious themselves, and thus doing honor to their Maker. Our dependence on God has been so taught, as to extinguish the consciousness of our free nature and moral power. Religion, in one or another form, has always been an engine for crushing the human soul. But such is not the religion of Jesus Christ. If it were, it would deserve no respect.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING, Thoughts
Religion is like a knife. If you use it the wrong way you can cut yourself.
ERIC WEINER, The Geography of Bliss
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