Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)
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
All things tend to unity. It is the universal law of life.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Human authority may furnish conviction, but never certainty. Divine authority is immutable and infallible.
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
Man and God being placed face to face, one as contingent, the other as absolute, the contingent lives as contingent and the absolute as absolute. To live as absolute, is to be at once the power and principle of life; to live as contingent is to live as effect, without ever being able to live as principle.
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
Thus man believes in truths of two kinds, in those of absolute certainty through direct conviction, and in those of comparative certainty through conviction of the trustworthiness of the authority which propounds them.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
God, the principle and the end of all, gives Himself to all to multiply indefinitely His gifts one by the other, and to distribute them, thus inimitably augmented, through each to all. Associated in this work of universal solidarity, we reunite all the scattered fragments of God's perfection manifested in ourselves.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
To any one with artistic taste, poetic feeling, and refined perceptions, there is something inexpressibly sad in passing from a Catholic to a Protestant country, it is like passing from sunshine into mist, from mountain variety and beauty into fens, well-drained, cut into square fields, but intolerably monotonous.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Certain of the angels having fallen, God made men, that they might take their vacated places.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
The first natural right man has in society is that of disposing freely of his person. It is the most sacred property in the world. Of what use is any other property, if between it and you is an impenetrable wall.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
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
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
Many are the origins attributed to man in the various creeds of ancient and modern heathendom. Sometimes he is spoken of as having been made out of water, but more generally it is of earth that he has been made, or from which he has been spontaneously born. The Peruvians believed that the world was peopled by four men and four women, brothers and sisters, who emerged from the caves near Cuzco. Among the North American Indians the earth is regarded as the universal mother. Men came into existence in her womb, and crept out of it by climbing up the roots of the trees which hung from the vault in which they were conceived and matured; or, mounting a deer, the animal brought them into daylight; or, groping in darkness, they tore their way out with their nails.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane,
But the church of Jesus constant will remain.
Gates of hell can never 'gainst that church prevail;
We have Christ’s own promise, and that cannot fail.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
"Onward Christian Soldiers"
The drowning man may be saved by a plank or a rope, but there are circumstances in which plank or rope can not avail him. How much better for him to have learned that in himself is the principle of buoyancy.
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
The faculty of teaching freely is a right, for instruction is a duty.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Deny God, and authority rests on force alone; we relapse into despotism.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
God, then, did not find in Himself any reason for creating. If the reason for creation were to be found in the nature of the Absolute, there would be no creation. The existence of the world is therefore irrational, for what can be more irrational than the idea of something added to perfection? Nevertheless the world exists. Reality is not rational, it is superior to reason.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity