Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)
If we are creatures of God, we are morally bound to accomplish our destiny, and we have a right to do so freely, and to resist to the uttermost, as immoral, every assault made upon it. Admit duty as the basis of right, and every difficulty vanishes. Seek a rational basis of right, and you are precipitated into despotism or inconsequence.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Hitherto Christianity has leaned, or has been represented as leaning, on authority--on the authority of an infallible text, or of an inerrable Church. The inadequacy of either support has been repeatedly demonstrated, and as the props have been withdrawn, the faith of many has fallen with a crash.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The rudimentary being inspired with vitality, progresses; its fluid parts thicken, its soft parts become firm, membrane changes into cartilage, and cartilage into bone, bone hardens and is welded into neighboring bones, the entire being advances towards solidification.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Reason starts from itself to return to itself.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Every logical act of the intellect is an assertion that something is.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Like a mighty army moves the church of God;
Brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod.
We are not divided, all one body we,
One in hope and doctrine, one in charity.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
"Onward Christian Soldiers"
The life of the animal is more complete than that of the vegetable, for it intervenes more spontaneously and more efficaciously in the double function of self-protection and continuance of the species.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Reason is a faculty for extracting truth out of materials provided by the sentiment.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
But the right of might is not a right, it is the violation of right; and the obligation to obey the strongest is not a duty, it is a physical necessity. It is playing with words to call that a right which is a faculty growing and waning with the power which imposes it, and that a duty which is necessary submission to a power against which resistance is vain.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The God of reason cannot be the object of religion.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
We say that science is in its infancy; it will never become decrepit, for if truth be infinite, there will always be new aspects of it to be discovered.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
In ethics, the conscience judges, according to a sliding scale; what it judges at one time to be admissible and good, it decides, as its experience grows, or as circumstances alter, to be inadmissible and bad. That which was right one day is wrong the next, for as conscience grows, its perception strengthens, and it discriminates with greater acuteness; its powers of analysis increase, not for the purpose of dividing and opposing, but for the purpose of reducing what is divided and opposed to unity.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
TRUTH, such as it appears to us, can only be relative, because we ourselves, being relative creatures, have only a relative perception and judgment. We appreciate that which is true to ourselves, not that which is universally true. And truth may well assume an aspect to one different from that it assumes to another.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
If Ahab had no weak places in his armour, the bow drawn at a venture would not have sent an arrow to him with death at the point. No bluebottles are bred where carrion is not found.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Urith
Although the drizzle was excluded by roof and walls from the house, the moisture-charged atmosphere could not be shut out, and it made the interior only less wretched than outside the house.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Urith
Individuality, the more emphasized it is, the better it is for the social welfare; for individuality is the perfecting of a member of the whole body. Of course, if one be emphasized at the expense of others, there is wrong done to, and injury sustained by, the body; but the perfection of solidarity will consist in the simultaneous development to its highest pitch of the individuality of every member of society.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Prayer is the assertion of the two personalities, the personality of God and that of the suppliant. It is the affirmation of the existence of a link uniting the two individualities.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The idea so prevalent that man without woman, or woman without man, is an imperfect being, was the cause of the great repugnance with which the Jews and other nations of the East regarded celibacy.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
That which mankind wanted, and wants still, is not new truths, but the co-ordination of all aspects of the truth.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
God's existence escapes demonstration; it is idle to ask reason to prove what is beyond its scope, for reason is the faculty of dealing with the finite.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity