Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)
Of authority there are two sorts, the authority of right, and the authority of force.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Man cannot possibly be absolute, he is altogether partial and relative. The good, the beautiful, and the true to one man may be very different from the good, the beautiful, and the true to another man, but the aspect seen by each man is an aspect of the Absolute. One aspect alone, if insisted on to the negation and exclusion of other aspects, is erroneous—erroneous inasmuch as it negatives and excludes, but in itself it is true. To recompose the whole body of truth, it is necessary to accept every aspect, and to weave them together into an indissoluble unity.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng,
Blend with ours your voices in the triumph song.
Glory, laud, and honor unto Christ the King,
This through countless ages men and angels sing.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
"Onward Christian Soldiers"
Our parents were then driven out of Paradise, and one leaf alone was given to each, wherewith to hide their nakedness.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
That personal autocracy is the destruction of religion is evident from the nature of the case; it is the negation of absolute law, and may be called personal theocracy or autotheism, for the individual thereby assumes a right and supremacy which is not the subordination of God to man, but the annihilation of God before the individual man.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Literary ladies may point to the primal mother as the first authoress; for a Gospel of Eve existed in the times of St. Epiphanius, who mentions it as being in repute among the Gnostics.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
Before the world was, God was the Absolute, inconceivable save as being. We cannot attribute to Him any quality, for qualities are inconceivable apart from matter.
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
Our conception of God being derived from ourselves and the objects affecting us, we can form no idea except one made up of materials furnished by our experience and reflection. Therefore we select whatever powers and qualities we find amongst ourselves, and consider to be most commendable; we separate them from everything gross, material and imperfect, and heighten them to the utmost imaginable pitch; the aggregate of all these makes up our first rational conception of God.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
As the animal life has its law of progress, so has the spiritual life; as the former has its wants, so has the latter; as the accomplishment of the animal wants is attended by complete satisfaction, so is the realization of the spiritual wants signalized by contentment.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
When we say that God is infinite, we do not mean that He is of immeasurable size and duration, but that He is beyond all space and time. He is neither in space nor in time; for this reason He is eternal and infinite, and therefore He is also incomprehensible.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
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
Worship is the subjection of the personality of the worshipper to the object worshipped; it is therefore the affirmation of the relations the two personalities bear to one another.
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"
Man must emphasize himself, and consequently must distinguish himself from God. He must recognize these two terms, himself and God, as terms distinct, not only in thought, but by an act of will, for man must will himself, and by willing himself constitute his personality. However, he must do this without separating himself from God, without excluding God. He must will himself, but he must at the same time will God.
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
Interference with personal liberty for opinions is immoral, for every man has a right to his own opinions and a right to express them; and interference with the liberty of A is only lawful when A has violated the rights of B, and then one interference must exactly balance the other. When an idea takes the knife like Lady Macbeth, it has on its hands a dye which all the perfumes of Araby cannot efface. It has defied morality, and, as its penalty, morality delivers it over to impotence.
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
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
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