Religion: Quotations from Burning Words
The ground of all religion, that which makes it possible, is the relation in which the human soul stands to God,— J. C. SHAIRP
Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to His throne.— DANIEL WEBSTER
Religion is faith in an infinite Creator, who delights in and enjoins that rectitude which conscience commands us to seek. This conviction gives a Divine sanction to duty.— W. E. CHANNING
In whatever light we view religion it appears solemn and venerable. It is a temple full of majesty, to which the worshiper may approach with comfort, in the hope of obtaining grace and finding mercy; but where they cannot enter without being inspired with awe. If we may be permitted to compare spiritual with natural things, religion resembles not those scenes of natural beauty where every object smiles. It cannot be likened to the gay landscape or the flowery field. It resembles more the august and sublime appearances of Nature — the lofty mountain, the expanded ocean, and the starry firmament; at the sight of which the mind is at once overawed and delighted; and, from the union of grandeur with beauty, derives a pleasing but a serious devotion.— BLAIR
Religion is the answer to that cry of Reason which nothing can silence, that aspiration of the soul which no created thing can meet, that want of the heart which all creation cannot supply.— I. T. HECKER
Religion to be permanently influential must be intelligent.— E. L. MAGOON
Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works ; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self, and benevolence to men.— JONATHAN EDWARDS
Religion is such a belief of the Bible as maintains a living influence on the heart. -— RICHARD CECIL
Too soon did the doctors of the church forget that the heart - the moral nature - was the beginning and the end, and that truth, knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion.— S. T. COLERIDGE
By religion I mean perfected manhood, - the quickening of the soul by the influence of the Divine Spirit.— H. W. BEECHER
Our religious needs are our deepest needs. There is no peace till they are satisfied and contented. The attempt to stifle them is in vain. If their cry be drowned by the noise of the world, they do not cease to exist. They must be answered.— I. T. HECKER
The true office of religion is to bring out the whole nature of man in harmonious activity.— W. E. CHANNING
The true religion of Jesus Christ our Saviour is that which penetrates, and which receives all the warmth of the heart, and all the elevation of the soul, and all the energies of the understanding, and all the strength of the will.— DEAN STANLEY
Religion is not mere truth, gained by study, and retained by watchfulness in the soul. It is truth translated into actions, embodied in life. A religion that never suffices to govern a man, will never suffice to save him. That which does not distinguish him from a sinful world, will never distinguish him from a perishing world.— JOHN HOWE
No man's religion ever survives his morals. -— SOUTH
Religion is the best armor in the world, but the worst cloak.— NEWTON
Religion is not a perpetual moping over good books. Religion is not even prayer, praise, holy ordinances, these are necessary to religion-no man can be religious without them. But religion is mainly and chiefly the glorifying God amid the duties and trials of the world; the guiding of our course amid adverse winds and currents of temptation by the sunlight of duty and the compass of Divine truth, the bearing up manfully, wisely, courageously, for the honor of Christ, our great Leader, in the conflict of life.— JOHN CAIRD
Religion is no dry morality; no slavish, punctilious conforming of actions to a hard law. Religion is not right thinking alone, nor right emotion alone, nor right action alone. Religion is still less the semblance of these in formal profession, or simulated feeling, or apparent rectitude. Religion is not nominal connection with the Christian community, nor participation in its ordinances and its worship. But to be godly is to be godlike.— ALEXANDER MACLAREN
Human things must be known to be loved; but Divine things must be loved to be known.— PASCAL
True religion is not what men see and admire; it is what God sees and loves; the faith which clings to Jesus in the darkest hour; the sanctity which shrinks from the approach of evil; the humility which lies low at the feet of the Redeemer, and washes them with tears; the love which welcomes every sacrifice; the cheerful consecration of all the powers of the soul; the worship which, rising above all outward forms, ascends to God in the sweetest, dearest communion - a worship often too deep for utterance, and than which the highest heaven knows nothing more sublime.— RICHARD FULLER
I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion. If they had that, and I had not given them one shilling, they would have been rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor.— PATRICK HENRY
The call to religion is not to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. O Heavenly Father, convert my religion from a name to a principle! Bring all my thoughts and movements into an habitual reference to Thee!— THOMAS CHALMERS
When we take our last remove, I fear that we shall find that a great deal which we call religion, and which we were at the trouble of lugging about with us through our whole pilgrimage, is perfectly worthless, fit only to be burned.— WM. GOODELL
Is religion one of the fine arts, that it should consist simply in going to meeting in good clothes every Sunday, saying grace at table, and praying night and morning? Are we so literally a flock that we have nothing to do but to be fed all the year, yielding only the annual fleece which forms our pastor's salary?— J. G. HOLLAND
The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and an imitation of His perfections.— EDMUND BURKE
The sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you. -— CHALMERS
Carry religious principles into common life, and common life will lose its transitoriness. The world passes away. The things seen are temporal. Soon business, with all its cares and anxieties, the whole "unprofitable stir and fever of the world" will be to us a thing of the past. But religion does something better than sigh and moan over the perishableness of earthly things. It finds in them the seeds of immortality.— JOHN CAIRD
How admirable is that religion which, while it seems to have in view only the felicity of another world, is at the same time the highest happiness of this.— MONTESQUIEU
Religious faith and purpose are the only certain safeguards against the growing perils of life. So far as there has been among educated men a decline of loyalty to Christ and His gospel, there has been a decline in those qualities which claim confidence and honor, which insure unblemished reputation, which minister to social well-being, and to the integrity and purity of public life.— A. P. PEABODY
It is only religion, the great bond of love and duty to God, that makes any existence valuable or even tolerable. Without this, to live were only to graze. Without this, the beauties of the world are but splendid gewgaws, the stars of heaven glittering orbs of ice, and, what is yet far worse and colder, the trials of existence profitless and unadulterated miseries. - -— HORACE BUSHNELL
Remove from the history of the past all those actions which have either sprung directly from the religious nature of man, or been modified by it, and you have the history of another world and of another race. -— MARK HOPKINS
It was religion, which, by teaching men their near relation to God, awakened in them the consciousness of their importance as individuals. It was the struggle for religious rights, which opened their eyes to all their rights. It was resistance to religious usurpation, which led men to withstand political oppression. It was religious discussion, which roused the minds of all classes to free and vigorous thought.— W. E. CHANNING
The men that history enshrines in her pages, the men whose memories are embalmed in the hearts of their fellows for all ages, were men who placed unfaltering trust in the loftiest convictions of the soul, and consecrated life and death to their realization.— I. T. HECKER
It is the very nature and essence of religion to raise men, peoples, and nations above the common level of life, to break through its ordinary bounds, and express itself in a thousand ways, in poetry, painting, music, sculpture, and in every other form of ideal expression. The splendid monuments of the genius and greatness of by-gone ages are the monuments inspired by their religion.— I. T. HECKER
One must build to the praise of a Being above, to build the noblest memorial of himself. Then, Angelo may verily “hang the Pantheon in the air." Then the unknown builder, whose personality disappears in his work, may stand an almost inspired mediator between the upward-looking thought and the spheres overhead. Each line then leaps with a swift aspiration, as the vast structure rises, in nave and transept into pointed arch and vanishing spire. The groined roof grows dusky with majestic glooms; while, beneath, the windows flame, as with apocalyptic light of jewels. Angelic presences, sculptured upon the portal, invite the wayfarer, and wave before him their wings of promise. Within is a worship which incense only clouds, which spoken sermons only mar. The building itself becomes a worship, a Gloria in Excelsis, articulate in stone; the noblest tribute offered on earth, by any art, to Him from whom its impulse came, and with the ineffable majesty of whose spirit all skies are filled.— R. S. STORRS
Religion converts despair, which destroys, into resignation, which submits. What but the mighty mastership of religion has ever led a people up through civil wars and revolutions into a regenerated order and liberty? What has planted colonies for a great history but religion? The most august and beautiful structures of the world have been temples of religion, crystallizations, we may say, of worship. The noblest charities, the best fruits of learning, the richest discoveries, the best institutions of law and justice, every greatest thing the world has seen, represents more or less directly the fruitfulness and creativeness of religion.— HORACE BUSHNELL
All noblest things are religious, - not temples and martyrdoms only, but the best books, pictures, poetry, statues, and music.— WM. MOUNTFORD
Other religions have risen and decayed; Christ's comes down the ages in the strength of youth, through the seas of popular commotion, like the Spirit of God on the face of the waters, through the storms of philosophy, like an apocalyptic angel, and through all the wilderness of human thought and action, like the pillar of fire before the camp of the Israelites.— EDWARD THOMSON
The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.— WHATELY
Beware of a religion of mere sentiment which gazes and sighs and wishes, but makes no sacrifice, which hides the cross with flowers, and wears it over, but not within the heart. Beware of a religion which costs you nothing, never rises an hour earlier, never denies itself a pleasure, never gives that which it will miss, for the sake of Christ and the soul, If you are seeking the comforts of religion rather than the glory of our Lord, you are on the wrong track. The Comforter meets us unsought in the path of duty. There is something in religion, when rightly comprehended, that is masculine and grand. It removes those little desires which are the constant hectic of a fool.— RICHARD Cecil
Let a man be firmly principled in his religion, he may travel from the tropics to the poles, it will never catch cold on the journey.— Wm. M. PUNSHON
The way to judge of religion is by doing our duty. Religion is rather a Divine life than a Divine knowledge. In heaven, indeed, we must first see, and then love; but here, on earth, we must first love, and love will open our eyes as well as our hearts, and we shall then see and perceive and understand.— JEREMY TAYLOR
To judge religion we must have it - not stare at it from the bottom of a seemingly interminable ladder.— GEORGE MACDONALD
The spirit of true religion breathes gentleness and affability; it gives a native, unaffected ease to the behavior; it is social, kind, cheerful; far removed from the cloudy and illiberal disposition which clouds the brow, sharpens the temper, and dejects the spirit.— BLAIR
It is the half-way religion that undoes the professing world. The heart can never be at unity with itself till it is wholly centered in God. Religion gives to virtue the sweetest hopes, to unrepenting vice just alarms, to true repentance the most powerful consolations; but she endeavors above all things to inspire in men love, meekness, and piety. -— MONTESQUIEU
Nothing exposes religion more to the reproach of its enemies than the worldliness and half-heartedness of the professors of it.— MATTHEW HENRY
Men use religion just as they use buoys and life-preservers ; they do not intend to navigate the vessel with them, but they keep just enough of them on hand to float into a safe harbor when a storm comes up and the vessel is shipwrecked; and it is only then that they intend to use them. I tell you, you will find air-holes in all such life-preservers as that.— PORTER
There is a great deal too much in the world, of the "heavenly-mindedness" which expends itself in the contemplation of the joys of paradise, which performs no duty which it can shirk, and whose constant prayer is to be lifted in some overwhelming flood of Divine grace, and be carried, amidst the admiration of men and the jubilance of angels, to the very throne of God.— H. CLAY TRUMBULL
The religion of some people is constrained; like the cold bath when it is used, not for pleasure, but from necessity, for health, into which one goes with reluctance, and is glad when able to get out. But religion to the true believer is like water to a fish. It is his element. He lives in it, and could not live out of it.— JOHN NEWTON
With many people, religion is merely a matter of words. So far as words go we do what we think right. But the words rarely lead to action, thought, and conduct, or to purity, goodness, and honesty. There is too much playing at religion, and too little of enthusiastic, hard work.— SAMUEL SMILES
You have no security for a man who has no religious principle. -— RICHARD COBDEN
There are men who stalk about the world gloomy and stiff and severe - self-righteous embodiments of the mischievous heresy that the religion of peace and good-will to all mankind - the religion of love and hope and joy, the religion that bathes the universal human soul in the light of paternal love, and opens to mankind the gates of immortality - is a religion of terror - men guilty of misrepresenting Christ to the world, and doing incalculable damage to His cause.— J. G. HOLLAND
Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; any thing but - live for it.— COLTON
Too much is said in these days about the æsthetics of religion and its sensibilities. Religion's home is in the conscience. Its watchword is the word "ought." Its highest joy is in doing God's will.— T. L. CUYLER
They who seek religion for culture's sake are æsthetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which religion adds to culture, because they never can have the religion.— J. C. SHAIRP
The belief in a Divine education, open to each man and to all men, takes up into itself all that is true in the end proposed by culture, supplements, and perfects it.— J. C. SHAIRP,
To rely on intellectual methods for the direct advance of devout thoughts is to mistake philosophy for religion.— JAMES MARTINEAU
Religion is the only metaphysics that the multitude can understand and adopt.— JOSEPH JOUBERT
Man without religion is the creature of circumstances. Religion is above all circumstances, and will lift him up above them.— GUESSES AT TRUTH
Educate men without religion, and you make them but clever devils.— DUKE OF WELLINGTON
It seems to me a great truth, that human things cannot stand on selfishness, mechanical utilities, economies, and law courts; that if there be not a religious element in the relations of men, such relations are miserable, and doomed to ruin. -— CARLYLE
Who ever heard of a devout deist? Who ever heard of one who was willing to spend his life in missionary labor for the good of others? It is not according to the constitution of the mind that such a system should awaken the affections. And what is true of this system is true of every false system. All such systems leave the heart cold, and, accordingly, exert very little genuine, transforming power over the life.— MARK HOPKINS
Religion may enter a pothouse as a minister of good, but it may not lay aside its dignity to argue its rights and claims there. The moment that it does this it is shorn of its power.— J. G. HOLLAND
Who does not know out of his own heart, that he never was reasoned into holy wonder, love, or reverence? and who can fail to observe that there is no fixed proportion between force of understanding and clearness or depth of religion?— JAMES MARTINEAU
You have respect for religion ! How vastly condescending! How deeply humble! The creature has a respect for the service of the Creator! A grasshopper deigns to acknowledge that it has a respect for the King of kings and Lord of lords! Verily a subject of congratulation for the universe! A worm crawling in the dust confesses to its fellow worm that it has some respect for the government of the high and mighty One that inhabiteth eternity.— DR. MUHLENBERG