"Theism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... necessitates a step further. That step might possibly be in the direction of pantheism, though, according to Driesch,[11] pantheism is the doctrine "that reality is a something which makes itself ('dieu se fait,' in the words of Bergson), whilst theism would be any theory according to which the manifoldness of material reality is predetermined in an immaterial way." And he concludes "that those who regard the thesis of the theory of order as necessary for everything that is or can be, must ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... the polling-places. The lower classes were violently Tory. During the excitement of the contest the mob had set upon Mardon as he was going to his work, and had reviled him as a Republican and an Atheist. By way of proving their theism they had cursed him with many oaths, and had so sorely beaten him that the shock was almost fatal. I went to see him instantly, and found him in much pain, believing that he would not get better, but ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... remind you how this Jewish people, who have at all events taught the world the purest Theism, and led men up to the most spiritual religion, had this same institution of a priesthood for the very centre of its worship. Nor need I dwell at length on the fact that the New Testament gives—in its full adhesion ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... must note that Bergson avoids theological forms of expression, because he is well aware that these—especially in a philosophical treatise—may give rise to misconceptions. He does not, like Kant, attack any specific or traditional argument for Theism; he does not enter into theological controversy. He has not formulated, with any strictness, his conception of God; for he has recognized that an examination of Theism would be of little or no value, which was not prefaced by a refutation of mechanism and ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... eaten the vitals of non-catholic sectaries. The teaching of so-called Christian churches has evaporated into a mere natural theism, the supernatural element has disappeared. Both the Socialist and Agnostic frankly confess that the demolition of the sects is but a preliminary skirmish: the real battle lies farther afield. The lines of conflict between us and them are daily drawing closer, and it ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... quoting only one phrase from it. The sentence in full is this: "By a wholly new line of reasoning, drawn exclusively from those sources [science and philosophy], this book aims to show that, in order to refute agnosticism and establish enlightened theism, nothing is now necessary but to philosophize that very scientific method which agnosticism barbarously misunderstands and misuses." There is no "pretension" whatever in these words, except that the general "line of reasoning" set forth in the book is, as a whole, different from ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... all things, his providence is over all events. He avoids pantheism on one side, by making God a distinct personal intelligent will; and polytheism on the other, by making him absolute, and therefore one. Plato's theology is pure theism.[250] ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... must leave, therefore, to others, younger and more learned than we are, to prepare this euthanasia for Platonic Christianity, and its restoration to the primitive simplicity of its founder. I think you give a just outline of the theism of the three religions, when you say that the principle of the Hebrew was the fear, of the Gentile the honor, and of the Christian the love ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... find that any other fate has awaited the germ of Religion. Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, and out of the action and interaction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has taken the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the present differs from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present has become more scientific ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... and their allegiance. No such grand theology had ever appeared in the world before, so far as we know; and it is the forerunner of the later monotheist religions, while it is even more abstract and impersonal, and may well rank as a scientific theism. ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... in theology of a kind which he nowhere attributes to Socrates. He represents him, indeed, as a man of a deeply religious nature, but we do not gather that he had felt the need of a formal doctrine of God. Plato, on the other hand, has left us the first systematic defence of Theism we know of, and it is based entirely on his doctrine of soul as the self-moved mover. But the highest soul, or God, is not only the ultimate source of motion, but also supremely good. Now, since there are many things in the world which are not good, and since it would be blasphemy to attribute ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... another. But the Genesis narratives are distinguished by their freedom from the polytheistic ingredients which disfigure the corresponding narratives elsewhere. They are on the elevated plane of that pure theism which is the kernel of the Hebrew faith. This whole subject is elucidated by Lenormant, in The Beginnings of History (1882). The Book of Joshua relates the history of the conquest of Canaan; Judges, the tale of the heroic age of Israel prior to the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... their conduct, regardless of penalty or reward. Humanity is yet on the low moral plane, where penal laws, human or divine, are the most potent forces in regulating human life. Hence the sad fact appears that when theism seems most successfully assailed we hear from many quarters ill-concealed rustlings of exultation at the welcome loosening of the bonds of morality and religion. It seems to be overlooked that a very stern theological system may be quite rationally evolved from atheistic premises; and there ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... sum of all the functions by which death is resisted," he was as conclusively indulging in the argumentum in circulo as if he had said, "Life is the antithesis of what is not life." This would be as luminous a definition as that which should make Theism the opposite of Anti-theism, or the Algebraic statement x-y the antithesis of xy—one of no definitional value so long as there is no known ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... misquotation from a well-known philosopher, in this line, is, however, sufficiently noteworthy for special mention here. Jacobi, in his intense theism, protests against the unqualified idealism of Fichte, and the indefinite naturalism of Schelling; and, in his famous Letter to Fichte,[1] he says vehemently: "But the Good what is it? I have no answer if there be no God. As to me, this world of phenomena—if it ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... the result is the Theism of Saint Paul and Christianity. Synesius was censured for his doctrine of the pre- existence of the soul; but never, that I can find, arraigned or deemed heretical for his Pantheism, though neither Giordano Bruno, nor Jacob Behmen ever ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... which is sustained by the facts: "Not an American book of the first class has ever been written by an atheist or denier of immortality." That sentence need not offend an admirer of Walt Whitman, for he "accepts both theism and the doctrine of the future life." American thought has remained loyal to the great Trinity, God, Freedom, and Immortality. So it comes about that while there are a number of these writers who could be put under the ban of the strongly orthodox in religion, every one of ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... Martineau had gotten well beyond the idea that God was a great, big man who could be beseeched and moved to alter His plans because some creature on the planet Earth asked it. Her religion was pure Theism, with no confounding dogmas about who was to be saved and who damned. The state of infants who died unbaptized and of the heathen who passed away without ever having heard of Jesus did not trouble her at all. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... Atheism; he projected sending it round broadcast as an invitation or challenge to discussion. This small pamphlet—it is scarcely more than a flysheet—hardly amounts to saying that Atheism is irrefragably true, and Theism therefore false; but it propounds that the existence of a God cannot be proved by reason, nor yet by testimony; that a direct revelation made to an individual would alone be adequate ground for convincing that individual; and that the persons to ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... multiplex theism of certain Christian churches, three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one. Subordinate deities of the polytheistic faith, such as devils and angels, are not dowered with the power of combination, and must urge individually their claims ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... succeeded in proving himself a strong theist and a strong anti-revelationist, who is to succeed in proving himself one thing or the other in any matter whatsoever? By occasional confusion between theism and Christianity; by taking advantage of the formal phrases of adhesion to the Roman Church, which very often occur, and are often the happiest bits of irony in an ironical production; by citations of his morality, which is decidedly Christian, though often ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... this tendency to poetry among Browning's knaves, must be reckoned another characteristic, their uniform tendency to theism. These loose and mean characters speak of many things feverishly and vaguely; of one thing they always speak with confidence and composure, their relation to God. It may seem strange at first sight that those who have outlived the indulgence, and not only of every ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... object—of so-called judicious men, is to hush it up. No matter what the difference is about; that is thought so little to the purpose, that your well-judging men will not even take the trouble to inquire what it is. It may be, for what they know, a question of theism or atheism; but they will not admit, whatever it is, that it can be more than secondary to the preservation of a good understanding between Christians. They think, whatever it is, it may safely be postponed for future consideration—that things will right themselves—the one pressing ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... is an essential part of our being and the key to the interpretation of our life, we load ourselves down with a difficulty that has always proved burdensome in philosophies of religion. Theism, whenever it has erected itself into a systematic philosophy of the universe, has shown a reluctance to let God be anything less than All-in-All. In other words, philosophic theism has always shown a tendency to become pantheistic and monistic, and to consider the world as one unit of ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... examine the truth of these statements, it certainly is not strictly an argument to say, that the advocate of self-love on either of these hypotheses cannot consistently be a believer in Christianity, or even a theist, as theism is ordinarily understood. The commandments of the author of the Christian religion are, as we have seen, purely disinterested: and, especially if we admit the latter of the two explanations of self-love, we shall be obliged to confess, on the hypothesis ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... of life; and spiritual truth, as Bunsen said, was independent of history. He had no sort of sympathy with those who rejected belief in Christianity altogether, still less with those who abandoned Theism. Although he could not be a minister of the Church, he was content to be a member, understanding the Church to be what he was brought up to think it, the national organ of religion, a Protestant, evangelical establishment under the authority ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... on Setebos, Rabbi Ben Ezra, and A Death in the Desert, should be read in that order; for there is a logical order in the thought. The first is God as an amphibious brute would imagine him: the second is noble Hebrew theism: the third is the Christian God of Love. Whilst the second is the finest poem of the three, the first is the most original. The word "upon" is ironical: it is Caliban's treatise on theology. We read Caliban ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... Thales learned that the Earth revolved around the Sun in Egypt, 843-u. Thartae, a god with the head of an ass, Christianity said to be the reign of, 103-u. Theater of Scaurus surrounded by 360 columns, 236-u. Thebes, seven gates of, 233-m. Theism of Anaxagoras subversive of the religion of outward nature, 679-u. Theism of the Hebrews involved in symbols and image worship, 514-m. Theoclet, Johannite Pontiff, initiated de Payens into the Gnostic Mysteries, 817-u. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyropolis, speaks of the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of constant companionship the untranslated and indeed the unexamined Christian doctrine of God. And, because this God is responsive to all the many-sided human experience which reveals Him, it will be an actual preparation not for Theism only, but for that complexity in unity known as the Christian Trinity. Nothing could better summarise this whole achievement in religion than Pater's apt sentence, "To have apprehended the Great Ideal, so palpably ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... we may be certain that the numerous evils which we find in the details, work for the good of a system superior to them, and that all apparent imperfections contribute to the perfection of the whole. As our philosopher makes use of the idea of the world-harmony to support theism and the theodicy, so, further, he derives the content of morality from it, thus giving ethics a natural basis independent ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... which the black is born, and by which he lived, in much closer obedience to its laws than we of this latter-day Christendom. It seems to me, if we cannot respect the religion of others we deny our own. If we are powerless to see the theism behind the overlying animism, we argue a strange ignorance of what crept over other faiths, in the way of legends and superstitions quite foreign to the ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... the poem of Job is the most striking presentation of the most obscure and fascinating problem that ever puzzled and tortured the human intellect: how to reconcile the existence of evil, not merely with the fundamental dogmas of the ancient Jewish faith, but with any form of Theism whatever. Stated in the terms in which the poet—whom for convenience sake we shall identify with his hero[3] manifestly conceived it, it is this: Can God be the creator of all things and yet ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of disputing. Whether the Old Testament contains a revelation from God, or not, its moral precepts are, as far as I know unexceptionable; there is not, I believe, any thing extravagant or impracticable in them, they are such as promote the good order of society. Its religion in fact is merely Theism garnished, and guarded by a splendid ritual, and gorgeous ceremonies; the belief of it can produce no oppression and wretchedness to any portion of mankind, and for these reasons I for one will never attempt to weaken its credit, whatever may be my own opinion ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... point we came into collision, my researches and reflections constantly tending to remove me farther from a belief in any God outside the world, so that after the Meeting Carl von Bergen and I exchanged letters on Theism and Pantheism, which assumed the width and thickness of treatises. For very many years the Swedish essayist and I kept up a friendly, though intermittent intercourse. Meanwhile von Bergen, whose good qualities included neither character nor originality, inclined, as years went on, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... attitude of the author in respect to moral and religious truth is truly, but not obtrusively, reverent. Though he asserts for man the dignity that pertains to a creator, yet he never forgets the limits under which and the materials out of which his creations are wrought. His Theism is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... 3. Theism. The man who is most influenced by the desire to be at one with God naturally wants to act in accordance with God's plan. But God being omnibeneficent, he necessarily believes that God's plan is that which is for the best interests of His ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... representing physical phenomena. But with Socrates a change came over philosophy; a sign—perhaps a cause—of the decline of the existing religion. The study of man superseded the study of nature: a purer Theism came in with the higher ideal of perfection, and sin and depravity at once assumed an importance the intensity of which made every other question insignificant. How man could know the good and yet choose the evil; how God could be all pure and almighty, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the Abbe Savonati, translated from Italian by M. Matricante, Primary School Principal, The Accursed Child, The Two Friends, a satiric sketch, The Day's Work of a Man of Letters, Some Fools, and, furthermore, fragments of a work on idolatry, theism and natural religion, a historic monograph on the Vaudois, some outlined letters on Paris, literature, and the general police system of the realm of letters. In his youthful enthusiasms, Honore de Balzac shifted from Beaumarchais to Moliere, from ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... more inevitable, because Theology is so precise and consistent in its intellectual structure. When I speak of Theism or Monotheism, I am not throwing together discordant doctrines; I am not merging belief, opinion, persuasion, of whatever kind, into a shapeless aggregate, by the help of ambiguous words, and dignifying this medley by the name of Theology. I speak of one idea unfolded in its ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the idea of evolution systematically. In doing this, they not only omitted some characteristic features of their master's teaching, but they made additions altogether foreign to it. One of the most influential of these importations was the transcendental [71] theism which had come into vogue. The restless, fiery energy, operating according to law, out of which all things emerge and into which they return, in the endless successive cycles of the great year; which ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... A Treatise on Theism and on the Modern Skeptical Theories. By Francis Wheaton. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott & ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... of doubt and distress on which I had been tossing for nearly twelve months. On the following Sunday, I saw them again, and was cordially invited down to their Dulwich home, where they gave welcome to all in doubt. I soon found that the Theism they professed was free from the defects which revolted me in Christianity. It left me God as a Supreme Goodness, while rejecting all the barbarous dogmas of the Christian faith. I now read Theodore Parker's "Discourse on Religion", ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... always discovering to me things which I would never have seen myself and opening up to me new avenues of knowledge, delight and adoration. There was something so intimate in his theism that it purified, elevated and broadened mine, even when I could not agree with him. His constant exclamation when a fine landscape would burst upon our view, or a shaft of light would pierce the clouds ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... of Matthew Arnold.] Handbook and Dictionary of Modern Arabic, Kabail Vocabulary, Libyan Vocabulary, Text of the Iguvine Inscriptions, Christian Commonwealth, History of the Hebrew Monarchy, Hebrew Theism, Early Life of Cardinal Newman, Anglo-Saxon Abolition of Negro Slavery, not to mention many others, alone show how writing largely filled his days and occupied ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... apologetics? And from the conditions of ancient thought, or, at least, from what we know of it, this resolves itself into the question: How far had the Greek philosophers advanced by means of speculative thought toward a conscious theism, and by what means did the various individuals and schools among them seek to prove the existence of the Divine? The answer to this inquiry will involve a brief examination of the contributions of the pre-Socratic philosophers (especially Anaxagoras), ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... was surrounded at the most impressible period of her life by this group of intellectual, free-thinking people, who seem to have fully indoctrinated her with their own opinions. None of them had rejected Christianity or theism, but they were rationalists in spirit, and eager students of philosophy and science. Here were laid the foundations of the doctrines she afterwards held so strongly, and even during this period very many of the theories ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... had so hard a lot; but every real man must, in one way or another, fight a great battle. . . . Especially I feel indebted to Abbot's article. Truly he 'says, that the great question of the coming days is,—theism, or atheism? Not whether Jesus is our Master, the chief among men, but whether the God in whom Jesus believed really exists; and, by consequence, whether the immortality which lay open to his vision is but a dream of weary and burdened humanity? Herbert Spencer ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... who will read thoughtfully an examination of so old a subject as Theism, and it is to those that these pages are addressed. One cannot hope to say anything that is strikingly new on so well worn a subject as the existence of God, but there are many who will read an old subject ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... genial evolutionary view of the world, has given a rude shock to the genteel tradition. What! The world a gradual improvisation? Creation unpremeditated? God a sort of young poet or struggling artist? William James is an advocate of theism; pragmatism adds one to the evidences of religion; that is excellent. But is not the cool abstract piety of the genteel getting more than it asks for? This empirical naturalistic God is too crude and positive a force; he will work miracles, he will answer prayers, he may inhabit distinct ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... they never entertained an idea of Theism or the belief of one supreme power is that they have no word in their language to express the person of God, except the Allah tala of the Malays, corrupted by them to Ulah tallo. Yet when questioned on the subject they assert their ancestors' knowledge ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... second world a grave." He fails to see that all such appeals are beside the question; and deserts the ground of his answer to John Sterling's expostulation, "that is downright Pantheism": "What if it were Pot-theism if it is true?" It is the same inconsistency which, in practice, led his sympathy for suffering to override his Stoic theories; but it vitiated his reasoning, and made it impossible for him to appreciate the calm, yet legitimately emotional, religiosity of Mill. ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... at different times, its teaching has become both negative and positive, agnostic and gnostic. It passes from apparent atheism and materialism to theism, polytheism, and spiritualism. It is, under one aspect, mere pessimism; under another, pure philanthropy; under another, monastic communion; under another, high morality; under another, a variety of materialistic philosophy; under another, simple demonology; under another, a mere farrago ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... principles are abstractions from facts, not elementary truths prior to reasoning.' This is pure nominalism, in its crudest form. It makes all arguments in favour of the great truths of religion valueless; for if there are no universals, rational theism is impossible. It follows that the famous scholastic 'proofs of God's existence' have for Newman no cogency whatever; indeed it is difficult to see how he can have escaped condemning the whole philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas as a juggling with bloodless concepts. Newman himself pleaded that ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... I found a corroboration of the fact of the logical connexion of Theism with Catholicism in a consideration parallel to that which I had adopted on the subject of development of doctrine. The fact of the operation from first to last of that principle of development in the truths of Revelation, is an argument in favour of the identity ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... decrees have hitherto been unfavourable to religion. Its professors who appeal to that judge, play a part most inconsistent and dangerous, as is evident in the case of Origen Bachelor, who more zealous and candid than prudent, declared the real and only question between Atheism and Theism a question of fact, reducing it to these terms—'Is there reason, all things considered, for believing that there is a God, an intelligent cause of things, infinite and perfect in all his ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... instruction I myself shall attend to, when she is sufficiently advanced to understand my teaching. At present she is a Mohammedan, if she is anything, and believes firmly in Allah. I consider that a working Theism is quite enough for a young woman in her position to go on with. In the afternoon she walks out with Antoinette. Once she stole forth by herself, enjoyed herself hugely for a short time, got lost, ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... himself."—Johnson's Sketch of Morin. "Ought is an imperfect verb, for it has no other modification besides this one."—Priestley's Gram., p. 113. "The verb is palpably nothing else but the tie."—Neef's Sketch, p. 66. "Does he mean that theism is capable of nothing else except being opposed to polytheism or atheism?"—Blair's Rhet., p. 104. "Is it meant that theism is capable of nothing else besides being opposed to polytheism, or atheism?"—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 307. "There is no other method of teaching ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... you must care for them and conduct their course yourself, and must learn to travel the road along which they are to be led. The husband must become himself the priest and the director: not by inculcating a vague theism or a cold morality, but by establishing in his household the purity and the practice of a Christian faith. If the domestic throne is to be upheld on its rightful foundation, the altar must be reared by its side. The philosopher and historian ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... highly significant to Godwin, who of course began the perusal of his prize in a suspicious mood. Nor was he long before he sympathised with Mr Gunnery's distaste. Though too young to grasp the arguments at issue, his prejudices were strongly excited by the conventional Theism which pervades Figuier's work. Already it was the habit of his mind to associate popular dogma with intellectual shallowness; herein, as at every other point which fell within his scope, he had begun to scorn average people, and to pride himself ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Dei patris—Amen," "Et vitam venturi," and "Osanna in excelsis," nevertheless gave his composition a scope which placed it beyond the apparatus of the Church, and filled it with a spirit that spurns the limitations of any creed of less breadth and universality than the grand Theism which affectionate communion with nature had ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... credulous as to believe that the spiritual can fall vertically to earth because a man kneels before a bishop and becomes a priest. Rather he had a much better plan. He started by being an atheist, the best possible foundation for subsequent theism. From this he became an Immanist, which is that God is in some ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... He continued an arduous work for some fifteen years, but it wore him out before his time. He was an erudite scholar and a prolific writer. Discarding the claims of Christianity to be the only 'divine revelation,' he based his clear and always optimistic theism on the broad facts of human experience. Ardently interested in social and political questions, he poured satire without stint on the religious defenders of slavery, and himself dared all risks along with the foremost abolitionists. Such a man could not but count for much; and though ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... a connection between the proposed substitutes for religion and the special training of their several authors. Historians tender us the worship of Humanity, professors of physical science tender us Cosmic Emotion. Theism might almost retort the apologue of the specter of ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Chaumette and Robespierre, each of them accepted the doctrine that it was in the power of the armed legislator to impose any belief and any rites he pleased upon the country at his feet. The theism or the atheism of the new France depended, as they thought, on the issue of the war for authority between the Hebertists in the Common Council of Paris, and the Committee of Public Safety. That was the religious side of the attitude of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... all but the very few. Man had suddenly fallen in love with man. The conventional were rubbing their eyes and wondering why they had ever believed, or even dreamed, that there was a God to love, asking one another what was the secret of the spell that had held them so long. Christianity and Theism were passing together from the world's mind as a morning mist passes when the sun comes up. His recommendations—? Yes, he had those clear, and ran them over in his mind with a sense ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... you have made known to me," said I, "strikes me all the more because of what you confess you do not know, than because of what you say you believe. They seem to be very like that theism or natural religion, which Christians profess to confound with atheism or irreligion which is their exact opposite. But in the present state of my faith I should have to ascend rather than descend to accept your views, and I find it difficult to remain just ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... creed of the old Persian, he also blended a reformed Magian worship of the elements, which had gained a footing among the Chaldean priests, and which originally came from the Scythic invaders. Magism could not have come from the Semitic races, whose original religion was theism, like that of Melchisedek and Abraham; nor from the Japhetic races, or Indo-European, whose worship was polytheism—that of personal gods under distinct names, like Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. The first to yield to this Magism were the Medes, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Scriptures and free inquiry; as soon as one of these factors is threatened or disappears, Protestantism disappears; a new form of Christianity succeeds it, as, for example, the church of the Brothers of the Holy Ghost, or that of Christian Theism. As far as I am concerned, I see nothing objectionable in such a result, but I think the friends of the Protestant church are logical in their refusal to abandon the apostle's creed, and the individualists are illogical in imagining that they can keep Protestantism ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Adi Samaj, aiming to diffuse the truths of Theism among their own nation, the Hindus, have naturally adopted a Hindu mode of propagation, just as an Arab Theist would adopt an Arabian mode of propagation, and a Chinese Theist a Chinese one. Such differences in the aspect of Theism in different countries must ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... professed by men around, are illustrations of most of the types of religious thought and practice. There are the pantheism of certain Hindu ascetics, the polytheism of the masses, the animism of aboriginal races, and the varieties of theism of Christians, Mahomedans, and the new Hindus respectively. There are the curious phenomena of goddesses as well as gods, and of distinctive features in the character and worship of the female deities. There is the whole scale of worship up from bloody sacrifices ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... doctrine finds itself on the lower level of Arminianism, or Pelagianism, or even subsides to Arianism. From this level to that of Unitarianism the outlet is freer, and the subsidence more rapid. And from Unitarianism to Christian Theism, the passage is largely open for such as cannot accept the evidence of the supernatural in the history of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Avalokitesvara was the Spirit of the Buddhas present in the church. Before many centuries had elapsed, these imaginary beings, with a few others, had become gods to whom men prayed; and thus Buddhism became a religion with some kind of theism,—which Gautama had expressly renounced. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... circular temple at Peking, called T'ien-t'an, or Altar of Heaven (see p. 459), where incensed offerings are made before a tablet, on which is inscribed the name Yuh-Hwang Shang-ti, which some interpret as "The Supreme Ruler of the Imperial Heavens," and regard as the nearest approach to pure Theism of which there is any indication in Chinese worship (See Doolittle, pp. 170, 625; and Lockhart in J. R. G. S., xxxvi. 142). This worship is mentioned by the Mahomedan narrator of Shah Rukh's embassy (1421): "Every year there are some days on which the Emperor eats no animal food.... ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Mr. Voysey, earnest, interesting, and pathetic in accounts of Whitechapel experiences. His Theism fills him with the joy of unbounded faith in a perfect God; but his keen sense of the evil done by the worship of Jesus as another and equal God leads him to a painful blindness to ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... school are recognizable by their evangelical style, their melancholy theism, and, above all, their ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... peace and purpose of mercy for you and for me, the creatures of a day indeed, but who are to live when the days shall cease to be. 'My kindness!' What a wonderful word that is, so far above all the cold delusion of so-called theism! 'My kindness!' the tender-heartedness of an infinite love, the abounding favour of the Father of my spirit, His gentle goodness bending down to me, His tenderness round about me, eternal love that never can die; the thing that lasts in the universe ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... in his face the traces of his suffering. He felt, too, that he had failed in his religious quest, though side by side with this was the consciousness that he had been meant to fail. His religious views were a vague Theism, coupled with a certain tendency to determinism, to which his wanderings had conducted him. Christian determinism he called it, because though his old unquestioning view of the historical evidences of ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Indian in opinion and prejudice, but German in instinct and thought. A little liquor only mellowed him—it thawed away the last remnant of Indian reticence. He talked with his associates upon all the knotty questions of law, art, and religion. Indian Theism and Pantheism were measured against the Gospel as taught by the land-seeking, fur-buying adventurers. A good class of missionaries had, indeed, entered the Cherokee Nation; but the shrewd Se-quo-yah, and the disciples this stoic taught among his mountains, had just sense enough to ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... that when he suffers, since it is for the good of that whole, he, the particle, has no right to complain; and in the long run, that which is the good of all will abundantly manifest itself to be the good of each. Other belief consists not with theism. This is its centre. Let me quote to their purpose the words of my favourite poet; it will do us good to hear his voice, though but for ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... humanity, or meet its indefinite aspirations; and that in degree as it is consciously made so, life becomes animalised and degraded. The whole scheme of Judaism, as first promulgated in all the stern simplicity of its awful Theism, where the Divine is fundamentally and emphatically represented as the Omnipotent and the Avenger, was an emphatic protest against that self-isolation in which the man folds himself up like a chrysalid in ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... an Oriental to be either; the East understands metaphysics too well for that. Of course, the real objection which a philosophical Christian would bring against the religion of Omar, is not that he gives no place to God, it is that he gives too much place to God. His is that terrible theism which can imagine nothing else but deity, and which denies altogether the outlines of ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... are often produced by widely differing processes. In the psychical world that quality which we call spirituality may be associated with and evoked by Theism, or the belief in a Divine Father; by Pantheism, as in the case of Spinoza, whose face at the very first glance impresses you with its spiritual cast; or even by the Buddhist belief in Nirvana. It may also be attained by following the precepts and striving ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... its contents as men deal with the things and events which they are strong enough to modify or control; and who is capable of being moved by appeals such as men make to one another. This belief does not even involve theism; for our earth is an insignificant particle of the solar system, while the solar system is hardly worth speaking of in relation to the All; and, for anything that can be proved to the contrary, there may be beings endowed with full powers over our system, yet, practically, as insignificant as ourselves ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... seems to be implied in the Christian belief in the brotherhood of man. By that phrase I meant to characterise Christianity, not to embark upon the question of Theism. It does not seem possible that we should ever have direct proof through human observation and reasoning of the existence of Deity or of the divine aim and will. To some power, and apparently to some moral power, we must owe our being. ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... objects to details in the narrative, such as the mention of days before the existence of the sun,(169) his real hatred is against the idea of the unity of God, and the freedom of Deity in the act of creation. It is the struggle of pantheism against theism. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... theist, before he becomes a Christian. Theism is a universal intuition, ready to assert itself in practice wherever it is not prevented by an evil will from its normal manifestation. But, because man is in an abnormal condition, this normal ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... who seeks to build his faith and theories of life on the teachings of those whose predilections are away from Christianity, will find it fatal to his lofty ideals and aspirations, while instruction based on Christian theism tends to lift the mind upward, and to foster a hopeful and earnest moral ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... pathology of the functionless wealthy, the half-educated independent women of the middle class, and the people of the Abyss. While the segregating new middle class, whose religious and moral development forms our main interest, is developing its spacious and confident Theism, there will, I imagine, be a steady decay in the various Protestant congregations. They have played a noble part in the history of the world, their spirit will live for ever, but their formulae and organization ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... growing opinion that he ought not to be the object of worship, but only the way by whom we approach to the Father; and as in fact we need no such "way" at all, this was (in the result) a change from practical Ditheism to pure Theism. His "mediation" was to me always a mere name, and, as I believe, would otherwise have been mischievous.[2]—Simultaneously a great uncertainty had grown on me, how much of the discourses put into the mouth of Jesus was really ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... said, he was not inclined to pour out unmixed wine to those who asked for a sample out of mere curiosity. At length, in the epilogue to the "Romanzero," dated 1851, there appeared, amid much mystifying banter, a declaration that he had embraced Theism and the belief in a future life, and what chiefly lent an air of seriousness and reliability to this affirmation was the fact that he took care to accompany it ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... generalities, and easily and quickly roused, and very much in earnest. For instance like that amiable logician the Marquis de Ferrieres, an old light-horseman, deputy from Saumur in the National Assembly, author of an article on Theism, a moral romance and genial memoirs of no great importance; nothing could be more remote from the ancient harsh and despotic temperament. They would be glad to relieve the people, and they try to favor them as much as they can.[1312] They are found detrimental, but they are not wicked; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... there is no desire to save the evidences of design unless they serve at the same time to testify to the nature of that design as beneficent,—I must once more observe that the difficulty thus presented to theism is not a difficulty of modern creation. On the contrary, it has always constituted the fundamental difficulty with which natural theologians have had to contend. The external world appears, in this respect, to be at variance with our moral sense; and when the antagonism ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes |
