"Theism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not ask you to contrast with this infinitely simple and infinitely deep utterance all other thoughts of a divine Being—the cold abstractions of Theism, the dim dreads of popular apprehension, the vague utterances of any mythology, the clouds that men's thoughts have covered over the face of this great truth—and then, to set by the side of all these groping, these peradventures, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... subject to it, and owe to it their existence 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
... 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, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... worship. The leaders have been, in the Unitarian line, such as Channing, who purified Christianity of its Calvinistic harshness and then of its Athanasian metaphysics; and Parker, who took the great step to simple theism,—Christian in ethics and piety, but purely naturalistic in theology. In the other great branch of the New England church,—for in New England alone has America shown religious originality,—Bushnell in a scholastic way, and Beecher with poetic and popular power, resolved ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... of nature, the feeling not of despair, but of what has been called atheism, one ingredient of atheism, has arisen: atheism never fully realised, and wrongly so called—recently it has been called severe Theism, indeed; for it is joyful sometimes, interested and placid always, exultant at the strange splendour of the spectacle which its intellect has laid bare to contemplation, satisfied with the perfection of the mechanism, ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... place, and our town was one of 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, ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... 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 ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... hope, which inspire its pages, we close the book with a sense of something wanting. The author points out the danger there always is of a faith which is intellectually demonstrable becoming, with many, a faith of the intellect merely,—and frankly avows that "there is a cause why Theism, even in warmer and better natures, too often fails to draw out that fervent piety" which is characteristic of narrower and intenser beliefs. This cause she traces to the neglect of prayer, and the consequent removal afar off, to vague confines of consciousness, of the Personality ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... 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, ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... superstitions as little as theological dogma, and treated kings as boldly as it treated priests. Though keenly occupied in watching the war then waging between Russia and Turkey, and already revolving the partition of Poland, he found time to compose a defence of theism. 'Tis a good sign, Voltaire said to him, when a king and a plain man think alike: their interests are often so hostile, that when their ideas do agree, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... 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
... and believed the will of God to be an efficient cause. Doubtless they did, and the Cartesians even believed (though Leibnitz did not) that it is the only such cause. Dr. Tulloch mistakes the nature of the question. I was not writing on Theism, as Dr. Tulloch is, but against a particular theory of causation, which, if it be unfounded, can give no effective support to Theism or to any thing else. I found it asserted that volition is the only efficient cause, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... to be 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 ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... government of the world. Whatever might be the origin of the Christian religion, it furnished the best guide 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 ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... theory of Divine finitude put forward by the present writer will be seen to differ from that of John Stuart Mill, as the idea of self-limitation differs from that of a limitation ab extra—in other words, as Theism differs from Deism. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... for 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 human personality and ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... still occasionally made that this means Pantheism, overlooking the fact that in all mythologies and cosmologies, an ideal and pure theism was recognized as lying back of and beyond the pantheons of the gods and the deification of the powers ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... 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 Voltaire to Rousseau, from Racine to Corneille, ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... 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 quantity ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... who believe that the English are descended from the lost Ten Tribes—persons who are about as representative of the English nation as those who believe that the earth is flat. The English mind, indeed, is but little inclined to this primitive form of theism. The German mind, on the other hand, is curiously addicted to it, and I have brought together a number of instances (Nos. 117-135) in which German writers make the very claim to Divine calling and election which they falsely attribute to the English, and denounce as insanely presumptuous.[3] So, ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... 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 creates and destroys worlds as a wanton child builds up, and anon levels, sand ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... was the princess dead, but he freed 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. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... denies or ignores them can justly be stigmatised as an atheist. Yet, although an inquiry into their soundness is thus plainly second in interest to none, it is not that in which I propose to engage at present, unless indirectly. My immediate concern is not with the strength of theism, but with the weakness of atheism, and the hollowness of the latter's dialectical pretensions. What in every form of piety is most provocative of philosophic scorn, is its forwardness of faith, its eagerness of acquiescence; but to this sort of reproach I expect to be able to show ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... credence. The only difference is that where Montaigne, disparaging the powers of reason by the use of that very reason, used his "doubt" to defend himself alike against the atheists and the orthodox Christians, Catholic or Protestant, himself standing simply to the classic theism of antiquity, Pascal seeks to demolish the theists with the atheists, falling back on the Christian faith after denying the capacity of the human reason to judge for itself. The two procedures were ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... 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 ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... surrender them to the guidance of others in those momentous concerns, 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 must stoop to learn from his own children ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... 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 outspoken and sincere. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... of its own, and is not the cause of the being of this one except as influencing its changes. God is the mover of the Spheres, but not their Creator, hence he stands outside of the world. This is Theism. In Israeli there is a continuity of God, the intelligible world and the corporeal, all being ultimately the same thing, though the processes in the two worlds are different. And yet he obviates Pantheism by declaring that God is a principle not ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... minded and most uninformed manufacturers of "Grellmann-diluted" pamphlets, on the Gipsies, their parallel to the Jews is most apparent. All over the world this black and God-wanting shadow dances behind the solid Theism of "The People," affording proof that if the latter can be preserved, even in the wildest wanderings, to illustrate Holy Writ—so can gipsydom—for no apparent purpose whatever. How often have we heard that ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... this dualistic 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, who adopted the religion ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... called The Necessity of 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 whom such a revelation is not accorded ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... 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), Socrates, Plato, ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... 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 attributed to Brahmins; and so on—the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... 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 ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... religion. He endeavoured to gain over the citizens by shewing them that their views of the Godhead could not stand the test of a vigorous and discriminating logic, and that Christianity alone rested on a sound philosophical foundation. But the exposition of a pure system of theism had comparatively little influence on the hearts and consciences of these system-builders. Considering the time and skill devoted to its culture, Athens had yielded perhaps less spiritual fruit than any field of labour on which he had yet operated. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... 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 Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... 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 ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... way of redemption. It is therefore really at one with the spirit of the New Testament, whilst all other systems are couched in the spirit of the Old; that is to say, theoretically as well as practically, their result is Judaism—mere despotic theism. In this sense, then, my doctrine might be called the only true Christian philosophy—however paradoxical a statement this may seem to people who take superficial views instead of penetrating to the heart ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... he 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
... sentence 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 ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... at this time Harriet 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. She already accepted the truth of necessity, believing that every ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... hitherto been unfavourable to superstition. 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 attributes ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... much as I revered some of them. I had to test, examine, and conclude for myself. I evidently felt the difficulties of belief, as most of my fellow-students did not. At New Haven the main outlines of evangelical orthodoxy, at Cambridge the fundamental ideas of theism, were accepted, as a rule, without serious question. I envied my fellows their assurance; I, too, craved assurance, but I had to get it in my own way, and I was plunged into investigations, and beset by doubts that did not seem to occupy or perplex them. The question was, where could I find a ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... have always marveled at is Balfour's capacity for mental detachment. In the first year of the war he found time to deliver, extempore, the Gifford lectures, and in the next year he published "Theism and Humanism." It is said, of course, that he had a great gift for getting or allowing other people to do his work in the war council and the admiralty; but that does not ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... 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 with regard ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... be divided into two kinds—the religion of the man, and that of the citizen. The first, without temples, without altars, without rites, limited to the inner and private worship of the Supreme God, and to the eternal duties of morality, is the pure and simple religion of the Evangel, the true theism. The other, established in one country only, gives that country its own gods, its own tutelary patrons; it has its own dogmas and ritual, and all foreigners are deemed to be infidels. Such were all the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... Anaxagoras expounded the higher Greek religious ideas, 617-m. Anaxagoras gives an account of the origin of things, 495-m. Anaxagoras includes in Mind moral principles as well as life and motion, 677-l. Anaxagoras' "Intelligence" principle possessed the defects of "Necessity", 677-l. Anaxagoras' Theism subversive of Mythology and outward religion, 679-u. Anchises, in the Aenid, taught Aeneas the doctrine of Universal Soul, 666-m. Ancient Hidden One contains no female; His totality is male; Hua, He, 763-u. Ancient Knightly virtues and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... 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 ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... 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 ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... evil 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 ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... to the probabilities of the case. Relatively to myself, I am quite sure that the region of uncertainty—the nebulous country in which words play the part of realities—is far more extensive than I could wish. Materialism and Idealism; Theism and Atheism; the doctrine of the soul and its mortality or immortality—appear in the history of philosophy like the shades of Scandinavian heroes, eternally slaying one another and eternally coming to life again in a metaphysical "Nifelheim." It is getting on for ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... religion of Zingis that best deserves our wonder and applause. [501] The Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a Barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy, [6] and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration. His first and only article of faith was the existence of one God, the Author of all good; who fills by his presence the heavens and earth, which he has created by his power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes; and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... with Rousseau and they corresponded at length in egard to the publication of the Expos succinct, which was to justify Hume in the eyes of the French. Hume and Holbach had much in common intellectually, although the latter was far more thoroughgoing in his repudiation of Theism. ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... 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 and glorify a mountain, was, "Praise God ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... of the 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 ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... need have felt complimented by the assignment of the master. He has the special laxity of the time in point of "morality," or at least of decency; its affectations of rather childish perfectibilism and anti-theism; and the tendency of at least a part of it to an odd Calibanic jesting. Bage is good-tempered enough as it is: but he rather suggests possible Carrier-and-Fouche developments in a favourable and fostering atmosphere. One does ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... less loathing, and with more contempt, than from the Canti Carnascialeschi and Aristophanic pageants of Lorenzo, which made Florence at Carnival time affect the fashions of Athens during the Dionysia. It is true that Italy owed much to the elevated theism developed by Platonic students. While the humanists were exalting pagan license, and while the Church was teaching the worst kinds of immorality, the philosophers kept alive in cultivated minds a ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... on earth, until a web of fiction and allegory was woven, partly by art and partly by the ignorance of error, which the wit of man, with his limited means of explanation, will never unravel. Even the Hebrew Theism became involved in symbolism and image-worship, borrowed probably from an older creed and remote regions of Asia,—the worship of the Great Semitic Nature-God AL or ELS and its symbolical representations of JEHOVAH Himself were ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... found their choice a great god above all gods. So the future may suffer not from the loss but the multiplicity of faith; and its fate be far more like the cloudy and mythological war in the desert than like the dry radiance of theism or monism. I have said nothing here of my own faith, or of that name on which, I am well persuaded, the world will be most wise to call. But I do believe that the tradition founded in that far tribal battle, in that far Eastern land, did indeed justify itself by leading up to a lasting ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... indifference—into absolute and often very cynical negation. They have become, as Sheridan wittily said, like the blank page between the Old and the New Testament. Others have taken refuge in a kind of highly rationalised Judaism little different from pure Theism. Some of the most independent, scientific, and trenchant criticism of the Old Testament writings has proceeded from members of the race which was once distinguished for the most complete and superstitious worship of the letter of the law. Spinoza in his 'Tractatus ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... elements of existing religions, 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 and self-tortures and from worship ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... below rather than above the average. 'They' always seem very fallible, very human to me, and nothing 'they' do startles me. I have no patience with those who make much of the morbid side of this business. To me it is neither 'theism' nor 'diabolism,' and is neither destruction of an old religion or the basis of a new one—But all this verges on the controversial, and is not good for our psychic. Let's sing some good old tune, like 'Suwanee River' ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... granite of the Alps or the Himalaya, as compared with the changing alluvium of the Nile or the Ganges. As the serene air that ever surrounds the head of Mont Blanc excels in purity the mists of the fen, so does the lofty theism of the Mosaic account rise high above the nature-worship of the Egyptian and Hesiodean theogonies. "In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... temperamental differences, 12. Their systems must be reasoned out, 13. Their tendency to over-technicality, 15. Excess of this in Germany, 17. The type of vision is the important thing in a philosopher, 20. Primitive thought, 21. Spiritualism and Materialism: Spiritualism shows two types, 23. Theism and Pantheism, 24. Theism makes a duality of Man and God, and leaves Man an outsider, 25. Pantheism identifies Man with God, 29. The contemporary tendency is towards Pantheism, 30. Legitimacy of our demand to be essential ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... 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 that divine ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... Heart upon it, with a council of 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; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... historically connected with one 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; ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... 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, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... religions, is obvious. The world's Parliament of Religions, held in Chicago in the year 1893, is an illustration of this statement. The dragon, the beast, and the false prophet met in "mutual confidence and respect," a "brotherhood" of religions. Theism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism, Catholicism, the Greek Church, and Protestantism in many forms—all these were represented. And the devotees of these religions met, as they said, "To unite all religion against all irreligion; ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... nations were controlled more or less by priests, who, as their power increased, instituted a caste to perpetuate their influence. Whether or not we hold the primitive religion of mankind to have been a pure theism, directly revealed by God,—which is my own conviction,—it is equally clear that the form of religion recorded in the earliest written records of poetry or legend was a worship of the sun and moon and planets. I believe this to have been a corruption of original theism; many think it to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... proof that 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 of a deity, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Atheists, and they are justified in doing so if theism inculcates the existence of a conscious God governing the universe by his will-power. Under such circumstance the Adwaitee will come under the same denomination. Atheism and theism are words of doubtful import, and until their meaning is definitely ascertained it ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Alexandretta and the Regent's Park. Her religious 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, and was brought back thoroughly frightened by a policeman. I wonder what the policeman thought ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... himself free, or he wishes to represent a character who has shaken himself free from Revelation, and is fighting the problem of life, its meaning and worth, without any help from Law, or Prophet, or Psalm. He does retain belief in what he calls 'God,' but his pure Theism, with little, if any, faith in a future life, is a creed which has no power of unravelling the perplexed mysteries of life, and of answering the question, 'What does it all mean?' With keen and cynical vision he looks out not only ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not escaped attention, that the honours paid to the illustrious Darwin, are an admission that our received Christianity is open to revision. In consequence of a few conciliatory phrases, Darwin has been credited with theism; nevertheless he has ridden rough-shod over all that is characteristic in our established creeds. Can the creeds come scathless out ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... especially when the pagans had yielded to the supremacy of the cross. The same fact is noticeable in the history of Mohammedanism. When it was first declared by the extraordinary man who claimed to be the greatest of the prophets of God, when it was a sublime theism, immeasurably superior to the prevailing religions of Arabia, and especially when it was promulgated by moral means, its converts were few, but these were lofty. When it was extended by an appeal to the sword, and to the bad passions of men, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... worshipped in the Egyptian temple the celestial being, the god of heaven or of the sun, whose nature is light, who is righteous and good, and who more and more fills the mind of the worshipper with noble adoration, and leads him towards the high truths of theism. These high gods of Egypt were represented, as we have seen, from the earliest times of which we have any knowledge, under animal forms. As far back as we can see, Hathor is a cow, and Horus a hawk, and Anubis a jackal. Did beast worship spring by a process of degradation from the ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... inherent excellence, forms the controlling motive of 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 ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... the most general terms can I trace the other origins of these present views. I do not think modern religion owes much to what is called Deism or Theism. The rather abstract and futile Deism of the eighteenth century, of "votre Etre supreme" who bored the friends of Robespierre, was a sterile thing, it has little relation to these modern developments, it conceived of God as an infinite Being of no particular character whereas ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... or reverence in others, the excitement of fasting, charms, and dreams. As far as the term has been defined this is Shamanism. Now lest our notions as to the religion of the Indians be rendered unduly favourable through the ideas of pure theism, called up by the missionary term Great Spirit, we must simply remember, in the first place, that the term is ours, not theirs; and that those who, by looking to facts rather than words, have criticised ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... 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 wax old like a garment. Their moral austerity—that touch of contempt ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy, in the minds of men. Therefore theism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Caesar) were civil times. But superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... 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 ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... Faraday, Joule, the Duke of Argyll, Lord Kelvin, Stokes, Tait, Adams, Clerk Maxwell, Salmon, Cayley, and Pasteur. And others would have to be added who, after contending for a while as materialists or agnostics, ultimately changed their attitude and joined the supporters of Theism. Haeckel frankly admitted that there were such defaulters from his cause in Germany, giving the names of "two of the most famous of living scientists, R. Virchow and E. Du Bois Raymond," amongst others. On the other hand he recommended his ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... founder of the Sikh brotherhood have been driven into dissent by the yoke of Brahmanism. Generally worshippers of some form of Vishnoo, and occasionally, as in Kabeer's case, influenced by the monotheism of Islam, these sects begin by professing theism and opposition to caste, though Hindooism is elastic enough to keep them always within its pale and ultimately to absorb them again. For sixteen years Krishna Pal was himself a gooroo of the Ghospara sect, of which from Carey's to Duff's earlier days the missionaries ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... "kernel of the psychological problem" than many of his predecessors. The second article contains a good discussion of the bearing of the book on the question of design, and concludes by finding in it a vindication of Theism more wonderful than that in Paley's 'Natural Theology.') have ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... A Treatise on Theism and on the Modern Skeptical Theories. By Francis Wheaton. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various |
