"Religious belief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were separated and grew to be independent in their own domestic matters, while united with respect to external affairs, as in the league made in 1251 between Zurich, Schwyz, and Uri;—they were like the Five Nations of Canada, says the historian, but more human through Christianity. Their religious belief was simple and fervent; the Goths, as Arians, had rejected the supremacy of the Pope; and now there came secretly teachers from the East, through Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Hungary, even into Rhaetia, and thence to these fastnesses of the Alps. The mind of men, thus left free, developed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... was very different from that of the Mohammedans; still, all forms of worship were tolerated in Genghis Khan's dominions, and the emperor was accustomed to take good officers into his service wherever he could find them, without paying any regard to the nature of their religious belief so far as their general duties were concerned. But now, in sending this deputation to the sultan, he selected the embassadors from among the Mohammedans at his court, thinking that it would please the sultan better to receive his message through ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... to religious phenomena, take the melancholy which, as we shall see, constitutes an essential moment in every complete religious evolution. Take the happiness which achieved religious belief confers. Take the trancelike states of insight into truth which all religious mystics report.[8] These are each and all of them special cases of kinds of human experience of much wider scope. Religious melancholy, whatever peculiarities it may have qua religious, is at any rate melancholy. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... learned enough from his incoherent talk to clear up what had seemed a mystery. The scandalous reports concerning Olaf Gueldmar were incorrect,—he had evidently laid the remains of his wife in the shell-cavern, for some reason connected with his religious belief, and Thelma's visits to the sacred spot were now easy of comprehension. No doubt it was she who placed fresh flowers there every day, and kept the little lamp burning before the crucifix as a sign of the faith her departed mother had professed, and which ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... discouragement and misfortune they melted away. Only religious communism, the facts seem to prove, can be successful."[1072] Only the communism of the convent and of the monastery, the equality of all based on a fervent religious belief, on a firm discipline, on an equal and absolute poverty, and on the almost insurmountable difficulty of re-entering the world, has hitherto proved practicable from the time of the Essenes to ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... community; they were little disturbed by heresy; and if they had been thus infected they were too busily engaged in contending against the difficulties and dangers of a perilous position to be able to give much attention to differences in religious belief. But soon the purity of their faith was in danger of being corrupted by heretical immigrants. The Puritans were the most numerous and powerful of the fugitives from political and religious tyranny in England, and the dominant sect in North America almost as severely oppressed Anabaptists ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... to the contrary contained in any Act of Parliament, every subject of Her Majesty shall be eligible to hold and enjoy the office of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, without reference to his religious belief. ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... gradual adoption by almost all thinkers of the theory of Evolution, which, partly formulated by Lamarck early in the century, received definite statement in 1859 in Charles Darwin's 'Origin of Species.' The great modification in the externals of religious belief thus brought about was confirmed also by the growth of the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... persecution and opposition that they have stood in most danger, but from fraternal contact, growing appreciation, and ultimate absorption. The Hindu mind, like the Hindu faith, has a fatal facility for accepting, semi-assimilating, and finally absorbing, all of religious belief and conviction that may come into contact with it. And this never necessarily involves the ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... of a young man whose religious belief was shattered in childhood and restored to him by the little white lady, many years older than himself, to whom ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... Shakspere stood aloof. Turn as others might to the speculations of theology, man and man's nature remained with him an inexhaustible subject of interest. Caliban was among his latest creations. It is impossible to discover whether his religious belief was Catholic or Protestant. It is hard indeed to say whether he had any religious belief or no. The religious phrases which are thinly scattered over his works are little more than expressions of a distant ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... ADAM: it is a religious belief that Adam, supposedly the first man, committed sin, the tendency to which he handed down to all men as his descendants. Hence when one does wrong it is said that the Old Adam comes out. QUARTERS: house ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... devoted pilgrims in two great ways of thought. The truth may be, that naturalists took their view of what creation was from Christian men of science who naturally looked in their own special studies for the supports and illustrations of their religious belief. Of almost every labourious student it may be said: "Hic ab arte sua non recessit." And both the believing and the denying naturalists, confining habitual attention to a part of experience, are apt to affirm and deny with trenchant ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... distinct conception of God. I am aware that from time to time explorers imagine that they have found a race of men who have no notion of God, but in almost every instance subsequent investigation has found a religious belief. Such mistakes were made concerning the aborigines of Australia, the Dyaks of Borneo, the Papuans, the Patagonians, and even the American Indians. The unity of the race finds a new and striking proof in the universality ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... interval signify as much to the local official and the necessary entry would be made in the registers. These formalities would be quite independent of any religious ceremonial the contracting parties might choose, for with religious belief and procedure the modern ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... new, and while we compelled every sect to contribute to the payment of a pretended national religion, we became at once the abhorrence of all the Catholics and Protestants in Europe. The repulsion of our religious belief counteracted the attraction of our political principles.—But truth is at length triumphant, and all the ill-intentioned shall no more be able to detach our neighbours from the dominion of the rights of man, under pretext of a religious dominion which no longer exists.—The purpose ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... current of religious belief in the West was almost entirely confined to the one channel of Catholic Christianity. There the mighty river pursued his course, "brimming and bright and large," till the time came when, with the gradual loss of his ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... worshipped did not know how to handle the Jews. They did not understand the Jewish character at all. Extreme tolerance (based upon indifference) was the foundation upon which Rome had constructed her very successful Empire. Roman governors never interfered with the religious belief of subject tribes. They demanded that a picture or a statue of the Emperor be placed in the temples of the people who inhabited the outlying parts of the Roman domains. This was a mere formality and it did not have ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon
... cities and towns, the minister of religion has been tamed: so many weapons are bared against him when he obtrudes his office in a dictatory manner, that, as a rule, there is no more quiet and modest member of society than the urban clergyman. Domination over religious belief is reserved for the exclusive use of those who admit the right: the rare exception to this mode of behavior is laughed at as a bigot, or shunned as a nuisance. But the overbearing minister of nature, who snaps you with unphilosophical as the clergyman once frightened you with infidel, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... the influence of the heart upon the intellect and scholarship, let us hasten to confess that the heart determines the religious belief and creed. It is often said that belief is a matter of pure reason determined wholly by evidence. And doubtless it is true that in approaching mathematical proofs man is to discharge his mind of all color. That two and two are four is true for the poet and the miser, for the peaceable man ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... note, and I can assure you that I believe the promoters of the Affirmation Bill to be already on the side you wish me to take, and its opponents to be engaged in doing (unwittingly) serious injury to religious belief." It is strange to see how much intellectual subtlety combined with interested partisanship can be self-deceived, even in a man who believes himself and is ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... which has been the theme of Dr. Baird in the substantial work to which so many years of his life have been devoted. It is to the elucidation of one portion only of the history of this period that he has given himself; but although in this, the story of the Huguenots, nominally only a matter of religious belief was involved, it in fact embraced almost the entire internal politics of the nation, and the struggles for supremacy of its ambitious families, as well as the effort to achieve ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... fundamental principle of the Reformation is "private judgment" in matters of Faith. The divine message of Revelation is to be interpreted as each one sees best. This principle makes, "de jure," every Protestant independent in his religious belief, and opens the door to the most conflicting interpretations of the Divine Message. "The High Church clergyman to-day," writes A. Birrell, "is no theologian, he is an opportunist." Dogma degenerates into religious ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... that has ever been held up before it—the thought that the church and the school go together, and that the school is simply the handmaid of the church. We recognize the fact that in Congregationalism especially, out of all forms of religious belief, we cannot hope to make men earnest, effective Christians, caring for themselves, managing their own affairs independently, and having in them the heart to go out and work, unless we cultivate their minds as well. And so this Association has ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... was very different. To him, as to Montesquieu, natural causes alone were operative in history; but this was not all; in his eyes there was one influence which, from the earliest ages, had continually retarded the progress of humanity, and that influence was religious belief. Thus his book, though far more brilliant and far more modern than that of Bossuet, was nevertheless almost equally biased. It was history with a thesis, and the gibe of Montesquieu was justifiable. 'Voltaire,' he said, 'writes history to glorify his own convent, like any Benedictine ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... lower rate. In view, however, of the fact that the suicide rate of the Protestant cantons in Switzerland is nearly four times that of the Catholic cantons, it seems probable that Catholicism, as a form of religious belief, does restrain the suicidal impulse. The efficient cause may be the Catholic practice of confessing to priests, which probably gives much encouragement and consolation to unhappy but devout believers, and thus induces many of them to struggle on in spite ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... prevent and punish the publication of views commonly regarded as blasphemous. I deny Mr. Buckle's statement, that all belief is involuntary. I say that in a country like this, every man of education is responsible for his religious belief; but of course responsible only to his Maker. Thus, on totally different grounds from Mr. Buckle, I agree with him in thinking that no human law should interfere with a man's belief. I am not prepared, without much longer thought than I have yet given to ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... accepted, and feeling that his religious belief would be in the way of his advancement, when he changed his master he changed his Church. He was given the command of the valley of Barcelonnette, whence he made many excursions against the Barbets; then he was transferred to the command of the Avennes, of the principality ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Japanese subjects shall, within limits not prejudicial to peace and order, and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, enjoy freedom of religious belief. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... cattleman's fancy, she did not weigh his remarks very heavily. She guessed why Stewart might have been angry at the presence of Padre Marcos. Madeline supposed that it was rather an unusual circumstance for a cowboy to be converted to religious belief. But it was possible. And she knew that religious fervor often manifested itself in extremes of feeling and action. Most likely, in Stewart's case, his real manner had been both misunderstood and exaggerated. However, Madeline had a curious ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... explanation of the instinctive reverence of man for woman which we have been talking about to-night. It was given to me, of course, as a doctrine peculiar to Positivism; but I don't know of any form of religious belief, inconsistent with the recognition of the sacred quality of womanhood on the grounds given by Regnier. Indeed, I am by no means sure whether the doctrine as I received it is orthodox Positivism at all. I have reason to think that Regnier was quite too original ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... worth one's while to enquire as to the prevalency of this practice amongst different people, and whether or not it is in general connected with any peculiarities of religious belief. That it was in use in early times, is certain, for we find a prohibition against it in the Mosaic code, Deut. xiv. 1. and an allusion to it in Jerem. xvi. 6. Mr Harmer, who has some observations on the subject, seems to be of opinion that the expression used in Deuteronomy, the dead, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... the days of Moses, of Samuel, and of David, we cannot hesitate to pronounce that they are distinguished by a remarkable peculiarity, indicating by the most unambiguous tokens, that, in all things pertaining to religious belief, the descendants of Jacob were placed under a special ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... civil practices, our political creed, are all imitation. How many men are there, that have examined the evidences of their religious belief, and can give a sound "reason of the faith that is in them?" When I was a child, I was taught that there were four religions in the world, the Popish, the Protestant, the Mahometan, the Pagan. It is a phenomenon to find the man, who has held the balance steadily, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... never satisfy the higher intellect, became disgusted betimes with mere legal dialectics. Those grand and absorbing mysteries connected with the Christian faith and the Roman Church (grand and absorbing in proportion as their premises are taken by religious belief as mathematical axioms already proven) seized hold of his imagination, and tasked to the depth his inquisitive reason. The Chronicle of Knyghton cites an interesting anecdote of his life at this, its important, crisis. He had retired to a solitary spot, beside ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... execution of the laws to which I have alluded; nor was any one ever condemned by the head of the church for putting Protestants to death. Until, therefore, Rome repeals her exterminating decrees, she must submit to the heavy charge of maintaining the right to persecute men for their religious belief. ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... was the golden age of the Toltec race. The government was just and beneficent; the arts and sciences were cultivated—indeed the workers in these fields, guided as they were by occult knowledge, achieved tremendous results; religious belief and ritual was still comparatively pure—in fact the civilization of Atlantis had by this ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... Simply dressed, he nevertheless gave the impression of superior social station. He was of the New England theological-seminary type—narrow-chested, gaunt as to visage, by temperament drawn to theology, or, in default of religious belief, an ardent enthusiast in sociology. The contracted temples, uncertain gaze, and absence of fulness beneath the eyes betrayed the unimaginative man. Art was a sealed book to him, though taxation fairly fired his suspicious soul. He was nervous because ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Mahomedan countrymen. As a public-server therefore, I would be unworthy of the position I claim, if I did not support Indian Mussalmans in their struggle to maintain the Khilafat in accordance with their religious belief. I believe that in supporting them I am rendering a service to the Empire, because by assisting my Mahomedan countrymen to give a disciplined expression to their sentiment it becomes possible to make the agitation thoroughly, ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... for them, yet, as the primary mission of the Christian was to "go, disciple all nations," they were soon brought, in their endeavors to fulfil this command, into contact with those who not only denied the authority of their Teacher, but who were sceptical about the very fundamentals of religious belief. For the sake of these, then, and occasionally for the further confirmation of the faith of believers, and for purposes of illustration, the patristic writers return again to the discussion of those elements of belief for which they themselves felt no need, and ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... to argue the matter, I suppose," were her words. "It seems to me as if in talking to you I see my old mental self in a mirror, if you'll pardon me for saying so. When we come out from any conviction, and most of all from a religious belief, it seems to us a profound misfortune that any man should still believe what we have decided is false. By and by I think you will see that the chief point is that a man shall believe. What he believes doesn't so much matter. It must be the thing that ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... cannot affirm that the poet's demand for recognition, in his religious belief, of every phase of his existence, has not flowered, once, at least, in most genuinely religious poetry, for the puritan himself feels the power of Emily Bronte's Last Lines, in which she cries with proud ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... as it now stands the citizen, in time of peace at least, is guaranteed, among other matters, the protection of the writ of habeas corpus; freedom from bills of attainder and ex post facto legislation; freedom of religious belief and worship; freedom of thought and its expression; freedom peacefully to assemble with others and petition for redress of grievances; freedom from unreasonable searches and seizure; the right not to be prosecuted for infamous ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... particular argued in great detail (adv. Marc. I. 9-19) that every God must, above all, have revealed himself as a creator. In opposition to Marcion's rejection of all natural theology, he represents this science as the foundation of all religious belief. In this connection he eulogised the created world (I. 13) and at the same time (see also the 2nd Book) argued in favour of the Demiurge, i.e., of the one true God. Irenaeus urged a series of acute and weighty objections to the cosmogony ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Mexicans, by the Chinese at the present time, and to a considerable degree by ourselves (for what else is the wish to do that which a lately-deceased parent was known to have desired?) has been the universal first form of religious belief; and from it have grown up the many divergent beliefs ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the negro race in America is a Christian race. Here are four millions of Christians. We mean, of course, Christian in contradistinction from any other form of religious belief. Before this one fact we may stand in silent wonder and admiration at the processes of God's great providence. If any where on earth the night of heathenism is dark, and the darkness is palpable, it is in the negro's native home. Yet ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman
... lingering remnant of paganism, that, in reclaiming the outcast from the error of his ways, she was making an offering acceptable to that God whom her mere prayers could not move to look with favour upon her prodigal son Andrew. Nor from her own acknowledged religious belief as a background would it have stuck so fiery off either. Indeed, it might have been a partial corrective of some yet more dreadful articles of her creed,—which she held, be it remembered, because she ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Persian, and was a profound scholar and philosopher. When he began to have some doubt about the faith of his fathers, he went to Thibet to study Buddhism, where he was so outspoken that he offended the priests and others, and his religious belief brought upon him the enmity of his own family. In 1803 he lived in Benares, and held a public office at one time. He published works in the languages with which he was familiar, directed against idolatry, which he labored ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... that there are many kinds of myths, of various origins; but there is none, which, if properly taken to pieces, thoroughly traced and cornered, will not be covered by this definition. A Myth has also been defined as a legend connected more or less closely with some religious belief, and, in its main outlines, handed down from prehistoric times. There are only two things which can prevent the contemplation of nature and speculation on its mysteries from running into mythology: a knowledge of the physical laws of nature, as supplied by modern experimental ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... in him by the loose and unguarded talk of a Portuguese sea captain.(203) But other causes undoubtedly contributed to produce in him this intolerant frame of mind. Indeed, the idea of toleration as applied to religious belief had not yet been admitted even in Europe. At this very time Philip II., who had united in his own person the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, was endeavoring to compel, by force of arms, the Netherlands to accept his religious belief, and ...
— Japan • David Murray
... met with in this Sodom of iniquity, he saw the threads, thin indeed yet sufficient, which formed the links between the Israel of the present and its better future. Over against the vain confidence of the multitude Isaiah had hitherto brought into prominence the darker obverse of his religious belief, but now he confronted their present depression with its bright reverse; faint-heartedness was still more alien to his nature than temerity. In the name of Jehovah he bade King Hezekiah be of good courage, and urged that ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... replied evasively, "the Bible stands on a very different ground. We couldn't examine the ancient miracles just as we do modern faith-cures if we wished. The belief in Bible miracles is a poetic and religious belief, and it does not involve any practical question of action to-day. But faith-healing now is a ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... of religious belief was a subject that never had been touched upon or talked of in the Bates family. Money was their God, work their religion; Kate looked at her ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... been discussion as to Mr. Lincoln's religious belief. He was silent as to his own preference among creeds. Prejudice against any particular denomination he did not entertain. Allied all his life with Protestant Christianity, he thankfully availed himself of the services of an eminent Catholic prelate—Archbishop ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... I am concerned," replied the director, "I have no religious belief. But I consider that the Church and the Stage are two great social powers, and that it is beneficial that they should be friends and allies. For my own part, I never lose an opportunity of sealing the ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... the state of affairs in this island, and what we were to encounter, I would have implored him not to come to Trinidad; however, as we are here, we must seek for guidance how to act should we, as I fear we shall, be questioned as to our religious belief." ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... panels. The carving is of the most elaborate description, both human and animal forms being depicted with great fidelity, and representations occur of various forms of tree worship which have been of the greatest use in elucidating the history of this phase of religious belief. Occasionally the junctions of the rails are carved into a series of discs, separated by elaborate scroll-work. These rails are frequently of very large dimensions, that at Bharhut—which is one of the most recently discovered—measuring 275 ft. in circumference, ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... the atheistic and anti-religious works found many purchasers among those who inserted a plank in their party platform stating that the Socialist movement was primarily an economic one and was not concerned with matters of religious belief. ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... and army, which captured the principal seaport, and continued the war for about four years, when a treaty of peace was concluded. Annam was compelled to pay 25,000,000 francs for the expense of the war, and permit every person to enjoy his own religious belief. The missionaries were to be protected, commercial relations were established, and in 1886 a treaty was ratified at Hue, by which the country was placed under the protection of France, though the native princes were nominally continued in power. This was the beginning ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... were a sect among the Jews, who confined their observances and religious belief to the precepts of Moses, while the Rabbinists followed all the wild fancies of the Talmud. An excellent account of these sects is to be found in the Lettres Juives, or Jewish Spy, by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... Holland, as far as yet can be ascertained, have no religious belief or ceremonies. A Deity, or great First Cause, can hardly be said to be acknowledged, and certainly is not worshipped by this people, who ascribe the creation to very inefficient causes. They state that some things called ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... authentic Scripture? My hopes are derived from the prophets and the evangelists. Believing in them with a calm and settled faith, with that consent of the will and heart and understanding which constitutes religious belief, and in them the clear annunciation of that kingdom of God upon earth, for the coming of which Christ himself has taught and commanded ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... As to religious belief, everything was a chaos. What might be to him the ultimate forms and condition of thought, the tired mind was quite incapable of divining. To every stage in the process of destruction it was feverishly alive. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... they have the same plant in Guinea. At this place they were as thick as a man's leg. All the people were stout and lusty, not thin, like the natives that had been seen before, and of a very pleasant manner, without religious belief. The trees were so luxuriant that the leaves left off being green, and were dark colored with verdure. It was a wonderful thing to see those valleys, and rivers of sweet water, and the cultivated fields, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... Virginia the people, without regard to religious belief, were bound to pay a tax of so many pounds of tobacco per poll for the support of the clergy. The parson of each parish was entitled to sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco per annum. When the price of tobacco was low this imposition ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... centered about his boy. He wanted Graham to go. But in giving him he was giving him to the chance of death. Then he must hold to his belief in eternity. He must feel that, or the thing would be unbearable. For the first time in his life he gave conscious thought to Natalie's religious belief. She believed in those things. She must. She sat devoutly through the long service; she slipped, with a little rustle of soft silk, so easily to her knees. Perhaps, if he ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... overturn a system of religious belief founded on ancient and deep-rooted prejudices, supported by power and defended with no less art than industry—to establish in its room doctrines of the most contrary genius and tendency, and to accomplish all this, not by external violence ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... Sixteen Hundred Eighty-nine, things were not allowed to rest even there, for you were considered by the law to be the enemy of the State. In Sixteen Hundred Fifty-six, a thousand Quakers were in prison in England on account of their religious belief, several hundred had been hanged, a few were burned at the stake, many had their ears cut off, others were branded, and many others had their tongues bored through. But strangely enough, the number of Quakers increased. A king can't kill all his people, even ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... some hope, sir," he said, "of inclining the heart of this woman to religious belief, before it is too late. Will you read my report, and say if ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... after having accomplished, during its seven years, the greatest permanent revolution in the history of England, it had snapped the bands with Rome and determined articles of religious belief; it had given the king more power in the church than the pope ever had, and had exalted his prerogative in the state to a pitch never reached before or afterwards; it had dissolved the smaller monasteries, abridged the liberties of the subject, settled ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... first centuries of our era, when the Christians had formed a forbidden sect, they claimed toleration on the ground that religious belief is voluntary and not something which can be enforced by law. This view changed after Christianity triumphed in the Roman Empire and enjoyed the support, instead of the opposition, of the government. The Church, backed by the State, no longer advocated freedom of conscience, but ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... only four ladies, most of the men having native wives. The shoemaker, the blacksmith, the missionary, the planter, all met in that little parlor, to hear a sermon in their native tongue. It made no difference what was their religious belief; they came dressed in their best, and some of them joined in singing the hymns, the tunes doubtless familiar to them long ago, before they left their ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... outside her art was interesting. Her father was a rigid Calvinist, and endeavored to influence his daughter to adopt his religious belief; but her mother, who was a fervent Roman Catholic, persuaded Elizabeth to pass a year in a convent, during which time she ardently embraced the faith of her mother. She was an affectionate daughter to both her parents and ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... Act the Irish Parliament shall not make a law so as either directly or indirectly to establish or endow any religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, or give a preference, privilege, or advantage, or impose any disability or disadvantage, on account of religious belief or religious or ecclesiastical status, or make any religious belief or religious ceremony a condition of the ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... time preparing the treatise which was to embody all the quintessential elements of his philosophical doctrine. This was the essay Nature, which was published in 1836. By its conception of external Nature as an incarnation of the Divine Mind it struck the fundamental principle of Emerson's religious belief. The essay had a very small circulation at first, though later it became ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Jastrow: Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, New York, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... determined to lay aside the cassock, and obliged, as he was, to declare immediately that he was betrothed to Pepita and was going to marry her, Don Luis, notwithstanding his peaceable disposition, his dreams of human brotherhood, and his religious belief, all of which remained intact in his soul, and all of which were alike opposed to violent measures, could not succeed in reconciling it with his dignity to refrain from breaking the head of the insolent count. He knew well that dueling is a barbarous practice; that ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... her beauty or her youth. That she should not have all the happiness to which she thought herself entitled,—(for she believed in happiness, it was a matter of faith with her, wholeheartedly and absurdly, a religious belief),—and that others should have more happiness than herself, would have seemed to her the most horrible injustice. Happiness was not only a religion to her; it was a virtue. To be unhappy seemed to ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... deny the unity of the human race; with such we have no controversy, but it is a part of our religious belief, that "God made of one blood all nations that dwell on the face of the earth;" and on this we would base one of our arguments for the subordination of a part of the human family. It is not necessary to the vindication of our cause, or of truth, to deny the authority, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... never be a solution to any of our fundamental problems, and mankind will never, in the full sense of the word, be free, as long as there exists in the human mind the insanity of religious belief. As long as God occupies a portion of our thoughts, mankind must be content to suffer the ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... illusion that made primitive man recognize in all things, and everywhere, spirits such as his supposed spirit; a belief that the world swarms with invisible spirits which are the cause of disease and death. And thus primitive medicine is inseparable from primitive modes of religious belief. All these phenomena which we consider today natural—the rustling of leaves in a forest, the crash of thunder, the flash of lightning, winds, clouds, storms, and earthquakes—were to primitive man the outward and visible signs of angry gods, demons, and spirits. Similar spirits ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Jacob Forney, Sr. He was the son of a Huguenot, and born about the year 1721. His life was checkered with a vicissitude of fortunes bordering on romance. At the revocation of the edict of Nantes, in 1685, his father fled from France, preferring self-expatriation to the renunciation of his religious belief, and settled in Alsace, on the Rhine where, under the enlightening influences of the reformation, freedom of opinion in matters of conscience was tolerated. The family name was originally spelt ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... poesy of Milton and Shakespeare. But though the general truth of the remark has been acknowledged, the connection which it intimates—a connection clearly referable to the will of that adorable Being who has made 'godliness profitable for all things'—has been too much lost sight of. Religious belief, transmuted in its reflex influences into mere intellectual activity, has too often assumed another nature and name, and forgotten or disowned its origin; and whatever is suited to remind us of the certainty of the connection, or to illustrate the mode of its operations, cannot ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... against the Church was to inaugurate a fundamental revolution in many of the habits and customs of the people. It was not merely a change of religious belief, for the Church permeated every occupation and dominated every social interest. For centuries it had directed and largely controlled education, high and low. Each and every important act in the home, in the guild, in the town, was accompanied by religious ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy! How many old recollections, and how many dormant ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... return, he found that the form of a new oath had been established, which each civil and military officer was to take, according to his own religious belief. An acknowledgment of the independence, liberty, and sovereignty of the United States; an eternal renunciation of George III., his successors, and heirs, and every King of England; a promise to defend the said states against the said George III.; this was the purport of ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... field, and spent a night with them. He was afflicted and confounded by the information which they gave him, that the victorious army was full of hot-headed schemers and levellers, who were against King and Church, prelacy and ritual, and who were for a free Commonwealth and freedom of religious belief and worship. He was appalled to find that the heresies of the Antinomians, Arminians, and Anabaptists had made sadder breaches in the ranks of Cromwell than the pikes of Jacob Astley, or the daggers of the roysterers who followed the mad charge ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... good brother came to me with tears in his voice, if not in his eyes, worried seriously as to my own religious belief because I had asserted in a public address that I believed the earnest prayer of a good Indian woman reached the ear of God as surely as did my own prayers, or those of any man, woman, minister, or priest living. ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... Turanian—worshippers of Budh. The latter process would have made more headway but for the influence of the reigning dynasty, which discourages it on system. The change implied in this proselytism is greater in respect of some social practices than in the abstract principles of religious belief. The polyandry of the Tibetans is in direct contrast with the polygamy of the Moslems, and is far more strictly maintained. It is favored by the circumstance that, contrary to what usually obtains in old countries, the males in this region considerably outnumber the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... to the state should be judged, like his loyalty to God, from his actions only—namely, from his charity towards his neighbors; we cannot doubt that the best government will allow freedom of philosophical speculation no less than of religious belief. I confess that from such freedom inconveniences may sometimes arise, but what question was ever settled so wisely than no abuses could possibly spring therefrom? He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... whole heart, I say it! Be converted, and be happy. Be happy, and you will be a good husband. I speak in your wife 's interest as well as in yours. People who are happy in each other's society, will yield a little on either side, even on questions of religious belief. And perhaps there may follow a more profitable result still. So far as I have observed, a good husband's example is gladly followed by his wife. Don't think that I am trying to persuade you against your will! I am only telling you, in my own justification, ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... appliances by which it stimulates imagination, and opens a refuge for frailty. Impressed with the new ideas thus awakened in his mind, he had in his Esprit des Loix pronounced a studious and sincere eulogium on Christianity; recommending it, not only as the most perfect of all systems of religious belief, but as the only secure basis of social order and improvement. It was material to correct the impression, partly just, partly erroneous, which his earlier and more indiscreet writings had produced; and with this view he wrote and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... literature, so that, were the purely historical record lost, we should have in the works of poetry, fiction, and the drama, correct portraitures of the character, habits, manners and customs, political sentiments, and modes and forms of religious belief among the English people; in a word, the philosophy ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... their life was bound up with that of the village god, and only they had a right to cultivate his land. This would explain the great respect shown by the Marathas for hereditary title to land, as seen above; a feeling which must certainly have been based on some religious belief, and not on any moral idea of equity or justice; no such deep moral principle was possible in the Hindu community at the period in question. The Hindu religious conception of rights to land was thus poles apart from the secular English law of proprietary and transferable right, and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... be expected as the consequence of certain other acts. Perhaps no one in the memory of the tribe has ever tested one of these acts to find whether the expected result would appear; it is held as a matter of religious belief that the result would appear, and the act ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... as possible, for in many of their graves the heads, hands and feet have been found severed from the trunks and lying at some distance from them. On the other hand, the dynastic Egyptians, either as the result of a difference in religious belief, or under the influence of invaders who had settled in their country, attached supreme importance to the preservation and integrity of the dead body, and they adopted every means known to them to prevent its dismemberment and decay. They cleansed it and embalmed it with drugs, spices and balsams; ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... defenders interested him exceedingly. By reason of residence in New England and his life abroad, he was not familiar with the negro, especially his Southern type. Their innocent guile and preposterous religious belief amused him. He both smiled and wondered at their faith in "Linkum," whom at that time he regarded as a long headed, uncouth Western politician, who had done not a little mischief of ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... the sacred book of the Mohammedans, is, according to their belief, the revelation of God to their prophet Mohammed. It contains not only their religious belief, but their civil, military, and political code. It is divided into 114 chapters, and 1,666 verses. It is written in rhythmical prose, and its materials are borrowed from the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the legends of the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... language of poesy that they naturally went unchallenged. But now the grandson of Doctor Erasmus Darwin came forward with the net result of thirty years' continuous work. "The Origin of Species" did not attack any one's religious belief—in fact, in it the biblical account of Creation is not once referred to. It was a calm, judicial record of close study and observation, that seemed to prove that life began in very lowly forms, and that it has ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... burn, considering fire as a ferocious beast, devouring everything which it touched." According to Diodorus of Sicily, embalmment originated in filial piety and respect. De Maillet, however, in his tenth letter on Egypt, attributes it entirely to a religious belief, insisted upon by the wise men and priests, who taught their disciples that after a certain number of cycles, of perhaps thirty or forty thousand years, the entire universe became as it was at birth, and the souls of the dead returned ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... without delay. During this interval, we remained in Mexico full of terror of being attacked by the whole force of a numerous and warlike people, exasperated by the insults we had heaped on their sovereign and their religious belief. Our apprehensions were continually kept alive by the information we received from Donna Marina, and the page Orteguilla; who, by understanding the language, obtained much information which must otherwise have escaped ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... figure, his poetical fancy developed the myth-making faculty, which in process of time elaborated the legend of the hare in the moon, which has left its marks in every quarter of the globe. In Asia it is indigenous, and is an article of religious belief. "To the common people in India the spots look like a hare, i.e. Chandras, the god of the moon, carries a hare (sasa), hence the moon is called Sasin or Sasanka, hare mark or spot." [75] Max Mueller also writes, "As a curious coincidence ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... the reformed doctrines than for national independence. Governments began to form themselves into new combinations, in which community of political interest was far more regarded than community of religious belief. Even at Rome the progress of the Catholic arms was observed with mixed feelings. The Supreme Pontiff was a sovereign prince of the second rank, and was anxious about the balance of power as well as about the propagation of truth. It was known that he dreaded the rise ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... piece of admirable self-portraiture; allusions here and there have a personal significance. In this earliest poem we see the germ of almost all the qualities (humour excepted) which mark Browning's mature work. Intensity of religious belief, love of music, of painting, and of the Greek classics; insight into nature, a primary interest in and intense insight into the human soul, these are already manifest. No characteristic is more ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... or more, such he still remains, speaking the same tongue, leading the same life, cherishing the same habits, entertaining the same wholesome or unwholesome hatred of all civilisation, and now, as then, utterly devoid of even the simplest rudiments of religious belief. His whole attitude of mind is negative. To him all who are not Gipsies, like himself, are 'Gorgios,' and to the true Gipsy a 'Gorgio' is as hateful as is a 'cowan' to a Freemason. It would be interesting to speculate whether, when the Romany folk first began their wanderings, the 'Gorgios' ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... responsibility; and sometimes I am not exactly easy over the account of my stewardship I must render to my poor dead Marcia. The more I see of your lover, the more I dread your marriage. A man who makes no profession of religious belief, is an unsafe guardian of any woman's peace of mind. You who have been reared almost in the shadow of the altar, accustomed to hearing grace at your meals, to family prayers, to strict observance of our ritual, will feel isolated indeed, when transplanted to the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... religious belief and ceremonies of the Indians that I propose showing some of the evidences of their being, as it is believed, the descendants of the dispersed ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... rates, provided that the immigrant is not seeking to avoid prosecution or punishment on religious or political grounds, or persecution, involving danger of imprisonment or danger to life or limb, on account of religious belief. Lunatics, idiots, persons who from disease or infirmity appear likely to become a detriment to the public otherwise than through the rates, and persons sentenced in a foreign country for crimes for which they could be surrendered to that country, are ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... man's religious belief (which is of course the ground of his religious life) should be supposed to come to him without the trouble of learning, any more than any other body of truths and principles on which people act," Mr. Andrewes went on. "And yet what religious instruction ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... legally bound to Louise in England, and could not marry another, the marriage was in all ways illegal for her,—being without the consent of her relations while she was under age; without the ceremonials of the Roman Catholic Church,—to which, though I never heard any profession of religious belief from her or her father, it might fairly be presumed that she belonged; and, above all, without the form of civil contract which is indispensable to the legal marriage ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Queen's party. The princely House of Hamilton generally approved of the deed. Let not those, however, who see in the Archbishop's conduct the natural effect of Catholicism, be in too great hurry to attribute his conduct to his religious belief; for there were Protestant assassins in Scotland in those days, and later. Only a few years before, a very eminent Catholic, Cardinal Beaton, who was Archbishop of St. Andrews, was murdered by Norman Lesley; and John Knox associated himself with Lesley, and those by whom he was aided, to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... largely among rude and uncivilised races, survivals of which even linger on in our own country. To trace back the history of plant-worship would necessitate an inquiry into the origin and development of the nature-worshipping phase of religious belief. Such a subject of research would introduce us to those pre-historic days when human intelligence had succeeded only in selecting for worship the grand and imposing objects of sight and sense. Hence, as ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... earlier and later phases of Indian religious belief, between the Vedic hymns, Brahmanas, Upanishads and their accessory treatises on the one hand, and the epics, Puranas, Tantras and later literature on the other, is due chiefly to the predominance in the latter of the great gods Siva and Vishnu, with the attendant ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... rightly—that a man's religious beliefs, and particularly his method of expressing them, was a part not of his individual but of his social life. But the great upheavals of the Reformation resulted finally in a compromise, a sort of truce, that has put religious belief very largely out of intercourse and discussion. It is conceded that within the bounds of the general peace and security a man may believe and express his belief in matters of religion as he pleases, not because ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... des Postes (now rue Lhomond). Celebrated mathematician. Had some dealings with Felix Phellion, whom he tried to convert to his religious belief. This rather meagre information concerning him was furnished by a certain Madame ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... precipitate the devotion of a precious thing to extinction. And worse; for life was common, and women and Hindoo widows were common; but a Vittorian voice was but one in a generation—in a cycle of years. The religious belief of the connoisseur extended to the devout conception that her voice was a spiritual endowment, the casting of which priceless jewel into the bloody ditch of patriots was far more tragic and lamentable than any disastrous concourse ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... separate government, and was jealous of all outside interference. Lack of good roads and methods of travel made extensive communication between the scattered settlements difficult. Prejudice against strangers, and especially those of a different religious belief, was common. Bonds of sympathy, however, between the citizens of different colonies were not wholly lacking. Their language and customs were mainly English. Their chief desire was to develop a government according ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... that affected them both, Mavis did not altogether attribute to the revival of her husband's religious belief; but she thought that this had accelerated its progress and confirmed its finality. It had begun after the birth of her second child. Then it was that the love between husband and wife purified itself still further; and the refining process had continued; they had passed onward and upward until ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... for granted that Puritanism doesn't survive religious dogma? Believe me, you are greatly mistaken. I am sorry to say I have a large experience in this question. The mass of the English people have no genuine religious belief, but none the less they are Puritans in morality. The same applies to the vastly greater part of those ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... 'think that her faith in Judaism is of much avail to her. She has found pleasure in reading the sacred books of the Jews, and has often expressed warmly her admiration of the great principles of moral living and of religious belief found in them; but I do not think that she has derived from them that which she conceives to be the sum of all religion and philosophy, a firm belief and hope of immortality. I am sure she has not. She has sometimes spoken as ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... and superstitious race of black men should have invented and founded, in the dim obscurity of past ages, a system of religious belief that still enthralls the minds and clouds the intellects of the leading representatives of modern theology,—that still clings to the thoughts, and tinges with its potential influence the literature and faith of the civilized ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... unmistakably indicate that General Lee concealed, under the natural reserve of his character, an earnest religious belief and trust in God and our Saviour. Nor was this a new sentiment with him. After his death a well-worn pocket Bible was found in his chamber, in which was written, "R.E. Lee, Lieutenant-Colonel, U.S. Army." It was plain, from this, that, even during the days of his earlier ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... questions affecting the status in the Russian Empire of American citizens of other faith than that held by the national church, this Government remains firm in its conviction that the rights of its citizens abroad should be in no wise affected by their religious belief. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur
... persistent qualities of race, or the cumulative property of culture, will find something to their purpose in his Saxon blood and his clerical and juristic ancestry. It is worth mentioning, that his grandfather, in the thesis for his doctor's degree, defended the right to entire freedom of religious belief. The name first comes to the surface in Parson Clement Lessigk, nearly three centuries ago, and survives to the present day in a painter of some distinction. It has almost passed into a proverb, that the mothers of remarkable children have been something beyond the common. If there ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... and has them very noisily; but he does not seem to me to attach immense importance to them, certainly not so much as the Red Indian does. I doubt whether there is much real ground for supposing that from dreams came man's first conception of the spirit world, and I think the origin of man's religious belief lies in man's misfortunes. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... most ordinary religious belief is simply an imaginative personification: but that is a childish affair, not a reasonable affair: and that is why most religious teachers praise what they call a childlike faith, but what is really a childish faith. I don't honestly think that our religious beliefs ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and is supposed to be under divine patronage, criticism of the social order savours of impiety, while criticism of the religious belief is a direct challenge to ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... Mr. Gillespie on the point, and think it not a good sign either of our religious belief or religious feeling that such blessings should become really a matter of reminiscence; for if we are taught to pray for one another, and if we are taught that the "prayer of the righteous availeth much," surely we ought to bless one another, and ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... "creed"—derived from the Latin "credo, I believe"—is, in its ecclesiastical sense, used to denote a summary or concise statement of doctrines formulated and accepted by a church. Although usually connected with religious belief, it has a wider meaning, and designates the principles which an individual or an associated body so holds that they become the springs and guides of conduct. Some sects of Christians reject formal creeds and ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... and whole knave," subjoined the Varangian. "With the mask of apparent good-humour he conceals his pandering to the vices of others; with the specious jargon of philosophy, he has argued himself out of religious belief and moral principle; and, with the appearance of the most devoted loyalty, he will, if he is not checked in time, either argue his too confiding master out of life and empire, or, if he fails in this, reason his simple associates ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... The religious belief of the North-American Indians seems, on a first view, anomalous and contradictory. It certainly is so, if we adopt the popular impression. Romance, Poetry, and Rhetoric point, on the one hand, to the august conception of a one all-ruling Deity, a Great ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... population of Ireland belonged to the Church of Rome and were devoted to the religion of that Church. The island was nevertheless compelled to maintain the State Church, which did not even represent the religious belief of the one-sixth of the population that was not Roman Catholic. One of the privileges of the State Church was to exact tithes from all the farmers of the country for the maintenance of its clergymen. Ireland was almost ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and inspired by the belief that it has been written that he is the chosen force which is to regenerate misgoverned nationalities. Order out of chaos; moderation in the hour of victory; no interference with any one's religious belief; stern discipline—these were some of the behests of this young Titan, whose startling and victorious campaigns were amazing an astonished world and causing significant apprehension in the minds of the Directory, who decided to ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... know that every man has a religious belief peculiar to himself? Smith is always a Smithite. He takes in exactly Smith's-worth of knowledge, Smith's-worth of truth, of beauty, of divinity. And Brown has from time immemorial been trying to burn him, to excommunicate him, to anonymous-article him, because he did not take in Brown's-worth ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Church of England, he had said, and said with deep sincerity: 'I wish to see Nova Scotians one happy family worshipping one God, it may be in different modes at different altars, yet feeling that their religious belief makes no distinction in their civil privileges, but that the government and the law are as universal as the atmosphere, pressing upon yet invigorating all alike.' A few years later, in his struggle for one undenominational college, he had ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... year 1830 that the revelations of a celebrated chief, whose life was spared on condition of his denouncing his accomplices, laid bare the whole system. The basis of the Thuggee Society is a religious belief—the worship of Bowanee, a gloomy divinity, who is only pleased with carnage, and detests above all things the human race. Her most agreeable sacrifices are human victims, and the more of these her disciple may have offered up in ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the religious belief of more than ninety-nine hundredths of mankind is determined by the geographical accident of birth. Born in Spain they are Catholics; born in England they are Protestants; born in Turkey they are Mohammedans; born in ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Christ is a message of Divine love, indispensable and therefore true; but He is, as such, a spiritual mystery far more than a definable or dogmatic fact. A definite revelation uttered for all men and for all time is denied by the first principles of Mr. Browning's religious belief. What Christianity means for him, and what it does not, we shall ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the right of her predecessors, and above all to her own views. If she ever thought of making her own religion predominant, or of oppressing that which was newly established, open resistance was announced to her in threatening terms by its leader John Knox. However much this reaction against her religious belief straitened her on the one side, yet on another side it opened out to her a wider prospect. She already had numerous personally devoted partisans in Great Britain, both in Scotland where she could yet once more call them together, and in England ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... replied: "What! I have borne with this old man for eighty years, and you could not bear with him for two days!" After that, so the story goes, Abraham helped everyone who came along, no matter what his religious belief might be. ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... Pontiff of three hundred million men; who do all live and work, these many centuries now; authentically patronised by Heaven so far; and therefore must have some 'religion' of a kind. This Emperor-Pontiff has, in fact, a religious belief of certain Laws of Heaven; observes, with a religious rigour, his 'three thousand punctualities,' given out by men of insight, some sixty generations since, as a legible transcript of the same,—the Heavens do seem to say, not totally an incorrect one. He has not much ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... obvious to common sense that any attempt on the part of the clergy or the laity of Upper Canada to crush the free exercise of religious belief, would be met not only with difficulties absolutely insurmountable, but by the withdrawal of all support from the home government; for, as the Queen of England is alike queen of the Presbyterian and of the Churchman, and is forbidden by the constitution to exercise ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... not better illustrate what I mean than by telling a story, which has nothing to do with Europe, or the Middle Ages, or any particular form of religious belief. It is not a Christian story at all; and it could not be told you exactly as written, for there are some very curious pages in it. But it is a good example of the worth that may lie in a mere product ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... hundred years will not change the character of a single Indian. To a considerable extent he is a superstitious pagan still. He needs Jesus Christ. He needs to learn the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. As it is a part of the Indian man's religious belief that his god does not want him to work and he will be punished if he does, it is especially necessary to touch his religious nature first. When he accepts the Christian's God, then he will be ready to go to work for himself. The taking ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... compensation for a large quantity of cotton purchased in the Confederacy and seized by the military forces of the United States;—Reynolds v. United States (98 U. S. 145), which declared the futility of the plea, in cases of bigamy among the Mormons, of religious belief, claimed under the first amendment of the Constitution; and established the principle that pretended religious belief cannot be accepted as a justification of overt acts made criminal by the law of the land;—The Sinking Fund Cases (99 U. S. 700), which involved the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... by the erection of a visible house of worship in this city, which will be dedicated to-morrow. It has cost two hundred thousand dollars, and no additional sums outside of the subscriptions are asked for. This particular phase of religious belief has impressed itself upon a large and increasing number of Christian people, who have been tempted to examine its principles, and doubtless have been comforted and strengthened by them. Any new movement will awaken some sort of interest. There ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy |
