Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)
It is not the place or authority of Church or Bible to strangle reason, defy criticism, and fetter inquiry, for reason is a faculty given to man by God for the purpose of criticizing, and thereby distinguishing error, so that he may reject it; and of inquiring, so that he may find truth under the veil which ignorance or error has cast over it. The place of the Church is to declare authoritatively to every man that his own partial view and individual judgment are not the whole truth, and the complete measure of truth, but that the whole truth is the syncretism of all partial aspects.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng,
Blend with ours your voices in the triumph song.
Glory, laud, and honor unto Christ the King,
This through countless ages men and angels sing.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
"Onward Christian Soldiers"
Take a man, place him outside of all society, leave him to his own inspirations; he will do a little more than will an animal born at the same time, but he will not advance far in the study of the world and the appropriation of material for his use. He will begin like the first man, by taking the first step in civilization. If men were to succeed one another in isolation, each would be learning the alphabet of experimental truths, and none would be able to put the letters together into practical rules.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
That personal autocracy is the destruction of religion is evident from the nature of the case; it is the negation of absolute law, and may be called personal theocracy or autotheism, for the individual thereby assumes a right and supremacy which is not the subordination of God to man, but the annihilation of God before the individual man.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The narrative of the Gospels may carry conviction to some minds, the testimony of the Church may take hold of and satisfy others, but if so, what is it that really convinces? It is the fact, or, if the expression be preferred, the idea of the Incarnation commending itself to the soul of man. That idea, looking upon the soul of man, bears its own guarantee with it, and thus, and thus only, through the head or through the heart, enchains consent.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Religion! you should have seen his face, he started at the word as if he had been shot.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Only a Ghost
To create is to love, to will the creature for itself. The creature is therefore willed as its own end. God wills that the creature should be. He wills it in the interest of the creature. He wills its good, and its good consists in the realization of its being.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Before the world was, God was the Absolute, inconceivable save as being. We cannot attribute to Him any quality, for qualities are inconceivable apart from matter.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Evil is the rejection of the infinite for the finite.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!
SABINE BARING-GOULD
"Onward Christian Soldiers"
What is all creation but an aspiration towards what it presupposes, the Infinite, from the atom to the globes that revolve in space, from the mineral to the man?
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Literary ladies may point to the primal mother as the first authoress; for a Gospel of Eve existed in the times of St. Epiphanius, who mentions it as being in repute among the Gnostics.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
Personality is, in fact, only a free being emphasizing and recognizing itself as such. Every man makes his own personality, he is to that extent his own creator.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Society is the theatre, obligatory for the emancipation and development of the creative power in man. To reject social life is to deprive ourselves of the power of profiting by the experience of the past and the present.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Curiosity, is a movement of the soul towards Truth, which it seeks to assimilate by Knowledge. It is the first step in the direction of Certainty.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
My dear sir, if we only talked about what we understood, our conversation would be extremely limited.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Only a Ghost
Freedom consists in the exercise of the will in overthrowing every opposition which restrains the development of the nature of the creature.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
If we are creatures of God, we are morally bound to accomplish our destiny, and we have a right to do so freely, and to resist to the uttermost, as immoral, every assault made upon it. Admit duty as the basis of right, and every difficulty vanishes. Seek a rational basis of right, and you are precipitated into despotism or inconsequence.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
In considering the right of man, we have had to treat him as an unit, but the state of separation is not that of the primitive existence of men. On the contrary, the first man alone could have risen into being outside of all social relations; every other man has been born in the bosom of a family, and therefore finds himself in the midst of a society already shaped; and, being unable to grow up without assistance, the association has maintained itself, and the ideas of those educated in it have been moulded by the organization.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Now, as a ghost, of course I am invisible, but when I wish for information I have the power of investing myself with the outward appearance of an intelligent stranger, and of assuming the language of the country in which I am sojourning. People who would naturally be shy of a Greek-speaking ghost, might have no objection to impart information to a quiet looking stranger dressed in black, and indulging in broken English.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Only a Ghost