Anglican priest & novelist (1834-1924)
After his fall, Satan took to himself four wives, Lilith and Naama the daughter of Lamech and sister of Tubal-Cain, Igereth and Machalath. Each became the mother of a great host of devils, and each rules with her host over a season of the year; and at the change of seasons there is a great gathering of devils about their mothers.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
Before the Fall, wheat grew to a tree with leaves like emeralds. The ears were red as rubies and the grains white as snow, sweet as honey, and fragrant as musk. Eve ate one of the grains and found it more delicious than anything she had hitherto tasted, so she gave a second grain to Adam. Adam resisted at first, according to some authorities for a whole hour, but an hour in Paradise was eighty years of our earthly reckoning. But when he saw that Eve remained well and cheerful, he yielded to her persuasions, and ate of the second grain which Eve had offered him daily, three times a day, during the hour of eighty years.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
All the forces in the human soul, all the investigations of the mind, the artistic creations of the fancy, all refinements in the pursuit of pleasure even, are the gravitation of man's higher being towards the Ideal.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Man has no knowledge of things except by the thoughts present to his mind; that is, he can only know what is thinkable.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Interference with personal liberty for opinions is immoral, for every man has a right to his own opinions and a right to express them; and interference with the liberty of A is only lawful when A has violated the rights of B, and then one interference must exactly balance the other. When an idea takes the knife like Lady Macbeth, it has on its hands a dye which all the perfumes of Araby cannot efface. It has defied morality, and, as its penalty, morality delivers it over to impotence.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
In the family, from the first, the idea of authority has appeared. Protection and order are requisites of the family; and these cannot exist without recognition of an authority.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Man has received fewer physical advantages from nature than any other animal. For the protection of his organs he has an envelope as delicate as a rose-leaf, which can he rent by a thorn. The beasts are wrapped in wool or fur, the birds in non-conducting plumage. They have claws and fangs, and are well-shod, and move with agility, but man is tender-footed, slow in his motions, his nails and teeth are fragile.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Our parents were then driven out of Paradise, and one leaf alone was given to each, wherewith to hide their nakedness.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
Scholasticism is the least incomplete, when, starting from revelation, it rests unshaken on its divine foundation, and never deserts the formulae of absolute verity.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The free creature can alone say of itself "I am." In a word, the free creature is the only one with veritable being.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
God, the infinite Being, arrives at the finite only through the eternal Word, the mediating moment; the creature, or the finite, can only lift itself towards the infinite by means of the same mediator.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
If God had designed to work a miracle, it may justly be argued, He would certainly have given, or suffered to be acquired, a preliminary knowledge of the laws on which the miraculous derogation would take effect. But man, even now, knows so little of the world, that he is at all moments arrested by facts in disaccord with those laws which he does know, facts which are only explained by laborious study, and a more profound exploration of the nature of things. Moreover, a miracle which took place at a certain place, at a certain time, and which was to serve all humanity, must have been subjected to several or some witnesses. But the testimony of men, of history, of tradition, is never infallible; and the guarantee to us of the fact of the miracle is a fallible guarantee after all.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Some of the angels by an act of free will obeyed the will of God, and in such obedience found perfect happiness; other angels by an act of free will rebelled against the will of God, and in such disobedience found misery.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets and Other Old Testament Characters
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
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
God is not a person in the human sense, which is exclusive of other personalities. He is immutable, all-inclusive, absolutely free, intelligent and loving, that is, He is personal, because the world exists, and by its existence He becomes relative.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
If Catholicism be the principle of inclusion, Protestantism is the principle of exclusion. The first is the system of conciliation of all verities, the second is the opposition of all verities to their mutual exclusion.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The method by which Nature proceeds is invariable. First she watches over the conservation of the individualities she has called out, then she takes care of the species to which they belong, and lastly, she assigns to all their places and their functions in the scale of creatures. Thus, she introduces into the world duration, stability, and unity.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
No man or corporation has a right to employ any man without giving him the equivalent of his labor.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Man must emphasize himself, and consequently must distinguish himself from God. He must recognize these two terms, himself and God, as terms distinct, not only in thought, but by an act of will, for man must will himself, and by willing himself constitute his personality. However, he must do this without separating himself from God, without excluding God. He must will himself, but he must at the same time will God.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity