"Theism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tendency to pure theism, and met the objection that it retards improvement by turning the minds of some of the best men from social affairs, by the counter-proposition that it is useful to society, apart from the question of its truth,—useful as a provisional belief, because people will identify serviceable ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... began the perusal of his prize in a suspicious mood. Nor was he long before he sympathised with Mr Gunnery's distaste. Though too young to grasp the arguments at issue, his prejudices were strongly excited by the conventional Theism which pervades Figuier's work. Already it was the habit of his mind to associate popular dogma with intellectual shallowness; herein, as at every other point which fell within his scope, he had begun to scorn average people, and to pride himself intensely on views ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... late has shown more Conservative tendencies; takes a deep interest in the scientific theories and questions of the time; wrote, among other works, a book in 1866 entitled "The Reign of Law," in vindication of Theism, and another in the same interest in 1884 entitled "The Unity ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Bostroem philosophy, and as such an ardent Theist. At this point we came into collision, my researches and reflections constantly tending to remove me farther from a belief in any God outside the world, so that after the Meeting Carl von Bergen and I exchanged letters on Theism and Pantheism, which assumed the width and thickness of treatises. For very many years the Swedish essayist and I kept up a friendly, though intermittent intercourse. Meanwhile von Bergen, whose good qualities included ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... actions. All her external aspects are in harmony with the weakness and the strength of human nature. We recognize ourselves in her, and find all the characteristics of our own humanity there developed into a theism so divine, clothed with a personification so exquisite and poetical, that the Hellenic mythology seems still to live in our hearts, a silent and shadowy religion without ceremonies or altars or sacrifices. The festive gods ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... Mr. Voysey, earnest, interesting, and pathetic in accounts of Whitechapel experiences. His Theism fills him with the joy of unbounded faith in a perfect God; but his keen sense of the evil done by the worship of Jesus as another and equal God leads him to a painful blindness to that ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... 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 ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... 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 ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... a connection between the proposed substitutes for religion and the special training of their several authors. Historians tender us the worship of Humanity, professors of physical science tender us Cosmic Emotion. Theism might almost retort the apologue of the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... 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
... 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 ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... as to make it plain that all these groups of accounts are 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; Judges, the tale of the heroic age of Israel prior ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... 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 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, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... culminates in theology of a kind which he nowhere attributes to Socrates. He represents him, indeed, as a man of a deeply religious nature, but we do not gather that he had felt the need of a formal doctrine of God. Plato, on the other hand, has left us the first systematic defence of Theism we know of, and it is based entirely on his doctrine of soul as the self-moved mover. But the highest soul, or God, is not only the ultimate source of motion, but also supremely good. Now, since there are many things in ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... society, and is said to have sent the servant out of the room on one occasion when one of the company was doubting the existence of the Deity, giving as a reason that he did not want to have his throat cut. Yet it is probable that his theism went a little deeper than this. He says that matter is probably eternal and self-existing, and that God is everlasting, and self-existing likewise. Are there other Gods for other worlds? It may be so; some nations ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Scriptures and free inquiry; as soon as one of these factors is threatened or disappears, Protestantism disappears; a new form of Christianity succeeds it, as, for example, the church of the Brothers of the Holy Ghost, or that of Christian Theism. As far as I am concerned, I see nothing objectionable in such a result, but I think the friends of the Protestant church are logical in their refusal to abandon the apostle's creed, and the individualists are illogical in imagining that they can keep ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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, they must certainly ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... 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 law, but of every reasonable ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... logical, learned, and strong as a Titan, he fairly vanquishes all antagonists by pure mental superiority; never understating their views or evading their arguments, but meeting them in all their force and crushing them." Another critic says: "It is a great argument for Theism and against Atheism, magnificent in its strength, order, and beauty.... The style is lucid, grave, harmonious, and every way commensurate with the dignity and importance of the subject.... The chapter on Pantheism is admirable. ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... is without mysteries; mystery is its essence; a religion destitute of mysteries would be a contradiction of terms. The God which serves as a foundation to natural religion, to theism or to deism, is Himself the greatest mystery to a mind wishing to dwell ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... Mr. Hume, in the Natural History of Religion, sagaciously remarks, that the most refined and philosophic sects are constantly the most intolerant. * Note: Hume's comparison is rather between theism and polytheism. In India, in Greece, and in modern Europe, philosophic religion has looked down with contemptuous toleration on the superstitions ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... life as "the sum of all the functions by which death is resisted," he was as conclusively indulging in the argumentum in circulo as if he had said, "Life is the antithesis of what is not life." This would be as luminous a definition as that which should make Theism the opposite of Anti-theism, or the Algebraic statement x-y the antithesis of xy—one of no definitional value so long as there is no known ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... 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 entirely ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... subject, and that, as one of his friends said, he was not inclined to pour out unmixed wine to those who asked for a sample out of mere curiosity. At length, in the epilogue to the "Romanzero," dated 1851, there appeared, amid much mystifying banter, a declaration that he had embraced Theism and the belief in a future life, and what chiefly lent an air of seriousness and reliability to this affirmation was the fact that he took care to accompany it ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... not, whatever reason I may have to rejoice in case such ideas he realised, I can upon such an issue have none to tremble. I look upon myself to have more reason to be temporally afraid than eternally so. Dr. Priestley or any other Doctor can put his name boldly to a book in favour of Theism, loudly call the supporters of a contrary doctrine to the argument, and if no answer is produced, assert their own reasoning to be unanswerable. In that sense their sort of reasoning has been frequently unanswerable. Here however is an instance of a poor unknown individual, making experience ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... executive; He is represented in the heart of man by His viceroy—conscience. The soul is immortal, and God is just; therefore let wrong-doers beware. In L'Histoire de Jenni the youthful hero is perverted by his atheistic associates, and does not fear to murder his creditor; he is reconverted to theism, and becomes one of the best men in England. As to the evil which darkens the world, we cannot understand it; let us not make it worse by vain perplexities; let us hope that a future life will right the balance of things; and, meanwhile, let us attend to the counsels of moderation and good sense; ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... 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 ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... Darwin comes much nearer to the '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 ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... mild, very courteous, tolerably cultivated, fond of generalities, and easily and quickly roused, and very much in earnest. For instance like that amiable logician the Marquis de Ferrieres, an old light-horseman, deputy from Saumur in the National Assembly, author of an article on Theism, a moral romance and genial memoirs of no great importance; nothing could be more remote from the ancient harsh and despotic temperament. They would be glad to relieve the people, and they try to favor them as much as they can.[1312] They are found detrimental, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the truth of the trinity, whereof the triangle is an emblem—though with Pythagoras it was a symbol of holiness, of health—was never meant to contradict the unity of God, but to make it more vivid. As too often interpreted, it is little more than a crude tri-theism, but at its best it is not so. "God thrice, not three Gods," was the word of St. Augustine (Essay on the Trinity), meaning three aspects of God—not the mathematics of His nature, but its manifoldness, its variety in unity. The late W.N. Clarke—who put more common sense into theology ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... he becomes a Christian. Theism is a universal intuition, ready to assert itself in practice wherever it is not prevented by an evil will from its normal manifestation. But, because man is in an abnormal condition, this normal action of his powers can be restored only by the ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... beams? What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... They had too much wisdom to meet bigotry with bigotry, or set Protestant intolerance against Catholic absolutism. But they had too much sympathy with the spirit of Europe to react into free thinking or to make a frontal attack on revealed truth. They took their stand on a fundamental Christian theism, the common religion of all good men; they repudiated the negative ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... compartment, and the freight of doctrine finds itself on the lower level of Arminianism, or Pelagianism, or even subsides to Arianism. From this level to that of Unitarianism the outlet is freer, and the subsidence more rapid. And from Unitarianism to Christian Theism, the passage is largely open for such as cannot accept the evidence of the supernatural in the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... form. Yet even these transferred to the Sun the worship which, in speculation, they considered due only to the Supreme Mind. The history of the Jews is the record of a continued struggle between pure Theism, supported by the most terrible sanctions, and the strangely fascinating desire of having some visible and tangible object of adoration. Perhaps none of the secondary causes which Gibbon has assigned for the rapidity with which Christianity spread over the world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... or 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 not quite know why Scott, who included in ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... patris—Amen," "Et vitam venturi," and "Osanna in excelsis," nevertheless gave his composition a scope which placed it beyond the apparatus of the Church, and filled it with a spirit that spurns the limitations of any creed of less breadth and universality than the grand Theism which affectionate communion with ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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
... fate has awaited the germ of Religion. Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, and out of the action and interaction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has taken the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the present differs from that of the past, it is because ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... infinitely contemptible to him. In death, I think, he has neither fear nor hope. Atheism, truly, he never could abide: to him, as to all of us, it was flatly inconceivable that intellect, moral emotion, could have been put into HIM by an Entity that had none of its own. But there, pretty much, his Theism seems to have stopped. Instinctively, too, he believed, no man more firmly, that Right alone has ultimately any strength in this world: ultimately, yes;—but for him and his poor brief interests, what good was it? Hope for himself in Divine Justice, in Divine ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... 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 ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... 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; the thing that lasts in the universe is His kindness, which continues from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... born, and by which he lived, in much closer obedience to its laws than we of this latter-day Christendom. It seems to me, if we cannot respect the religion of others we deny our own. If we are powerless to see the theism behind the overlying animism, we argue a strange ignorance of what crept over other faiths, in the way of legends and superstitions quite foreign to the simplicity ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... a little pamphlet 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 are in consequence ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... that the doctrines of theism and of the soul need not to be false, even if they were arrived at slowly, after a succession of grosser opinions. But if the doctrines were reached by a process which started from real facts of human nature, observed by savages, but not yet ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... time, and is now in its death-pangs. Material interests claim minute attention. All we want is the assertion of a pure, rational religion. It was a great misfortune that Marcus Aurelius did not popularize the theism which he expressed in his writings. It would not then have been possible for Constantine to establish the Christian religion, and the world would have been spared the irruption of the barbarians, and the many subsequent periods ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... 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 ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... always discovering to me things which I would never have seen myself and opening up to me new avenues of knowledge, delight and adoration. There was something so intimate in his theism that it purified, elevated and broadened mine, even when I could not agree with him. His constant exclamation when a fine landscape would burst upon our view, or a shaft of light would pierce the clouds and glorify a mountain, was, "Praise God from ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... government of the world postulates of practical philosophy. More generally, it is just this conviction that 'what is' has its source and explanation in what 'ought to be', which is the central thought of all philosophical Theism. If we can accept such a faith, we shall not, of course, be enabled to eliminate mystery from things. We shall, for instance, be still quite in the dark about the way in which evil comes to be in a world of God's making. We shall neither be able to say ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... has not borne examination. It is artificial and sterile. Look at Christianity. It is the highest of all religions, but it is not monotheism. Look at Buddhism. In its pure form it is not even theism. The second classification is more fruitful for ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... that without faith in Christ such faith in God as is possible is feeble, incomplete, and will not long last. Historically a pure theism is all but impotent. There is only one example of it on a large scale in the world, and that is a kind of bastard Christianity—Mohammedanism; and we all know what good that is as a religion. There are plenty of people amongst us nowadays who claim to be very ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... mind, who seeks to build his faith and theories of life on the teachings of those whose predilections are away from Christianity, will find it fatal to his lofty ideals and aspirations, while instruction based on Christian theism tends to lift the mind upward, and to foster a hopeful and earnest ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... 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 religions of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... in a world from which God seems to be an absentee. What had been supposed to be letters from our friend are proved forgeries; what we called his loving actions are the accumulated results of the natural law of heredity. Yet even if theism had to be abandoned, it would have ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... no distinctive contribution to make, he gave a new turn to speculation. There is something almost of magic in the ease with which he demolishes divine right and the social contract. The one is an inevitable deduction from theism, but it protects an usurper not less than an hereditary king, and gives a "divine commission" as well to a constable as to the most majestic prince. The proponents of the social contract are in no better case. "Were you to preach," he remarks, "in most parts of the world that political connections ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... according to which, in the words of Jean Paul, "heaven becomes a gas, God a force, and the second world a grave." He fails to see that all such appeals are beside the question; and deserts the ground of his answer to John Sterling's expostulation, "that is downright Pantheism": "What if it were Pot-theism if it is true?" It is the same inconsistency which, in practice, led his sympathy for suffering to override his Stoic theories; but it vitiated his reasoning, and made it impossible for him to appreciate the calm, yet legitimately emotional, religiosity ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... author, the poem of Job is the most striking presentation of the most obscure and fascinating problem that ever puzzled and tortured the human intellect: how to reconcile the existence of evil, not merely with the fundamental dogmas of the ancient Jewish faith, but with any form of Theism whatever. Stated in the terms in which the poet—whom for convenience sake we shall identify with his hero[3] manifestly conceived it, it is this: Can God be the creator of all things and yet ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... system, successively meditated by enthusiasts of very distinct characters, must of necessity experience vicissitudes, and quickly depart from its primitive simplicity. The greater part of those philosophers who have been disposed to substitute theism for superstition, have not felt that it was formed to corrupt itself—to degenerate. Striking examples, however, prove this fatal truth. Theism is almost every where corrupted; it has by degrees given way to those superstitions, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... produced by widely differing processes. In the psychical world that quality which we call spirituality may be associated with and evoked by Theism, or the belief in a Divine Father; by Pantheism, as in the case of Spinoza, whose face at the very first glance impresses you with its spiritual cast; or even by the Buddhist belief in Nirvana. It may also be attained by following the precepts ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... 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 ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... 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 ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... fact of immanence; and it may be said at once that the 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
... the vitals of non-catholic sectaries. The teaching of so-called Christian churches has evaporated into a mere natural theism, the supernatural element has disappeared. Both the Socialist and Agnostic frankly confess that the demolition of the sects is but a preliminary skirmish: the real battle lies farther afield. The lines of conflict between us and them are daily drawing closer, and it is a question ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... shadow world for me. The messages are intelligent, but 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' or 'Lily Dale.' We must keep to the ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... phrase from it. The sentence in full is this: "By a wholly new line of reasoning, drawn exclusively from those sources [science and philosophy], this book aims to show that, in order to refute agnosticism and establish enlightened theism, nothing is now necessary but to philosophize that very scientific method which agnosticism barbarously misunderstands and misuses." There is no "pretension" whatever in these words, except that the general "line of reasoning" ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... and the race of mortals, and readily suffers all things on their account. But where it departs from the Calvinistic Christianity and exhibits him as the defier of Jove, it represents a state of mind which readily appears wherever the doctrine of Theism is taught in a crude, objective form, and which seems the self-defence of man against this untruth, namely a discontent with the believed fact that a God exists, and a feeling that the obligation of reverence is onerous. It would steal if it could the fire of the Creator, and live ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... corroboration of the fact of the logical connexion of Theism with Catholicism in a consideration parallel to that which I had adopted on the subject of development of doctrine. The fact of the operation from first to last of that principle of development in the truths of Revelation, is an argument in favour of the identity of Roman and Primitive Christianity; ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... disappeared. Every source of activity revealed by symbols appears as a fragmentary manifestation; it descends from a single primary, personal or impersonal, spring. At the root of this imaginative construction there is always either theism or pantheism. ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... him, and he bore in his face the traces of his suffering. He felt, too, that he had failed in his religious quest, though side by side with this was the consciousness that he had been meant to fail. His religious views were a vague Theism, coupled with a certain tendency to determinism, to which his wanderings had conducted him. Christian determinism he called it, because though his old unquestioning view of the historical evidences of Christianity had practically ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... resolved to cleanse Hinduism of the superstitious and idolatrous impurities which, as they believed, were only morbid growths on the pure kernel of Hindu philosophy. The Brahmo Somaj, the most vital of all these reform movements, professed even to reconcile Hinduism with theism, though without importing into the new creed the belief in any personal God. British administrators watched and fostered the moral and intellectual progress of India with increasing confidence in the results of Western education, and ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... that his mind had so hard a lot; but every real man must, in one way or another, fight a great battle. . . . Especially I feel indebted to Abbot's article. Truly he 'says, that the great question of the coming days is,—theism, or atheism? Not whether Jesus is our Master, the chief among men, but whether the God in whom Jesus believed really exists; and, by consequence, whether the immortality which lay open to his vision is but a dream of weary and burdened humanity? Herbert Spencer believes in ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... perfect are these prayers asking for a clean heart and a right spirit! And yet 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... Hall. (I must interject a parenthesis here to the effect that matters did not move precisely as we expected; for at table, where most of our time was passed, Francesca had for a neighbour a scientist, who asked her plump whether the religion of the American Indian was or was not a pure theism; Salemina's partner objected to the word 'politics' in the mouth of a woman; while my attendant squire adored a good bright-coloured ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a solidarity as well as a separateness in all human and probably in all lives whatsoever, and this consideration goes far, I think, to establish an opinion that the constitution of the living universe is a pure theism and that its form of activity is what may he described as cooperative. It points to the conclusion that all life is single in its essence, but various, ever-varying and interactive in its manifestations, and that men ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... on which I had been tossing for nearly twelve months. On the following Sunday, I saw them again, and was cordially invited down to their Dulwich home, where they gave welcome to all in doubt. I soon found that the Theism they professed was free from the defects which revolted me in Christianity. It left me God as a Supreme Goodness, while rejecting all the barbarous dogmas of the Christian faith. I now read Theodore Parker's "Discourse on Religion", ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... two things: either that the living instrument was made and perfected under (which is the same thing as by) an intelligent First Cause, or that it was not. If it was, then theism is asserted; and as to the mode of operation, how do we know, and why must we believe, that, fitting precedent forms being in existence, a living instrument (so different from a lifeless manufacture) would be originated and perfected in any other way, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... few. Man had suddenly fallen in love with man. The conventional were rubbing their eyes and wondering why they had ever believed, or even dreamed, that there was a God to love, asking one another what was the secret of the spell that had held them so long. Christianity and Theism were passing together from the world's mind as a morning mist passes when the sun comes up. His recommendations—? Yes, he had those clear, and ran them over in his mind with ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... 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, but ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... hear that a personal friend has fallen into matrimonial courses, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing into theism—a holy sorrow, unmixed with anger; for who am I to judge him? I think at such a sight, as the preacher—was it not Baxter?—at the sight of a thief or murderer led to the gallows: "There, but for the grace of——, goes A.C.S.," and drop a tear ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... Australia, where the strictness of totemism is relaxed. Melanesia and Polynesia show an increased definiteness of theistic figures. Northwestern North America is, in comparison with the East, undeveloped in this regard. Similar relations between totemism and theism appear in India and South America. In a certain number of cases the facts suggest that the former system has been superseded by ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... great interest with which I have at last slowly read the whole of your work.... I never in my life read so lucid an expositor (and therefore thinker) as you are; and I think that I understand nearly the whole, though perhaps less clearly about cosmic theism and causation than other parts. It is hopeless to attempt out of so much to specify what has interested me most, and probably you would not care to hear. It pleased me to find that here and there I had arrived, from my own crude thoughts, at some of the same conclusions ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... institution is condemned by jurist or popular opinion when an opportunity is not given to present the facts on both aspects of the case, just so is no man justified in making a decision between theism and atheism until he becomes acquainted with both sides of the controversy. Freethought but asks a hearing and the exercise of the unbiased reason of the man who has not hitherto been made ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... 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
... in existence; and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some pre-existent Being. Then, as now, the so-called a priori arguments against Theism; and, given a Deity, against the possibility of creative acts, appeared to me to be devoid of reasonable foundation. I had not then, and I have not now, the smallest a priori objection to raise to the account of ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... scholars meet us in astonishing abundance, and along with these, accusations of the most serious nature are brought formally against them. Among these are anger, vanity, obstinacy, self-adoration, dissolute private life, immorality of all descriptions, heresy, theism; further, the habit of speaking without conviction, a sinister influence on government, pedantry of speech, thanklessness towards teachers, and abject flattery of the great, who st give the scholar a taste of their favours and then leave ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... contains in itself the infinite personality and consciousness of every subordinate mind. God is the ocean—we are but the waves; the ocean may be one individuality, and each wave another; but still they are essentially one and the same. We see not how Cousin's Theism can possibly be consistent with any idea of moral evil; neither do we see how, starting from such a dogma, he can ever vindicate and uphold his own theory of human liberty. On such theistic principles all sin must be simply defect, and all defect must be absolutely fatuitous.' ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... of this school are recognizable by their evangelical style, their melancholy theism, and, above all, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... recognition of a principle apart from nature, independent of nature, yet moulding, regulating, and sustaining nature. The idea of Personality is essential to Theism. A-theism, literally, ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... show in a very few words not only that this homogeneousness of matter is the only rational view of the composition of the material universe, but also that it is the only view consistent with Christian Theism and with the doctrine ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... who have accomplished the great transition to the confusion of faith which followed the popularization of the great scientific generalizations, nor ought it to blind us to the fact that much of this confusion still persists. Christian theism was more sharply challenged by materialism and agnosticism than by a frankly confessed atheism. Materialism was the more aggressive; it built up its own great system, posited matter and force as the ultimate ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... There was at most times a degree of misconception. Some naturalists attributed to theologians in general a poverty of thought which belonged really to men of a particular temper or training. The "timid theism" discerned in Darwin by so cautious a theologian as Liddon[225] was supposed by many biologists to be the necessary foundation of an honest Christianity. It was really more characteristic of devout naturalists like Philip Henry Gosse, ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... speculate on the spiritual pathology of the functionless wealthy, the half-educated independent women of the middle class, and the people of the Abyss. While the segregating new middle class, whose religious and moral development forms our main interest, is developing its spacious and confident Theism, there will, I imagine, be a steady decay in the various Protestant congregations. They have played a noble part in the history of the world, their spirit will live for ever, but their formulae and organization wax old like a garment. Their moral austerity—that touch of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... prejudging an issue in science, we think this is an unfortunate accusation. What is there in the hypothesis of necessary, as distinguished from actual, correlation of parts, which is particularly in harmony with Theism? Maintenance of the necessity, whether of sequences or of coexistences, is commonly thought rather a derogation from divine power than otherwise. Cuvier says—"None of these parts can be changed without affecting the others; and consequently, each taken separately, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... and at different times, its teaching has become both negative and positive, agnostic and gnostic. It passes from apparent atheism and materialism to theism, polytheism, and spiritualism. It is, under one aspect, mere pessimism; under another, pure philanthropy; under another, monastic communion; under another, high morality; under another, a variety of materialistic philosophy; under another, simple demonology; under another, a mere farrago of superstitions, ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... every man is a particle of a marvellous whole; that when he suffers, since it is for the good of that whole, he, the particle, has no right to complain; and in the long run, that which is the good of all will abundantly manifest itself to be the good of each. Other belief consists not with theism. This is its centre. Let me quote to their purpose the words of my favourite poet; it will do us good to hear his voice, though but for ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... light across the stormy sea of doubt and distress on which I had so long been tossing. The next Sunday saw me again at the Hall, and Mrs. Voysey gave me a cordial invitation to visit them in their Dulwich home. I found their Theism was free from the defects that had revolted me in Christianity, and they opened up to me new views of religion. I read Theodore Parker's "Discourse on Religion," Francis Newman's works, those of Miss Frances Power Cobbe, and of others; the anguish of the tension ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... 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 ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... religious sects. protestantism, Arianism[obs3], Adventism, Jansenism, Stundism[obs3], Erastianism[obs3], Calvinism, quakerism[obs3], methodism, anabaptism[obs3], Puseyism, tractarianism[obs3], ritualism, Origenism, Sabellianism, Socinianism[obs3], Deism, Theism, materialism, positivism, latitudinarianism &c. High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, Free Church; ultramontanism[obs3]; papism, papistry; monkery[obs3]; papacy; Anglicanism, Catholicism, Romanism; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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
... 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 establishment under the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... "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 ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... under the Andes, Nezahualcoytl held the same faith that Socrates had vainly taught in the Agora; and Zengis Khan knew the truth of theism like Plato; yet the world has never generally learnt it. It is the religion of nature—of reason. But the faith is too simple and too sublime for the multitude. The mass of minds needs a religion of mythics, legend, symbolism, and fear. What is impalpable escapes it; and it must give an outward ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... not hear—and even if he did, he would not know how to help. The worst is that he seems incapable of communicating himself clearly; is he uncertain?—This is what I have made out (by questioning and listening at a variety of conversations) to be the cause of the decline of European theism; it appears to me that though the religious instinct is in vigorous growth,—it rejects the ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... on this Continent is, I fancy, pretty much that to which Robert Elsmere would bring us—Theism, with Christ as a model of character, but without real belief in the miraculous part of Christianity. Churches are still being everywhere built, money is freely subscribed, young men are pressing into the clerical profession, and religion shows ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... life. We must leave, therefore, to others, younger and more learned than we are, to prepare this euthanasia for Platonic Christianity, and its restoration to the primitive simplicity of its founder. I think you give a just outline of the theism of the three religions, when you say that the principle of the Hebrew was the fear, of the Gentile the honor, and of the Christian ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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 ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... 3. Theism. The man who is most influenced by the desire to be at one with God naturally wants to act in accordance with God's plan. But God being omnibeneficent, he necessarily believes that God's plan is that which is for the best interests of His children—unless he is ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... it?" One can see in this sense of constant companionship the untranslated and indeed the unexamined Christian doctrine of God. And, because this God is responsive to all the many-sided human experience which reveals Him, it will be an actual preparation not for Theism only, but for that complexity in unity known as the Christian Trinity. Nothing could better summarise this whole achievement in religion than Pater's apt sentence, "To have apprehended the Great Ideal, so palpably that it defined personal ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... absurd and revolting in this dogma is, in the main, as I said, the simple outcome of Jewish theism with its 'creation out of nothing,' and the really foolish and paradoxical denial of the doctrine of metempsychosis which is involved in that idea, a doctrine which is natural to a certain extent, self-evident, ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... claim in theory. It is a great advantage (though not absolutely indispensable) that this sentiment should crystallize, as it were, round a concrete object; if possible a really existing one, though, in all the more important cases, only ideally present. Such an object Theism and Christianity offer to the believer: but the condition may be fulfilled, if not in a manner strictly equivalent, by another object. It has been said that whoever believes in "the Infinite nature ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... deal with the things and events which they are strong enough to modify or control; and who is capable of being moved by appeals such as men make to one another. This belief does not even involve theism; for our earth is an insignificant particle of the solar system, while the solar system is hardly worth speaking of in relation to the All; and, for anything that can be proved to the contrary, there may be beings endowed with full powers over ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... 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 ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the loom 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, content to be ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... Being, the Creator, Jehovah, Infinite Spirit, Deity, the First Cause, the Almighty; (Hebrew) Elohim, El Shaddai, Adonai, Jah. Associated Words: theism, deism, atheism, theocracy, theocrasy, theology, theomachy, pantheism, acosmism, pancosmism, theocentric, thearchy, theomania, theosophy, theochristic, theodicy, theophany, demiurge, anthropomorphism, anthropomorphology, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... tolerably strong opinion as 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 ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... philosophy, my answer will be such as I suppose you already prepared to receive. I understand by a first philosophy, that which deserves the first place on account of the dignity and importance of its objects, natural theology or theism, and natural religion or ethics. If we consider the order of the sciences in their rise and progress, the first place belongs to natural philosophy, the mother of them all, or the trunk, the tree of knowledge, out of which, and in proportion to which, like so many branches, they ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... the Spirit of the Buddhas present in the church. Before many centuries had elapsed, these imaginary beings, with a few others, had become gods to whom men prayed; and thus Buddhism became a religion with some kind of theism,—which Gautama had expressly renounced. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... 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
... Hobbes shattered the theistic prejudices of Baconian materialism, so Collins, Dodwall, Coward, Hartley, Priestley, etc. broke down the last theological bars which still obstructed Locke's sensationalism. At least for materialists, theism became nothing more than a convenient and easy-going way ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... Moreover, these and other such stories are only curiously ornamented myths, representing physical phenomena. But with Socrates a change came over philosophy; a sign—perhaps a cause—of the decline of the existing religion. The study of man superseded the study of nature: a purer Theism came in with the higher ideal of perfection, and sin and depravity at once assumed an importance, the intensity of which made every other question insignificant. How man could know the good and yet choose the evil; how God could be all pure and almighty, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... to follow him throughout all the windings of his long journey, within the limits of this essay. I purpose, therefore, to limit myself to those propositions which concern—1. Necessary Truths; 2. The Order of Nature; 3. The Soul; 4. Theism; 5. The Passions and Volition; 6. The ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... of disputing. Whether the Old Testament contains a revelation from God, or not, its moral precepts are, as far as I know unexceptionable; there is not, I believe, any thing extravagant or impracticable in them, they are such as promote the good order of society. Its religion in fact is merely Theism garnished, and guarded by a splendid ritual, and gorgeous ceremonies; the belief of it can produce no oppression and wretchedness to any portion of mankind, and for these reasons I for one will never attempt to weaken its credit, whatever may be my own opinion ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... The Origin of Species, he had "long done with the Pentateuchal cosmogony which had been impressed on his childish understanding as divine truth." In the chapter he contributed to the Life of Darwin he wrote that in his opinion "the doctrine of evolution does not even come into contact with theism, considered as a philosophical doctrine." The reason of his general attitude to the Bible was simply that his application to it of the agnostic method led him to the view that there was not sufficient evidence ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... and gone in a moment. "Flat Pantheism!" urged he once (which he would often enough do about this time), as if triumphantly, of something or other, in the fire of a debate, in my hearing: "It is mere Pantheism, that!"—"And suppose it were Pot-theism?" cried the other: "If the thing is true!"—Sterling did look hurt at such flippant heterodoxy, for a moment. The soul of his own creed, in those days, was far other than this indifference to Pot or Pan in ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... 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; ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... die Theologen mit dem lieben Gott in Verlegenheit.' 'No one,' he adds, 'has so damaged Theism as Copernicus.' As if limitation and imperfection in the celestial mechanism would make for the belief in God; or, as if immortality were incompatible with dependence. Des Cartes, for one, (and he counts for many,) held ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... organization which is mainly political; he is not so credulous as to believe that the spiritual can fall vertically to earth because a man kneels before a bishop and becomes a priest. Rather he had a much better plan. He started by being an atheist, the best possible foundation for subsequent theism. From this he became an Immanist, which is that God is in some ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... 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 and ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... And from the conditions of ancient thought, or, at least, from what we know of it, this resolves itself into the question: How far had the Greek philosophers advanced by means of speculative thought toward a conscious theism, and by what means did the various individuals and schools among them seek to prove the existence of the Divine? The answer to this inquiry will involve a brief examination of the contributions of the pre-Socratic philosophers ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... with tears and stained with blood, the 'grey spouse of Satan,' as he styled her in a later poem, sitting by a fire that is fed with the bones of her victims. From this time forward he declares open war upon theology, and even upon Theism; he is the mortal foe of bigots and tyrants; his praise is for Giordano Bruno, for Pelagius the British monk, born by the northern sea; for Voltaire, for all who have fought and suffered in the cause of intellectual emancipation. The prevailing religious beliefs seem to him relics of mediaeval ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... else. "When Berkeley said there was no matter"—it mattered greatly what he said. Nothing can be more certain than that, apart from percipience, there is no matter that matters. From the point of view of pantheism (the only logical theism) God, far from being a Veiled Being, or an Invisible King, is precisely the mind which translates itself into the visible, sensible universe, and impresses itself, in the form of a never-ending pageant, upon our cognate minds. It ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... Animism supplanted Theism. Nothing could be more explicit. But, though we have found an authentic Zulu text to suit our provisional theory, the most eminent philosophical example must not reduce us into supposing that this text settles the question. Dr. Callaway collected ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... follows a very notable 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 be put under ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... so or no, the rhubarb can be seen in Covent Garden, and I am afraid it must be admitted that to the philosophically minded there lurks within it a theory of evolution, and even Pantheism, as surely as Theism was lurking ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... Nature, and an incapacity of finding unity in the manifold and infinity in the individual,—these are the origin of polytheism. The most perfect instance of this kind of theism is that of early Greece; other nations seem to have either transcended, or come short of, the old Hellenic standard,—a mythology in itself fundamentally allegorical, and typical of the powers and functions of nature, but subsequently mixed up with a deification of great men and hero-worship,—so ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... effort made in certain religious publications to imply that there is a dearth of thought and thinkers beyond the pale of theism. The subsequent examination of the theological beliefs of great minds will show that there has never been a lack of brilliant thinkers who have not sought truth apart from the dominant faith of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... evolutionist ("theistic" from "theism," the belief in a personal God) makes place for God in the beginning and all along the line of development, as overlooking the process, perhaps reinforcing and to a certain extent directing the energy, but not interfering ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... geography; then sits him down "over against" the church, like Jonah squatting under his miraculous gourd-vine in the suburbs of Nineveh, and confidently expects to see it collapse. He imagines that in pointing out a number of evident errors and inconsistencies in "revealed religion" he has hit Theism in its stronghold; but he hasn't. He has but torn and trampled the ragged vestments of religion, struck at non-essentials, called attention to the clumsy manner in which finite man has bodied forth his idea of Infinity—has made ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... his theism rested seem, as Sir Leslie Stephen points out, to have been exactly those which satisfied Paley. Lord Murray, who, though he was a judge, does not seem to have been exacting about the quality of argument, admiringly relates this anecdote of ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... this, that Leibnitz and the Cartesians were Theists, 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, on the ground that no other efficient cause is conceivable. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... 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 ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... 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 would be better not to use them ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... by the senses; 'first principles are abstractions from facts, not elementary truths prior to reasoning.' This is pure nominalism, in its crudest form. It makes all arguments in favour of the great truths of religion valueless; for if there are no universals, rational theism is impossible. It follows that the famous scholastic 'proofs of God's existence' have for Newman no cogency whatever; indeed it is difficult to see how he can have escaped condemning the whole philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... evil. If this does not so appear to our minds, it is because we have not sufficiently reflected on the great truth, that a necessary virtue is a contradiction in terms, an inherent and utter impossibility. The full possession of this truth will show us, that the cause of theism has been encumbered with great difficulties, because its advocates have endeavoured to explain the reason why God has permitted a thing, which, in point of fact, he has not permitted. Having attempted ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... simplest statement of fact. Then is their whole theory of social relations—both in and out of the body—most philosophical, and, though at variance with the popular theology, self-evident. It is only when they come to their descriptive theism, if I may say so, and then to their drollest heaven, and to some autocratic not moral decrees of God, that the mythus loses me. In general, too, they receive the fable instead of the moral of their Aesop. They are to me, however, deeply interesting, as a sect which ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 in the Universe, 33. Pluralism versus Monism: ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... own mind.' For ourselves, we honestly confess we cannot see the logical consistency of such a position; any more than the reasonableness, after having admitted the preponderant evidence for the great truth of Theism, of excepting some phenomena as apparently at variance with the Divine perfections; and thus virtually adopting a Manichaean hypothesis. We must recollect that we know nothing of Christianity except from its records; and as these, once fairly ascertained to be authentic and genuine, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... variation of scepticism, and just as popular preachers confused it with atheism (q.v.) in their denunciations, so the callow freethinker—following Tennyson's path of "honest doubt''—classed himself with the agnostics, even while he combined an instinctively Christian theism with a facile rejection of the historical ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... controversy; my point is only that William James, in this genial evolutionary view of the world, has given a rude shock to the genteel tradition. What! The world a gradual improvisation? Creation unpremeditated? God a sort of young poet or struggling artist? William James is an advocate of theism; pragmatism adds one to the evidences of religion; that is excellent. But is not the cool abstract piety of the genteel getting more than it asks for? This empirical naturalistic God is too crude and positive a force; he will work miracles, he will answer prayers, he may inhabit ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana |
