"Supreme Being" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... examine at any length the general subject of miracles. The assertion that miracles, such as those recorded in Scripture, are absolutely impossible, and so have never taken place, must be met by the counter assertion that they are possible, and have taken place. They are possible to the Supreme Being, and have taken place by His will or sufferance at certain perfectly historical periods; especially during the first century after the birth of Christ. When to this it is replied that miracles are violations of natural law or order, and ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... resolve to conquer or die. Our own, our country's, honor calls upon us for a vigorous and manly action; and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us then rely upon the goodness of our cause, and the aid of the Supreme Being, in whose hands victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... fetters. An exclusive zeal for the truth of religion, and the unity of God, was as carefully inculcated in the new as in the ancient system: and whatever was now revealed to mankind concerning the nature and designs of the Supreme Being, was fitted to increase their reverence for that mysterious doctrine. The divine authority of Moses and the prophets was admitted, and even established, as the firmest basis of Christianity. From the beginning of the world, an uninterrupted series of predictions had ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... of the Supreme Being that does the work. What a word of encouragement this is. It was this hand that made the worlds and hurled them off into space. It was this hand that created man and made him in the likeness of God. It was this hand that formed the countless number of angels, and has ever directed ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... of God was the central doctrine in this private system. They gave to this Supreme Being the very same name by which he was known to the Hebrews—Nuk Pu Nuk, "I am that I am." [Footnote: "It is evident what a new light this discovery throws on the sublime passage in Exodus iii. 14; where Moses, whom ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... ask you one question as a test whether or not I am right. If the Supreme Being used His power, as the Roman Caesar used his; if He used His wisdom as the Greek sophist used his, would He be glorious then and worthy of admiration? The old heathen AEschylus answered that question for mankind long ago on the Athenian stage. I should be ashamed to answer it ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... of myrtle, and oak, and poplar, and vine, and olive and cypress, and ivy, with violets and roses and daffodils and dandelions in our hands, we will swear respect to childhood and manhood, and old age, and virginity, and womanhood, and widowhood; but above all to the Supreme Being. There we will decree and sanction the immortality of the soul, there pillars and obelisks, and arches, and pyramids will awaken the love of glory and of our country. There painters and statuaries with their chisels and colours, and engravers with their engraving ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... know there is a Supreme Being who rules the affairs of men and whose goodness and mercy have always followed the American people, and I know He will not turn from us now if we humbly and reverently ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... There is no supreme being in the Manbo pantheon, though there are two principal classes of beneficent divinities. Little is known of one of these classes beyond its supposed existence. The other class is made up of humanlike deities called diwta that retain a fondness for this world and the good things thereof. They select ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... work, and of these were St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine. Ready as they were to accept the literal text of Scripture, they revolted against the conception of an actual creation of the universe by the hands and fingers of a Supreme Being, and in this they were followed by Bede and a few others; but the more material conceptions prevailed, and we find these taking shape not only in the sculptures and mosaics and stained glass of cathedrals, and in the illuminations ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... when we men of science and observation say that the Bible is a failure, we mean that it hasn't accomplished what it should have done supposing it to be a revelation from the Supreme Being." ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... to holy actions, drawn to his duty, restored, quickened, persuaded, in such a manner, that he would be unjust to the Spirit of God to question his agency in the whole! Yes, on my soul! there is a Supreme Being, who governs the world, and is present with it, who takes up his more special habitation in good men, and is nigh to all who call upon him, to sanctify and assist them! Hast thou not felt him, oh my soul! like another soul, [Transcriber's ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... always had for the society of Quakers. May it please Heaven to cause all nations to adopt their principles; men would then be happy, and the globe not stained with blood. Let us join in our supplications to the supreme Being, that he may unite us in the bonds of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... compulsion, or other mode of absorbing disunions, would be indifferent; if they were not all improbable, as unworthy of the God. Perpetuity of discord is a thing impossible; every thing short of unity tends to decomposition. Any how then, given the element of eternity to work in, a one great Supreme Being was, in the created beginning, an a priori probability. That all other assumptions than that of His true and eternal Oneness are as false in themselves as they are derogatory to the rational views of deity, we all now see ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... it—set forth in these brilliant pages, will avail to redeem men from animalism and secularity? But, indeed, we need not here rest in the domain of mere speculation. The experiment has been tried. Not quite a century ago, when Chaumette's "Goddess of Reason," and Robespierre's "Supreme Being," had disappeared from the altars of France, La Reveillere-Lepeaux essayed to introduce a Natural Religion under the name of Theophilanthropy[37] to satisfy the spiritual needs of the country over which he ruled as a member of the Directory, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... providence, the goodness of the "Framer of the animal body,"—if Mr. Boyle, the student of nature, as Addison and that friend of his who had known him for forty years tell us, never uttered the name of the Supreme Being without making a distinct pause in his speech, in token of his devout recognition of its awful meaning,—surely we, who inherit the accumulated wisdom of nearly two hundred years since the time of the British philosopher, and of almost two thousand since the Greek physician, may ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... other hand, that in such University one special and important branch of knowledge is omitted. I say, the advocate of such an institution must say this, or he must say that; he must own, either that little or nothing is known about the Supreme Being, or that his seat of learning calls itself what it is not. This is the thesis which I lay down, and on which I shall insist as the subject of this Discourse. I repeat, such a compromise between religious parties, as is involved in the establishment ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... the titles of books, essays, poems, plays, etc., and the names of the Deity, only the chief words begin with capital letters; as, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Supreme Being, Paradise Lost, the Holy ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... ceremony of going thrice round their sacred circle, from east to west, following the course of the sun, by which it is supposed they intended to express their entire conformity to the will and order of the Supreme Being, and their desire that all might go well with them according to that order. It may be noticed, as an illustration of the tenacity of popular usages and religious rites, how they abide with a people, generation ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... to make her happy, he wanted to give her what the storms of past years had ravished from her—he wanted to give the republic a God! On the tribune of the Convention, on this tribune which was his throne, rose Robespierre, to tell with grave dignity to the republic that there was a Supreme Being, that the soul of man was immortal. Then, accompanied by the Convention, he proceeded to the Champ de Mars, to inaugurate the celebration of the worship of a Supreme Being as his high-priest. But amid this triumph, on his way to the Champ ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... of having to do with invisibles, with angels, good or bad, yea, with the highest and supreme Being, even the holy God of heaven. I told you before that God sought the soul of man to have it for his companion; and now I tell you that the soul is capable of communion with him, when the darkness that sin hath spread over its face ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... and such are the ideas of space, duration, and number, which we have considered in the foregoing chapters. It is true, that we cannot but be assured, that the great God, of whom and from whom are all things, is incomprehensibly infinite: but yet, when we apply to that first and supreme Being our idea of infinite, in our weak and narrow thoughts, we do it primarily in respect to his duration and ubiquity; and, I think, more figuratively to his power, wisdom, and goodness, and other attributes which are properly inexhaustible and incomprehensible, &c. ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... in hell, so that filled with hellish fury they curse themselves for their folly and curse the evil companions who have brought them to such ruin and curse the devils who tempted them in life and now mock them in eternity and even revile and curse the Supreme Being Whose goodness and patience they scorned and slighted but Whose justice and power ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... the river received the child, and carried him along. But Miriam, the child's sister, passed along upon the bank over against him, as her mother had bid her, to see whither the ark would be carried, where God demonstrated that human wisdom was nothing, but that the Supreme Being is able to do whatsoever he pleases: that those who, in order to their own security, condemn others to destruction, and use great endeavors about it, fail of their purpose; but that others are in a surprising manner ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... family, and to the last moments of his life, the dignity [1501] of an apostle, and the faith of an enthusiast; described the visits of Gabriel, who bade an everlasting farewell to the earth, and expressed his lively confidence, not only of the mercy, but of the favor, of the Supreme Being. In a familiar discourse he had mentioned his special prerogative, that the angel of death was not allowed to take his soul till he had respectfully asked the permission of the prophet. The request was granted; and Mahomet immediately ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... come to Niagara in the patronizing spirit in which we approach everything nowadays, and for a few hours we have it our own way, and pay our little tributes of admiration with as much complacency as we feel in acknowledging the existence of the Supreme Being. But after a while we are aware of some potent influence undermining our self-satisfaction; we begin to conjecture that the great cataract does not exist by virtue of our approval, and to feel that it will not cease when we ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... belief in Divinity has become a suspected opinion; if the bare suspicion of a Supreme Being is already noted as evidence of a weak mind; and if, of all philosophical Utopias, this is the only one which the world no longer tolerates? Is it my fault if hypocrisy and imbecility everywhere hide behind ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... steady; thoroughly virtuous, but not severe; wise, as well as cheerful! Can such a friend be loved too much, or cherished too tenderly? If to excellence and happiness there be any one way more compendious than another, next to friendship with the Supreme Being, it is this. ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Araucanians, formerly that of all the native tribes of Chili, resembles in a great measure the freedom of their modes of life and government. They acknowledge a Supreme Being, the creator of all things, whom they name Pillan, a word derived from pulli or pilli, the soul. He is likewise named Guenu-pillan, the soul or spirit of heaven; Buta-gen, the great being; Thalcove[59], the thunderer; Vilvemvoe, the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... ado, though his face was often crimsoned over with the hues of shame and anger. Several times he was on the point of turning the officious sycophant to the door; but good manners, and an inherent respect that lie entertained for the clergy, as the immediate servants of the Supreme Being, restrained him. ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... ancient Hebrews emphasized the former, not the latter sense of the word, and thus depriving it of its more distinctive characteristics of sex, prepared the way for the teachings of Christianity, in which the Supreme Being always appears with the attributes of the male, but disconnected from ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... in the persistently inculcated doctrine of sacrifice. It is not that a Supreme Being desires sacrifice, or gifts, or adulation, or homage, or worship, or that any power glories in our unhappiness. It is not that we may purchase any spiritual thing by giving up something which we prize, but it is because our spirit becomes attuned to the central source of Life by means ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... Teufelsdroch is readily annotated by history. There are garments that have earned an immortality of fame. Such an one is the sky-blue coat which Robespierre wore at the height of his power when he celebrated the festival of the Supreme Being, and in the depths of his degradation when a few days later he was carried to his death. Such an one is the gala coat of flowered Manchester velvet which Franklin wore in his day of degradation when he was compelled to listen with ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... prolong the praises of you, my beneficent friends? May the Supreme Being, for this benign, compassionate, humane action, have you in His keeping, and increase your prosperity, and speedily grant me the pleasure of an interview! Until which time continue to favor me with friendly letters, and oblige ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in time of drought. There his people lived for several hundred years, attached to the Egyptian nation, and adopting many phases of the Egyptian civilization. When he turned his back upon his people in Babylon, he left polytheism behind. He obtained conception of one supreme being, ruler and creator of the universe, who could not be shown in the form of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... most powerful organization—a man who has not, perhaps, like yourself seen all the kingdoms of the earth, but who has helped to overturn one of the greatest; in fact, a man who believed himself, like you, one of the envoys, not of God, but of a supreme being; not of providence, but of fate. Well, sir, the rupture of a blood-vessel on the lobe of the brain has destroyed all this, not in a day, not in an hour, but in a second. M. Noirtier, who, on the previous night, was the old Jacobin, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... you," he cried. "It is this—I love you, little Claire—love you with all my heart, all my soul. You are the light of my life, the sunshine of my existence, my lode-star, my hope—all that a young girl is to a man who idolizes her as the one supreme being on earth who can make him happy. Oh, Claire, I worship you as man never worshiped woman before, and I want ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... creation as not to be honoured with bearing marks of the attributes of its great Creator; marks not only of his power, but of his wisdom and goodness. Man alone, the king of this globe, the last and greatest work of the Supreme Being, below the sun; man alone hath basely dishonoured his own nature; and by dishonesty, cruelty, ingratitude, and treachery, hath called his Maker's goodness in question, by puzzling us to account how a benevolent being should form so foolish and so vile an animal. Yet this is ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... sense of this duty which mastery of the earth gives or should afford is to be one of the moral gifts of modern learning. So long as men considered themselves to be accidents on the earth, imposed upon it by the will of a Supreme Being, but in nowise related in origin and history to the creatures amid which they dwelt, it was natural that they should exercise a careless and despotic power over their subjects. Now that it has been made perfectly ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... enlargement of his comprehension and the elevation of his fancy; but this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be amplified; Perfection ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... If he were too poor to do that, a needle or any other article was admissible to make up the dowry to an even number, and so avoid giving one or three, or more odd numbers of articles. Conscious as they were of the existence of some Supreme Being, but worshipping no God, true or false, the white man's religion which makes such a worship obligatory through a mediator found easy access among so susceptible a people; and with equal ease they likewise adopted the civilization of the white man. ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... was not a man to postpone the enjoyment of the splendor which his satisfied ambition could draw from his new title. In this palace, where had ruled the Committee of Public Safety, where the Convention had sat, whence Robespierre had departed in triumph to preside over the festival in honor of the Supreme Being, nothing was heard but the titles of Emperor, Empress, My Lord, Prince, Princess, Imperial Highness, Most Serene Highness. It was asserted that Bonaparte had cut up the red caps to make the ribbons of the Legions ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... must express my tendency to believe that his longevity is (to say the least of it) extremely problematical:" and that it was to another, who had been insisting somewhat obtrusively on dissenting and nonconformist superiorities, he addressed words which deserve to be no less celebrated; "The Supreme Being must be an entirely different individual from what I have every reason to believe him to be, if He would care in the least for the society of your relations." There was a laugh in the enjoyment of all ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... London," he declared. "If my father were alive, and heard me tell him that in one year, out of a single transaction, I had cleared over sixty-five thousand pounds, he'd be fit to doubt the existence of a Supreme Being. I'm obliged to you for your good words, Thorpe. It's not only been profitable to work with you, but it has been a great education and ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... my head, it is bread and "your King that you ought to demand." Decreed, that all royal houses shall be kept for the use and enjoyment of the people. 10. Robespierre obtains decrees to admit the existence of a Supreme Being, and of the immortality of the soul; and for the establishment of decadary festivals. In La Vendee, General Haxo, after the example of General Moulin, blows his brains out, to avoid being taken prisoner. All letters coming into France are opened. ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... and the end of all things come only from Him; nor do they offer divine honours to any but to Him alone. And, indeed, though they differ concerning other things, yet all agree in this: that they think there is one Supreme Being that made and governs the world, whom they call, in the language of their country, Mithras. They differ in this: that one thinks the god whom he worships is this Supreme Being, and another thinks that his idol is that god; but ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... I should say that they are a most amiable, industrious, and peaceful people, whose minds are well prepared to receive the truths of Christianity, though at present they appear to have little or no notions whatever of any sort of religion, and none of a Supreme Being. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... are at liberty to do it, and I shall consider myself amply rewarded if in a single instance it proves beneficial in removing a doubt in the minds of such, who, although they dare not deny the existence of a Supreme Being, yet disbelieve that he ever in any way revealed Himself to his creatures. Let Philosophy (as it is termed) smile with pity or contempt on my weakness or credulity, yet the superintendence of a particular PROVIDENCE, interfering by second causes, is so apparent to me, and was so conspicuously ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... her one day after prayer if she understood what I had been doing (for I had a notion she did not)—"Yes, verily," says she, "you have been making petitions to the image of the great Collwar."*—"Pray," says I (willing gently to lead her into a just sense of a Supreme Being), "who is this Collwar? and where does He dwell?"—"He it is," says she, "that does all good and evil to us."—"Right," says I, "it is in some measure so; but He cannot of Himself do evil, absolutely and properly, as His own act"—"Yes," says she, "He can; for He can do all that can be done; and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... The Supreme Being was believed in, praised and worshipped by all the ancient peoples, and is now believed in, praised and worshipped by the vast majority of the people of the world—it is true under different names, but still it is the same idea—a Being without beginning and without end—Infinite ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... war-club was ever raised by either of these against the other. Their language is of the same root, as they could quite intelligently understand each other. Their manners and customs in every way correspond. Their legends, particularly respecting the flood, and their belief in the Supreme Being, the great creator of all things —Ketchi-mat-ne-do—is very much the same; also their belief in the evil spirit, whose habitation was under the earth. To this deity they offered sacrifices as well as to the other gods or deities. These offerings were called in ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... supposed, traditions without number are connected with it. No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that the Indians who are found in this region are naturally atheistic, as well as ignorant. To the student of religion there is rather an inherent belief in the Supreme Being among these people, with very strong proofs of the truth of the divine revelation. One of the traditions, told with much fervor and earnestness about Tacoma, involves in it a Savior of mankind. With ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... to have no religion, and I never saw any ceremony performed suggestive of a belief in a Supreme Being, although good and evil spirits are believed to exist, and when I was at Oumwaidjik, sacrifices of seal and walrus meat were often thrown into the sea by the medicine men to abate its fury. Three men who died at Whalen during our visit ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... the throne occupied by the Supreme Being under monotheistic systems made all the rest of Comte's construction easy enough. Utility remains the test of every institution, impulse, act; his fabric becomes substantially an arch of utilitarian ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... York natives. A very accurate vocabulary of their language has been published by Mr. M'Gillivary in his account of the voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake. Of their superstitions I am unable to speak with certainty. That they have no belief in the existence of a Supreme Being is, I think, positive. They are, like all the Australian tribes, averse to travelling about at night if dark; this, I believe, chiefly arises from the inconvenience and difficulty of moving about at such times, and not from any superstitious fear. They travel when there is moonlight. They ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... of 1881 Gladstone gave notice of an Affirmation Bill, to enable men like Mr. Bradlaugh to become members of Parliament without taking an oath which implied a belief in a Supreme Being. But it was not till 1883 that the Bill was taken up. On April 26th Gladstone made one of his most lofty and fervid speeches in support of the Bill, which, however, was lost by ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... though it is not far from it," replied Mr. Eng. "Religion is a very indefinite idea among the Dyaks, and they are chary in speaking of what there is of it. Some who have been among them maintain that they believe in a Supreme Being, who has a great many different names among the various tribes. They have almost as many inferior deities as ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... thinking about the inspirational stuff I get now and then," Ont said matter-of-factly. "If it came all the time I would be inclined to think it was the Voice of the Supreme Being Itself! But ...
— The Unthinking Destroyer • Roger Phillips
... relation to the powers of man, as to make the latter entirely disappear; or else the power of man has been represented as occupying so exalted and independent a position, as to exclude the Almighty from his rightful dominion over the moral world. Thus, the Supreme Being has generally been shut out from the affairs and government of the world by one side, and his energy rendered so all-pervading by the other, as really to make him the author of evil. In this way, the difficulties concerning the origin and existence of evil have been greatly ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... beg you to consider that question earnestly. The Psalmist, when he talked of the Lord, did not mean merely what some people call the Deity, or the Supreme Being, or the Creator. You will remark that I said—What. I do not care to say, Whom, of such a notion; that is, of a God who made the world, and set it going once for all, but has never meddled with it; ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... religious convictions of a large section of the community. Many individuals, influenced by pantheistic teaching, did not believe in the existence of a personal God distinct from the world; others, while holding fast to the belief in a personal supreme Being, rejected the Trinity and the Incarnation, and a still larger section insisted on the subjection of Christian revelation to the judgment of reason, and as a consequence on the rejection of everything in Christianity that flavoured of the supernatural. ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... of the covetous) are directly opposed to the last on the subject of transmigration; and they believe that God is in all places, and performs all things. They likewise maintain that the whole visible universe is only a manifestation of the Supreme Being; the soul itself being a portion of the Divine essence. Therefore, they consider, that whatever appears to the eye is God, and that all religious rites should be comprised in the contemplation of God's ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... these sentiments, I express not my own feelings only, but those of my fellow-citizens, in relation to the commencement, the progress, and the issue of the French Revolution; and they will certainly join with me in purest wishes to the Supreme Being, that the citizens of our sister-republic, our magnanimous allies, may soon enjoy in peace that liberty which they have purchased at so great a price, and all the happiness that ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... he to those around him; "but what king can be certain that he has always followed it? Perhaps I have done much evil of which I am ignorant. Frenchmen! who now hear me, I address myself in the presence of the Supreme Being to you. I find that kings are happy but in this—that they have the power of ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... Aristotelian basis, are antecedent to Natural Theology. They belong rather to Natural Anthropology: they are a study of human nature. But as human nature points to God, so Ethics are not wholly irrespective of God, considering Him as the object of human happiness and worship,—the Supreme Being without whom all the aspirations of humanity are at fault (pp. 13-26, 191-197). Ethics do not refer to the commandments of God, for this simple reason, that they have nothing to say to commandments, or ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... Gadarn is by some writers identified with Noah. He was endowed, it would seem, with all the qualities of the gods of the Greeks, Egyptians, and Orientals, and his name is applied by the Welsh poets of the middle ages to the Supreme Being. ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... embraced the Christian faith, have no forms of religious worship, and I am informed by Rev. Mr Harrison, missionary at Massett, and probably the best authority upon the subject, that there is no word in their language which signifies the praise or adoration of a Supreme Being. They believe in a Great Spirit, a future life, and in the transmigration of souls. Their God, (Sha-nung-et-lag-e-das), possesses chiefly the attributes of power, and is invoked to help them attain their desires. Their Devil, ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... except the heaven. These bad spirits are far superior to man in power and subtlety; and their whole energies are devoted to bringing physical and moral evils upon him, and to thwarting, so far as his power goes, the benevolent intentions of the Supreme Being. In fact, the souls and bodies of men form both the theatre and the prize of an incessant warfare between the good and the evil spirits—the powers of light and the powers of darkness. By leading Eve astray, Satan brought sin and death upon mankind. As the gods of the heathen, the demons are ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... of evil. The Christian Scriptures profess to give no solution of that mystery. They relate facts: but they leave the metaphysical question undetermined. They tell us that man fell; but why he was not so constituted as to be incapable of falling, or why the Supreme Being has not mitigated the consequences of the Fall more than they actually have been mitigated, the Scriptures did not tell us, and, it may without presumption be said, could not tell us, unless we had been creatures different ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... predestination, and grace, too severe, he began to express his doubts concerning them in the year 1591, and, upon further inquiry, adopted the sentiments of those whose religious system extends the love of the Supreme Being and the merits of ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... a non-theistic, as distinguished from an a-theistic, kind. It has rendered impossible the appearance in literature of any future Paley, Bell, or Chalmers; but it has done nothing in the way of negativing that belief in a Supreme Being which it was the object of these authors to substantiate. If it has demonstrated the futility of their proof, it has furnished nothing in the way of disproof. It has shown, indeed, that their line of argument was misjudged when they thus sought to separate ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... most curious and multiform instances of this Frenchness. The early priggishness is French; the effusive domestic affection is French; the antipathy to dogmatic theology, combined with general recognition of the Supreme Being, is French; the talk (I had almost said the chatter) about virtue and sympathy, and so forth, is French; the Whig recognition of the rights of man, joined to a kind of bureaucratical distrust and terror ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... is a Divine intelligence from which all the ideas of the human intellect are derived, and which stamps them as true. These religious conceptions are the meeting-ground of the dramatic and the metaphysical activity of his poetic genius. The two are blended in the vision of a Supreme Being not to be invested with human emotions, but only to be reached ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... to their original religion is shrouded in mystery, and is likely so to remain. They may have been idolaters, or atheists, or what they now are, totally neglectful of worship of any kind; and though not exactly prepared to deny the existence of a Supreme Being, as regardless of him as if he existed not, and never mentioning his name, save in oaths and blasphemy, or in moments of pain or sudden surprise, as they have heard other people do, but always without any fixed belief, trust, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... accidents are very curious things; and those who have no belief in a Supreme Being who brings about great results by apparently insignificant agencies, must have a very difficult time of it, in reconciling the incongruous and the inadequate. Holmes, the merriest and wisest of ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... says: 'The innumerable Gods of the Pantheon are but manifestations of the One Being,' that is, they had special names for the different manifestations of God, as He appeared to them in the sun, the air, the earth, and also the different qualities of human character. They all alike believed in a Supreme Being, and made statements almost synonymous with many in the Bible. That is what may be called universal truth, and if this philosophy is what is consistent with fundamental truth, it will be just what I have been wishing to find." Grace leaned back meditatively, adding, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... against the mantel and looked dejectedly into the fire. After a moment he said, sadly, "I envy you, Miss Walton. I wish I could believe in a personal God who thought about us and cared for us —that is, each one of us. Of course I believe in a Supreme Being—a great First Cause; but He hides Himself behind the stars; He is lost to me in His vast universe. I think my prayers once had an effect on my own mind, and so did me some good. But that's past, and now I might as well pray to gravitation as to ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... greater age; while 'tu' thou, of the singular number is used in addressing an inferior or an equal. But the degree of seniority or of superiority, which is understood to entitle a person to this token of respect, varies in different parts of the Highlands[41]. The Supreme Being is always addressed by the pronoun 'tu' ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... the vitality of a man who approaches a woman in her courses will utterly perish; whereas, if he avoids her, his wisdom, energy, strength, sight, and vitality will all increase.[242] The Persian lawgiver Zoroaster, who, if we can take his word for it, derived his code from the mouth of the supreme being Ahura Mazda, devoted special attention to the subject. According to him, the menstrous flow, at least in its abnormal manifestations, is a work of Ahriman, or the devil. Therefore, so long as it lasts, a woman "is unclean and possessed of the demon; she must be kept confined, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... he said; "for that being would be God;" and he adds, "Nature is the system of the laws established by the Creator." The supreme notion of Providence appears to his eyes in all its grandeur, when he writes, "The verities of nature were destined to appear only in course of time, and the Supreme Being kept them to Himself as the surest means of recalling man to Him when his faith, declining in the lapse of ages, should become weak; when, remote from his origin, he might begin to forget it; when, in ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... The popular conception is undeniably that the relationship between God and man is identical with that between an inventor and an animated machine. It is an absolutely anthropomorphic view of the Supreme Being and thinks of God as being apart from man in precisely the same sense that a father is apart from his son. It may be an exalted, idealized conception of the relationship of father and son but it is nevertheless just that relationship, and along that line ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... from the little we know, that each one of them fancies himself an estimable person. Ivan of Russia, the ferocious ruler, who had men torn to pieces before his eyes, the being who had forty thousand men, women, and children massacred in cold blood, regarded himself as the deputy of the Supreme Being. The mad Capet, who fired the signal which started tho massacre of St. Bartholomew, believed that he was fulfilling the demands of goodness and orthodoxy. The deadly inquisitors who roasted unhappy fellow mortals wholesale believed—or pretended ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... should be the first principle in the make-up of a young woman, and it is only obtained while learning the rudiments and duties to manage a home; and a home of contentment is only where such a supreme being, commonly called ...
— Plain Facts • G. A. Bauman
... the Supreme Being noticed two very beautiful ladies who, apparently, were entirely ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Principle which acted in these different Animals cannot be termed Reason, so when we call it Instinct, we mean something we have no Knowledge of. To me, as I hinted in my last Paper, it seems the immediate Direction of Providence, and such an Operation of the Supreme Being, as that which determines all the Portions of Matter to their proper Centres. A modern Philosopher, quoted by Monsieur Bayle [1] in his learned Dissertation on the Souls of Brutes, delivers the same Opinion, tho' in a bolder ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... right to his obedience, to whom he can be loyal, whom he can address, calling him Father, as we are told that Christ did. But you cannot love a law. True, David says, "O how I love thy law"; but the law that he loved was the will of the Supreme Being, and he loved it because it was His. It was not a mode of action or of evolution that he loved. Nor can you obey such a law, although you may conform to it; nor can you be loyal to it, for you cannot be loyal ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... embraces all of the good points in Buddhism, with a pantheism that is very confusing. It would seem that the Sikhs worship all gods who are good to men, and reject the demonology of the Hindus. They believe in one Supreme Being, with attributes similar to the Allah of the Mohammedans, and recognize Mohammed as his prophet and exponent of his will. They have also adopted several Hindu deities in a sort of indirect way, although the Sikhs strictly prohibit idolatry. Their ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... very different fortune. We are told that, "by the knowledge we derive from astronomy, our faculties are enlarged, our minds exalted, and our understandings clearly convinced, and affected with the conviction, of the existence, wisdom, power, goodness, immutability and superintendency of the supreme being; so that, without an hyperbole, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... returns of a stated time, in which the whole village meet together with their best faces, and in their cleanliest habits, to converse with one another upon indifferent subjects, hear their duties explained to them, and join together in adoration of the Supreme Being. Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week, not only as it refreshes in their minds the notions of religion, but as it puts both the sexes upon appearing in their most agreeable forms, and exerting all such qualities as are apt to give ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... its author. The reader of the New Heloisa will remember that the heroine, after her repentance and her marriage, has only one chagrin in the world; that is the blank disbelief of her husband in the two great mysteries of a Supreme Being and another world. Wolmar, the husband, has always been supposed to stand for Rousseau's version of Holbach, and Holbach would hardly have complained of the portrait. The Wolmar of the novel is benevolent, active, patient, tranquil, friendly, and trustful. The nicely combined conjunction of the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... supposing we influence the Immutable; but because to petition the Supreme Being, is the way most suited to our nature, to stir up the benevolent affections in our hearts. Christ positively commands it, and in St. Paul you will find unnumbered instances of prayer for individual blessings; for kings, rulers, &c. &c. We indeed should all join to our petitions: ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... a stated time in which the whole village meet together with their best faces and in their cleanliest habits to converse with one another upon indifferent subjects, hear their duties explained to them, and join together in adoration of the supreme Being. Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week, not only as it refreshes in their minds the notions of religion, but as it puts both the sexes upon appearing in their most agreeable forms and exerting all such qualities as are apt to give them a figure in the ...
— English Satires • Various
... Wales may be classified into six parts, viz.: the sublime, the beautiful, the patriotic, the humourous, the sentimental and religious. Much of the poetry of the Principality consists of the first class, and is specially dedicated to description and praise of the Supreme Being, the universe and man. As the great objects of creation, like the sun and moon, the planetary world and stars first attract the attention of man and always enlist his deepest feelings, so they furnish the ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... practice is "nowhere," my opinion is here. Nevertheless I am far from regarding myself as one of those privileged ones to whom the Ved refers when it says, that "he who has true faith in the Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all that exists," that is, is not bound to inquire what is his food, or who prepares it; and even in their case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has remarked, that the Vedant limits this privilege ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... an astrologer), describes the heavens and the earth, the stars in their constellations, the arrangement of time in the official calendar, with some geography, mythology, and cosmogony. In the fifteenth century the King of Tezcuco published sixty hymns in honor of the Supreme Being, with an elegy on the destruction of a town, and another on the instability of ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... of their great gifts, the very limited amount of which they do not suspect, and will be very glad to learn, even at the expense of their self-love, when they are called to their account? If the ways of the Supreme Being are ever really to be "justified to men," to use Milton's expression, every human being may expect an exhaustive explanation of himself. No man is capable of being his own counsel, and I cannot help hoping that the ablest of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... bound to note the fact. Coeval, then, with the foundation of the city of Menes was, according to the tradition, the erection of a great temple to Phthah—"the Revealer," the Divine artificer, by whom the world and man were created, and the hidden thought of the remote Supreme Being was made manifest to His creatures, Phthah's temple lay within the town, and was originally a naos or "cell," a single building probably not unlike that between the Sphinx's paws at Ghizeh, situated within a temenos, or "sacred enclosure," watered from the river, and no doubt ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... study of the writings themselves. In the Book of Genesis the evidence of the combination of two documents is so obvious that he who runs may read. These two documents are distinguished from each other, partly by the style of writing, and partly by the different names which they apply to the Supreme Being. One of these old writers called the Deity Elohim, the other called him Yahveh, or Jehovah. These documents are known, therefore, as the Elohistic and the Jehovistic narratives. Sometimes it is a little difficult to tell where ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... Christian faith, produced by conviction or reason. They have a superstitious reverence for certain ceremonies, rights, and ancient customs, which have prevailed for ages; and these serve, in many respects, to cover various vices and habits which are prevalent. They seem, however, to believe in a Supreme Being, called the Great Joss, or Yook-Chee, represented only to the mind, and not allowing his image to be made on earth; and they say, should any one be rash enough to make a statue of him, he would be immediately struck ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... be sound health and a bright life before him. But, instead of giving way, he silently braced himself for a lifelong conflict. He did not turn, in his extremity, to the gods of his fathers—whatever these might be—for he did not believe in them, but he did believe in one good supreme Being. To Him he raised his heart, offered an unspoken prayer, and felt comforted as well ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... And speaking from the depth of his heart he says, "Once more surrounded by all the members of my dear family, enjoying the countenance of numerous friends who have never deserted me, and possessing a competent share of all that can render life agreeable, I look up with gratitude to the Supreme Being, and feel that I ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... the world and one man, He had to take a part of a man to start a woman with. So He causes sleep to fall on this man—now understand me, I do not say this story is true. After the sleep had fallen on this man the Supreme Being took a rib, or, as the French would call it, a cutlet, out of him, and from that He made a woman; and I am willing to swear, taking into account the amount and quality of the raw material used, this was the most magnificent ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... sincerity that is killing me. Mrs. Sewell was bad enough; I was reasonably bad myself; but this! Couldn't you keep him away? Do you think it's exactly decorous to let your man-servant occupy a seat in your family pew? How do you suppose it looks to the Supreme Being?" ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... individuals, most assuredly is it true of nations, which are but individuals in the concrete, subject to the same vicissitudes, governed by the same laws, physical and moral, and following the same path of development. Only that form of government which recognizes the Supreme Being as the chief of rulers, and His law as the source and model of all human law, can be sure of truth and justice on its side, both in its dealings with other nations and in its regulation of its own internal affairs. Only such a form can work steadily for the advancement ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Divine worship, its principal feature is that they acknowledge our Lord as the Supreme Being who governs heaven and earth. Him they call the One only Lord; and because they acknowledge and worship Him during their life in the body, they seek Him after death, and find Him: He is the same with our Lord. Being questioned whether they knew that the One only Lord is Man, they ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Bagirmese for slaves. Most of them are of a primitive type and appear to be dying out. The Saras are remarkable for their herculean stature, and are one of the most promising of African races. Tree worship is prevalent among the Somrai and the Gaberi. All the tribes believe in a supreme being whose voice is the thunder. Polygamy is general in upper Bagirmi, where some traces of a matriarchal stage of society linger, one small state being called Beled-el-Mra, "Women's Land," because its ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... between unbelief and disbelief;[15] and its validity is admitted in so far as it discriminates merely between dogmatic and skeptical Atheism. But Anti-theism is maintained, in the strictest sense of the term, where it is affirmed either that there is no God, or that the existence of the Supreme Being cannot in any circumstances become an object of human knowledge. In each of these forms, Atheism is dogmatic; it denies the existence of God, or it denies the possibility of His being known. But there is also a skeptical Atheism, which ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... everything spiritual and intellectual. For everything that is genuinely true, in the realm of thought as well as in the domain of nature, is concrete, and has, in spite of universality, nevertheless, a particular and subjective character. By saying, for example, that God is simply One, the Supreme Being as such, we express thereby nothing but a lifeless abstraction of an understanding devoid of reason. Such a God, as indeed he is not conceived in his concrete truth, can furnish no content for art, least of all for plastic art. Thus the Jews and the Turks have not been able ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... great festival, which lasts two or three days, sometimes a week, and is spent in eating and drinking. He does not know the cause; but thinks it, perhaps, a commemoration of the king's birth-day; no work is done. They 33 believe in a Supreme Being and another state of existence, and have saints and men whom they revere as holy. Some of them are sorcerers, and some ideots, as in Barbary and Turkey; and though physicians are numerous, they expect more effectual aid ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... book it is full of interest. It shows us their conceptions of the Supreme Being and his relation to the world; it enables us to see what they admired in character as virtue, heroism, nobleness, and beauty; it discloses their mythology and their notions of religious worship; in a word, it bears witness to the fact that the various families of mankind are all of "one blood," ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... of God is supposed to be the Christian conception of God as a Heavenly Father. This conception credits the Supreme Being with supernal tenderness and mercy—"God is Love." That is a very lofty, poetical, and gratifying conception, but it is open to one fatal objection—it ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... writer affirms that [Rx] is the emblem of the sun-god Ra, and signifies "In the name of Ra," or "Ra, God of Life and Health, inspire me."[156:2] This deity was regarded as the Supreme Being, not only by the Egyptians, but by other heathen people of antiquity, because the sun was the greatest and most brilliant of ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... synagogues, which did not take place until a late period. The people of all nations, whether actuated by desires or fears, have summoned the assistance of the Divinity. Philosophers, however, more respectful to the Supreme Being, and rising more above human weakness, have been habituated to substitute, for prayer, resignation. This, in fact, is all that appears proper and suitable between creature and Creator. But philosophy is not adapted to the great mass of mankind; it soars too highly above the vulgar; it speaks a language ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... symbolical representative religion, and that as God is vastly beyond our comprehension, we cannot, except by symbols, attain any conception of Him. We have often to say in reply, that as we cannot see our own spirit, and yet know how real, how dominant it is, so far less do we know the Supreme Being, and yet we have abundant evidence of His existence, character, and government. Of Him no fitting image can be made, and every such attempt is unworthy of Him, and degrading and demoralizing to us. The representations of God in Scripture under ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... the soul; the passions are the voices of the body. Immortality of the soul is a pleasing doctrine and there is nothing to contradict it. "When, delivered from the illusions caused by the body and the senses, we shall enjoy the contemplation of the Supreme Being, and of the eternal truths whose source He is, when the beauty of order shall strike all the powers of our soul, and we shall be solely occupied in comparing what we have done with what we ought to have done, then will the voice of conscience resume its force and its empire; ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... add here: So many of our greatest statesmen have reminded us that spiritual values alone are essential to our nation's health and vigor. The Congress opens its proceedings each day, as does the Supreme Court, with an acknowledgment of the Supreme Being. Yet we are denied the right to set aside in our schools a moment each day for those who wish to pray. I believe Congress should ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... divers parts of the Infinite forming one living melody; and each time that the accord made itself felt like a mighty respiration, the Worlds drawn by the concordant movement inclined themselves toward the Supreme Being who, from His impenetrable centre, issued all things and ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... the incontestable fact that belief does produce these effects is for us an ultimate fact as little capable of explanation as any physical law whatever; and may, therefore, for aught we know, or ever can know, be ordained by a Supreme Being. Secondly, all the beneficial effects, including happiness, are as real in themselves as if the belief were ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... his own mind; they represented for him an absolute truth in contingent relations to it. No one felt more strongly than he the contradictions involved in any conceivable system of Divine creation and government. No one knew better that every act and motive which we attribute to a Supreme Being is a virtual negation of His existence. He believed nevertheless that such a Being exists; and he accepted His reflection in the mirror of the human consciousness, as a necessarily false image, but one which ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... in character; undoubtedly it is the root of all nature-worship, from fetishism to the highest pantheistic development. It was more to me in those early days than all the religious teaching I received from my mother. Whatever she told me about our relations with the Supreme Being I believed implicitly, just as I believed everything else she told me, and as I believed that two and two make four and that the world is round in spite of its flat appearance; also that it is travelling through space and revolving round ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... actually vouchsafed. It pleased the supreme Being, through His infinite mercy, to manifest His will, and make known some great and precious truths, which men would have vainly attempted to discover with the unaided operation of their reason; He chose to undertake, to a certain extent, the education of mankind. From the beginning ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... is necessary in order that the mind be applied to God, since the human mind is soiled by contact with inferior things, even as all things depreciate by admixture with baser things, for instance, silver by being mixed with lead. Now in order for the mind to be united to the Supreme Being it must be withdrawn from inferior things: and hence it is that without purity the mind cannot be applied to God. Wherefore it is written (Heb. 12:14): "Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see God." Again, firmness is required for the mind to be applied to God, for ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of their consciences; for neither the government nor any other power interferes. If they are peaceable subjects, and are industrious, what is it to their neighbours how and in what manner they think fit to address their prayers to the Supreme Being? But if the sectaries are not settled close together, if they are mixed with other denominations, their zeal will cool for want of fuel, and will be extinguished in a little time. Then the Americans become as to religion, what they are as to country, allied to all. In ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... its great Author devoid of every supernatural sign and token which, in the time of its Founder and His immediate disciples, attested and celebrated their inappreciable mission. Such a permission on the part of the Supreme Being would be (to speak under the deepest reverence) an abandonment of His chosen people, ransomed at such a price, to the snares of an enemy from whom the worst evils were to be apprehended. Nor would it consist with the remarkable promise in holy writ, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... of the doctrine of evolution in an early shape is only mentioned to prove that the idea has been familiar to the human mind from the lowest known stage of culture. Not less familiar has been the theory of creation by a kind of supreme being. The notion of creation, however, up to 1860, held the foremost place in modern European belief. But Lamarck, the elder Darwin, Monboddo, and others had submitted hypotheses of evolution. Now it was part of the originality of Tennyson, as a philosophic ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... the Christian element out of religion, without either seeking or finding any other substitute for the feelings to rest upon. Theism may be considered that definite heightened devotion to the one Supreme Being which the Middle Ages were not acquainted with. This mode of faith does not exclude Christianity, and can either ally itself with the Christian doctrines of sin, redemption, and immortality, or else exist ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the World; and on the contrary, to esteem those things as Blessings, which to the Generality of Mankind appear as Curses. Thus in the Form which is prescribed to us we only pray for that Happiness which is our chief Good, and the great End of our Existence, when we petition the Supreme Being for the coming of his Kingdom, being solicitous for no other temporal Blessings but our daily Sustenance. On the other side, We pray against nothing but Sin, and against Evil in general, leaving it with Omniscience to determine what is really such. If we look into the first of Socrates ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... "Divinity! Supreme Being! Spirit of the Universe! great principle of all that I feel great, or good, or immortal within myself—whose existence I believe in, because I must have emanated from something superior to that by which I am surrounded—I am about to reunite myself to thy essence." ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Christian Scriptures, of which an imperfect translation was distributed among them. Hung announced that in case of success the Bible would be substituted for the works of Confucius. The Sabbath was strictly observed among them, forms of prayer to the Supreme Being were in constant use, and Englishmen who came among them spoke in the highest terms of their pious devotion and their great kindliness of feeling. They welcomed Europeans as "brethren from across the sea" and ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... equality; the blood which they have spilled together; their avowed hatred for despots; the moderation of their political views; the disinterestedness of their counsels, and especially the success of the vows which they have made, in presence of the Supreme Being, to be free or die, all combine to render indestructible the connections which they ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... then, prepared for him by a perspiring Lascar, the Major-General stepped. At the time Draycott did not know he was a Major-General: he was just a supreme being resplendent in a green silk dressing-gown. The door closed, only to ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... distinguished by goodness. If chastisements have come to us as individuals, families, communities, and as a nation; if the earthquake, and the tornado, and the conflagration, have combined to teach us our dependence on the Supreme Being—all these should be esteemed as ministers of the Highest to teach us that we are pensioners upon the infinite bounty of the Almighty; that in our prosperity we should remember His mercies; in our adversity we should deplore ...
— 'America for Americans!' - The Typical American, Thanksgiving Sermon • John Philip Newman
... dreary hours of a life passed in the contempt of almost all laws, whether human or divine. There is a word in the gypsy language to which those who speak it attach ideas of peculiar reverence, far superior to that connected with the name of the Supreme Being, the creator of themselves and the universe. This word is Lacha, which with them is the corporeal chastity of the females; we say corporeal chastity, for no other do they hold in the slightest esteem; it is lawful among them, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... York, nor in any of the Islands of Torres Strait, so far as I am aware, do the aborigines appear to have formed an idea of the existence of a Supreme Being; the absence of this belief may appear questionable, but my informant, Giaom, spoke quite decidedly on this point, having frequently made it the subject of ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... of Voltaire: "We must love our country whatever injustice we suffer in it, as we must love and serve the Supreme Being, notwithstanding the superstitions and fanaticism which ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... favorite book was Sturm's "Observations Concerning God's Works in Nature" (Betrachtungen uber die Werke Gottes in der Natur), which he recommended to the priests for wide distribution among the people. He saw the hand of God in even the most insignificant natural phenomenon. God was to him the Supreme Being whom he had jubilantly hymned in the choral portion of the Ninth Symphony in the words of Schiller: "Brothers, beyond you starry canopy there must dwell a loving Father!" Beethoven's relationship to God was that of a child toward his ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... the Sumero-Akkadian /ana/, "heaven," of which he was the principal deity. He is called the father of the great gods, though, in the creation-story, he seems to be described as the son of Ansar and Kisar. In early names he is described as the father, creator, and god, probably meaning the supreme being. His consort was Anatu, and the pair are regarded in the lists as the same as the Lahmu and Lahame of the creation-story, who, with other deities, are also described as gods of the heavens. Anu was worshipped at Erech, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... in a Supreme Being, the Creator and Governor of the world; if you believe that God is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, and at the same time an avenger to execute wrath upon every soul ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... God is All. He is best understood as Supreme Being, as infinite and conscious Life, as the affectionate Father and Mother of all He creates; but this divine Parent no more enters into His creation than the human father enters into his child. His creation is not the Ego, but the reflection of ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... the midst of the vast and superb enclosure of the Champ de Mars; and the ceremony commenced with the invocation of the Supreme Being. The homage paid to God in the presence of nature seems more fully to inspire man with religion, confidence, and respect. At the instant of the elevation of the host, this crowd of citizens, soldiers, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... Finishing and Consummation of a good Habit. He beholds the first imperfect Rudiments of a Virtue in the Soul, and keeps a watchful Eye over it in all its Progress, till it has received every Grace it is capable of, and appears in its full Beauty and Perfection. Thus we see that none but the Supreme Being can esteem us according to our proper Merits, since all others must judge of us from our outward Actions, which can never give them a just Estimate of us, since there are many Perfections of a Man which are not capable of appearing in Actions; many which, allowing no natural Incapacity ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... fragments which remain of the most ancient authors, have all concurred in the opinion, that poetry was first employed in celebrating the praises of the gods. The fragments of the Orphic hymns, and those of Linus and Musaeus, show these poets entertained sounder notions of the Supreme Being than many philosophers of a later date. There are lyric fragments yet remaining that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... which hung, like the sword of Damocles, by a cord, an immense sounding-board, considered indispensable, duly to scatter round that each might have his appropriate portion, the crumbs of salvation he dispensed, and "gave out" an appropriate hymn, in which the Supreme Being was acknowledged as the Ruler of the Seasons. This was sung, it must be confessed, by a sadly shrunken choir, stoutly supported, however, by the congregation in the body of the meeting-house, without the sound of tabret, or harp, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Laws, as for framing them: and as we know not why He framed them in such a manner, and no otherwise; so He may have the best and wisest reasons for the suspension of them, which it is not for us to call in question. To speak of the Supreme Being as actuated by a kind of physical necessity, and not by His Will, is to confound the GOD of Nature with Nature itself; which is the very essence of Atheism, and never can be reconciled with any just notions of the Deity, as a Being ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... is a recognition of the existence of the Supreme Being, of the Bible as containing a record of his will concerning men, and of the common duty of rational creatures to live in obedience to the ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... "The first precept of the divine law, therefore, indeed its sum and substance, is to love God unconditionally as the supreme good—unconditionally, I say, and not from any love or fear of aught besides"? And again, that the very essence of religion is belief in "a Supreme Being who delights in justice and mercy, whom all who would be saved are bound to obey, and whose worship consists in the practice of justice and charity ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... descend from Parmenides and Zeno of Elea; Gorgias was the disciple of the latter. By dint of thinking that all is semblance save the Supreme Being, who alone is real, it is very easy to arrive at belief in all being semblance, including that Being; or at least what is almost tantamount, that all is semblance, inclusive of any idea we can possibly conceive of the ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... the tenth day) substituted for Sunday. Religious festivals were replaced by feasts in honour of "Nature" or "Mankind," and most of the churches were closed or transformed into barracks, storehouses or temples devoted to the worship of the "Supreme Being." Finally, in 1795, a proposal was made to the Committee of Public Safety to annex the territory of the Austrian Netherlands. In spite of a few protests, the proposal was adopted, on October 1, 1795, and the country ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... of hatred and abhorrence. We find a touching allegory in the Talmud. Each time that a human being is created God orders his angels to bring a soul before his throne, and orders this soul to go and inhabit the body which is about to be born on earth. The soul is grieved, and supplicates the Supreme Being to spare it that painful trial, in which it only sees sorrow and affliction. This allegory may be suitably applied to a people who have only to expect contempt, mistrust, and hatred, everywhere. The Israelites, therefore, clung enthusiastically to the hope of the advent of a Messiah who should ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... element of the Antediluvian apostasy was the worship of God as Creator and Benefactor, and not as the Jehovah-God of Covenant and Mercy. And surely that is what we find everywhere to-day. People acknowledge a Supreme Being, and accept Christ as a model man, but they flatly deny the Fall, Hereditary Sin, the need of an Atonement, and all else that is connected with the Great Evangel. The Second cause of Antediluvian apostasy was the disregard of the original ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... their former tuition are apparent. The king once gravely told a visitor, with an idea of impressing him with his importance, that a short time previously to his arrival, he had held a conference with the supreme being, from whom he had learnt the cause of a recent sickness which had visited them, and also that he had approved of his being the king of the island. Other stories, equally nonsensical, are told of them, such as might be ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... illimitable space. On the instant all things are smitten with unreality; the solid earth sinks beneath him, and leaves him solitary and awestruck in a universe that is a dream. He cannot understand, but he feels what Emerson meant when he said, "The Supreme Being does not build up Nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves." That which was fixed, stable, cast in permanent forms forever, was suddenly annihilated by a revelation which spoke to ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... into one ultimate unity where all are blended into one complete and perfect whole; the whole of the universal fabric being held together in its mechanical order and beauty by the electro-magnetic Aether. Then in the very centre of the Universe there dwells that Supreme Being whom we call God, who is at once the one real fountain and source of all the light and life of the Universe itself. For it is His universal Spirit that moulds and fashions the plastic matter into the many forms which it assumes, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... and while her intelligence could not accept all the doctrines of dogmatic religion she did not go so far as Jefferson, who was a frank agnostic. She would not admit that we do not know. The longings and aspirations of her own soul convinced her of the existence of a Supreme Being, First Cause, Divine Intelligence—call it what you will—which had brought out of chaos the wonderful order of the universe. The human mind was, indeed, helpless to conceive such a First Cause in any form and lay prostrate before the Unknown, yet she herself was an enthusiastic delver ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... the most perfect outline of materialism in general. "They believed in a supreme force, but denied the existence of a Supreme Being. They rejected inquiry into first causes as unscientific," maintaining that facts alone were to be dealt with ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... nation and without the pressure of Buddhism, Confucianism or other powerful influences from outside, the scattered and fragmentary mythology might have become organized into a harmonious system, or codes of ethics have been formulated, or the doctrines of a future life and the idea of a Supreme Being with personal attributes have been conceived and perfected, are questions the discussion of which may seem to be vain. History, however, gives no uncertain answer as to what actually did take place. We do ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... "Bogie" or "Bug-a-boo" or "Bugbear" of nursery lore turns out to be identical, not only with the fairy "Puck," whom Shakespeare has immortalized, but also with the Slavonic "Bog" and the "Baga" of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, both of which are names for the Supreme Being. If we proceed further, and inquire after the ancestral form of these epithets,—so strangely incongruous in their significations,—we shall find it in the Old Aryan "Bhaga," which reappears unchanged in the Sanskrit of the Vedas, and has left a memento ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... live bullock. As they thus live entirely on cattle, and as cattle cannot thrive without good pasture, it is not unnatural to find that they have a great reverence for grass. They also worship a Supreme Being whom they call N'gai, but this term is also applied to anything ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... jet-black cloth, with linen of dazzling whiteness, composed the festive dress of the President, who marched at the head of his Committee carrying an enormous nosegay, like that which a hundred and twenty-one years later, Monsieur de Robespierre displayed at the festival of "The Supreme Being." ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... already quoted, we might infer that they adored the sun; and this passage is very remarkable as the only mention anywhere made by St. Patrick of idolatry among the people. If it was only the emblem of the Supreme Being, then would there have been nothing idolatrous in its worship; and the strong terms in which the saint condemns it perhaps need only express his fear lest the superstition of the ignorant people might convert veneration into positive idolatry. At all events, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud |
