"Divine revelation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to traverse unaided and explore the material world, than the wisest of men would be to know and grasp by his natural powers the unrevealed good of the immortal human spirit. And as, in our natural state, we could not know the true end of our existence, without a divine revelation, so likewise, we could not pursue and attain our spiritual destiny without special assistance ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... lad as I was, perceived the bitter irony in which he spoke. Not so she. I vow she flushed under what she accounted his praise of her wisdom and divine revelation; for vanity is the last human weakness to be discarded. Then she seemed to recollect herself. She ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... it also alike derogatory of the one and the other. There is but one situation where, like Mount Nebo affording to the man of God a view of the promised land, we can rightly examine it. If on the mount of Divine revelation with the eye of faith, which, like the eye of Moses, with age waxes not dim, we explore it, in its fairest proportions, like the land of Canaan, will we apprehend it; and like that distinguished patriarch, who ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... privilege of deciding on man's religious belief and his moral duty; and that if, from long custom, any respect is still due to revelation, it should only receive it when it is not opposed to the judgments of reason. But if this reason were sufficient for mankind, why should divine revelation be in any case opposed ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... more of a Divine Revelation to the torpid frivolous children of men, if they were not to sink altogether into the ape condition. And in that whirlwind of the Universe,—lights obliterated, and the torn wrecks of Earth and Hell hurled aloft into the Empyrean; black whirlwind, which made even apes serious, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... Legislature, infallible and omnipotent Parliaments, princes full of the enlightenment of the age, and reigning by divine right, or the sovereignty of the people, or what not;—we have hierarchies of priests and ministers of religion, we have a Divine revelation;—we have philosophers, poets, and rhetoricians, all enforcing the sublime morals of the age, with reason or fancy and the attractions of the most cultivated intellect;—we have science exhausting nature by its discoveries;—we have our fine arts, and the arts to humanize ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... centuries? Mr. Palmer himself admits that this tenet of Purgatory "had become the popular doctrine during the period under review;" which, in connection with the solemn promises of Christ to guard His Church from error, clearly proves that it was an article of divine revelation,—on the principles ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... grace of mediate illumination may be inferred aprioristically from the existence of a divine revelation equipped with such supernatural institutions as the Bible, the sacraments, rites, ceremonies, etc. In conformity with the psychological laws governing the association of ideas, intelligent meditation on the agencies comprised under the term ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... themselves did not. Take the matter in this light, it will afford field enough for a divine to enlarge on, by showing the advantages which the Christian world has over the heathen, and the absolute necessity of Divine Revelation, to make the knowledge of the true God, and the practice of virtue more universal ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... it not a time for serious reflection among moderate and candid men of all parties, when such a question was actually thought impertinent interference? Surely they would say with him, that men who have no belief in the divine revelation are not the men to govern this nation, be they whigs or radicals.' Long, extraordinary, and not inglorious, was the ascent from such a position as this, to the principles so nobly vindicated in the speech on the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... formed a coterie whose desire it was to edit a vast encyclopaedia, giving the latest discoveries, in philosophy and science in particular, and in literature in general. These men became known as the Encyclopaedists, and their history is fully set forth by Condillac. They rejected all divine revelation and taught that all religious belief was the working of a disordered mind, and that physical sensibility is the origin of all our thoughts. Alternately gross or flippant, or else both, the French philosophers offered nothing pure or elevating in philosophic ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... polity, no theology, no ritual is perfect. One only came directly and simply from Heaven, the Jewish; and even that was removed because of its unprofitableness. This is no derogation from the perfection of Divine Revelation, for it arises from the subject-matter on and through which it operates." There was a pause; then Carlton went on: "It is the fault of most young thinkers to be impatient, if they do not find perfection in everything; they are 'new brooms.'" Another pause; he went on again: "What form of religion ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... statements involve that the difference between the development which led to the Catholic doctrine of religion and the original condition, was by no means a total one. By recognising the Old Testament as a book of Divine revelation, the Gentile Christians received along with it the religious speech which was used by Jewish Christians, were made dependent upon the interpretation which had been used from the very beginning, and even received a great part of the Jewish literature ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... profess the name of Christ, and dost thou pretend to be a man departing from iniquity? Then take sufficiency of divine revelation before human reason and speculation, and to acknowledge with humble gratitude the rich rewards of an earnest and prayerful study of the English Scriptures. heed thou dost not deceive thyself, by changing one bad way of ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... must excite less wonder, that in the world in general, though Christianity be not formally denied, people know little about it; and that in fact you find, when you come to converse with them, that, admitting in terms the Divine Revelation of Scripture, they are far from believing ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... passed away; and at length, towards the close of the fourth century, the whole of what are now called the Catholic epistles were received, by unanimous consent, as inspired documents. [183:5] The Apocalypse was acknowledged to be a divine revelation as soon as it appeared; and its credit remained unimpeached until the question of the Millennium began to create discussion. Its authenticity was then challenged by some of the parties who took an interest in the controversy; but it still continued to be regarded as a part of Holy Scripture ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... bidding. Thus the door was thrown wide open for every kind of superstition. The Cabbalists followed much the same path. The word Cabbala means "oral tradition," and is defined by Reuchlin as "the symbolic reception of a Divine revelation handed down for the saving contemplation of God and separate forms.[338]" In another place he says, "The Cabbala is nothing else than symbolic theology, in which not only are letters and words symbols of things, but things are symbols of other things." ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... Thomas Hartwell Horne, in commending a work by Dr. Ellis, concerning the origin of human wisdom and understanding, says: "It shows satisfactorily, that religion and language entered the world by divine revelation, without the aid of which, man had not been a rational or religious creature."—Study of the Scriptures, Vol. i, p. 4. "Plato attributes the primitive words of the first language to a divine origin;" and Dr. Wilson ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... sciences. It is the science that treats of God and of man in his relation to God. It is a systematic presentation of revealed truth. As the basis of Astronomy is the universe of worlds revealed by the telescope, and as the basis of Geology is the crust of the earth, so the basis of Theology is the Divine revelation found in the Holy Scriptures. The Theology of Entire Sanctification, therefore, is a systematic presentation of the doctrine of entire sanctification as derived from the written word of God. Such a presentation we hope—with the help of the Holy Spirit, which we here and ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... penetrated to the farthest corners of the earth also as remnants of primitive revelation, their promulgation may be said to be contained in the traditional instruction which the heathen receive from their forebears. This external factor of Divine Revelation, assisted by interior grace, may engender a supernatural act of faith, which implicitly includes belief in Christ, Baptism, etc., and through which the heathen are eventually cleansed from sin and attain ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... Letters, in defence of Divine Revelation; in reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the authenticity of the same. By HOSEA BALLOU, Pastor of the Second Universalist Society in Boston. To which is added, a Religious Correspondence, between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... one of the doctrines should in truth be all that is claimed for it—the divine revelation, or the divine inspiration, of an Almighty Providence—then all the other doctrines can be no more than theories, more or less ingenious, more or less erroneous, mere products of man's imagination. Then countless millions of people for countless ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... contrived by a disreputable adventurer, Joe Smith, with the aid of three confederates, who afterward confessed the fraud and perjury of which they had been guilty. It is a shame to human nature that the silly lies put forth by this precious gang should have found believers. But the solemn pretensions to divine revelation, mixed with elements borrowed from the prevalent revivalism, and from the immediate adventism which so easily captivates excitable imaginations, drew a number of honest dupes into the train of the knavish leaders, and made possible the pitiable history which followed. The chief recruiting-grounds ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... the best of them were acceptable to the Almighty himself, for he granted to them to see darkly and from afar what he has brought nigh to us, and poured into our hearts by divine revelation. You all know the name of Plato. He, from whom Salvation was hidden, saw remotely, by presentiment as it were, many things which to us, the Redeemed, are clear and plain and near. He perceived the relation of earthly beauty and heavenly truth. The great ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ideal of self-sacrifice. It is the rule that "the strong ought to bear the infirmities of those that are weak." It is the divine revelation which is summed up in the words: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... the fact that the knowledge of the Buddha, which embraces the whole universe, sees that it is a consequence of the nature of things. In that sense it may be described as an eternal law, but this is not the way in which the Pitakas usually speak of it and it is not represented as a divine revelation dictated by other than human motives. "Come, disciples," the Buddha was wont to say, "lead a holy life for the complete extinction of suffering." Holiness is simply the way out of misery into happiness. To ask why we should take that way, would seem to an Indian an ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... know; it was most surprising. But, what is stranger still is, that the Jesuit priest who has just left—you know, that excellent man whom I have made such fun of—had a divine revelation of my state, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... discovered an ascending order in creation, which agrees marvellously with that given in the book of Genesis: first, vegetable productions; then the moving creatures in the sea; then terrestrial animals; and finally man. Naturalists, who utterly reject the Scriptures as a divine revelation, speak with the highest admiration of the Mosaic account of the creation, as compared with any other cosmogony of the ancient world. While there is in general an ascending series in these living forms, each was perfect ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... this wickedness is carefully set before us. Noah, looked upon by his son as a foolish, insane, and ridiculous old man, now steps forth in the majesty of a prophet, to announce to his son a divine revelation of future events. Truly does Paul declare that "power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor 12, 9); for the certainty characterizing Noah's utterance is proof that he was filled with the Holy Spirit, notwithstanding that his son ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... civilization, so as to account, on natural principles, for the origin and prevalence of the various forms of Religion, and even for the introduction, in its appointed season, of Christianity itself, without having recourse to anything so utterly unphilosophical as the idea of a Divine Revelation, or the supposition of supernatural agency. And it has been applied, fourthly, to explain the order, and to vindicate the use, of those additions both to the doctrines and rites of primitive Christianity, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... producing a considerable difference of character amongst the various hordes. It may be proper to bear in mind also that we are about to draw the character of a people whose only rule of conduct is public opinion and to try them by a morality founded on divine revelation, the only standard that can be referred to by those who have been educated in a land to which the blessings ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... theorized on a method of finding longitude by the variation of the needle; so that even Richard Eden, who greatly admired him, wrote as follows: "Sebastian Cabot on his death-bed told me that he had the knowledge thereof (longitude by variation) by divine revelation, yet so that he might not teach any man. But I thinke that the goode olde man in that extreme age somewhat doted, and had not, yet even in the article of death, utterly shaken off all worldlye vaine glorie." These words would ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... to be trusted than the Sacred Books of the Hindoos; the miracles by which Christianity is supported, the discrepancies between the accounts in the different Gospels, gradually led him to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. "Thus," he writes,[85] "disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress." But Darwin was too modest to presume to go beyond the limits laid down by science. He wanted nothing more than to be able to go, freely and unhampered ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... science, and the exposition of the successes of scientific method. It was here that the Encyclopaedia exerted really destructive power, and it did so in the only way in which power of that kind can be exerted either wisely or effectually. The miracle of a divine revelation, of grace, of the mass, began to wear a different look in men's eyes, as they learned more of the physical processes of the universe. We should describe the work of the Encyclopaedia as being to make its readers lose their interest, rather than their belief, in mysteries. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... life. If usury or interest is found to be a sin from the Word, there is no need for those to enter into the economic proof who have no taste for this character of study or reasoning. If it is found to be "malum per se" from the nature of things, even those who reject the divine revelation must array themselves against it. If it is shown to be evil by both revelation and economic law, then all peoples, Christian and heathen, ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or Act ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... man, the man who walks with God, is in principle and purpose identified with every just cause, with every step of human progress, with every sphere of man's well-being. To him property is a sacred trust, time a golden opportunity, truth a divine revelation, Nature the visible garment of God, humanity a holy brotherhood, the family, society, and the state are God-ordained institutions, with God-given laws. Through the one fundamental devotion of his heart and will ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... reason why you should have attended to it. If there is a divine revelation confided to the care of a church, that revelation is for the sake of men and not for the sake of the church. A church has no right to existence for its own sake. He was a wise Pope who called himself 'Servant of the Servants of God.' The ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... no "divine revelation," nor did he seek to found a religion. He was simply a teacher, and what he taught was the science of living—living in the present, with the plain and simple men and women who make up the world, and bettering our condition by bettering ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... Legislation and Administration. Such an education, which leads the youth beyond mere outside shew, will impress their minds with a profound reverence of the Deity, universal benevolence, and a warm attachment and affection towards their country. It will excite in them a just regard to Divine Revelation, which informs them of the original character and dignity of Man; and it will inspire them with a sense of true honor, which consists in conforming as much as possible, their principles, habits, and manners to that ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... common: first, they assume that man is his own arbiter, has both the requisite intelligence and the moral ability to control his own destiny; secondly, they place the source and criterion of this power in collective wisdom, not in individual vagary and not in divine revelation. They assert, therefore, that the law of the group, the perfected and wrought out code of human experience, is all that is binding and all that is essential. To be sure, and most significantly, this authority is not rigid, complete, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... with all its Absurdities, was less superstitious than that of the ancient and learned Greeks and Romans. May we not hence conclude that the Mexicans derived some part of their Religious Knowledge from a People enlightned by a divine Revelation; which, tho' very much corrupted in the Days of Madoc, yet was superior to Heathen Darkness. Clavigero, Hist. of Mexico. Monthly Review, Vol. 65. p. ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... hundred years, all religion has perished from the practically active national mind of France and England. No statesman in the senate of either country would dare to use a sentence out of their acceptedly divine Revelation, as having now a literal authority over them for their guidance, or even a suggestive wisdom for their contemplation. England, especially, has cast her Bible full in the face of her former God; and proclaimed, with open challenge to ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... build forts on their frontiers and keep colossal standing armies to avoid being butchered by their own Christian brethren; that are full of divorce courts and demagogues, penitentiaries and poorhouses, sending young theological goslings, who believe that all of divine revelation can be found in one book, to teach the philosophic Hindu the road to heaven! Gall! Why the men we are trying to convert were preaching the immortality of the soul when the Hebrew prophets were putting people to the sword for accepting it; they were familiar with all the essential features ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Light of Divine Revelation, and Dr. Hodge's Bible Argument on Slavery, form a synopsis of the whole theological argument on the subject. The plain and obvious teachings, of both Old and New Testament, are given with such irresistible force as to carry conviction to every mind, except those wedded to the theory ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... His everlasting love, His infinite compassion, His all-embracing purpose were from eternity; but we only got to know of it all because He came. If He had contented Himself with sending messages or highly-placed messengers, or even with making occasional and wonderful excursions of Divine revelation, man would, no doubt, have been greatly attracted, and perhaps even helped somewhat in his tremendous conflict with evil; yet he might never have been subdued in will, he might never have been touched and won back to God; he might never have been brought down from his pride to cry out, "My Lord ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... in the eyes of a sensible man than for one denomination to criticize another whose creed is equally foolish. A Christian thinks that the Koran, the Divine revelation announced by Mohammed, is but a tissue of impertinent dreams and impostures injurious to Divinity. The Mohammedan, on his side, treats the Christian as an idolater and a dog; he sees but absurdities ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... Mr. Moffat in his Missionary Labours, "had the light of Divine revelation dawned upon his savage mind, and of course his conscience had never accused him, no, not for one of the thousands of deeds of rapine and murder which had marked his course ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... preface, is full of interest; and this preface is impressively wrought with the system of creative law that he aims to outline, and that the verse of Mr. Wait labors to elaborate. This author is firmly loyal to the sacred Scriptures as divine revelation, and, as such, he aims to show that, in their inmost sense, they systematically unfold the creative process, which consists of divine operations in the human soul by which, through varied series of growth, it becomes fully conjoined to, and illuminated with creative ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... matters of opinion, taste, and prudence. But a regulation which determines who shall and who shall not be recognized as members of the Church of Christ, involves a vital question, the importance of which cannot be overrated, and which must be determined by Divine Revelation, and not by ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... needed revision, apologised for the criticism he could not avoid. It is sometimes said that Homer was the Bible of the Greeks; while this statement is probably inaccurate—for no theological system was built on him nor did he claim any divine revelation—yet it is certain that authors of all ages searched the text for all kinds of purposes, antiquarian, ethical, social, as well as religious. This careful study of Homer culminated in the learned and accurate work of the great Alexandrian school ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... rule. Whence he sprang, and what his race, I cannot say, but he dwelt in a waste howling wilderness in the land of Senaar, and had been perfected through the grace of the priesthood. Barlaam was this elder's name. He, learning by divine revelation the state of the king's son, left the desert and returned to the world. Changing his habit, he put on lay attire, and, embarking on ship board, arrived at the seat of the empire of the Indians. Disguised as a merchant man, he entered the city, where was the ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... perfection and absolute supremacy. The singular fallacy of these last days, that Natural Science, in some unexplained manner, has already demolished,—or is inevitably destined to demolish[1],—the Book of Divine Revelation, appeared to be the fallacy which had emerged into most offensive prominence; and to this, he accordingly addressed himself.—It will not, surely, be thought by any one who reads the IInd of these Sermons that its author is so weak ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... mystery, miracle, and Divine Revelation, as dispassionately in the Vedic, Brahmanical, and Buddhistic cults, as in the Mosaic and Christian. Belief in God, and reverence for Truth in the light of reason and conscience, shine from every page of ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... true and so striking that they could not be forgotten. They contained eternal truths, expressed for the first time in human language. Of such oracles of truth it was said in India that they had been heard, Sruta, and from it arose the word Sruti, the recognized term for divine revelation ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... tended to the pleasures of the body by that method; and first of all invented the art of making brass. Lamech was also the father of a daughter, whose name was Naamah. And because he was so skillful in matters of divine revelation, that he knew he was to be punished for Cain's murder of his brother, he made that known to his wives. Nay, even while Adam was alive, it came to pass that the posterity of Cain became exceeding wicked, every one successively dying, one after another, more wicked ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... not believe that he would have freed an existence so brief from the cares and sorrows to which, since the beginning of the world, mankind has been subjected? Suppose that I am a kind father, and have a child whom I dearly love, but I know by a divine revelation that he will die at the age of eight years, surely I should not vex his infancy by needless preparations for the duties of life. If I am a rich man, I should not send him from the caresses of his mother to the stern discipline of school. If I am a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... God and is based upon eternal and unchanging truth. Truth is one of the attributes of Jehovah and the unshaken pillar that supports the throne of eternity. In truth and righteousness he governs the world, and by an omnipotent arm wields the destinies of men. Truth is the sun of divine revelation pouring its beams on intelligent creation and calling upon all men to believe. If a man assert that which does exist, it is a truth; but if he assert that which does not exist, it is a falsehood. Whatever has an existence in the compass of reality is ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... unfounded suspicion of conspiracy against the Spanish rule, spent twenty-seven years in prison, and died in Paris after a short period of quiet. Renewing an old idea, Campanella directed attention from the written volume of Scripture to the living book of nature as being also a divine revelation. Theology rests on faith (in theology, Campanella, in accordance with the traditions of his order, follows Thomas Aquinas); philosophy is based on perception, which in its instrumental part comprises mathematics and logic, and in its ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... not until its times of humiliation and decay that one of the most remarkable of its orders appears,—an order itself illustrative of extreme degradation, and which figures largely, in every scheme of mythology that borrowed through traditional channels from Divine revelation, as a meet representative of man's great enemy the Evil One. I of course refer to the ophidian or serpent family. The earliest ophidian remains known to the Palaeontologist occur in that ancient deposit of the Tertiary division known as the London Clay, and must have belonged to serpents, some ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... recommended as the will and reason of the supreme Deity, and enforced by the sanction of eternal rewards or punishments. The experience of Greek and Roman history could not inform the world how far the system of national manners might be reformed and improved by the precepts of a divine revelation; and Constantine might listen with some confidence to the flattering, and indeed reasonable, assurances of Lactantius. The eloquent apologist seemed firmly to expect, and almost ventured to promise, that the establishment of Christianity would restore the innocence and felicity of the primitive ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... typically manifested to the church by a variety of ceremonies, persons and events, under the Old Testament dispensation, is past doubt.' And it is very plainly intimated, that those who affect to call this notion in question, and yet pretend to be friends of a divine revelation, are hypocrites. It is added: 'The sacrifices were ordained to pre-figure Christ,—and were professions of faith in ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... too superficially; that the principles which underlie the dogmas are not sufficiently explained, inculcated, and impressed upon the minds of the young men, and that their educators fail in giving them a correct idea of the spirit and essence of our religion, which is based on divine revelation, and invested in a Body divinely commissioned to teach all men, authoritatively and infallibly, all its sacred and immutable truths—truths which we are consequently bound in conscience ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... that wait for Thee" (Isa. 66:4). But the end must first be known by men who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that man should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... no system of India has approached so near to veritable divine revelation as that of Plato, but in variety and subtlety, and in their far-reaching influence upon human life, the Indian schools, especially the Vedanta, are scarcely excelled to this day. And they are applied philosophies; they constitute ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... thing incredible to natural reason that God should be able to raise the dead. I do not say that by natural light we can discover that God will raise the dead; for that, depending merely upon the will of God, can no otherwise be certainly known than by divine revelation: but that God can do this is not at all incredible to natural reason. And this is sufficiently implied in the question which St. Paul asks, in which he appeals to Festus and Agrippa, neither of them Christians, "why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?" ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... the Romans, A.D. 66. At the approach of war, Christians of Jerusalem and Judea removed to Pela, beyond the Jordan.[200] Eusebius says they fled in obedience to a Divine revelation.[201] These were all Jews, and in their new homes were called ...
— Water Baptism • James H. Moon
... their course. Others, again, have urged that the six days of creation were six literal days, but instead of being consecutive were separated by long ages. And yet again, as no man was present during the creation period, it has been suggested that the Divine revelation of it was given to Moses or some other inspired prophet in six successive visions or dreams, which constituted the "six days" in which the chief facts of creation ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... the editors say: "In chapter v., verse 23, Adam proclaims the eternal oneness of the happy pair, 'This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh;' no hint of her subordination. How could men, admitting these words to be divine revelation, ever have preached the subjection of woman? Next comes the naming of the mother of the race. 'She shall be called woman,' in the ancient form of the word, 'womb-man.' She was man and more than man, because of her maternity. The ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... days have had it streaming in upon you. The measure of the guilt is the brightness of the light. No shadows are so black as those which the intense sunshine of the tropics casts. And you and I live in the very tropical regions of divine revelation, and 'if we turn away from Him that spoke on earth and speaketh from heaven, of how much sorer punishment, think you, shall we be thought worthy' than those who live away out in the glimmering twilight ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... beloved of the Lord, being full of days and of good works, and now faithfully finishing the time of his appointed ministry, saw, as well by the divine revelation as by the dissolution of his earthly tabernacle, that the evening of his life was drawing near. And being then nigh unto Ulydia, he hastened his journey toward the metropolitan seat, Ardmachia; for earnestly he desired to lay in that ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... individuals, while the majority of a nation continue to recognize and own his authority. The absurdity of this scheme of principles may obviously appear at first view to every unbiassed mind that is blessed with any competent measure of common sense and discretion, and tolerable knowledge of divine revelation. That magistracy is a divine ordinance, flowing originally from Jehovah, the supreme and universal Sovereign of Heaven and earth, as the ultimate fountain thereof, cannot be denied. Neither is it to be doubted, ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... writers of his time. 'I would not,' he says, 'take the method generally practised by the defenders of Christianity. I would not attempt to show from reason and antiquity the necessity and reasonableness of a Divine revelation in general, or of the Mosaic and Christian in particular. Nor do I enlarge upon the arguments for the credibility of the Gospel history, the reasonableness of its creeds, institutions, and usages; or the duty of man to receive things above, but not contrary to his reason. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... species of Divine revelation which has not, and cannot, be tampered with, one great Bible, which forms the starry original ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... down, and pondered this new question, so suddenly presented for solution, turning it towards every light—viewing it now from the side of human feeling and human reason—and now with the light of Divine Revelation shining upon it. But he was not satisfied. The letter of the record was against him; but nature cried out for some different reading. At length he made an effort to thrust the ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... the other. "I do not in the least say it is not Divine Revelation—that is another question—but you receive the statement that it is so, on the word of ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... thought. Asserting that human society is a gradual progress of development and of improvement, it regards every age as manifesting some phase of truth, or of error, and contributing its portion of knowledge to the student. Humanity is regarded as a divine revelation: its social and intellectual changes as manifestations ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... of ostentation, that they may pass upon the world for persons of great knowledge and observation, or, what is worse, there are some who highly exalt the wisdom of those Gentile sages, thereby obliquely to glance at and traduce Divine revelation, and more especially that of the Gospel; for the consequence they would have us draw is this: that since those ancient philosophers rose to a greater pitch of wisdom and virtue than was ever known among Christians, ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... this day, a meaning very different from what it bore when the old charges were compiled. It then signified what we now call a "free-thinker," or disbeliever in the divine revelation of the Scriptures. This rule would therefore greatly abridge the universality and tolerance of the Institution, were it not for the following qualifying clause in the ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... question can be raised as to the validity of anything once admitted to form part of the sacred volume. The Anglican clergy, on the contrary, are at liberty to apply criticism freely in order to discriminate between that part of the Bible which is and that which is not part of divine revelation. Finally, a long series of authorities from Hooker to Bishop Hampden is adduced to prove that, in point of fact, our most learned divines had constantly taken advantage of this liberty; and established, so to speak, a right of way to all the results of criticism. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... considerably greater, from the circumstance of the early enemies of the Christian religion having instituted a comparison between the miracles of Christ and of this celebrated philosopher, for the obvious purpose of undermining one of the most considerable evidences of the truth of divine revelation. It was probably with an indirect view of this sort that Philostratus was incited by the empress Julia to compose his life of this philosopher; and Hierocles, a writer of the time of Dioclesian, appears to have penned an express treatise in the way of a parallel ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... of thoughts crowded on my imagination. I knew that the priests claimed the word of God as their authority for all their doctrines and ceremonies, which word I also knew was contained in the Old and New Testaments, although, to my misfortune, I did not then regard them as a divine revelation. In fact, I believed no more in the Holy Bible as the word of God, than I did in the doctrine of purgatory; still I felt a desire to search and to ascertain whether this lucrative doctrine was contained ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... real Gospel, they are sincere; preaching and teaching the best things their energizing power, the angel of light, is pleased to reveal unto them. Their gospel is one of human reason, and appeals to human resources. There can be no appreciation of Divine revelation in them, for they have not come to really know God or His Son, Jesus Christ. As all this is true, how perilous is the attitude of many who follow attractive ministers and religious guides only because they claim to be such, and are ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... forces. But suppose a time of reaction came, and the influences I have referred to should diminish for a season; is it not probable, nay certain, that the old forces of Christian exclusiveness and infallibility, based upon a divine revelation, would once more produce the effects-which cursed and degraded Europe for over a thousand years? Such, at any rate, is my belief; it is also, I think, the belief of most Freethinkers; and this is the reason why we cannot forgive and forget. The serpent is scotched, not ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... of unrest and of great intellectual activity, and at all such times the claims of the Church as the guardian and expounder of Divine Revelation are sure to be questioned. Not that the Church has need to fear inquiry, or that the claims of faith and reason are incompatible, but because some daring spirits are always to be reckoned with, who, by mistaking ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... saying about two commandments being the sum and substance of the law was just as holy when Hillel spake them as when Jesus uttered them after his time. All truth is divine, and part of God's divine revelation to his children. ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... unnoticed:—(1) the primitive men are supposed to be created out of the earth, and not after the ordinary manner of human generation—half the causes of moral evil are in this way removed; (2) the arts are attributed to a divine revelation: and so the greatest difficulty in the history of pre-historic man is solved. Though no one knew better than Plato that the introduction of the gods is not a reason, but an excuse for not giving a reason (Cratylus), yet, considering that more than two thousand years later mankind are still ...
— Statesman • Plato
... can be submitted for consideration to those who believe in the existence of God, in man's responsibility to his Creator, and in divine revelation, than what are God's conditions for pardoning sin committed after baptism. For however much men may doubt, deny, or dispute about religion, they can never impugn the fact that they are individually sinners. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel
... possessed not only the primitive intuition of God as He had revealed Himself to all mankind, but passed through the denial of all other gods to the knowledge of the one God, we are content to answer that it was by a special Divine Revelation. We do not indulge in theological phraseology, but we mean every word to its fullest extent. The Father of Truth chooses His own prophets, and He speaks to them in a voice stronger than the voice of thunder. It is the same inner voice ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... its later development, is mainly the result of European influences. It began with an attempt to bring the modern corrupt forms of worship back to the purity and simplicity of the Vedas; and by ascribing to the Veda the authority of a Divine Revelation, it was hoped to secure that infallible authority without which no religion was supposed to be possible. How was that movement stopped, and turned into a new channel? Simply by the publication of the Veda, and by the works of European scholars, such as Stevenson, Mill, Rosen, Wilson, and ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... innocence, that it was carefully handed down to his descendants, and that Moses, under the divine direction, incorporated it into his history; or it may have been directly communicated to Moses by special inspiration—that matters not—but a divine revelation it must have been, or it is nothing; the dream of a poet, or the theory of a philosopher, if we can believe that such a philosopher existed at such a time. But if it be indeed a revelation from the Creator Himself, we cannot imagine that He could fall into any error, or sanction ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... accelerating that ineffable fusion of God and man. The materialism of the Sankhya and the idealism of the Vedanta combine to provoke the reaction of yet another system, the Mimansa, which stands for the eternal and divine revelation of the Vedas, codifies, so to say, their theology into liturgical laws, admits of no speculation or esoteric interpretation, and seems to subordinate the gods themselves to the forms of worship ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... principles, we maintain that it well becomes Christians, when the soundness of their faith, and the rectitude of their acts of worship, are called in question, "to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good." Thus, when the unbeliever charges us with credulity in receiving as a divine revelation what he scornfully rejects, it behoves us all (every one to the extent of his means and opportunities) to possess ourselves of the accumulated evidences of our holy faith, so that we may be able to give to our own minds, and to those who ask it of us, a reason ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... careless disregard of an almighty power, whose determination and ability to punish him, if not bought off, he did not question. The torments of a physical hell were vividly portrayed on all occasions, and accepted by the highest as well as the lowest as an essential part of the divine revelation. William was no exception to this rule. He became even more shockingly defiant of God after his recovery than he had been before. God, he declared to the Bishop of Rochester, should never have ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... exactly as easy as to prove the existence of the supernatural. There are no arguments in favor of the supernatural. There are theories and fears and mistakes and prejudices and guesses, but no arguments—plenty of faith, but no facts; plenty of divine revelation, but no demonstration. The supernatural, in my judgment, is a mistake. I believe ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the whole of Divine Revelation and the elucidation of the Mysteries. And this branch of ancient theology has been secretly preserved with reverence even to our own day; Jacob Boehm, Swendenborg, Martinez Pasqualis, Saint-Martin, Molinos, Madame Guyon, Madame Bourignon, ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... Moses: "Tell me the commission God hath given thee." Moses answered: "Wait until we reach the mountain." At the foot of the mountain Moses said to the people: "Stay here until we return to you; I, Aaron, and Eleazar will go to the top of the mount, and shall return when we shall have heard the Divine revelation." All three now ascended. ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... tableland of Amarkantak, takes a westerly course for some miles, and then turns off suddenly to the east, and is joined by the little stream of the Johila before it descends the great cascade; and hence the poets have created this fiction, which the mass of the population receive as divine revelation. The statue of little Johila, the barber's daughter, in stone, stands in the temple of the goddess Nerbudda at Amarkantak, bound in chains.[6] It may here be remarked that the first overtures in India must ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... immense significance of the Pauline conception of the Church as the continued embodiment and revelation of Christ, the communion of saints past and present who live or have lived by the Spirit. Through this spiritual group, part of whom are visible and part invisible, they held that the divine revelation is continued and the eternal Word of God is being uttered to the race. "The true religion of Christ," as one of these spiritual teachers well puts it, "is written in the soul and spirit of man by the Spirit of God; and the believer is the only book in ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Divine Revelation has been committed by Jesus Christ to the custody of the Church, and century after century she has guarded it with the utmost jealousy and fidelity. Like a loyal watchman, stationed on a lofty tower, ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... things being to perswade Men that they may please God at a cheaper Rate than by the Denial of their Appetites, and the Mortifying of their Irregular Affections, these Misrepresentations of a pretended Divine Revelation have been highly prejudicial to Morality: And, thereby, been also a great occasion of Scepticism; for the Obligation to Vertue being loosen'd, Men easily become Vicious; which when once they are, ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... find an abundance of evidence, both in the works of nature and in the Divine revelation, to establish the fact that the family properly regulated is the foundation and pillar of society, and is the most important of any other human institution. In the Divine economy it is provided that the man shall be the head of the family, and shall take upon ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... to do was to heed at once this divine revelation and devote the whole Sabbath day to the solemn work—in ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... how wonderful are the dealings of our God! Can we shut our eyes to His Divine revelation? Let us be wise in the day of grace, taking heed to the sure Word of prophecy, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place. The world indeed is dark, and all confusion. But His Word shows unto us order in all this confusion, blessed be His name. ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... Jeremiah and Deuteronomy—upon the Law, the Temple, the Sacrifices, and Doctrines of Providence and Morality—suggest an important question with regard to the methods of Divine Revelation under the Old Covenant. Do they not prove that among those methods there were others than vision or intuition springing from the direct action of the Spirit of God upon the spirits of individual men? Are they not instances of the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... turning-point of Alexander's life; and its horrors, for which his sensitive nature felt much of the responsibility, overset still more a mind never too well balanced. At the burning of Moscow, he declared afterwards, his own soul had found illumination, and he had realized once for all the divine revelation to him of his mission as the peacemaker of Europe. He tried to calm the unrest of his conscience by correspondence with the leaders of the evangelical revival on the continent, and sought for omens and supernatural guidance in texts and passages of scripture. It was not, however, according to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that the love of the Father and the grace of the Son do not accomplish more, when the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is little understood or sought or accepted. The Holy Spirit is the fruit and crown of the Divine Revelation, through whom the Son and the Father come to us. If you would know God, if you would be holy, you must be taught ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... our schools than "The Deathless Book," by Rev. David O. Mears, D.D. Dr. S.E. Smith says of it:—"It contains more items of knowledge in many a field than are often brought together, and all legitimately associated with the precious Book of Divine Revelation." A pledge has been given for a part payment in the purchase of one hundred volumes of this book, to be paid when the whole is pledged. It would be a great addition to our school libraries if this book were put into them. The publishers offer ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then,' in heaven, 'shall I know even as also I am known.' Therefore, while you use all diligence, accompanied with prayer and the expositions of God's faithful ministers, to understand every part of divine revelation, be neither surprised nor disheartened at the want of comprehension, far less attempt to reduce it to human reason, as many have done to their ruin. The Scripture says, 'Vain man would be wise, though born like the wild ass's colt.' ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... half tempted to smile when he reflected that the vigilant Sauk, while engaged on a delicate duty, had forgotten all about it, even to the personal danger involved. Reflecting on the new and divine revelation, he had sat down where he believed he was not likely to be disturbed, and given himself wholly up to the sacred joy ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the saying true, "This child is set for a sign which shall be spoken against."[029] It is rejected by the Jew and the Mohammedan, and finds opponents in many who profess to accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as a Divine revelation, and to regard the exemplary life of Jesus as a model to be copied, while they deny His Divine origin, His sacrificial death, and His ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... truth to mankind was something gradual, progressive, and cumulative; also that it is dependent upon the ability of men to receive it. This capacity of the individual to receive is, after all, the determining factor in the process of divine revelation; for God's truth and his desire to impart it are always the same. Hence, whenever conditions favor, or national or private experiences clarify the vision of a race or group of men, a ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... those hidden organs of the Unconscious Personality we can only dimly see. It is through them that Divine revelation is vouchsafed to man. The visions of the mystic, the prophecies of the seer, the inspiration of the sibyl, all come through this Unconscious Soul. It is through this dumb and suppressed Ego that we communicate by telepathy,—that thought is transferred without using the ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... pattern of the life here. A dream is something to be carried out; not put aside and neglected and lost in over-lying and ever-accumulating stratas of experience. The dream, once clearly recognized, becomes a personal responsibility. It has been revealed for a purpose. It is the Divine revelation to the individual life, and these visions are given to the individual as well as to humanity, and they are the most significant occurrences in the entire experience of life. To once clearly recognize this divine ideal, this glorious vision of possibilities that shines ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... young?" "Then," I answer, "there can be no principle, only an occasional and arbitrary exercise of spiritual power, in the perfecting of praise out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, or in the preference of them to the wise and prudent as the recipients of divine revelation." ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... referred, I believe, to the last of Tillotson's Sermons preached upon Several Occasions, ed. 1673, p. 316, where the preacher says:—'Supposing the Scripture to be a Divine Revelation, and that these words (This is My Body), if they be in Scripture, must necessarily be taken in the strict and literal sense, I ask now, What greater evidence any man has that these words (This is My Body) are in the Bible than every man has that the bread ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... were more obviously of general moral import; but the books of the prophets were not God's special revelation to the Jews, but rather individual utterances and exhortations: and their teaching was treated as subordinate to the Divine revelation in the Five Books of Moses. Those, then, who aimed at the spread of Jewish monotheism were impelled to draw out a philosophical meaning, a universal value from the Books of Moses. Nowadays the Bible is the holy book of so much of the civilized world ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... for he carefully distinguishes that principle of life which he ascribes to a gas, and by which he means the sensuous animal life, from the intellectual immortal principle of soul. Van Helmont, indeed, was a sincere believer of Divine Revelation. "The Lord Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life," says with earnest humility this daring genius, in that noble chapter "On the completing of the mind by the 'prayer of silence,' and the loving offering tip of ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... built on a collection of commandments supposed to be inspired by God. Religions have established different duties toward God, and these duties or commandments are in part very inhuman. This has often resulted in direct contradictions between ethics attributed to divine revelation, and pure human ethics. Moreover, the divine commandments vary in ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Indian literature, and the earliest literary document of Aryan religion. Of four vedas or collections of hymns, the Rigveda is the oldest and most interesting. It contains a set of hymns which, with much more of their early religious literature, the Hindus ascribed to direct divine revelation, but which we know to have been written by men who claimed no special inspiration. Most of them date from the time when the Aryans, having made good their entry in India, but without by any means altogether subduing the former inhabitants, were dwelling in ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... vote correctly at elections and keep the political business going and allow everything to run on smoothly for the next war. Only automatons will agree to the lengthening of skirts from the knee to the ankle. And only automatons will acquiesce in a system of morality which is not built on divine revelation or even on social necessity, but on exploded superstitions and sex domination and the conventions of the ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... standpoint of idealists and endeavouring to avoid the logical consequences of their speculations; while others, adopting so far as possible a position of pure empiricism, set tradition at defiance, and hoped by the aid of reason to reach the conclusions of divine revelation. ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... cured the dog, but it must have charmed away the eczema on his ducal hands. Full of a wild surmise he tried it next on his landlady's child, who had a sore on its legs, and lo! the sore healed. It was then that the Divine Revelation came to him; it was then that he passed his vigil, as he had told Zora, and consecrated himself and his Cure to ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... himself with feeling the ground beneath his feet. That, at least, though the heavens fall, is likely to remain; meanwhile, let the heavens take care of themselves. It may be the part of valor to champion divine revelation, but the better part of valor is discretion, and if divine revelation prove true, discretion will be none the worse off. On the other hand, to champion a myth is to make one's self ridiculous, and of being ridiculous the agnostic has a consuming ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... and, to a careless observer, their faults may seem to cast a shade on the faith which they professed. But the scandal of the pious Christian, and the fallacious triumph of the Infidel, should cease as soon as they recollect not only by whom, but likewise to whom, the Divine Revelation was given. The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption, which she contracted in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Eternal Father in the latter days; and His coming to His temple in the current dispensation. All these developments in the ministration of the Christ are already of the past. Our proposed course of investigation will lead yet onward, into the future concerning which the word of divine revelation is of record. We shall consider the conditions incident to the Lord's return in power and glory to inaugurate the dominion of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, and to usher in the predicted Millennium ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the first time, and then if we could use it faithfully as a working plan for a time, simply as an experiment,—it would soon cease to be an experiment, and we should not need to be told by any one that it is a divine revelation; we would be confident of that in our own souls. Indeed that is the only way any one can ever be sure of revelation; it must come to each of us alone, as if it had never come to any one before; and yet the beauty and power of it is such that it has ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... generate religious beliefs. And when once we have discovered grounds in our own reflection or experience for believing them to be true, there is no reason why we should not regard all of them as {146} pieces of divine revelation. Visions and dreams, for instance, had a share in the development of religious ideas. We might even admit the possibility that the human race would never have been led to think of the immortality of the soul but for ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... Globe, after consluting with the sagest Politicians of the Age, and carefully examining the several frames of Government already erected in this new Empire, and particularly all the advantages which Divine Revelation affords; have drawn up the following Frame of Government for New Ireland, which, from the knowledge we have of the dispositions of our Constituents we have ground to believe will be very acceptable to them, and calculated to render ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... science of nature presupposes Omniscience; man's interpretations of nature have to turn upon presumptions of Probability (chh. iii. Sections 9-17; iv. SectionS 11-17; vi, xiv-xvi). In forming their stock of Certainties and Probabilities men employ the faculty of reason, faith in divine revelation, and enthusiasm (chh. xvii-xix); much misled by the last, as well as by other causes of 'wrong assent' (ch. xx), when they are at work in 'the three great provinces of the intellectual world' (ch. xxi), concerned ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... the visible, material body of Jesus Christ, in which there enshrined itself the everlasting Word, which from the beginning was the Agent of all divine revelation, that is the true Temple of God. When we begin to speak about the special presence of Omnipresence in any one place, we soon lose ourselves, and get into deep waters of glory, where there is no standing. And I do not care to deal here with theological definitions ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the life of many a wiser and sadder philosopher than Berkeley; but they, like Plato, for instance, or Spinoza, have made experience the subject as well as the language of that intercourse, and have thus given the divine revelation some degree of pertinence and articulation. Berkeley in his positive doctrine was satisfied with the vaguest generalities; he made no effort to find out how the consciousness that God is the direct ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... more unphilosophical than this. Apart altogether from divine revelation, by which we are informed that "all deeps, fire, and hail, snow, and vapour, and stormy wind," are "fulfilling God's word" (which information we are bound to receive as a matter of faith if we be Christians, and as a matter of necessity if we be men of common sense, because it is mere absurdity ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... revelation against arrogant rationalism, and of idealism against materialism. Hostile as he is to the Stoic intellectual dogmatism, Philo is none the less opposed to its converse, intellectual skepticism and agnosticism. Man, he is convinced, has a Divine revelation[111] which he may not deny without ruin. He holds with Pope that ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... time to come; which are naturally, but Conjectures upon the Experience of time past; and supernaturall, divine Revelation; the same authors of the Religion of the Gentiles, partly upon pretended Experience, partly upon pretended Revelation, have added innumerable other superstitious wayes of Divination; and made men believe they ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... attainments. How forcibly does such a conduct prove the existence of a sense of the law, which says, "Do to others, as you would that others should do to you." It is curious, that some authors have maintained, that no such law is recognised among mankind till they are made acquainted with divine revelation. But these persons have confounded together two things, which are quite distinct,—a sense of the obligation of such a law, and a disposition and power to obey it. The former may exist, and indeed more generally does exist, without the latter. But we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... dare not, attempt to inventory the charms of this divine revelation of perfect beauty. Those eyes of mystic violet, dewy and serene, evade my words. Her long lustrous hair following her glorious head in a golden wake, like the track sown in heaven by a falling star, seems to quench my most burning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... dictated by the Spirit of God; according to another, though they are not verbally inspired, they contain a record of divine things written under divine inspiration; according to a third, though not written under divine inspiration in any part, they contain a faithful record of a divine revelation; and according to a fourth, they contain a record merely of what a succession of God-fearing men in sympathy with each other and their race saw and felt to be the clear purpose of God in His ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood |
