James Martineau Quotes

Religion is no more possible without prayer than poetry without language or music without atmosphere.

Religion is the belief in an ever-living God, that is, in a Divine Mind and Will ruling the Universe and holding moral relations with mankind.

When speech is given to a soul holy and true, time, and its dome of ages, becomes as a mighty whispering-gallery, round which the imprisoned utterance runs, and reverberates forever.

We can neither change nor overpower God's eternal suffrage against selfishness and meanness.

The first party of painted savages who raised a few huts upon the Thames did not dream of the London they were creating, or know that in lighting the fire on their hearth they were kindling one of the great foci of Time. * * * * */All the grand agencies which the progress of mankind evolves are formed in the same unconscious way. They are the aggregate result of countless single wills, each of which, thinking merely of its own end, and perhaps fully gaining it, is at the same time enlisted by Providence in the secret service of the world.

Religion is no more possible without prayer than poetry without language, or music without atmosphere.

There is no surer mark of a low and unregenerate nature than this tendency of power to loudness and wantonness instead of quietness and reverence. To souls baptized in Christian nobleness the largest sphere of command is but a wider empire of obedience, calling them, not to escape from holy rule, but to its full impersonation.

God is infinite; and the laws of nature, like nature itself, are finite. These methods of working, therefore,--which correspond to the physical engagement in us,--do not exhaust His agency. There is a boundless residue of disengaged energy beyond.

The health of a community is an almost unfailing index of its morals.

There is no human life so poor and small as not to hold many a divine possibility.