The Hearts of Men

"I am not getting on very well," he thought. "I have looked for three things, and two I am sure I have not found. I have found nowhere any explanation of the Universe, of the Fi...

What is the most general, the most conspicuous form in which religion expresses itself? Is it not in prayer? Where is the religion that is without prayer? There is none. And per...

Sitting on the hillside when the hot season was coming near its end he saw the thunderstorms come across the hills. From far away they came, black shadows in the distance, and t...

If you go to any believer in any religion--in any of the greater religions, I mean--and ask him why he believes in his religion, he has always one answer: "Because it is true."...

It is some years ago now--about twenty, I think--that we first heard of the beginning of a new religion, the arrival of a new prophetess who was to unfold to us the mystery of t...

I had six years of that life in India. I passed six years living in a solitary bungalow miles away from any other European, meeting them but occasionally, six years with practic...

There is one complaint that all Europeans make of the Burmese. It matters not what the European's duties may be, what his profession, or his trade, or his calling--it is always...

"The difficulty of framing a correct definition of religion is very great. Such a definition should apply to nothing but religion, and should differentiate religion from anythin...

Thus are the heavens of all religions explanations to materialise, as it were, the vague instincts of men's hearts. The Mahommedan's absolutely material garden of the houris, th...

There is a festival to-day among the coolies. All night, from down in the valley where their huts are, has come the sound of tom-toms beating. And this morning there has been no...

"This is not the place, nor have I space left here, to explain all I mean when I say that art is a mode of religion, and can flourish only under the inspiration of living and pr...

It is Sunday to-day in the little Italian town, and they have been holding a procession. I do not know quite what was the reason of the procession; it is the feast day of the pa...

What thought the boy of these explanations? Do you think they helped him at all? Do you think he was able to accept them as real? Did they throw any light into the darkness of h...

Such are the qualities and such the circumstances that increase and nourish religious feeling, of such are the more religious of all peoples. What is the result in their lives?...

Reason and religion have but little in common. They come from different sources, they pursue different ways. They are never related in this order as cause and effect. No one was...

Of all aspects of religion none is so difficult to understand as the relation of religion and conduct. It is ever varying. There seems to be nothing fixed about it. What does co...

Brahminism and Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity, Mahommedanism and Parseeism, the cult of the Taoists and Confucians, every belief that has been a great belief, that has led m...

If you look back at the histories of peoples, at the histories of their great wars, their movements, their enthusiasms, you will find that on one side or another, usually on bot...

It is two years and a half ago now that I passed through Westminster Hall, one of a great multitude. They went in double file, thickly packed between barriers of rails on either...

I am not sure that in such an enquiry as this history is of much avail. I do not find that those who search into the past to write the history of it ever discover much that is o...

Perhaps it does not matter. It may be that all this speculation about the First Cause, about the Ruling Power of the world, is unnecessary. What matter if God be inscrutable, if...

He found himself in a new world. He had stepped out of a woman's world into a man's, out of the New Testament into the Old, out of dreams into reality. For the ideas and beliefs...

It will not be denied, I think, that even in England, where we pride ourselves so much upon our religiousness, where we have a hundred religions and only one sauce, the only cou...

There is a faith--Judaism--which originated so far back that we have only a legendary account of it. It was the cult of a warrior nation whose ideal was bravery and whose glory...

But granted, people may say, that religion is what you say, a cult of the emotions, of what use is it? Why should these emotions be cultivated at all? You say that they are beau...

Therefore the man got books and read them. He read books on Hinduism, many of them; he read the Vedas and the sacred hymns. He learnt of Vishnu and Siva, of Krishna and the milk...

All nations, almost all men, have a religion. From the savage in the woods who has his traditions of how the world began, who has his ghosts and his devils to fear or to worship...

"I have been lent your book 'The Soul of a People,'" said a lady to me, "but I have only had time so far to read the dedication. Do you know what I exclaimed?"

Think what a difference, what an immense difference, it makes to a man which he believes, how utterly it alters all his attitude to the Unknown, to the Infinite, whether he beli...

About this time he read the "Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man." This surprised him. It was not only that this was his first introduction to the science of biology, his...

The boy of whom I am about to write was brought up until he was twelve entirely by women. He had masters, it is true, who taught him the usual things that are taught to boys, an...

What, then, is religion? Do any of the definitions given at the beginning explain what it really is? Is it a theory of the universe, is it morality, is it future rewards and pun...

The only other form in which the Christ is presented to popular adoration is as a baby in the Madonna's arms. Out of all the life of Christ, all the varied events of that career...