Neville Figgis

Man is so made that he cannot be satisfied with less than the highest, and that he must be beaten down before he can be raised up.

Christ does not reveal Himself to those who are satisfied. Why should He? They do not want Him.

The Gospel is the freshest and most original thing in the world, while the tone of modern intellectualism, with all its culture, is at bottom commonplace and middle aged.

Religion without a Church is not really possible, for not only is man a social animal, but religion is essentially social. And more and more is the comparative study of religion making it clear that men are fundamentally religious.

The naturalistic theory of Christianity takes on different colours with the temperament of the speaker. From the hysterical contempt of Nietzsche, the hostility of writers like Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Sturt, we may pass through almost every …

True, the Christian Church still lives on. But it is only a living power in small groups. Some of its apparent strength is due to its inherited wealth and to the general lack of education. All this, however, is but for the moment.

It is strange what an attraction the Christian Church still possesses even for men who scorn her claims.

The whole movement of the Christian Church may be a delusion, and then we are all in the dark, except that the darkness has been made visible by the pathetic splendour of Christianity.

The Christian says that life is a good thing, but has been marred by sin; and suffers from the growing pains of youth.

Our world is fonder of riches, perhaps, than ever it was, but I think that it is ceasing to believe in its idol. The danger is that it should cease to have any belief at all.

The universe contemplated by religion is by no means self-contained or self-sufficient, it is dependent for its origin and maintenance, as we are for daily bread and future hopes, upon the power and good-will of a being or beings of which …

The test of a civilisation is in its characteristic culture and in the type of men and women who thrive best in it.

Physical science is indeed valued, but mainly because it is hoped to increase the chances of money-making. Take the Western world through, and what unity can you find either in religion or thought or practical ideals except the desire for …

... art, like religion, appeals to the non-mechanical parts of our nature, to what in us is mystic and vital.

Apart from the Christian hope, we are in a state of chaos, only the more appalling that it seems to be hardly realised. The chaos is all the greater that it applies not only to fundamental doctrines, but to practical ideals.

The atmosphere in literature and art, in novels and dramas, in newspapers and reviews is not only no longer Christian, but is largely anti-Christian, even on the ethical side. If you think of some of the names most honored of late, Thomas …

Perhaps not many now read Tancred. ... Yet that book is far more than mere romance. It is evidence of the dissatisfaction with modern civilisation ...

... I do not conceive the scientific or mathematical temperament as in any way final. Large elements of life, the artistic, the social, the personal, it cannot handle, and when it tries to do so it is apt to come to grief, and this quite …

How far can the new wine of modern knowledge and changed ways of thought be poured into the old bottles of traditional religion?

The object of Grotius was not to make men perfect or treat them as such, but to see whether there were not certain common duties generally felt as binding, if not always practised, and to set forth an ideal.

In the days of their triumph the Netherlands became the University of Europe; if we remove from the first half of the seventeenth century the thinkers, publicists, theologians, men of science, artists and gardeners who were Dutch, and take …

In the struggle between liberty and authority the possession of a hostile printing press becomes of capital importance.

From the Monarchomachi we naturally pass to the Jesuits, the real agents of the Counter-Reformation, and partly also of Spanish aggression. Nearly all of the Jesuit writers of importance in the earlier years of their existence are …

Political liberty is the residuary legatee of ecclesiastical animosities.