Essays in a Series of Letters to a Friend ..., Volumes 1-2 |
Common terms and phrases
acquire action admiring amidst appear become cause choly Christ christian circumstances connexion conscience conscious considerable contempt death debility decisive character deemed degree determination diction Diet of Worms displayed dissimilar trains distinctions divine effect enchanting nights epic poetry epithet evangelical evil excite express faculty feel fluence force grand greater habit happiness haps human ideas imagination impressions influence instance intellectual interest irreligion judgment kind labour language lence mankind manner means melan ment merating mind mode moral nature object observe operation opinions passions peculiar perceive perhaps persons phatical ples possible present principles probably racter reader reason recollect religion religious religious habit sacred seems sensible sentiments serious shew sions sive society solemn sometimes spect spirit stancy strong sublime taste tendency thing thought tically tion train truth vated virtue vulgar whole wish wonder words writers
Popular passages
Page 392 - Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to inquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron...
Page 395 - Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
Page 123 - The moment of finishing his plans in deliberation, and commencing them in action, was the same. I wonder what must have been the amount of that bribe, in emolument or pleasure, that would have detained him a week inactive after their final adjustment.
Page 122 - It was the calmness of an intensity kept uniform by the nature of the human mind forbidding it to be more, and by the character of the individual forbidding it to be less.
Page 122 - ... deviation his extreme parsimony, and thus advanced by degrees into larger transactions and incipient wealth. I did not hear, or have forgotten, the continued course of his life ; but the final result was, that he more than recovered his lost possessions, and died an inveterate miser worth £60,000.
Page 47 - ... propositions that constitute universal truth, the one which he wants may be, that there is a God. If he cannot with certainty Assign the cause of all that he perceives to exist, that cause may be a God. If he does not know...
Page 121 - ... not to spend, if he could help it, a farthing of whatever he might obtain. The first thing that drew his attention was a heap of coals shot out of carts on the pavement before a house. He offered himself to shovel or wheel them into the place where they were to be laid, and was employed.
Page 94 - A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself; since, if he dared to assert that he did, the puny force of some cause, about as powerful, you would have supposed, as a spider, may make a seizure of the...
Page 5 - Rome had not at length commanded the world. The little rill near the source of one of the great American rivers, is an interesting object to the traveller, who is apprised, as he steps across it, or walks a few miles along its bank, that this is the stream which runs so far, and which gradually swells into so vast a flood.
Page 47 - The wonder then turns on the great process, by which a man could grow to the immense intelligence that can know that there is no God. What ages and what lights are requisite for THIS attainment ! This intelligence involves the very attributes of Divinity, while a God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he cannot know but there may be in some place manifestations of a Deity by which even he would be overpowered.