A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strange that society should be disheartened and sensualized by unbelief. — © Ralph Waldo Emerson
When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strange that society should be disheartened and sensualized by unbelief.
So let's set the record straight. Faith is not the opposite of reason. The opposite of faith is unbelief. And reason is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of reason is irrationality. Do some Christians have irrational faith? Sure. Do some skeptics have unreasonable unbelief? You bet. It works both ways.
There should be a class on drugs. There should be a class on sex education-a real sex education class-not just pictures and diaphragms and 'un-logical' terms and things like that.....there should be a class on scams, there should be a class on religious cults, there should be a class on police brutality, there should be a class on apartheid, there should be a class on racism in America, there should be a class on why people are hungry, but there are not, there are classes on gym, physical education, let's learn volleyball.
Unbelief is infectious! The unbelief of one strengthens the unbelief of another, just as the faith of one strengthens the faith of another.
Today the crime novelist has one advantage denied to writers of 'straight' or 'literary' novels. Unlike them he can range over all levels of society, for crime can easily breach the barriers that exist in our stratified society. Because of these barriers the modern literary novel, unlike its 19th-century predecessors, is often confined to the horizontal, dealing only with one class. But crime runs through society from top to bottom, and so the crime novelist can present a fuller picture of the way we live now.
Talk unbelief, and you will have unbelief; but talk faith, and you will have faith. According to the seed sown will be the harvest.
I am an Episcopalian who takes the faith of my fathers seriously, and I would, I think, be disheartened if my own young children were to turn away from the church when they grow up. I am also a critic of Christianity, if by critic one means an observer who brings historical and literary judgment to bear on the texts and traditions of the church.
Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.
I have noticed that whenever a person gives up his belief in the Word of God because it requires that he should believe a good deal, his unbelief requires him to believe a great deal more. If there be any difficulties in the faith of Christ, they are not one-tenth as great as the absurdities in any system of unbelief which seeks to take its place.
There is no grace more excellent than faith; no sin more execrable and abominable then unbelief. Faith is the saving grace and unbelief the damning sin. (Mark 16:16) ... Before Christ can be received, the heart must be emptied and opened: but men's heart's are full of self-righteousn ess and vain confidence (Rom 10:3).
They that are of the flesh cannot do the works of the Spirit, neither can they that are spiritual do the works of the flesh, even as faith cannot do the works of unbelief, nor unbelief the works of faith.
Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better; unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse. Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear; unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf.
Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts its faith not in the living God, but in dying men.
Those who do not believe do not pray. This is a good functional definition of faith. Faith prays, unbelief does not.
For Henry James, class was 'the essentially hierarchial plan of English society' which was 'the great and ever-present fact to the mind of a stranger; there is hardly a detail of life that does not in some degree betray it'.
Every obstruction of the course of justice,--is a door opened to betray society, and bereave us of those blessings which it has inview.... It is a strange way of doing honour to God, to screen actions which are a disgrace to humanity.
As soon as we ask what faith is and what sort of mistreatment of faith causes doubt, we are led to the first major misconception about doubt-the idea that doubt is always wrong because it is the opposite of faith and the same thing as unbelief. What this error leads to is a view of faith that is unrealistic and a view of doubt that is unfair.
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