"Goethe, as lately quoted by Matthew Arnold, said those who have science and art have religion; and added, let those who have not science and art have the popular faith; let them have this escape, because the others are closed to them. Without any hold upon the ideal, or any insight into the beauty and fitness of things, the people turn from the tedium and the grossness and prosiness of daily life, to look for the divine, the sacred, the saving, in the wonderful, the miraculous, and in that which baffles reason. The disciples of Jesus thought of the kingdom of heaven as some external condition of splendor and pomp and power which was to be ushered in by hosts of trumpeting angels, and the Son of man in great glory, riding upon the clouds, and not for one moment as the still small voice within them. To find the divine and the helpful in the mean and familiar, to find religion without the aid of any supernatural machinery, to see the spiritual, the eternal life in and through the life that now is--in short, to see the rude, prosy earth as a star in the heavens, like the rest, is indeed the lesson of all others the hardest to learn."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Atheists from the United StatesPeople from New York (state)Essayists from the United StatesNaturalists from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. IV: Natural Versus Supernatural
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Burroughs
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
John Burroughs
John Burroughs (April 3, 1837 - March 29, 1921) was an American naturalist and nature essayist.
27 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by John Burroughs →
Related Quotes
"Science has fairly turned us out of our comfortable little anthropomorphic notion of things into the great out-of-doo…"
"Theology passes; religion, as a sentiment or feeling of awe and reverence in the presence of the vastness and mystery…"
"The old theology had few if any fast colors, and it has become very faded and worn under the fierce light and intense…"
"We are like figures which some great demonstrator draws upon the blackboard of Time. A problem is to be solved, witho…"
"From the first the progress of man has been slowly but surely from the artificial to the natural, from the arbitrary …"
"All political progress has been the removal of forced and artificial relations among men, and the establishment of na…"
"Science, in the broadest sense, is simply that which may be verified; but how much of that which theology accepts and…"
"Theology, for the most part, adopts the personal point of view the point of view of our personal wants, fears, hopes,…"
"...the Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind."
"To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk …"