William Edward Hartpole Lecky Quotes

I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them.

Theology in general seems to me a substitution of human ingenuity for divine wisdom.

My thinking is that miracles exist to reveal God, but miracles don't exist for God to do me any favors.

The resurrection of Christ is therefore emphatically a test question upon which depends the truth or falsehood of the Christian religion. It is either the greatest miracle or the greatest delusion which history records.

I believe the universe created us - we are an audience for miracles. In that sense, I guess, I'm religious.

All religious notions are uniformly founded on authority; all the religions of the world forbid examination, and are not disposed that men should reason upon them.

Religion is still parasitic in the interstices of our knowledge which have not yet been filled. Like bed-bugs in the cracks of walls and furniture, miracles lurk in the lacunae of science. The scientist plasters up these cracks in our knowledge; the more militant Rationalist swats the bugs in the open. Both have their proper sphere and they should realize that they are allies.

It is the conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, to put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace.

The gospel which they so greatly needed they would not have; the miracles which Jesus did not always choose to give, they eagerly demanded.

No man can come to God but by an extraordinary revelation of the Spirit.

When an apparent miracle happened.it proved divine mission to the credulous, and proved a contract with the devil to the skeptical.

I have a friend — or had a friend, now dead — Abdus Salam, a very devout Muslim, who was trying to bring science into the universities in the Gulf states and he told me that he had a terrible time because, although they were very receptive to technology, they felt that science would be a corrosive to religious belief, and they were worried about it… and damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive of religious belief, and it’s a good thing too.

...There is a great need of more familiarity with the Scriptures and their teaching in order that we may be crushed to our knees with a sense of humility and be made to cry to God that He would visit us again.

God raises the level of the impossible.

God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.

The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain.

Religion believes in miracles, but these aren't compatible with science.

There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.

I cannot prove that gods do not exist. Nor can I prove that the world and everything in it was not created by an entity or entities in the distant past. But I can tell you that in the millennia we elves have studied nature, we have never witnessed an instance where the rules that govern the world have been broken. That is, we have never seen a miracle. Many events have defied our ability to explain, but we are convinced that we failed because we are still woefully ignorant about the universe and not because a deity altered the workings of nature.

The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle.

Miracles may be, for anything we know to the contrary, phenomena of a higher order of God's laws, superior to, and, under certain conditions, controlling the inferior order known to us as the ordinary laws of nature.

It was a miracle; it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.

The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.

I believe in miracles, but I trust in Jesus. If you believe the Bible, you know that God is a miracle-working God. And God is not limited in any degree nor any respect. He is totally sovereign. Do you believe that? I hope you do. Believe in miracles, but don’t put your faith in miracles. Put your faith and your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.