Word: belief
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Dates: during 1900-1909
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...abandon the Classics and mathematics for studies which seem to them more likely to be serviceable in the actual activities of modern society. These tables, as the Dean points out, do not furnish material for an exhaustive study of the elective system in Harvard College; but they support the belief that as a body the students use the system with reasonable intelligence. They confirm the results of previous inquiries in several important respects;--thus, they prove that under a wide elective system there will be no extreme specialization, and there will be fair amount of judicious choice of correlated subjects...
...historical beginnings of the theory of immortality were crude. In the primeval savage tribes, it existed in the belief in ghosts who more or less directly influenced the lives of mortal men. As the intellect of mankind developed through the ages, so this theory of immortality grew and became clearer,--showing itself in the religion of the Hebrews, the mythology of the Greeks, and reaching its culmination in Christianity...
...thirteenth century the belief in immortality had reached pre-eminence, but there followed a reaction to scepticism that was almost complete. Men fell back on materialism and natural science and the theory of immortality to be established today must answer the questioning doubts of both of these...
...argument of science which opposes the belief in immortality is first of all the inability of man to conceive a disembodied existence. This argument must fall before the consideration that immortal spiritual life, in its very nature is above the thorough comprehension of man and the inability of man to understand it cannot be taken as proof against its reality. The recent great discoveries of science itself have bared men's minds to the realization that there are whole worlds in nature whose presence men must acknowledge though they utterly fail to comprehend them...
...doctrines of the Council of Trent may be purified by this moralization: the Papacy becomes the assertion of the need of unity: Trans substantiation the change of the 'idea' which makes us feel the presence of Christ: Purgatory the hope of restoration for imperfect souls. So, in the dominant belief of a later time, inspiration becomes the association not only of Prophets and Apostles but of all Christ like men and writings in the redemptive, uplifting work of the Saviour. The Atonement in a reconciliation in mind and deed to God through the self-offering of Christ which begets self...