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John Daniel Biography

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“Diversity of opinion in religious belief and its mode is not incompatible with equal possession of the essentials of pure faith, nor at variance with the divine purpose. If an analogy exists between the growth we observe in the vegetable kingdom and that of the intellectual, we should expect to find the same variety in the expression of human belief that we seek in the development of tree and flower. Every tree is not an oak, nor every flower a rose, but each tree and flower is the expression in form and colour of its own inner life. In the same manner the mind was intended to be free to develop according to its own light, and any attempt to coerce it into a defined groove is an interference with the natural order of things. To condemn those who in matters of religion do not conform to our standards is, therefore, as unreasonable as to find fault with an oak tree because it is not an elm.”

PhilosophyReligionFaithOpinionDevelopmentDiversityDruids
Book:The Philosophy of Ancient Britain
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“As all material creation consists of out-births of things spiritual, the spiritual world being the world of causes, and the natural world that of effects, and as effects are the repositories of their causes, the natural world is the reflection of the spiritual. For this reason, from the beginning of things, the sun has stood out as a pre-eminent symbol of the things of God. Of all inanimate things it bears the closest correspondence to the Supreme Being, for what it is in the natural world the Supreme Being is in the Spiritual. Its central fire is the correspondence of the essence of the Divine Nature--DIVINE LOVE; its heat the correspondence of the heat flowing from Divine Love, which is Divine Goodness and all that that comprises; its light the correspondence of Divine Truth which is the light proceeding from Divine Wisdom; and the union of heat and light in its central essence forever symbolizes the union of the Divine Love and Wisdom resulting from that of the Divine Will and Understanding. God is the SUN from whose heat and light--His Love and Wisdom--proceed all that is spiritual, and through the spiritual, by the medium of the natural sun, all that is natural. The sun is supreme in all natural things, and its operations run through all in its own world, but the Divine SUN from which it derives its origin is supreme in all and operates through all, above and below. And as the natural sun is everywhere present in its own realm, and all things derive their life and grow in more or less perfect measure according to their forms and distances, so is the Supreme One omnipresent, filling both the spiritual and the natural world.”

PhilosophySpiritualReligionNaturalSunDivineReflectionSymbolismDruids
Book:The Philosophy of Ancient Britain
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“In the agreement to rescue Rome [i.e., the Roman Catholic Church's hierarchy] from the predicament of losing its world control to Protestantism, and to preserve the spiritual and temporal supremacy which the popes [had] 'usurped' during the Middle Ages, Rome now 'sold' the [Roman Catholic] Church to the Society of Jesus [i.e., the Jesuits]; in essence the popes surrendered themselves into their hands.”

WorldHandsAgeSpiritualJesusChurchMiddleLosingEssenceCatholicPreservesAgreementRomeRescuePopeHierarchyMiddle AgesCatholic ChurchSupremacyPredicamentsProtestantismRoman CatholicJesuitRoman Catholic Church
Author:John Daniel
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“The Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648, was a series of conflicts that became the last great struggle of religious wars in Europe. It was fought almost exclusively on German soil...but before the war ended, it involved most of the nations of Europe. The underlying cause of the war was the deep-seated hostility between the German Protestants and German Catholics - with the Jesuits and Cardinal Richelieu, who was the real ruler of France, fanning the fires to accomplish their ends.”

YearsWarRealEndsLastsNationsCausesReligiousStruggleFireInvolvedConflictEuropeCatholicSeriesAccomplishFranceThirtySoilRulersHostilityThirty YearsProtestantsCardinalsJesuitReligious WarsRichelieu
Author:John Daniel
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“The stream sings a subdued music, a scarcely audible lilt, faint and fluid syllables not quite said. It slips away into its future, where it already is, and flows steadily forth from up the canyon, a fountain of rumors from regions known to it and not to me.”

SaidKnownFlowRiversEnvironmentalStreamsRegionsSlipsFountainRumorFluidSyllablesCanyons
Book:The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature
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“We don't tend to ask where a lake comes from. It lies before us, contained and complete, tantalizing in its depth but not its origin. A river is a different kind of mystery, a mystery of distance and becoming, a mystery of source. Touch its fluent body and you touch far places. You touch a story that must end somewhere but cannot stop telling itself, a story that is always just beginning.”

KindDifferentEndsStoriesBodyLyingAsksMysterySourceBecomingRiversDistanceEnvironmentalDepthLakesDifferent KindsFluentTantalizing
Book:The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature
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“We are never far from the lilt and swirl of living water. Whether to fish or swim or paddle, of only to stand and gaze, to glance as we cross a bridge, all of us are drawn to rivers, all of us happily submit to their spell. We need their familiar mystery. We need their fluent lives interflowing with our own.”

NeedsWaterMysteryRiversCrossesEnvironmentalFishesFamiliarBridgesSwimSpellsSubmitGlancesSwirlsFluent
Book:The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature
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