Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the tendency of people to accept comforting beliefs over harsh realities.
Edward Gibbon highlights the human inclination to cling to comforting ideologies, even when faced with uncomfortable truths. By suggesting that many would rather see a wafer as a representation of God than confront the notion of a cruel deity, he reflects on the complexities of faith and the lengths to which individuals go to preserve their beliefs against distressing concepts.
In practice
In a discussion about faith and belief, this quote can illustrate the struggle between comfort and truth.
It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.
And the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.
In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome.
The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.
As wave is driven by wave_x000D_ And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,_x000D_ So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows,_x000D_ Always, for ever and new. What was before_x000D_ Is left behind; what never was is now;_x000D_ And every passing moment is renewed.
Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people.
The ADA was a landmark civil rights legislation. It was a bill of rights for persons with disabilities, a formal acknowledgement that Americans with disabilities are Americans first and that they're entitled to the same rights and freedoms as everybody else.
Faith never knows where it is being led, or it would not be faith. True faith is content to travel under sealed orders.
Liberty and equality, spontaneity and security, happiness and knowledge, mercy and justice - all these are ultimate human values, sought for themselves alone; yet when they are incompatible, they cannot all be attained, choices must be made, sometimes tragic losses accepted in the pursuit of some preferred ultimate end.
All general judgments are loose and imperfect
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