"Ritual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hesitated. As an object of religion of course we could have nothing to do with it; the Roman Catholic creed, with its outward signs and symbols, was not ours; who even in our own Church mourned the almost lost beauty and simplicity of our ancient ritual; that substitution of the ceremonial for the spiritual, the creature for the Creator, which seems to threaten the downfall of the Establishment. Would it be right to purchase and possess this beautiful thing merely as an object of refined ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... the king remained the priest par excellence. Hence the prominent part played by the ruler in the religious literature of the country. A large proportion of the hymns were composed for royalty. The most elaborate ritual dealt with the endeavor to secure oracles that might serve as a guide for the rulers. Astronomical reports were made and long series of omen tablets prepared for the use of the royal household. The calendars furnished regulations for the conduct of the kings. A ceremonial ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... there. And out on the side porch Mynie would be sitting, her head thrown back against the wooden column of the porch, her hands clasped about her knees, smiling, smiling, always smiling. Sometimes she would hum a sort of low tuneless chant—it sounded like a pagan ritual of some sort, all repetitions, rising and falling in a monotonous, haunting drone. And once, as I stood watching her curiously, the word for that noise flashed suddenly into my mind—incantation. That was ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... leave it to time to carry out the sentence. The one thing which he was resolved should not be was its imposition on Gentile Christians. Their road to Jesus was not through Temple or synagogue. As for Jewish Christians, let them keep to the ritual if they chose. The conciliatory plan recommended by the elders, though perfectly consistent with Paul's views and successful with the Jewish Christians, roused non-Christian Jews as might have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... of its Minister In the assembly of his long-time sway Is near his last, and themes to-night launched forth Will take a tincture from that memory, When me recall the scene and circumstance That hung about his pleadings.—But no more; The ritual of each party is rehearsed, Dislodging not one vote or prejudice; The ministers their ministries retain, And Ins as Ins, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... prosecutor and takes his place." As the ritual prescribed by the Red Book was religiously gone through, the prisoner continued to stare at the wall above the President's head, and the rain rattled against the window-panes with intermittent violence. Having finished his recital, the President rose, and with him all the members ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... themselves into a separate body was (1) for the maintenance of a strictly Calvinistic doctrine; (2) for the exercise of a vigorous and exclusive discipline; (3) for the practice of a literal scriptural ritual, especially in the matter of Baptism. In Church polity they follow the Independents. The Baptists hold that immersion is essential to the validity of the ordinance. Their leading idea is that the Church must consist of true Christians, and not ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... form, With the grave ritual brought from England's shore, And with the simple faith which asks no more Than that the heart ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... had kept a chunk of it in each hip pocket for elasticity. George Honkey, our druggist and censor of public manners, said it was the most insipid piece of equine pitty-patter he had ever seen on Main Street, and from the get-up-and-down of it, he guessed it must be the Episcopal ritual for horseback exercise. My vocal cords, while tuning for my lowly part in life's orchestra, for a day at a time would seem to stick to a decent tenor or drop to an impressive bass which would have fitted me to ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... sat the choir of men and women, all in their gala dress. Each member of the society, wrapped in his robe, with measured steps entered the tent, and silently took his seat on the ground against the wall. The ceremony had opened by the choir singing the ritual song which accompanied the act of charring the elder wood with which the face of the Leader was afterward to be painted. As memory brought back the scene in vivid colours,—the blazing fire in the centre of the wide circle of muffled warriors, the solemn ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... ancients, the Zoroastrians considered the woman unclean at childbirth as at menstruation.[22] In the Old Testament, ritual uncleanness results from contact with a ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... wondered if the minister would have talked in the same way—blatantly and without knowledge—of the virtues of the dead. In a chair at the side of the coffin the bereaved husband, in new black clothes, wept audibly. The baldheaded, officious undertaker kept moving nervously about, intent upon the ritual of his trade. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... a novice must pass before being admitted to holy orders is a severe tax upon nerve and endurance. In the process of a long ritual, at least three, or even so many as nine, pastilles are placed upon the bald scalp of the head. These are then lighted, and allowed to burn down into the skin until permanent scars have been formed, the unfortunate novice being supported on both sides ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... The ritual, so to speak, is very precise throughout. Besides the Beatitudes, which are recited by the angel-guards, and in some cases it would seem repeated by a chorus of voices, we find in each circle commemoration variously contrived of notable instances, both ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... repentance," said John, with some indignation, as he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism. He insisted that practical and vital religion was not a rule, but a life; not outward ritual, but a principle; not works, but fruit: and he demanded that the genuineness of repentance should be attested by appropriate fruit. "Do men gather grapes of ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... all, however, the Keys are singularly shallow and agreeably bland. Curll simply agrees with Gulliver-Swift, and reinforces the meaning by practically repeating the text, as he does at this point when deploring inessential differences in ritual as needless causes of cruel conflict. Although Curll was aware of the presence of politics and religion in Swift's allegories, his annotations do not reflect unfavorably ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... doctor triumphantly used them in his pow-wows. Geometric figures in a handful of sand or seeds would prophesy the fate of the ills—and do we not to this day tell our fortune in the geometric figures made by the dregs in our tea-cups? Paternosters, snatches of Latin hymns, bits of early Church ritual were used by quacks of the olden days for much the same reason as the geometric figures—because they were unusual and ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... the wonderful thought, also mirrored in this piece of ancient ritual, that God delights in men's sacrifices and surrenders and services. 'If I were hungry, I would not tell thee,' said the Psalmist in God's name in regard to outward sacrifices; 'Will I eat the flesh ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sepulture, according to the forms of his denomination, would be denied to his remains. The aged sufferer, it is related, read his own funeral service while on the scaffold. Solemn, sublime, and affecting as are passages of this portion of the ritual of the Church, surely it was never performed under circumstances so well suited to impress with awe and tenderness as when uttered by the calumniated, oppressed, and dying old man. Baxter had been tried for sedition, on the ground that one of his publications contained a reflection ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... yet certain of that. But the charge will be black magic. He has all the paraphernalia in a chest in his room. Master Sean reports that a ritual was enacted in the bedroom last night. Of course, that's out of my jurisdiction. You, as a representative of the Church, will have to be the arresting officer." He paused. "You ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... The Old Testament ritual had one sacrifice which carried this truth in it. It is the first prescribed in the Book of Leviticus, the ceremonial book—namely, the burnt offering. Its especial meaning was this, that the whole man is to be laid upon God's altar and there consumed in the fire of a divine love. It began with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... head uncovered, listening to the sublime and touching service which our ritual prescribes, I found that a gentleman had drawn near also, and was standing at my elbow. I did not turn to look at him until the earth had closed over my darling boy; I then walked a little way apart, that I might be alone, and drying my eyes, sat down upon a tombstone, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... would do if the string were cut, we discover that in point of fact we have, as in the case of the Bible, many books in one. We have scarcely turned the title-page, for instance, before we come upon a ritual of daily worship, an order for Morning Prayer and an order for Evening Prayer, consisting in the main of Psalms, Scripture Lessons, Antiphonal Versicles, and Collects. Appended to this we find a Litany or General Supplication and ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... with the universal telephone and the universal language," I said, "there still remains the ceremonial and ritual side of religion to be considered. For the practice of that I should suppose the piously inclined would still need churches to assemble in, however able to dispense with ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... and purism. Voltaire and the Encyclopedists were bitterly attacked; Jean Jacques Rousseau was deified. The State should adopt his religious attitude, his universal church of nature. In that church, nature herself is the chief priest and there is no need of an infamous priesthood. Its ritual is virtue; its festivals the joy of a great people. Therefore let the Convention decree that the Cult of the Supreme Being be established, that the duty of every citizen is to practise virtue, to punish tyrants and traitors, to succour the unfortunate, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... university and the Grand Hotel on the left hand side of the Konigstrasse, east, stood an historical relic of the days when Austria, together with the small independent states, strove to shake off the Napoleonic yoke. In those days students formed secret societies; societies full of strange ritual, which pushed devotion to fanaticism, which stopped at nothing, not even assassination. To exterminate the French, to regain their ancestral privileges, to rescue their country from its prostrate humiliation, many sacrificed their ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... the influence of ceremonial worship, which is the artistic expression of the soul's faith and love, of its hopes and yearnings. We are, indeed, still subdued by the majesty of dimly lighted cathedrals, by solemn music, and the various symbolism of the ritual, but we feel not the deep awe of our fathers whose knees furrowed the pavement stones, and whose burning lips kissed them smooth; and to blame ourselves for this would serve no purpose. To those who find no pleasure in sweet sounds, we pipe in vain, and ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... she stood in front of the clergyman with Don by her side, she felt, not that she was in a bower of wild flowers, but before an altar. The ritual for her had a deeply religious significance. She made her responses in a steady voice heard by every one in the room. When she made the promise "to love, cherish, and obey," she spoke it as though she meant it. It did not disturb her in the slightest to utter the ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... purpose of efficiency, inasmuch as they derive efficacy from that Word, by Whom "all things were made." Consequently they are becomingly addressed not only to men, but also to insensible creatures; for instance, when we say: "I exorcize thee, creature salt" (Roman Ritual). ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... and creeds, forms and ceremonies, play little part. Ours is the search of the heart for something greater than itself which is still itself; it is the religion of brotherhood, whose creed is love, whose ritual is service. ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... II.I.1. The ritual is according to RQ the main subject of the Mosaic legislation, according to JE it is pre-Mosaic usage; in RQ the point is How, according to JE and D To ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... likely to be attended with the requisite mental abstraction from all worldly objects, and intellectual elevation of the soul towards its Divine Source—a condition of mind indispensable to establish a true spiritual communion in Prayer, and without which all our orisons and ritual ceremonies would be but mechanical and meaningless performances, a body without soul. It is this condition of the mind that, in Talmudical style, is called [Hebrew: het-nun-vav-kaf], as is well known, and that later ascetic writers termed [Hebrew: tav-vav-dalet-dalet-vav-bet-het-he], ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... thus oddly. But whether reverend Rapp learn'd this in Germany Or no, 't is said his sect is rich and godly, Pious and pure, beyond what I can term any Of ours, although they propagate more broadly. My objection 's to his title, not his ritual, Although I wonder ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... in all priestly ceremonies, whether ritual or pontifical, care is taken not at such times to name one god more than another, for fear of impiety, since it is quite uncertain which ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the page exposed to view was that which contained the office for the celebration of the 25th of August. A sudden revelation dashed across Servadac's mind. The solemn isolation of the island tomb, the open breviary, the ritual of the ancient anniversary, all combined to apprise him of the sanctity of the ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Anastasia, with her name inscribed in Lombardic letters between two foliage scrolls. Fragments of early work are visible here and there, pointing to the reconstruction of the crypt. It is very dark, and is now used as a store, having become too damp for ritual purposes. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... agencies. In these times it seems difficult to maintain religious societies except where the element of fear is dominant in the creed, where some remarkable preacher takes the attention, or where the ritual or fashion attracts. Do not the papers often speak of ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... the office of Emperor was never more than a politico-religious concept, translated for the benefit of the masses into socio-economic ordinances. These pronouncements, cast in the form of periodic homilies called Edicts, were the ritual of government; their purpose was instructional rather than mandatory; they were designed to teach and keep alive the State-theory that the Emperor was the High Priest of the Nation and that obedience to ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... A similar ritual is gone through with respect to one of the gentler sex, where such rhymes as the following are used. In the case of acceptance the ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... if she pleased, he said, encourage her domestics and her husband's tenants and farm-labourers to abandon the church for the chapel, and go, as she had done and threatened to do habitually, to the chapel herself; but to denounce the ritual of the Orthodox Church under the denomination of 'barbarous,' to say of the invoking supplications of the service, that they were—she had been heard to state it more or less publicly and repeatedly—suitable to abject ministers and throngs at the court of an Indian rajah, that he did not hesitate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Hebrew, and Phoenician Dancing. The Ritual Dance of Egypt. Dancing Examples from Tomb of Ur-ari-en-Ptah, 6th Dynasty, British Museum. Description of Dancing from Sir G. Wilkinson; of the Egyptian Pipes and Hieroglyphics of Dancing, &c. Phoenician Round Dances, from a Limestone Group found ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... that, while the pogrom was going on, the governor-general of Warsaw refused to comply with the request of a number of Poles, who applied for permission to organize a civil guard, pledging themselves to restore order in the city in one day. It would seem as if the official pogrom ritual did not allow of the slightest modification. The disorders had to proceed in accordance with the established routine, so as not to violate the humane commandment: "Two days shalt thou plunder, and on the third day shalt thou rest." Evidently some one had an interest in having the capital of Poland ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... ceremonial law. Certainly better to be familiar with the Apostles' Creed, than to know all about the building of the Temple. Better be able to repeat and understand the Lord's Prayer, than to have a clear knowledge of the elaborate ritual of the Temple service. Better understand the meaning of Christ's two Sacraments than to be able to tell all about the great ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... an organised civilisation will or will not be solved. All the conditions are so completely new, our whole machinery of government so thoroughly presupposes a little aristocratic agricultural state, and our strong attachment to form and ritual so hampers all attempts at reorganisation, that the way in which we shall answer, if we do answer, the question of this sphinx, cannot as ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... ceremonial occasion. An ordinance has been made for the ceremony of 'The Blessing and the Curse' to be an institution of the promised land: representatives of the Blessing are to stand on one mountain and representatives of the Curse on the opposite slope, the whole ritual solemnly enforcing the sanctity of the Covenant. At present however the people are on the wilderness side of Jordan; accordingly Moses arranges a Rehearsal of this ceremony, on ground resembling the valley ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... think so. Yes, I'm sure you did," she said, finishing the ritual; but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat beside her and put his arm around her small shoulders. ...
— Breakaway • Stanley Gimble
... reorganized, and numerous local amalgamations took place. Most of the organizations now took the form of secret societies whose initiations were marked with naive formalism and whose routines were directed by a group of officers with royal titles and fortified by signs, passwords, and ritual. Some of these orders decorated the faithful with high-sounding degrees. The societies adopted fantastic names such as "The Supreme Mechanical Order of the Sun," "The Knights of St. Crispin," and "The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor," of which ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... had a pretty turn for literature herself. I coveted to see her dazzled, exalted, impressed—it would be a fascinating spectacle. Before I slept that night, or rather next morning, I recognized her coming as a disastrous mistake. For she had received insufficient instruction in ritual, in the suitable forms of approach to so august a presence as that of our host. She played round him, flickering, darting, like lightning round a cathedral tower, metal tipped. Where we, in our young male modesty, had but gently drawn or furtively shoved, she tickled the soft, sedentary creature's ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... yellow bone; but in the houses of Phanar and noisy old Galata, and in the Jew quarter of Pri-pacha, the black shoe and head-dress of the Greek is still distinguishable from the Hebrew blue. It was a mixed ritual of colours here in boot and hat: yellow for Mussulman, red boots, black calpac for Armenian, for the Effendi a white turban, for the Greek a black. The Tartar skull shines from under a high taper calpac, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... singular coincidence and diversity between the two nations appears in this, that the goat was common in the religious observances of both; a similar ritual required the sacrifice of this animal: but with the Jews the creature was an emblem of solemnity, while with the Greeks he was significant of joy; the Jews sacrificed him on their fasts,—the Greeks in their feasts. And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of the State, and every father in Al-Islam was made priest and pontiff in his own house, able unaided to marry himself, to circumcise (to baptise as it were) his children, to instruct them in the law and canonically to bury himself (vol. viii. 22). Ritual, properly so called, there was none; congregational prayers were merely those of the individual en masse, and the only admitted approach to a sacerdotal order were the Olema or scholars learned in the legistic and the Mullah or schoolmaster. By thus abolishing the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... writer's intolerance. One single example will suffice. A year or two ago, a Jew called Beilis was put on his trial (after an imprisonment of nearly three years) for the murder of a small Christian boy named Yushinsky, in order that his blood might be used for ritual purposes. Yushinsky, who was found dead under peculiar circumstances, was probably a Jew himself, but that does not affect the point at issue. Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., tried to arouse an agitation in order to secure the freedom ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... colleagues decided in effect, and from a legal point of view may have been right in deciding, that slavery was recognised by the Constitution of the United States. Their decision was denounced by the best men in the Union as infamous. The Privy Council have laid down doctrines on matters of ritual which are held to be erroneous by a large body of the clergy, and Ritualists have gone to prison rather than treat the judgment of the Privy Council as of moral validity. Clergymen are not perhaps the most reasonable of mankind, but they are not more unreasonable than political enthusiasts. ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... in a luxuriously-appointed dressing-table and in an excessive care of her body. Progress touched its high-water mark in the perfection of her creature comforts. Taken from this standpoint, progress could scarcely go any further, or so Michael would have thought if he had watched her ritual ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Leo XIII, after donning the tiara in lieu of the mitre, and exchanging the chasuble for the pontifical cope, went to occupy his throne on the platform at the entry of the left transept. He thence dominated the whole assembly, through which a quiver sped when after the prayers of the ritual, he once more rose erect. Beneath the symbolic, triple crown, in the golden sheathing of his cope, he seemed to have grown taller. Amidst sudden and profound silence, which only feverish heart-beats interrupted, he raised his arm with a very ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... ourselves often and notoriously wise in the penny and foolish in the pound. As, for instance, when we are so scrupulous and so conscientious about forms and ceremonies, about times and places, and so on. In short, the whole ritual that has risen up around spiritual religion in all our churches, from that of the Pope himself out to that of George Fox—it is all the penny rather than the pound. This rite and that ceremony; this habit and that tradition; ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... says Beans. "The candidate presumes to address your Grand Worthy in terms unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. I would suggest that we suspend the ritual until by some means he can be brought to his better senses. Can anyone think of ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... had been the result of allowing the church to interfere unwarrantedly in what was not its affair. Religion had calmly usurped this, the most potent of the motives of humanity; or, rather, it had fastened to it the ludicrous train of ritual. That laughable idea that God had a separate scrutinizing eye, like the eye of a parrot, on every ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... music in expressing the religious life of man. For the intellect alone is inadequate either to express that life as it exists, or to call it into existence where it does not exist. The tendency to ritual in our time is a tendency not to substitute aesthetic for spiritual life, though there is probably always a danger that such a substitution may be unconsciously made, but to express a religious life which cannot be expressed without the aid of aesthetic symbols. The work of the intellect ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the religion instilled by his earliest consciousness had been simply the religion of the Dead. It suited his inclination, it satisfied his spirit, it gave employment to his piety. It answered his love of great offices, of a solemn and splendid ritual; for no shrine could be more bedecked and no ceremonial more stately than those to which his worship was attached. He had no imagination about these things but that they were accessible to any one who should feel the need of them. The poorest could build such temples of the spirit—could ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... poor priest named Simon, for in his own diocese he was a beggar and a stranger as it were in a foreign land. In 1246, however, the Pope having threatened excommunication, the King gave way, and Richard at once began to reform his diocese, to discipline his priests, and to restore the ritual of his cathedral, and indeed of all the churches in his diocese. He lived a life of severe asceticism, and gave so much in alms that he was always a beggar. Usurers were punished by excommunication, and Jews were forbidden ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... the sun or moon?' (A.) 'Two one-bow prayers, without call to prayer or repetition thereof by the devotee, who shall make in each two standings up and two inclinations and two prostrations, then sit up and testify and salute.' (Q.) 'What is the ritual of prayer for rain?' (A.) 'Two one-bow prayers, without call to prayer or repetition; then shall the devotee make the profession and salute. Moreover [the Imam] shall deliver an exhortation and (in place of the magnification, as in the two exhortations ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... Sabbath day put up one shutter, out of presumed respect for the Holy Lord, and behind the shutter continue all the business of the world! That one shutter is typical of all the religion that is left when a man "loves the world" and delights in its prizes and crowns. His religion is a bit of idle ritual which is an offence ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... Board of Erin, but they were, as I have said, more generally known as "the Mollies." They were a narrowly sectarian institution and they had the almost blasphemous rule that nobody but a Catholic frequenting the Sacraments could remain a member. They had their own ritual and initiation ceremony, founded on the Orange and Masonic precedents, and had their secret signs and passwords. It is possible that they were at first intended to be a Catholic protection society in Ulster at the end of the eighteenth century ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... hieroglyphs, springing from the belt and running down to the feet, contained no doubt some formal funeral ritual, or rather, the names and titles of the deceased, a problem which Dr. Rumphius promised himself ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... schoolbuilding disconcerted Carol. She laid her dreams of perfection aside. When Vida asked her to take charge of a group of Camp Fire Girls, she obeyed, and had definite pleasure out of the Indian dances and ritual and costumes. She went more regularly to the Thanatopsis. With Vida as lieutenant and unofficial commander she campaigned for a village nurse to attend poor families, raised the fund herself, saw to it that the nurse was young and strong ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... of the ritual was asked. Clear and strong came the answers. "Wilt thou renounce the devil and all his works?" Jane nodded yes—how little she knew of the devil! Job answered loudly, "I will"—how much he did know! "The vain pomp and glory of the world?" ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... compact and precise as a resolution at a public meeting which had been passed even by the women present. She was severe and decisive, and without recognition of anything there but the tariff of the house, and sold her refreshments as in a simple yet exacting ritual which she despised, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... one of the most interesting men I know. His pessimism, his Catholicism, his yearning for ritual, his very genuine hatred of ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... the King withal, And hied him to the work. Some bore amain The death-vat, some the corbs of hallowed grain; Or kindled fire, and round the fire and in Set cauldrons foaming; and a festal din Filled all the place. Then took thy mother's lord The ritual grains, and o'er the altar poured Its due, and prayed: "O Nymphs of Rock and Mere, With many a sacrifice for many a year, May I and she who waits at home for me, My Tyndarid Queen, adore you. May it be ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... displays. In fact they did not cease from confusion till Caesar suddenly coming upon them with his own hand seized one man and delivered him up to punishment. This person was executed for the reasons stated, and two other men were slaughtered as a kind of piece of ritual. The true cause I am unable to state, inasmuch as the Sibyl made no utterance and there was no other similar oracle, but at any rate they were sacrificed in the Campus Martius by the pontifices and the priest of Mars, and their heads were ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... part of a religious, ceremonial, or healing ritual. Ointment or oil. Something that serves to soothe; a balm. Affected or exaggerated earnestness, especially in choice and ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... rediscovered a home truth the American people have never forgotten: the government is too big and spends too much. And I call on Congress to adopt a measure that will help put an end to the annual ritual of filling the budget with pork-barrel appropriations. Every year, the press has a field day making fun of outrageous examples, a Lawrence Welk Museum, a research grant for Belgian Endive. We all ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George H.W. Bush • George H.W. Bush
... as we know, obtained in the case of Antinous. Hadrian's determination to exalt his favourite sufficed; and this is perhaps one of the earliest instances of those informal deifications which became common in the later Roman period. Antinous was canonised according to Greek ritual and by Greek priests: Graeci quidam volente Hadriano eum consecraverunt. How this was accomplished we know not; but forms of canonisation must have been in common usage, seeing that emperors and members of the Imperial family received the honour in due course. The star ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... An act of communion—the drinking of the potion here described—was one of the most important pieces of ritual in the Eleusinian mysteries, as commemorating the sorrows of ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... written to at once, to place it in the hands of a third party, of whom he would be presently notified at the place. The Marquis d'Antin at once had my equipage and his own draped. We hastened to put all our household into mourning from top to toe, and the funeral service, with full ritual, was ordered to be performed at the parish church. The very same day, as the family procession was about to set out on its way to the church, a sort of sergeant, dressed in black, handed a fresh letter to the Marquis d'Antin. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... dress for the visit to Mrs. Wayne. For the first time in her life Mathilde wished that her mother was not so elaborate. Hitherto she had always gloried in Adelaide's elegance as a part of her beauty; but now, as she watched the ritual of ribbons and laces and perfumes and jewels, she felt vaguely that there was in it all a covert insult to Pete's mother, who, she knew, would not be a ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... mysterious figures, I see you, turning the corner, mothers and sons; you, you, you. I hasten, I follow. This, I fancy, must be the sea. Grey is the landscape; dim as ashes; the water murmurs and moves. If I fall on my knees, if I go through the ritual, the ancient antics, it's you, unknown figures, you I adore; if I open my arms, it's you I embrace, you ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... which he has rendered to humanity, let us first mention his brilliant defence of the half-savage Votiaks, accused of ritual murder in the famous Malmige case. Although he had just suffered great grief himself—he had lost two children—he traveled to a distant town in order to be at the trial. He took his seat on the bench of the defenders. ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... with the cathedrals and churches, just as once the new Christian chapels and congregations stood side by side with pagan temples and heathen shrines, may oust their rivals, and assume the monopoly of ritual. Should its spirit remain fine and clear, should it maintain the glorious promise of its dawn, should its high priests realize the perpetually widening intimations of its universal triumph, and escape the ossification that has overtaken all young and hopeful ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... laughing like a good fellow, and from that day forward, we were sworn cronies. The Fullah at once wrote down a favorite prayer in Arabic, requiring as my spiritual guide, that I should commit it to memory for constant and ready use. After a day or two, he examined me in the ritual; but, finding I was at fault after the first sentence, reproached me pathetically upon my negligence and exhorted me to repentance,—much to the edification of our interpreter, who was neither Jew, Christian, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... churches: the exercise of the old priesthood was proscribed and the idols destroyed; elegant structures for Christian worship were raised, and those already erected, enlarged and beautified; the episcopacy was increased and honored with great favors and enriched with vast endowments; the ritual received many additions; the habiliments of the clergy were pompous, and the whole of the Christian service at once exhibited a scene of worldly grandeur and external parade. What a mighty change! But a short time since, and Christianity was held in sovereign contempt: now ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... necessarily was of most of the solemn formalism that characterises an interment ashore, and further marred in its effectiveness by the droning tones in which Purchas deemed it proper to read the beautiful and solemn words of the prescribed ritual, it was, nevertheless, profoundly impressive, the peculiar circumstances of the case, and the setting of the picture, so to speak—the small brig out there alone upon the boundless world of waters, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... in broad daylight; candles and lamps sputter futilely; incense nauseates: for the still small voice is stifled, and the kingdom is of this world. But in the twilight, what skeptic, what Puritan resists the call to worship of the Catholic ritual? I had come in time for the intercessory visit to the stations of the cross. Priest and acolytes were following the crucifix from the chancel. Banners waved. Before each station the procession stopped, ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... out of a brief and solemn church function, which followed a Latin ritual. In time German superseded the Latin, but without replacing it entirely; the performances increased greatly in scope, took in elements of fun, buffoonery and diablerie, outgrew the churches and became great popular festivals, which were ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... signal for silence, and every scout became mute. At least they had learned the value of obedience, and that is one of the cardinal virtues in a Boy Scout's ritual. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... times in the trance and ecstasy of dim divine feelings beyond the power of words inexpressible. It is miracle; it is religion; it is a feast of purification above pomps or mysteries, a cleansing ritual without victims and undefiled. In such hours, and in such hours alone, man and things are joined in a supreme utterance of life high and humble, transient and immortal, by which the fellowship of all existences within the universe is made real and significant to ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... already been pointed out that we have no grounds for regarding such practices as survivals; for if we put on sackcloth and ashes as a penance for our misdeeds, it does not follow that this was ever the prevailing costume. It is even less possible to interpret the ritual lending of wives to messengers as a survival, for, ex hypothesi, the messengers were not of the group which "group-married," and messengers of any sort point to a stage when inter-tribal relations had made considerable advance and the tribes in question ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... mad, most noble 'doubter,' but speak the words of truth and soberness. Mr. Willcoxen was married privately, when and where I said, to a beautiful, fair-haired lady, whose name heard in the ritual was Marian. And my husband, Olly Murray, was the secret witness ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... to a collection of aphorisms, summaries of the teachings of the Brahmans, and of rules regulative of ritual or religious observances, and also given to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Christopher Wren marks an epoch in the history of the English Church which should not be overlooked. For the first time since the Reformation the planning and general features of church edifices were made to conform to the exigencies of the Protestant faith and a simplified ritual. Rarely has such an opportunity for distinction been vouchsafed to any architect as that which fell to the lot of Wren; and he proved himself equal to the task. Fergusson is my authority for the statement that during the last forty years of the seventeenth century no building ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... 'permit' existing anywhere to destroy the life of the soul by so much as one false or cruel word! It is with a deep sense of the exact balance of God's justice, that I stand before you to-day, my friends, and ask you without any accepted ritual or ceremonial to hear my vows of marriage. She to whom I pledge my word and life, is one who in the world's eyes is accounted great, because rich in this world's goods,—but her wealth has no attraction for me, and for my own self I would rather she had been poor. Nevertheless, were ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... was carried by the wind into the house and drove out the countless horde. At length they were at peace, and with sighs of relief could desist from the warfare. The very last mosquito settled on the face of little Alma Rose. With great seriousness she pronounced the ritual words-"Fly, fly, get off my face, my nose is not a public place!" Then she made a swift end of the creature with a slap. The smoke drifted obliquely through the door-way; within the house, no longer stirred by the breeze, it spread ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... on the common street; to meet them in the market-place on equal terms; to live among them not as saint or monk, but as a brother man with brother men; to serve God not with form or ritual, but in the free impulse of the soul; to bear the burden of society and relieve its needs; to carry on its multitudinous activities in the city, social, commercial, political, and philanthropic—this is the religion of the Son of man." This is the ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... according to the custom of their country. The Indians of Bengal, and of the coast of Malabar, brought cages filled with birds, which they set at liberty upon her coffin. Thus did the loss of this amiable object affect the natives of different countries, and thus was the ritual of various religions breathed over the ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... we are both inclined to heterodoxy on these points, we make the more prominent our observance of the best of the old-time habits. I might preach a pleasant little sermon just here, taking as my text the "survival of the fittest," and illustrating the truth from our own domestic ritual; but the season preaches its own sermon, and I should only follow the example of some ministers and get between the text and my congregation if I made the attempt. For weeks we have all been looking forward to this eventful evening, and the still more eventful morrow. There ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... blood flows in order to stimulate their diminished sexual power. Rhodiginus, Bartholinus, and other older physicians mention individuals in whom severe castigation was a prerequisite of copulation. As a ritual custom flagellation is preserved to the present day by ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... chapels are recesses or alcoves along the side of the church, fitted up and furnished with altars, crucifixes, confessionals, paintings, images, and other sacred emblems connected with the ritual of the Catholic worship. They are usually raised a step or two above the floor of the church, and are separated from it by an ornamented railing, with a gate in the middle ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... slain. It mattered not; that all seeing eye which reads the heart, could not fail to discriminate between the living and the dead, and the gentle soul of the unfortunate girl was already far removed beyond the errors, or deceptions, of any human ritual. These simple rites, however, were not wholly wanting in suitable accompaniments. The tears of Judith and Hist were shed freely, and Deerslayer gazed upon the limpid water, that now flowed over one whose spirit was even purer than its own mountain springs, with glistening eyes. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... of a butler's obsequiousness. He offered the overcoat to the old gentleman's arms with the same air. Then he held up the collar of the greatcoat with one hand and with the other reached under its skirts, and drew down the Captain's long day coat with little jerks, as if he were going through a ritual. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... before the man threateningly withdrew—a scene witnessed by the servants, and overheard by her mother-in-law, whom she found seated in the drawing-room when she entered. The old Marquise's visits to her daughter-in-law were made at long intervals but with ritual regularity; she called every other Friday at five, and Undine had forgotten that she was due that day. This did not make for greater cordiality between them, and the altercation in the anteroom had been too loud for concealment. The Marquise was on her feet when her daughter-in-law ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... and regalia the Indians staged their "rain dance." The missionaries had long opposed this form of expression by the Indians, and their objections led to a government ban which was finally modified to permit some sort of ritual. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... Gospel," even to the Jews, is to contend for a position against all evidence. If from the Jews we turn to the Pagan thinkers, immortality is proclaimed by them long before the Jews have dreamed about it. The Egyptians, in their funeral ritual, went through the judgment of the soul before Osiris: "The resurrection of the dead to a second life had been a deep-rooted religious opinion among the Egyptians from the earliest times" ("Egyptian Mythology," Sharpe, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... entered the city was the banner of my Cid, and my Cid was the first Christian Alcayde of Toledo. Of the terms granted unto the Moors, and how they were set aside for the honour of the Catholic faith, and of the cunning of the Jews who dwelt in the city, and how the Romish ritual was introduced therein, this is not the place to speak; all these things are written in the Chronicles of the ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... to the mastership, which Charles I. settled by nominating William Beale. Beale was originally a Trinity man, but had been for about a year Master of Jesus. He was a supporter of Laud; he embellished the Chapel, and introduced a more ornate ritual; under his influence St. John's seems to have been the only College at Cambridge which fully complied with Laud's instructions. Thus when the Puritans got the upper hand, Beale and his College were the subject of ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... the life of the Church. At all times such problems, asking for attention and solution, emerge to every thoughtful disciple's sight. In our own time they seem to multiply upon one another with an importunate demand—problems doctrinal, ritual, governmental, social; the strife of principles and tendencies within the Church; all that is involved in the relations between the Church and the State, and again between the Church and the world, that is to say, human life indifferent ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... never have presented any difficulty. It was disbelief, doubt, that he abhorred. Like Sir Thomas Browne, he was greedy for more mysteries, more marvels, more sublimities for unhesitating acceptance. He was always in sympathy both with the Roman and the early Greek Churches, and sometimes in his own ritual he borrowed from both; yet he could fulminate hotly enough at times against the excesses of either. He loved deeply and hated strongly; but the love was permanent and real, the hatred ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... of the abbey of the Trinity had its own peculiar rites; and, till the period of the revolution, the community were in the habit of printing their liturgy annually in latin. A very beautiful quarto volume, containing the ritual, was published at Caen, in 1622, by the order of Laurence de Budos, then abbess. It was probably from pride at a privilege of this nature, and from a confidence in their strength, that the nuns persisted in celebrating the ridiculous, or, it might almost be called, blasphemous Fete des Fous, ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... cloth with specially prepared fringes is worn by pious males under the outer garments, but with, the fringes showing. The latter play a part in the daily ritual. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... supply of vessels of one worthy to become the receptacle of the water to be used. It was on the Sabbath-Day, and the dedication to God of the wee creature who had so newly come among them was a fitting observance of the day. The solemn words of the ritual of the English Church, never before spoken in that primeval forest, must have awakened mysterious vibrations which linger yet and give to Roanoak Island that atmosphere of perpetual repose which envelops it. There must have come to those ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... obliged to you for all that," said she, rather with an air of speaking ritual. The stint of reciprocal feeling was perceived, and Henchard showed chagrin at once—nobody was more quick ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... and of Knowledge, and, by consequence, of Health? Should she, by reason of their ignoble interferences and persecutions, yield her own allegiance to the Higher Light? Not she! Rather would she fling herself, heart and soul, into the freshening tide of her own visible church. Out of its ritual only, could she gain new fervour to bear and endure and then, if need be, fight for her spiritual freedom. It was only what the martyrs of old had done; only the work which fell upon the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... rites nor ritual. It was merely a mendicant order in which one tried to do what is right, with, for reward, the hope of Pratscha-Paramita, the peace that is beyond all knowledge and which Nirvana provides. That peace is—or was—the complete absence of anything, extinction utter and everlasting, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... with the same kind of dangerous politeness. "It only remains for me," he said, "to explain to my guests the social conditions upon which I have the pleasure of entertaining them. I need not expound the quaint old ritual of ransom, which it is incumbent upon me to keep up; and even this only applies to a part of the company. The Reverend Father Brown and the celebrated Signor Muscari I shall release tomorrow at dawn and escort to my outposts. Poets and priests, ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... ruling spirit of the reign in domestic and ecclesiastical affairs. She had civilised the Court, in matters of costume at least; she had read books to the devoted Malcolm, who could not read; and he had been her interpreter in her discussions with the Celtic-speaking clergy, whose ideas of ritual differed from her own. The famous Culdees, originally ascetic hermits, had before this day united in groups living under canonical rules, and, according to English observers, had ceased to be bachelors. Masses are said to have been celebrated ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... cries to heaven. From the empire of the music master, upon which the sun never sets, day and night, week in week out, from year to year, Rubinstein's Melody in F streams up for ever. These school pieces are like the Latin ritual before the Reformation, they link all Christendom by a common use. As the earth spins, and the sunlight sweeps ever westward, that melody passes with the day. Now it is tinkling in a grey Moravian school, now it dawns upon the Adige and begins in Alsace, now it ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... agonizing agitation passed from her and a great quiet fell upon her soul. The struggle was done. She had made the ancient sacrifice demanded of women since ever the first man went forth to war. It remained only to complete with fitting ritual this ancient sacrifice. She rose from her seat and ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... Fasts. The rite of fasting is one of the most deep-seated and universal in the Indian ritual. It is practised among all the American tribes, and is deemed by them essential to their success in life in every situation. No young man is fitted and prepared to begin the career of life until he has accomplished his great fast. Seven days appear to have ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... Winter, who is a Catholic, like yourself, madame, thinking that the deprivation of the rites and ceremonies of your church might be painful to you, has consented that you should read every day the ordinary of your Mass; and here is a book which contains the ritual." ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... It is a curious thing that in whaling vessels the Church of England Prayer-book is always employed, although there is never a member of that Church among either officers or crew. Our men are all Roman Catholics or Presbyterians, the former predominating. Since a ritual is used which is foreign to both, neither can complain that the other is preferred to them, and they listen with all attention and devotion, so that the system has something ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Outward ritual cannot destroy ignorance, because they are not mutually contradictory," wrote Shankara in his famous CENTURY OF VERSES. "Realized knowledge alone destroys ignorance. . . . Knowledge cannot spring up by any other means than inquiry. 'Who am I? How was this universe ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... business at El Arnieh, and Arthur, having by this time picked up enough of the language to make himself comprehensible, and to know fully what was set before him, was called upon to make his decision, so that either he might be admitted by regular ritual into the Moslem faith, and adopted by the sheyk, or else be advertised by Yusuf at the next town as a ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... north transept. Alterations of an extensive nature seem to have been begun in the fourteenth century; for to this date belong the rood screen, placed farther to the east than the old division between the ritual choir of the canons and the western part of the nave, which was probably given up to the lay dwellers in the parish,—and the splendid reredos. The Lady Chapel also was completed certainly before 1406, probably eleven years earlier. The fifteenth century saw the western tower built and ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... Ritual Case (The). The Argument, Proceedings, Judgment, and Report, revised by the several Counsel engaged. Demy 8vo. ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... Vedas, and those modes of life that have been laid down for Brahmanas, should, before everything else, be observed by every Brahmana. If a Brahmana acts otherwise, he should be punished like a Sudra. The duties of the four modes of life and the ritual prescribed in the Vedas, O king, should ever be followed by a Brahmana. Know that he has no other duties. For a Brahmana acting otherwise, a Kshatriya should not make any arrangement for sustenance. His ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... stilled at even," in the angry gleam of sunset on wet leaves, in wild and headlong gipsy rhythms, in moonfire, shimmering stuffs and flashing spray, in the garish lights and odors of the Peninsula, in rain fallen upon flowering parterres, in the melancholy march of clouds, the golden pomp and ritual of the church, the pools and gardens and pavilions reared for its delight by the delicate Chinese soul, in earth's thousand scents and shells and colors. For Debussy has set these adventures before us in their fullness. Before he spoke, he had dwelt with his experiences till he ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... friend of mine." Then he told us about it. Many years ago, a band of Kazaks and their priests migrated across the frontier into Turkey because they were "Old Believers;" that is to say, they belonged to the sect which refused to accept the reforms of errors (which had crept into the service-books and ritual through the carelessness of copyists and ignorance of the proper forms) instituted by the Patriarch Nikon in the time of Peter the Great's father, after consulting the Greek Patriarchs and books. In earlier times, these Old Believers burned themselves by the thousand. In the present ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... those we have named, were informally inducted into the organization, in the parlor of B. F. Stevenson, who at the first national encampment a few weeks later was made provisional Commander-in-chief; the ritual and unwritten work was communicated to the new members, and they were fully empowered to organize posts in Massachusetts, General Devens being appointed provisional Grand Commander of the department. On returning from Pittsburg there was something of a ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... trifle with the curse or unpardoning prophecy of a witch, but not with the pardon of a priest. They seem to have held (I believe erroneously) that the supernatural was safest when it came from below. When we think (for example) of the uncountable riches of religious art, imagery, ritual and popular legend that has clustered round Christmas through all the Christian ages, it is a truly extraordinary thing to reflect that Dickens (wishing to have in The Christmas Carol a little happy supernaturalism by way of a change) ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... angry at the fellow's impiety. 'However, (said he,) the Reviewers will make him hang himself.' He, however, observed, 'that formerly there might have been a dispensation obtained for working on Sunday in the time of harvest[924].' Indeed in ritual observances, were all the ministers of religion what they should be, and what many of them are, such a power might be wisely and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... it, a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of the rest of the tribe. Like facts, however, become known to other clans, and then coalitions are made which take the form of esoteric societies, and from these the stronger savages gradually exclude the weaker and their descendants. Meanwhile an elaborate ritual is developed, and so an hereditary priesthood comes into life, which always claims to have received its knowledge by revelation, and which teaches that resistance to its will is sacrilege. Nevertheless ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... harsh and bigoted in the company of his equals whether clerical or lay, but with his flock tender and comprehending and patient. The only indulgence he accorded to his senses was in the forms and ceremonies of his ritual, the vestments and furniture of his church. His vicar was able to give him a free hand in the obscure squalor of Lima Street; the ecclesiastical battles he himself had to fight with bishops who were pained or with retired military men who were disgusted ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... helmet and sabre that hang twixt him and her he is close by her side, and ere he knows it is kneeling there at the chancel rail and listening to the grandest, sweetest benediction in all the eloquent ritual of the church, and then—and then, he has risen and is gazing into the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... necessities and congruities which made me dimly aware that if you admit the glories of ecclesiastical architecture, it is only the asceticism of Puritan rebellion against art that can deny magnificence to ritual. I had occasionally, though rarely, been present at High Mass, and had felt a certain elevating influence, and if I had said to myself, "Religion is only a poem by which the soul is raised to the contemplation of the Eternal Mysteries," then I could have dreamed vaguely in ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... make any notes. A gentleman who had been requested to look after me attempted to explain what it meant, as the ceremony proceeded, but his English was very imperfect, and I lost a good deal of the show trying to clear up his meaning. While the chief priest was going through a ritual his deputies chanted mournful and monotonous strains in a minor key—repetitions of the same lines over and over again. They were praying for the favor of the gods, and their approval of ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... earliest and most widely spread of all human institutions. Behind the laws regulating sacrifice in the Old Testament there lies the long history of Shemitic ritual and religion. These sacrificial rites were not then introduced for the first time. They formed part of the inheritance of the Israelites from their far-off ancestors; an inheritance shared by them with the Ammonites ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... mental gipsy, to whom books were roads open to adventures; he saw skies in books, and books in skies, and in every orderly section of social life magic possibilities of vagrancy. But he was also a Cockney, a lover of limit, civic tradition, the uniform of all ritual. He liked exceptions, because, in every other instance, he would approve of the rule. He broke bounds with exquisite decorum. There was in all his excesses ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... accompanied with a general superior susceptibility of the other organs as well as the sight; for it is observed that a taste for any one of the fine arts is connected with a general predilection for them all. But neither the Apollo, the Vatican, nor the pomp of the Catholic ritual, excited his feelings to so great a degree as the spectacle which presented itself to his view around the portico of the church. Bred in the universal prosperity of Pennsylvania, where the benevolence of the human bosom was only employed in acts of hospitality and mutual kindness, he had never witnessed ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... wires, with a view to isolating the scene of action. I cannot help thinking that this is a mistake. We kept our telegraph offices open day and night, and I am strongly of opinion that we gained rather than lost by our departure from the established ritual of revolutions. The news which came to us from England was often encouraging, and generally of some value. Nor do I think that the Government gained any advantage over us by the messages which Clithering as their agent, or Bland and others in their capacity of public entertainers, sent ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... Ruthven or one of his assistants could have explained that chaotic mixture for what it was. But for all practical purposes Travis Fox—Amerindian Time Agent, member of Team A, Operation Cochise—was far less of a thinking animal now than the two coyotes paying their ritual addresses to a moon which was not the one ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... The Greek word hero means a semi-divine personage, who was worshipped, though with less elaborate ritual ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... portion of what is written in the great style is anonymous—like Homer and much of the Bible and certain old ballads and songs. It is for this reason that Walter Pater is right when he says that the important thing in Religion is the Ceremony, the Litany, the Ritual, the Liturgical Chants, and not the Creeds or the Commandments, or discussion upon Creed or Commandment. Creeds change, Morality changes, Mysticism changes, Philosophy changes—but the Word of our God—the Word of Humanity—in gesture, in ritual, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... Sotumpa wrote of the strength of the immaculate purity in tea which defied corruption as a truly virtuous man. Among the Buddhists, the southern Zen sect, which incorporated so much of Taoist doctrines, formulated an elaborate ritual of tea. The monks gathered before the image of Bodhi Dharma and drank tea out of a single bowl with the profound formality of a holy sacrament. It was this Zen ritual which finally developed into the Tea-ceremony of Japan in the ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... casa ... panes negros. "The following are the chief points in the funeral rite as prescribed in the Roman Ritual. The corpse is borne in procession with lights to the church. The parish priest assists in surplice and black stole; the clerks carry the holy water and cross; the coffin is first sprinkled with holy water and the psalm De Profundis recited; then the corpse ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... frequently invited the clergy and laity to feast at the table of Mother Church, to show that she could dispense loaves and fishes with the best, and vie with Court and Society in the splendour and hospitality of her entertainments. As he approved of an imposing ritual at the cathedral, so he affected a magnificent way of living at the palace. Mrs Pansey and many others declared that Dr Pendle's aims in that direction were Romish. Perhaps they were, but he could scarcely have followed a better example, since the Church of Peter owes ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... this spot was the Temple of Isis. Here the seance was held, and no demon appeared, but a regular God of one of the first circles. So terrified was an onlooker that he crushed to death the living birds which he held in his hands for some ritual or magical purpose. ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... the nature and sometimes the name of the enemy to be combated—the Fever-god, the Plague-god, the Headache-god. Consultations and medical treatment were, therefore, religious offices, in which were involved purifications, offerings, and a whole ritual of mysterious words and gestures. The magician lighted a fire of herbs and sweet-smelling plants in front of his patient, and the clear flame arising from this put the spectres to flight and dispelled the malign influences, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... human being is without significance. Our own faith is often clarified by comparing it with that of some supposedly unrelated religion. Many a usage and conviction in ethnic cults supplies a suggestive parallel to something in our Bible. The development of theology or of ritual in some other religion throws light on similar developments in Christianity. The widespread sense of the Superhuman confirms our assurance of the reality of God. "To the philosopher," wrote Max Mueller, ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin |
