"Sermon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... commended the reading of Aristophanes, the loosest of them all, to his royal scholar Dionysius, is commonly known, and may be excused, if holy Chrysostom, as is reported, nightly studied so much the same author and had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence into the style of a rousing sermon. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... seemed to fall upon them simultaneously, and to offer the prospect of novelty without too much danger. The brethren of the U. P. congregation, being a trifle more gleg than the others, arrived first at the inn, and secured the promise of a morning sermon from Chancellor Howard Crosby. The session of the Free Kirk came in a body a little later, and to them my father pledged himself for the evening sermon. The senior elder of the Established Kirk, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... Oldbiggins were rather hard upon a child too, for, on the top of the two long services, the old grandfather always read out a very long sermon, difficult for any one to understand, as he read very feebly, and the words were ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... meeting!—a Wesleyan proctor, delighting in black gowns, stopping by mistake a Quaker Freshman, with a reproof for being in broad-brim instead of academicals, and being answered with "Friend, I am not of thy persuasion!" Then the dissenting D.D.s flocking to the university sermon at Mount Pisgah Chapel, (late St. Mary's,) wherein all denominational topics were to be carefully avoided, and the sharp look-out that would be kept upon any preacher whose harangues savoured of bigotry! Then the boat-races; fancy the Independents' boat bumping ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... smaller places, and in country churches, service was suspended. This was true so far as my observation reached, and it must have been so in other places, from the fact that so great a proportion of the men were engaged in the war. And even where preaching was kept up, every sermon I heard was embellished and concluded by a grand flourish, about the duty of praying and fighting for their homes and institutions. This universally belligerent spirit was evidently unfavorable ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... administration; and, in all their sermons, and even prayers, mingling politics with religion, they inculcated the most seditious and most turbulent principles. Black, minister of St. Andrew's, went so far,[**] in a sermon, as to pronounce all kings the devil's children; he gave the queen of England the appellation of atheist; he said, that the treachery of the king's heart was now fully discovered; and in his prayers for the queen he used these words: "We must pray for her for the fashion's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... bare. On the walls the ten commandments and a few other quotations from Holy Writ, and above a small altar, "Do this in remembrance of me," in Gothic lettering. I had to endure the hymns, the sermon (awful), and the reading aloud of the ten commandments, with muttered protestations and Amens after each one from the reverent Americans. When we went out I said nothing, as I did not know whether Vinnie might not ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Mr. Docksey, that I merely gave these family details in order to substantiate my statement that I may be able to arrange something. By the way, if you would care to have a typescript of my sermon to-morrow for the Record, you can have one by applying at ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... nose was rubbed off somewhat, and the skin was coming off the face. The friars took it and carried it in procession on a feast day, from the house where it was found to the church that they had built." The natives were told that they thus honored the child Jesus. "After the mass and the sermon, the general went to treat with the king for friendship, telling him that we came thither for the King of Castilla, whose land this was, who had sent other people here before, and that they had been ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... definitions of old-fashioned photography—the "new" photography hugs closely the mellow mezzotint—and the vision of the painter. An eye—nothing more, is Cezanne. He refuses to see in nature either a symbol or a sermon. Withal his landscapes are poignant in their reality. They are like the grill age one notes in ancient French country houses—little caseate cut in the windows through which you may see in vivid outline a little section of the landscape. Cezanne ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... join the men at prayers. These arrangements completed, the chief mate placed a Bible on the capstan, read a chapter from the New Testament, made some remarks upon it, and then prayed; after which he read a sermon, and closed with prayer. The whole exercise occupied about an hour, and seemed to produce a good effect upon the men, who, during the rest of the day in their intercourse with ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... hinder it) they got a Painter to his Bed's-side, who took his Likeness as well as 'twas possible at such a time. Basilius Amerbachius assisted him during his last Sickness, and James Grinaeus made his Funeral-Sermon. He left two Sons behind him, John and Daniel; besides a great Reputation, and Desire of him, not only among his Friends and Acquaintance, but all the Men of Learning and Probity all ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... in peace. Towards evening fewer travellers passed by, but there came one party of six well-mounted men whose leader suddenly bowed his head down upon his horse's neck as he rode past. Wogan had preached a sermon on the carelessness which comes with danger's diminutions, but he was very tired. The head was nodding; the blow might fall from nowhere, and he ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... timidity natural to her sex and years, the moment her care could no longer serve her uncle, the funeral of the deacon took place the day after that of his death. It was the solemn and simple ceremony of the country. The Rev. Mr. Whittle conceived that he ought to preach a sermon on the occasion of the extinguishment of this "bright and shining light," and the body was carried to the meeting-house, where the whole congregation assembled, it being the Sabbath. We cannot say much for the discourse, which had ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... This sermon[1] is written on the characters and duties of the clergy. Perhaps it would have produced more effect upon the Yorkshire divines had it come from one who had lived longer among them, and of the correspondence of whose life with his doctrines, they had better opportunities of judging; ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... keep us, unless we will pay her tolls and pick our way along her turnpike. But though her major and minor premises may not be on the best terms with each other,—even though they may remind us of that preacher of whom Pierrepont Edwards said, "If his text had the smallpox, his sermon would not catch it,"—her conclusion is sound, and as inspiring now as when the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... said Fanny. "I think he is the nicest clergyman I have ever seen; and if one did not understand a word of his sermon, it would still be most edifying only to hear him read the service. Then the ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... left his house in Far-West, it was taken possession of by Sidney Rigdon. About this time, Rigdon preached his famous "Salt Sermon." The text was:—"Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... did not read a sermon. Instead he closed the book, and for a short five minutes spoke to the men simply, clearly, and to the point. Then there was one more song. Services do not usually end with it; but as the sound rose, the boys ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... Here the "Lady of the Lake," with the magic ring, sought the monarch to intercede for her father; here James II. murdered the Earl of Douglas; here the beautiful but unfortunate Mary was made Queen; and here John Knox, the Reformer, preached the coronation sermon of James VI. The Castle Hill rises from the valley of the Forth, and makes an imposing and picturesque appearance. The windings of the noble river till lost in the distance, present pleasing contrasts, scarcely ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... the loyal Jean, "because nobody would be able to attend to his sermon for looking ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... pseudo-scientific method: he describes the trivial with the attitude of the trained observer, registering minutely the detail of phenomena, amock-parade of scholarship illustrated by his description of Trim's attitude while reading his sermon, or the dropping of the hat in the kitchen during the memorable scene when the news ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... or clergyman preaches a good sermon, and speaks in such a manner as to please all who hear him, convincing them of their duty, and persuading them to do it, he ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... sung by one voice, it is called the Tract; if by choir, the Responsory. The collects and other prayers are said with the arms extended in the same manner as many figures are represented praying on old christian as well as pagan monuments. After the gospel the sermon used to be preached, as it generally is in our times[11] and after the sermon Pagans, Jews, heretics, schismatics, energumens, public penitents and catechumens were dismissed by the deacon; for the faithful alone were allowed to be present at the celebration of the ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... is nothing so mighty as the confession of personal experience. Do not you think that when that first of Christian converts, and first of Christian preachers went to his brother, all full of what he had discovered, his simple saying, 'We have found the Messias,' was a better sermon than a far more elaborate proclamation would have been? My brother! if you have found Him, you can say so; and if you can say so, and your character and your life confirm the words of your lips, you will have done more to spread His name than much eloquence and many an orator. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... just wants to cram us boys," Beppo confessed, in a confidential tone; "but it's no use knowing too much, even for a priest. For once, at San Marcuolo—true as true, faith of the Madonna!—one of those priests told the people one day in his sermon that there ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... knoll above it were visible the tiny homes built over the dead in the graveyard of the Hawns. And up there, above the murmuring sweep of the river, and with many of his kin who had died in a similar way, they laid "slick Steve" Hawn. The old circuit rider preached a short funeral sermon, while Mavis and her mother stood together, the woman dry-eyed, much to the wonder of the clan, the girl weeping silently at last, and Jason behind them—solemn, watchful, and with his secret working painfully in his heart. He had forbade ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... California Street, not far from Chinatown. By noon the family reassembled at dinner-table, where Mr. Bessemer ate his chicken-heart—after Travis had thrice reminded him of it—and expressed himself as to the sermon and the minister's theology: sometimes to his daughter and sometimes ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... fashionable church choirs, during the sermon, engage in kissing and hugging behind ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... this book of sufficient importance to take it and the text from which the title was drawn as his subject for an entire sermon, in the course of which he said: "In its ethical and social significance it is the most important piece of fiction that has lately appeared in America. I do not think that a more trenchant word has been spoken to this nation since 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' And it is profoundly to be hoped that this book ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the Service of the Church of England. The Reverend Mr Carre, the senior clergyman, preached from these words, 'Because the Lord reigneth, let the earth be glad.' I was sorry to think Mr Johnson did not attend to the sermon, Mr Carre's low voice not being strong enough to reach his hearing. A selection of Mr Carre's sermons has, since his death, been published by Sir William Forbes, and the world has acknowledged their uncommon merit. I am well assured ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... suspicion, the upshot of which we call shyness. Even an Englishman's rudeness is often rooted in his being embarrassed. But a German's rudeness is rooted in his never being embarrassed. He eats and makes love noisily. He never feels a speech or a song or a sermon or a large meal to be what the English call "out of place" in particular circumstances. When Germans are patriotic and religious they have no reactions against patriotism and religion as have the English and ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... It's a republic inside this old monarchy of ours. Look, here it is, my first bet with your grandfather—and I'm only sixty now!' He smoothed the page with his hand in a manner such as I have seen a dean do with his sermon-paper in a cathedral puplit. 'Here it is, thirty-six years ago.' He read the bet aloud. It was on the Derby, he himself having bet that the Prince of Wale's horse would win. 'Your grandfather, dear lad,' he repeated, 'but you'll ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... piece, printed in 1533, is entitled A merry Play between the Pardoner and the Friar, the Curate and Neighbour Pratt. A Pardoner and a Friar have each got leave of the Curate to use his church, the one to exhibit his relics, the other to preach a sermon. The Friar comes first, and is about to begin his preachment, when the other enters and disturbs him: each wants to be heard first; and, after a long trial which has the stronger lungs, they fall into a regular performance of mutual kicking and cuffing. The Curate, aroused ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... most curious paper on the subject of Ten-gan, or Infinite Vision— being the translation of a Buddhist sermon by the priest Sata Kaiseki— appeared in vol. vii. of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, from the pen of Mr. J. M. James. It contains an interesting consideration of the supernatural powers ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... Hear what the Lord God speaketh to you. I came not to make war upon you, but bring you the message of peace. As this building is not in condition to enter, I will give you the divine message from the door of the temple." After a short sermon he told them his mission was to rebuild the church, and he was going to ask them all to help. A short prayer followed his remarks, and the benediction closed this remarkable epoch in the history ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... Sometimes a sermon was read after the prayers, but more often it was my habit to give each of the young ones a text from the Holy Bible, and from that they made small sermons, or rather remarks of their own which were meant only for the Mother's eye, and sacredly ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... Mr. Rheaume, of the Seminary, the musical portion being rendered in a most impressive manner by the reverend mothers, to organ accompaniment. In the afternoon, at two o'clock, solemn vespers were chanted by the community, after which an eloquent and impressive sermon was preached by Rev. Father Lepinto, S.J., followed by the benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, which was given, by Rev. Mr. Fraser, of the Seminary, who had previously read a solemn form of "Reparation" in the name of all present, and in which all joined. The Tantum Ergo and other hymns ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... families. For not only the "Graduating Exercises" themselves, with their "Salutatory" and "Valedictory" addresses, their "Class History" and "Class Prophecy," their essays and songs, constitute a great occasion, but there is also the all-day excursion of picnic character; the "Baccalaureate Sermon" in the largest church; the "Prize Speaking" in the nearest "Opera House"; and last, but not least, the "Graduation Ball" in the Town Hall. The boys suffer agonies in patent-leather boots, high, stiff collars and blue serge suits; the girls suffer torments ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... Hulton-Sams—known as the Fighting Parson—and who was the winner of many friendly fights. He travelled the west visiting stations and shearing sheds with his Bible and prayer-book on one handle of his bike, and a set of boxing gloves on the other, and after preaching an impressive extempore sermon, concluding the service, would invariably say, "Now, boys, we will have a little recreation!" and invite his hearers to put on the gloves. He was not always the winner, however. His manly virtues, the sincerity of his life, and the beauty of his character, made him one of the best loved ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... leaves, a foot wide at least, looked quite lovely round the white shell font. All holy week and Easter Monday and Tuesday we had full service at seven o'clock in the morning, papa preaching a short sermon from the altar. It was delightfully cool at that hour, and began the day so pleasantly. I always love Easter, when all our dear ones seem to be gathered to us in Christ our Lord, whether those in Heaven ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... entrapped, and argued with, until she was heart-sick of the dreary business. On the last occasion of this kind she was brought into a burial-place at Rouen, dismally decorated with a scaffold, and a stake and faggots, and the executioner, and a pulpit with a friar therein, and an awful sermon ready. It is very affecting to know that even at that pass the poor girl honoured the mean vermin of a King, who had so used her for his purposes and so abandoned her; and, that while she had been regardless ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... reminds of a friend's parting breath. The inscriptions and epitaphs, elegies too, Must all be poetical, lively, and new; Such as never were heard of, or seen heretofore, To be written by Proctor, Sam. Rogers, or Moore. In lieu of a sermon, glee-singers attend, Who will chant, like the cherubims, praise without end. Three decent old women, to enliven the hours, Attend with gay garlands and sacred flowers, The emblems of grief—artificial, 'tis true, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... declared not only that a Council alone could represent the Church, but that even a decree of Council might err, and that an Act of the Church was no final evidence of the truth of a doctrine. Being threatened with excommunication, he preached a sermon on the subject, and showed how a Christian, even if under the ban of the Church, or excluded from outward communion with her, could still remain in true inward communion with Christ and His believers, and might then see in his excommunication the noblest ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... preparation thereto, fills up the thoughts, the hours, of these would-be soldiers, of James [224] Stokes, and therefore of Emerald Uthwart, through the long summer-time, till the Green Court is fragrant with lime-blossom, and speech-day comes, on which, after their flower-service and sermon from an old comrade, Emerald surprises masters and companions by the fine quality of a recitation; still more when "Scholar Stokes" and he are found bracketed together as "Victors" of the school, who will proceed together to Oxford. His speech in the Chapter-house was from that place in ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... "It's not—exactly in my line, you know. It's an excellent institution—for the poor. When I'm with my own folk, I go, just to set them an example. But I'm not known here: so I think I'll excuse myself sitting out a sermon. ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... The sermon came in the middle of Mass, and was a violent denunciation of the Ladies Cullen, who, it was stated, had pursued one poor boy until he took refuge in an empty house, the door of which he was fortunately enabled to fasten against them; they had sent a sick woman blankets, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... his beautiful sermon on "The Marriage Ring," has borrowed not a few hints from this treatise of Plutarch, as usual investing with a new beauty whatever he borrows, from whatever source. He had the classics at his fingers' end, and much of his unique charm he ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... you, John," he said, with heavy solemnity; for Struthers always made a congregation of his listener, and droned as if mounted for a sermon. "Ye have done excellently well this session; ye have indeed. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... more than we are, and stand against us, like the trench round a garden bed." Rav Huni says, "Everyone has a thousand on his left hand, and ten thousand on his right hand." Rabba says, "The want of room at the sermon is from them, the wearing out of the Rabbis' clothes is from their rubbing against them, bruised legs are from them." "Whosoever wishes to know their existence, let him take ashes passed through a sieve, and strew them in his bed, and ...
— Hebrew Literature
... admirer of the Spud Tamson books it irks me to have to say that Winnie McLeod (HUTCHINSON) contains too much solid sermon to appeal to me. I gather that R. W. CAMPBELL wants to show how dangerous life may be for a poor and beautiful girl, and as a warning Winnie can be confidently recommended. But sound and wholesome as the preaching is it seems to me more suitable for a tract than for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... heaven,' but will have nothing to do with the Son and the Holy Ghost, Unitarians, for example, one of whose popular preachers in the town of Manchester, was about twelve months ago charged with having in the course of a single sermon 'killed, two Gods, one Devil, ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... associations.[12] This is particularly noticeable in their attendance at outdoor sermons and involvement in the various political activities. At a time when fewer than 100 families lived in the territory, Fithian observed that "There were present about an Hundred & forty" people for a sermon which he gave on the banks of the Susquehanna, opposite the present city of Lock Haven, on Sunday, July 30, 1775.[13] Although William Colbert, a Methodist, later "preached to a large congregation of willing hearers" within the territory, he did not think that it was "worth the preachers ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... is. He takes after his father. Only he's not so restless. He's also a cunning rogue, I think, while Lubka regarded him almost as a saint. That foolish girl! What a sermon he read to me! A regular judge. And she—she was kind toward me." But all these thoughts stirred in him no feelings—neither hatred toward Taras nor sympathy for Lubov. He carried with him something ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... That was a wonderful sermon Christ preached on the Mount, but was it more wonderful than the ministry of the wounded man fallen by the roadside, or the drying of the tears from the pale, worn face of the widow of Nain? Or more wonderful than when ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... had not that consolation—would that you had it, too!—would it be endurable to me to see those menials whispering and showing their forced respect? As it is, I am fortified to forgive them. I breathe another atmosphere. Oh, Evan! you did not attend to Mr. Parsley's beautiful last sermon. The Church should have been ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... how to live without it; but I surely may be permitted to pass an opinion on it, and I often tell myself that if Christ should reappear among us with his train of publicans and fisherman—are you listening?—that if the meek and the lowly Jesus should come to preach his Sermon on the Mount in the ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... hence all the efforts to explain away the moral characteristics deducible from The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, and to prove that Whistler, beneath a prickly surface, was saturated through and through with the quintessence of the Sermon on the Mount. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... that of Scotch presbyterians a century earlier, rendered it less and less fit, in the opinion of high Churchmen, to legislate for the Church of England, and every concession to religious liberty shocked them as a step towards "National Apostasy". This was, in fact, the impressive title of a sermon preached by John Keble, in July, 1833, before the university of Oxford. From this sermon Newman himself dated the origin of the Oxford or "Tractarian" movement, but its inward source lay deeper. Having ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... But my sermon was far from reassuring him: he began to cry, and after taking another piercing look at the tremendous gulf, ran away in desperate excitement, seeking some other crossing. By the time he got back, baffled of course, I had made ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... strain would have been too great for his youthful spirits, and might have left on his character an impress of permanent melancholy, derived from thus perpetually being reminded that he had gone wrong, but for a school sermon which Mr Paton preached about this time, and which Walter felt was meant in part for him. It was on the danger and unwisdom of brooding continually on what is over; and it was preached upon the text, "I will restore to you ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... concentrated against it. In vain the Rev. Samuel Moody preached to its high stone walls; in vain the iconoclast chaplain brandished his ecclesiastical hatchet; in vain Whitefield's banner flaunted to the wind. The fortress held out against shot and shell, saint, flag and sermon. New England ingenuity finally circumvented Louisburgh. Humiliating as the confession is, it must be admitted that our pious forefathers did actually abandon "CHRISTO duce," and used instead ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... sincerity, of whose abilities, wonderful as they were, the most remarkable, and perhaps the most serviceable to his fortunes, was his hypocrisy; so much so, that South—a most acute observer of mankind, and who had been educated under the Commonwealth and Protectorate—in his sermon on "Worldly Wisdom," adduces Cromwell as an instance of "habitual dissimulation and imposture." Oliver, Mr. Macaulay tells us, modelled his army on the principle of composing it of men fearing God, and zealous for public liberty, and in ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... most stringent criticism; and during the six years of her reign his attitude toward her was that of uncompromising insistence. The celebration of mass in Holyrood Chapel, in defiance of the late religious settlement, first roused his wrath; and a sermon delivered by him in St. Giles led to the first of those famous interviews with Mary, the record of which makes such a remarkable portion of his "History of the Reformation." The division of ecclesiastical property, by which those in actual possession received ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... attended service in this edifice, and were immensely struck with the devotion of the enormous congregation of men and women, who all followed the service attentively in their books. The singing was most fervent, but the sermon a little tedious, as the clergyman preached in English, and his discourse had to be divided into short sentences, with a long pause between each, to enable the black interpreter at his side to translate what he said to his listeners, who simply ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... not always enjoy going to church, for sometimes the sermon seemed long and tiresome; but there was always the singing to look forward to, and the breaking up of the congregation after the benediction had been said. It was always so pleasant then, for the ladies in their pretty gowns and the men in their black Sunday coats exchanged kindly greetings ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... Abe could listen to a sermon, then come home and repeat it almost word for word. "I'd rather hear you preachify," she said, "than the ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... ended his sermon, leaving his hearers more disposed to laugh at his foolish speeches than to weep in memory of our Lord's Passion which was then ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... following, when Miss Philura Rice, newly returned from her annual visit to Boston, walked down the aisle to her accustomed place in the singers' seat. Whispered comment and surmise flew from pew to pew, sandwiched irreverently between hymn, prayer and sermon. Indeed, the last-mentioned portion of the service, being of unusual length and dullness, was utilized by the female members of the congregation in making a minute inventory of the amazing changes which had taken place in the ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... Tavernour, of Water Eaton, in Oxfordshire, high sheriff of the county, came, it is said, in pure charity, not out of ostentation, and gave the scholars at Oxford a sermon, in St. Mary's Church, with his gold chain about his neck, and his sword by his side, and accosted them thus: "Arriving at the Mount of St. Mary's, in the Stony stage, where I now stand, I have brought you some fine biscuits, baked in the oven of charity, and carefully conserved for the chickens ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... he crushed these qualms of conscience as being over-scrupulous, and, as he told himself, not practical. You must take the world as you find it, with a struggle to be something more honest than those around you. Phineas, as he preached to himself this sermon, declared to himself that they who attempted more than this flew too high in the clouds to be of service to ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... stating his claims to ecclesiastical preferment, "I am distinguished as a preacher," and this seems to have been no more than the truth. George Ticknor, writing in 1835, said that he had heard from Sydney "by far the best sermon that I have heard in England." Charles Greville wrote;—"He is very good; manner impressive, voice sonorous and agreeable: rather familiar, but not offensively so." Mrs, Austin,[113] who afterwards edited his Letters, writes:—"The choir[114] was densely ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... Valentine had said, when Julian told him of Cuckoo's strange fragmentary sermon in the Monico, and of its effect ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of a clock in a church-tower, appearing from the background with imposing majesty and with unfailing regularity. At last a gardener came, muttering something about boors and vagabonds, and led me off to the garden, preaching me a long sermon on the way about my being diligent and industrious and never loitering about the world any more, and how, if I would give up all my idle and foolish ways, I might come to some good in the end. There ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... politics are not the most promising themes for an agreeable amusement; but the battles are not frequent, nor do the cabinet councils last long. I beg the favor, if the story is to be read at all, that no scene may be passed over as extraneous, for though it begin like a state-paper, or a sermon, it always terminates by casting some new light on the portrait of the hero. Beyond those events of peril and of patriotic devotedness, the remainder of the pages dwell generally with domestic interests; but if the reader do not approach them regularly through the development of ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... "A sermon, a sermon from the young preacher, come, boys, give him Old Hundred. Really, sir, you promise almost as well as the parson you heard yesterday; and will take lessons from him, if advised by me. But go on—come to a finish—mount ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... down the limbs of my beast; a spruce civilian riding for curiosity; a gray-haired gentleman, in a threadbare suit, going to camp on foot, to say good by to his boy,—these were some of the personages that I remarked, and each was a study, a sermon, and a story. The Potomac, below me, was dotted with steamers and shipping. The bluffs above were trodden bare, and a line of dismal marsh bordered some stagnant pools that blistered at their bases. At points along the river-shore, troops were embarking on board steamers; ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... want of enthusiasm which characterized that effete epoch—"the Church of England, as well as all the dissenting bodies, slumbered and slept." At this epoch, the Puritans were buried, and the Methodists were not born. The Bishop of Litchfield, in a sermon delivered in 1724, said, "The Lord's Day is now the Devil's market day." In Litchfield Cathedral Library is a copy of Dr. Balguy's Sermons, delivered in 1748, containing on the fly-leaf an autograph remark by Bishop Bloomfield. It is in these words, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... astonishing the inhabitants of Crampsford by his academic learning, Theobald walked over to the Rectory one Sunday morning early in December—a few weeks only after he had been ordained. He had taken a great deal of pains with his sermon, which was on the subject of geology—then coming to the fore as a theological bugbear. He showed that so far as geology was worth anything at all—and he was too liberal entirely to pooh-pooh it—it confirmed the absolutely historical character of the Mosaic account of the Creation as given in ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... Isaac and Jacob and his sons, not without Rachel, E altri molti, e fecegli beati, the Resurrection and the Ascension, the Maries at the Tomb, the Pentecost. It is another and very different work you come upon in the Cantoria, which, lovely though it be, seems to be rather for a sermon than for singing, so cold it is, and yet full enough of his perfect feeling for construction, for architecture. It has a rhythm of its own, but it is the rhythm of prose, not ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... city, it seems, pretend much weakness and squeamishness of stomacke, which they say is so great that they are not able to continue in church while the mass is briefly hurried over, much lesse while a solemn high mass is sung and a sermon preached, unles they drinke a cup of hot chocolatte and eat a bit of sweetmeats to strengthen their stomackes. For this purpose it was much used by them to make their maids bring them to church, in the middle of mass or sermon, a cup of ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... Benedict XIII. and seized this opportunity of lavishing on the pontiff friendly congratulations mingled with useful advice. Two years later, before the same pontiff, he preached in the city of Genoa a sermon which led to the general institution, in the countries of the obedience of Avignon, of the festival of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... happened was, that the Duke of Gloucester caused one Dr. Shaw to preach a sermon to the people of London in the open air, explaining that King Edward IV. had been a very bad man, and had never been properly married to Lady Grey, and so that she was no queen at all, and her children ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... any human voice to reach his furthest hearers. Yet every word of the great preacher went with silvery tone and moving power, as if wafted on angel breathings, to the ears of sinners whom chance or grace had brought to join the immense crowd that surrounded his rude platform. Each sermon brought hundreds to repentance. Eyes that were long dry melted into tears, and hearts that were strangers to every sweet and holy influence throbbed with emotion. Efforts to check the pent-up feelings were expressed by louder and convulsive sobs; some knelt and prayed, others ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... company. The fact was, Mr. Thoughtless did not restrain his expressions of "great satisfaction" and "strong pleasure" in the "character and abilities" of Mr. Sharp. He was the "best minister ever among them"—"every one admired him"—"what a splendid sermon he preached last Sabbath morning"—"the congregations were doubled since he came"—he was "delighted with his general demeanour"—he "really thought his abilities were adequate to a larger Church in a city, than theirs in the country"—but he must not be "considered in speaking ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... very cunning of you to turn our own stories against us, and give us a sermon instead of a ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... over to Darien to church. Our people's church was closed, the minister having gone to officiate elsewhere. With laudable liberality I walked into the opposite church of a different, not to say opposite sect: here I heard a sermon, the opening of which will, probably, edify you as it did me, viz., that if a man was just in all his dealings he was apt to think he did all that could be required of him,—and no wide mistake either one might suppose. But is it not wonderful how such words can be spoken here, with the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... appears in the familiar 23d Psalm, where there are one hundred and nineteen words in all, of which ninety-five are words of one syllable, and only three of three syllables, with none longer. In the Sermon on the Mount eighty two per cent. of the words in our English version are words ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... of Canterbury in his Easter sermon dwells upon the national necessity for prohibition during the war; a band of the Irish Guards, arriving in Dublin on a recruiting tour, is enthusiastically cheered; John E. Redmond reviews at Dublin 25,000 of the Irish National Volunteers; Limerick welcomes recruiting officers; every man in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... which the same critic institutes between the seven parables of this group and the seven beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, is an attractive study, and some of the coincidences are obvious and beautiful; but this line of observation should be jealously kept subordinate to the primary substantial lesson which each parable contains. On the one hand, I desire that these secondary and incidental ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Faustus! if you repent, and call upon the Lord for mercy, as we have example in the Acts of the Apostles, the eighth chapter, of Simon in Samaria, who was led out of the way, affirming that he was Simon homo sanctus. This man notwithstanding in the end, was converted, after he had heard the sermon of Philip, for he was baptized and saw his sin and repented. Likewise I beseech you, good brother, Dr. Faustus, let my rude sermon be unto you a conversion, and forget thy filthy life that thou hast led, repent, ask mercy, and live: for Christ saith, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... us,—excellent chance to see dancing vines, or flying birds, or falling rains, or other "meteors outside," if the preacher proved dull or the hymns undevout. But I found my attention was well held within. Not that the preaching was anything to be repeated. The sermon was short, unpretending, but alive and devout. It was a sonnet, all on one theme; that theme pressed, and pressed, and pressed again, and, of a sudden, the preacher was done. "You say you know God loves you," he said. "I hope you do, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... rose, and putting his hand into his waistcoat, more suo, delivered his famous Sermon Upon The Connection ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to use a favorite expression of our American campaign style, "not all in force." They will do very little, and, as far as I can discern, are rather intimidated than provoked at the denunciations of the court in the Archbishop of York's sermon. I thought that sermon rather imprudent, when I first saw it; but it seems to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in very formidable ermine Were there, with brows that did not much invite The accused to think their lordships would determine His cause by leaning much from might to right: Bishops, who had not left a single sermon: Attorneys-general, awful to the sight, As hinting more (unless our judgments warp us) Of the 'Star Chamber' than of ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... 35.] Clarendon, in the text of the sermon preached at Newark before the King:—"And all the men of Judah answered the men of Israel, Because the King is near of kin to us: wherefore then be ye angry for this matter?"—Swift. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... the "Lessons for the day" being the first and second chapters of the "Book of Preferment,"' Horace was proud of this brochure, for he says it got about surreptitiously, and was 'the original of many things of that sort.' Various jeux d'esprit of a similar sort followed. A 'Sermon on Painting,' which was preached before Sir Robert Walpole, in the gallery at Houghton, by his chaplain; 'Patapan, or the Little White Dog,' imitated from La Fontaine. No. 38 of the 'Old England Journal,' ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... or to be seen anywhere with them. That was the way then; the fashion has changed since. When they were old and nobody cared for them, they tried to become devout. They lodged together, and one Ash Wednesday went and heard a sermon. This sermon, which was upon fasting and penitence, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... constable. "He's hitting them fine." From which I judged that the constable had in his youth come from the north, where golf is cheap. It was a disappointment that I could not get in, but perhaps well for the reader. The temptation to record a genuine sermon by Dawson might have proved too much for me. Presently the voice ceased to boom, the congregation squeezed out hot and oily, like grease from a full barrel, and I waited for Dawson to appear. "Don't speak to him now," directed my guide. "Let him get ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... literature the moral is not preached as a sermon," Miss Tevkin replied. "It naturally follows from the life it presents. Anyhow, the other kind of literature is mere froth. You read page after page and there doesn't seem to be any substance to it." She said it plaintively, as though apologizing for holding ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... like a door. On the window, made of little leaded panes, was a design showing the Christ laying his hand upon the head of a child. One Sunday morning in the summer as he sat by his desk in the room with a large Bible opened before him, and the sheets of his sermon scattered about, the minister was shocked to see, in the upper room of the house next door, a woman lying in her bed and smoking a cigarette while she read a book. Curtis Hartman went on tiptoe to the window and closed it softly. He was horror stricken ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... friend, it seems, of the family—a weighty one assuredly; but one whose acquaintanceship they were all glad to court. The ladies, in truth, seemed much taken with his society. They put fifty questions to him about the play—the assembly—the sermon—marriages—deaths—christenings, and what not; the whole of which he answered with surprising volubility. His tongue was the only active part about him, going as glibly as if he were ten stones, instead ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... hot midday, you saw the far-off glimmer of a white road, the roofs of the ugly little clachan of Kilmaclavers, and the rigging of the fine new kirk of Threepdaidle. It was a Sabbath afternoon in the hot weather, and the man had been to kirk all the morning. He had heard a grand sermon from the minister (or it may have been the priest, for I am not sure of the date and the King told the story quickly)—a fine discourse with fifteen heads and three parentheses. He held all the parentheses and fourteen of the heads in his memory, but he had forgotten ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... two pecks yet such were its miraculous properties that the poor could fill it with a gift of a few flowers, whereas the rich cast in myriads of bushels and found there was still room for more. A few years later Fa-Hsien heard a sermon in Ceylon[62] in which the preacher predicted that the bowl would be taken in the course of centuries to Central Asia, China, Ceylon and Central India whence it would ultimately ascend to the Tusita heaven for the use ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... church, and I went. And all the ladies and gentlemen looked at me as I went in. So I sat quietly among some men and looked up on the wall above my head, and there were a deer and a rabbit cut in the stone, beautifully done. I heard the clergyman speaking; and when the sermon was ended (literally, made), I came out and went down the road to ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... the bedside of his little Martin,—how, as the friend of godliness and learning, he had enjoyed the friendship of priests and school-teachers. Words of pious reflection from his lips remained stamped on Luther's memory from his boyhood. Thus Luther tells us, in a sermon preached towards the close of his life, how he had often heard his dear father say, that, as his own parents had told him, the earth contains many more who require to be fed than there are sheaves, even if collected from all the fields in the world; and yet how wondrously does God know ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... as people only can adore a brisk, businesslike man with a large heart and peremptory ways, who is their guide and father, and is perfectly aware of it. His sermons consisted of cold-cut blocks of dogma taken perseveringly from sermon outlines and served up Sunday by Sunday with a sauce of a slight and delightful brogue. He could never have kindled the Thames, nor indeed any river at all, but he could bridge them with solid stones; and this is, perhaps, even ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... ablest essay is the treatise on Language; the most literary is that on 'Work and Play'; the most penetrating in its insight is 'Our Gospel a Gift to the Imagination'; the most personal and characteristic is 'The Age of Homespun.' His best sermon is always the one last read; and they are perhaps his most representative work. The sermon is not usually ranked as belonging to literature, but no canon excludes those preached by this great man. They are timeless in their truth, majestic in their diction, commanding in their moral tone, penetrating ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... blessed day in my calendar. Dr. Channing held service in the dining-room and every person on the place was present, with many more from the neighborhood and from Boston. The subject of his sermon was the New Commandment: ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... of town with Madame de Stael, who hath published an Essay against Suicide, [1] which, I presume, will make somebody shoot himself;—as a sermon by Blenkinsop, in proof of Christianity, sent a hitherto most orthodox acquaintance of mine out of a chapel of ease a perfect atheist. Have you found or founded a residence yet? and have you begun or finished a poem? If you won't tell me what I have done, pray say what you have ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... quarry and marched away towards the township; and the crowd, relieved from the restraint imposed by the law as personified in him, gathered about the stone and examined it wisely, discovering a much longer and more significant sermon in it than Downy had ever suspected, and finding marrow-freezing suggestiveness in the marks of rust upon the face of the rock, which were declared by common consent to be bloodstains. Waddy confidently expected the gold-stealing case to culminate in the discovery of a particularly atrocious ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... governess and Brussels episodes in Charlotte's life we lose sight of Mr. Weightman, and the next record is of his death, which took place in September 1842, while Charlotte and Emily were in Brussels. Mr. Bronte preached the funeral sermon, {287} stating by way of introduction that for the twenty years and more that he had been in Haworth he had never before read his sermon. 'This is owing to a conviction in my mind,' he says, 'that in general, for the ordinary run of hearers, extempore preaching, though accompanied ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... is being sought. I know we are told that Christ's words do not call for this. But when I hear the laboured arguments which defend the splitting of American Presbyterianism into more than a dozen sects, I sympathize with the child who, after a sermon in which the minister had eloquently urged that the unity for which the Lord prayed was consistent with separation, said: "Mamma, if Christ didn't mean what He said, why didn't ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... England, the Countess of Roussillon, the two Countesses of Angoulesme (the old and the young), Lady Elis of Montfort (reputed the most witty lady in Languedoc), thirteen pronounced poets, and the hairdresser of the King of France—to name no more. That sermon of mine—I shame not to report it-was found worthy the inscription in the Register of Fontevrault; and in the initial letter thereof, garlanded in gold work very beautiful to be seen, is the likeness of myself vested, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... deceitful above all things and desperately wicked," and even then have something left to say. The statement illustrates the many-sidedness of truth, and the multitude of its relations to the life of the individual and the world. Any sensible preacher knows that, within the compass of a single sermon, he can only present a single aspect of a great and important truth, yet he is criticized as if it had been expected that the work of a dozen volumes could be crowded into the utterances of half an hour. What is called an "exhaustive" sermon would exhaust an audience long before it would its ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... answer to the smile, "you interest me as much as if you had been my son; and I am strong enough to afford to talk to you as openly as you have just done to me. Do you know what it is that I like about you?—This: you have made a sort of tabula rasa within yourself, and are ready to hear a sermon on morality that you will hear nowhere else; for mankind in the mass are even more consummate hypocrites than any one individual can be when his interests demand a piece of acting. Most of us spend a good part of our ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... intention, three hundred thousand people would assemble to see him pass, and all the parish churches of London would be left empty. He therefore attended the service in his own chapel at Whitehall, and heard Burnet preach a sermon, somewhat too eulogistic for the place. [824] At Saint Paul's the magistrates of the City appeared in all their state. Compton ascended, for the first time, a throne rich with the sculpture of Gibbons, and thence exhorted ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Beresford Ghost, has most variants. Following Monsieur Haureau, in the Journal des Savants, I have tracked the tale, the death compact, and the wound inflicted by the ghost on the hand, or wrist, or brow, of the seer, through Henry More, and Melanchthon, and a mediaeval sermon by Eudes de Shirton, to William of Malmesbury, a range of 700 years. Mrs. Grant of Laggan has a rather recent case, and I have heard of another in the last ten years! Calmet has a case ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... mother's brother. If colored people want preacher preach, he go in dere and made de children be quiet and preach a nice sermon and have watch night but not in ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... "Ideals" letter reminds me that I preached a good sermon to my family yesterday on his particular layer of the human race, that grotesquest of all the inventions of the Creator. It was a good sermon, but coldly received, & it seemed best not to try to take ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... see me, a Mrs. Goodhue, one of your good sort, I suppose, and she preached me quite a sermon on the employment of time. She said I had a solemn admonition of Providence, and ought to devote myself entirely to religion. I had just begun to he interested in a bit of embroidery, but she frightened me out of it. But I can't bear such dreadfully ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... preacher!" said he of Seville; "but I am afraid I can't stop to hear the end of your sermon. Don't put up to night at your usual place, but go to the Posada del Sevillano, for there you will see the prettiest scullery-wench I know. Marinilla at the Venta Tejada is a dishclout in comparison with her. I ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... immediately he always broke out into shouting and cursing, and praying and crying until his Staff felt so ashamed of him and themselves that they didn't know which way to look. There's never any knowing what a man like that will do. He's as likely as not to want to preach a sermon in St. Sophia, or to ride his horse up the steps ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... lay her out. She used to talk as free to me as she would to Miss Lorimer or Miss Carew. I s'pose ye ain't seen nothing o' them yet? She was a good Christian woman, Miss Katharine was. 'The memory of the just is blessed'; that's what Mr. Lorimer said in his sermon the Sunday after she died, and there wasn't a blood-relation there to hear it. I declare it looked pitiful to see that pew empty that ought to ha' been the mourners' pew. Your mother, Mis' Lancaster, ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... as we honestly wish to arrive at truth we need not fear that we shall be punished for unintentional error. "For what," says Micah, "doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." There is very little theology in the Sermon on the Mount, or indeed in any part of the Gospels; and the differences which keep us apart have their origin rather in the study than the Church. Religion was intended to bring peace on earth and goodwill toward men, and whatever ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... idea, will he not early feel repugnance at giving way to excessive passion, which he regards as a disease? And do you not think that such an idea, given at the appropriate time, will have as good an effect as the most tiresome sermon on morals? Note also the future consequences of this idea; it will authorize you, if ever necessity arises, to treat a rebellious child as a sick child, to confine him to his room, and even to his bed, to make him undergo a course of medical treatment; ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... lilies that brighten the low-lying meadows in early summer with pendent, swaying bells; possibly not a true lily at all was chosen to illustrate the truth which those who listened to the Sermon on the Mount, and we, equally anxious, foolishly overburdened folk ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... various places of worship. No accurate observer of the young in churches during divine service, can have failed to witness the inattention of the numbers of children who are assembled on such occasions. The service is too long and inappropriate for them, as is also the sermon. It is addressed to adults, and sometimes the terms used by the preacher, is Greek to half the adults, in agricultural districts. Men cannot be too simple with the young and illiterate; there is much room for improvement in these things, and with regard to the young, I can answer for them ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... also spake by his servant, and the response from the people was in tears and sobs, groans and shouts; and at the conclusion of nearly every sweep of the preacher's wonderful flights could be heard above the whole a shrill shout from the hostess, followed by a tornado of amens! When the sermon closed the storm ceased, and the "slain of the Lord were many." Memorable night! The people found neither slumber nor weariness, and when the morning dawned very few had not found a ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... and tolerance toward others, and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self. That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before—ideals of justice and conduct that are the same ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... rain, clear skies; and all the officers were being schooled in saluting with the sword, the General looking on. In the afternoon the Chaplain, 'Parson' Gano, as the soldiers call him, gave us a sermon. I went with Betty and Angelina. Miss Helmer went on the lake in a batteau with Mr. Boyd. The Rifles tried their guns on the lake, shooting at marks. Murphy and ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... sermon which this letter condemns, was a man equally worthy and stern—a divine of Scotland's elder day: he received "a harmonious call" to a smaller stipend than that of Dunscore—and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... she showered little smiles and bows on acquaintances and friends. She markedly drew back her lips in speaking, being in no way ashamed of her long white teeth, and wore a practically perpetual smile when there was the least chance of being under observation. Though at sermon time on Sunday, as has been already remarked, she greedily noted the weaknesses and errors of which those twenty minutes was so rewardingly full, she sat all the time with down-dropped eyes and a pretty sacred smile on her lips, and now, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... mind for. When I was not nearly so old as you, my dear, there was a young gentleman who sat next us at church, who used, almost every Sunday, to cut my name in large letters in the front of his pew while the sermon was going on. It was gratifying, of course, naturally so, but still it was an annoyance, because the pew was in a very conspicuous place, and he was several times publicly taken out by the beadle ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... during Henry Ward Beecher's lifetime a story, which is still revived every now and then, that on a hot Sunday morning in early summer, he began his sermon in Plymouth Church by declaring that "It is too damned hot to preach." Bok wrote to the great preacher, asked him the truth of this report, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... a Canon Regular of the chapter of St. Agnes, a very saint, who spends his life in copying and illuminating the Holy Scripture, and in writing holy thoughts that verily seem to have been breathed into him by special inspiration of God. It was a sermon of his in Lent, upon chastening and perplexity, that I heard when first I was snatched from Dijon, that made me never rest till I had obtained his ghostly counsel. If I never meet him again, I shall thank Heaven for those months at Zwoll all my life—ere ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kept a special manner and a special store of jokes. When leading such through Palestine he always had a Bible up before him on the saddle; and every night would join them after dinner and preach a sermon on the subject of the next day's journey. This he would make as comical as possible for their amusement, for clergymen, he often used to say to me, are fond of laughter ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... preached for at least three-quarters of an hour; none of the audience, however, showed the slightest symptom of weariness; on the contrary, the hope of each individual appeared to hang upon the words which proceeded from his mouth. At the conclusion of the sermon or discourse the whole assembly again shook Peter by the hand, and returned to their house, the mistress of the family saying, as she departed, 'I shall soon be back, Peter; I go but to make arrangements for the supper of thyself and company'; and, in effect, she presently ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... cat, the property of Robby and Kitty, which marched in after them, were the congregation, sitting on the edge of the bed, to be like the long church pew. The minister took for his text, "Little children, love one another," and his sermon was such a dear, funny little discourse, that I must write it ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... Presbyterian clergyman and President of Princeton College. From all that is known of this gentleman, there can be no doubt that his ability and piety were unquestioned. Edith, his wife, was a woman of rare gifts and one of the loveliest of her sex. The pathetic reference to her in the funeral sermon over Hamilton will be remembered: "If there be tears in Heaven, a pious mother looks down upon this scene ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... in the sermon some allusion made to those who had returned home; for the rest, it was a flowery discourse interlarded with many texts from the Bible. The community shed tears; the good, wise people, they understood it to mean that their young lord was returned ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... across to the wild left bank of the turbulent little torrent. On the way they talked much of the strange Saint. Giovanni wondered that Don Clemente had never in the past told him anything of the character of this under-gardener. He approved of the little sermon in the open air. He had once mentioned the subject of it to Don Clemente, pointing out to Mm that those words of Christ are neither properly observed, nor taught; even the best of Christians apply ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... answers the abbot. "Gart, my son, call the atheist to dinner. I'll hit him with a spoon on the forehead; an atheist understands a sermon best of all if you hit him ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... assisted him to forget himself at the sight of the inanimate houses of this London, all revealed in a quietness not less immobile than tombstones of an unending cemetery, with its last ghost laid. Did men but know it!—The habitual necessity to amass matter for the weekly sermon, set him noting his meditative exclamations, the noble army of platitudes under haloes, of good use to men: justifiably turned over in his mind for their good. He had to think, that this act of the justifying of the act reproached him with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... if you please," interrupted the Admiral, with a mingled look of impatience and disgust. "You are not a missionary, you tell me, and I'm hanged if I'm going to listen to a sermon in my own cabin just now. Yet I have already given you as much of my time as if you were one. But don't trespass on ...
— Officer And Man - 1901 • Louis Becke
... monumental of fools." He went to the Advent services feeling, he says, like a soul in hell. But matters mended after that, and the ordination itself seemed to him a true consecration. He read the Gospel, and he remembered gratefully the sermon of Canon Mason, my ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... still more absolute right of punishing error by death. Though they sacrificed government to religion, the effect was the same as that of absorbing the Church in the State. In 1524 Muenzer published a sermon, in which he besought the Lutheran princes to extirpate Catholicism. "Have no remorse," he says; "for He to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth means to govern alone."[247] He demanded the punishment of all heretics, the destruction of all who were not ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... for instance. She's a good woman and her pies have produced more deep religious satisfaction at the Methodist church socials than many a sermon. But St. Peter himself couldn't live on the same telephone line with her. She's polite and refined in any other way, but when she gets on a telephone line she's a hostile monopolist. Early in the morning she grabs it and holds it fiercely against all comers, while talking with ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... the little white church the Sunday before, and heard the Reverend Spragg preach a doctrinal sermon, in which the blood of the lamb was liberally sprinkled, and the congregation heard where and how they were to receive compensation for the distresses they endured in this ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... with, and I got interested in James' "Heidelberg" and was reading it all this morning; and secondly, Hewson left this afternoon and sat a long time with me before his departure. To lengthen my notes for the day I ought to write a sermon, or secular discourse, (as I have done before) but I don't feel inclined to do so. This diary only gets my thoughts when they arise spontaneously and require no further labour than the mere putting of them into words. To-day my mind is a blank, and I am not going to search in hidden recesses for ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... Hart Minor and asked him how he could have perpetrated such a horrible and daring crime. The matter, however, was soon forgotten by the boys, but Hart Minor had not heard the last of it. On the following Sunday in chapel, at the evening service, the Head Master preached a sermon. He chose as his text "Thou shalt not steal!" The eyes of the whole school were fixed on Smith and Hart Minor. The Head Master pointed out in his discourse that one might think at first sight that boys at a school might not have the opportunity to violate the tremendous ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... and that between her wild temper and mischief and the mirth of other children there was a great difference. Moreover, certain passages in the chapel prayers that morning had come home sharply to a mind whereof the only definite gift was a true religious sensitiveness. The text of the sermon especially—'Whoso loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how shall he love God, whom he hath not seen?'—vibrated like an accusing voice within him. As he sat in the doorway, with the sun stealing in upon him, the clock ticking ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... what a lesson to all the people! Sermons might be preached; the Son of Thunder and the Mouth of Gold might turn their periods now with some hope; for here, in the most impressive way, is a divine sermon acted. Didactic as no spoken sermon could be. Didactic, devotional too;—in awed solemnity, a recognition that Eternal Justice rules the world; that at the call of this, human pity shall fall silent, and man be stern as his ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... Miss Betty's sermon was interrupted by the appearance of a small, brown boy in a ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... impressive passages. Of dramatic interest in the ordinary sense, there is but little. It is a series of more or less animated scenes, from the period of the great civil war (1130-1240), connected by the personality of Sverre. Under the mask, however, of mediaeval history, the author preaches a political sermon to his own contemporaries. Sverre, as the champion of the common people against the tribal aristocracy, and the wily Bishop Nicholas as the representative of the latter become, as it were, permanent forces, which have continued their battle to the present day. There can be no doubt ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... worthy messenger!" The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week—for Sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one—with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, "Pause! Avast! Why so seeming fast, but ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... my place on the men's side,—the sexes being divided, as is usual in Germany. After the hymn, in which boys' voices were charmingly heard, and the prayer, the clergyman took a text from Corinthians, and proceeded to preach a good, sound political sermon, which, nevertheless, did not in the least shock the honest piety of his hearers. I noticed with surprise that most of the men put on their hats at the close of the prayer. Only once did they remove them afterwards,—when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... The sermon was simple and cordial, the singing pure; in a word, no dissonant tone came hither to disturb the devotion which the arrangement of divine service in Norway is so well adapted to call forth ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... Miss Lucy took Chad to church—a country church built of red brick and overgrown with ivy—and the sermon was very short, Chad thought, for, down in the mountains, the circuit-rider would preach for hours—and the deacons passed around velvet pouches for the people to drop money in, and they passed around bread, of which nearly everybody took a pinch, and a silver goblet with ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... misty white figure advanced slowly into sight. At the altar the silver-haired bishop turned his scholarly face upon her, full of tenderness; and when he spoke, his voice seemed an assurance of peace and purity. The service was long. In France one listens to a sermon when one is married, and the pretty bridesmaids came round for three collections. The bishop talked of her father, his friend, who had died under cruel circumstances. Shoulders heaved in the congregation, and in a dark ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall |
