Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Idolatrous   Listen
adjective
Idolatrous  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to idolatry; partaking of the nature of idolatry; given to idolatry or the worship of false gods; as, idolatrous sacrifices. "(Josiah) put down the idolatrous priests."
2.
Consisting in, or partaking of, an excessive attachment or reverence; as, an idolatrous veneration for antiquity.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Idolatrous" Quotes from Famous Books



... oppressions to which they were constantly liable, drove Christians to conceal their Faith from the eyes of the heathen world whenever such concealment did not involve any denial of their Lord, or any faithless compliance with idolatrous customs. [Sidenote: Seeking martyrdom forbidden.] Indeed, it was a law of the Church that martyrdom was not to be unnecessarily sought after, and the wisdom of this provision was more than once shown by the failure ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... carried by the boys. When even the temple had been ransacked and the work of clearing out the idols in the village was finished, the procession moved on to the next hamlet. The villages were very near each other, so the journey was not wearisome; and at last when every vestige of the old idolatrous life had been taken from the homes of five villages, the happy crowd marched back to the first village. There was a large courtyard near the temple and here the procession halted. The boys dropped their well-filled baskets, ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith

... vain do I redouble the violence of the language in which I proclaim my heterodoxies. I rail at the theistic credulity of Voltaire, the amoristic superstition of Shelley, the revival of tribal soothsaying and idolatrous rites which Huxley called Science and mistook for an advance on the Pentateuch, no less than at the welter of ecclesiastical and professional humbug which saves the face of the stupid system of violence and robbery which ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... this mountain is a little hill which the idolatrous Agaus have in great veneration; their priest calls them together at this place once a year, and having sacrificed a cow, throws the head into one of the springs of the Nile; after which ceremony, every one sacrifices a cow or more, according to their different degrees of wealth or devotion. ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo

... expected. He was so much shocked about the crucifix and about Dennis praying for Barney's soul, that he could think of nothing else. He didn't seem to think that he would have fever, but he said he feared we had small reason to reckon on the prayers of the idolatrous ascending to the throne of grace. He told me a long story about the Protestant martyrs who were shut up in a dungeon under the sea, on the coast of Aberdeenshire, and it would have been very interesting if I hadn't ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... sympathy, almost to a frenzy of adoration; he taught us how the true believer, 'clad in hope,' would one day (if he leaned upon Mary his mother in all the weary stages of the 'Passage of the Cross') be crowned with fruition. He lingered with almost idolatrous emphasis on the charms of Mary, and with his eyes fixed upon her image, his hands outstretched, and a thousand upturned faces listening to his words, the aisles echoed his ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... The idolatrous worship of her brother for the painter caused her to suffer still more as she comprehended, with the infallible perspicacity of antipathy, the immense dupery. She read the very depths of the souls of the two old comrades of Beaumont. She knew that in that friendship, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... minority, without weight or influence in the country, with no jury of millions to appeal to—denounced, vilified, and contemned,—how shall we make way against the overwhelming weight of some colossal reputation, if we do not turn from the idolatrous present, and appeal to the human race? saying to your idols of to-day: "Here we are defeated; but we will write our judgment with the iron pen of a century to come, and it shall never be forgotten, if we can help it, that you were false in your ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... Rightly to vertue fram'd in very nature; 15 In his most firme inexorable spirit To be remov'd from any thing hee chuseth For worthinesse; or beare the lest perswasion To what is base, or fitteth not his object; In his contempt of riches, and of greatnesse 20 In estimation of th'idolatrous vulgar; His scorne of all things servile and ignoble, Though they could gaine him never such advancement; His liberall kinde of speaking what is truth, In spight of temporising; the great rising 25 And learning ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... parchment wasted. No Moslem prince who had procured his restoration by such means as Hasan had used, who had spilt Moslem blood with Christian weapons and ruined Moslem homes by the sacrilegious atrocities of "infidel" soldiers, and had bound himself the vassal of "idolatrous" Spain, could hope to keep his throne long. He was an object of horror and repulsion to the people upon whom he had brought this awful calamity, and so fierce was their scorn of the traitor to Islam that the ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... "And the idolatrous chief priest of the heathen, standing on a lofty mound, strove like Balaam to curse the people of God, and to bind their hands by ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... of her own nation. But her whole life constituted Kate's supreme distinction. There can be no doubt, therefore, that, from the year 1624 (that is, the last year of our James I.), she became the object of an admiration in her own country that was almost idolatrous. And this admiration was not of a kind that rested upon any partisan-schism amongst her countrymen. So long as it was kept alive by her bodily presence amongst them, it was an admiration equally aristocratic and popular,—shared alike by the rich and the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... from above. The earth is cracked all around at the top, and portions of it are continually falling in. Steam issues from open places in all the region. This volcano has been in action from time immemorial, as the natives all assert, and has been with them an object of idolatrous worship. The range of mountains continues for some thirty miles beyond this, and terminates in the snow-capped summit of Mounadoa. This mountain is in full sight at Hilo, and about thirty miles distant. Since ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains."(32) When the idolatrous standards of the Romans should be set up in the holy ground, which extended some furlongs outside the city walls, then the followers of Christ were to find safety in flight. When the warning sign should be seen, those who would escape must make no delay. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... blue-bellied son of a scut," the lady had to pause for breath, and the soldier looked up from under his hat-brim and mildly remarked, "Madam, you're prejudiced," whereat even some of her sympathizers forgot their rancor and roared with laughter, and the idolatrous rank of his soldiery doubled up like so many blue pocket-rules, and the newspaper men chuckled with glee. By tacit consent, apparently, the Chicago papers were saying as little as possible against the regulars just then, and many a bright ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... be observed; for to the heavenly bodies much adoration was offered. But to afford shelter from wind or rain, and also to ensure privacy and shut out all external objects, the place fixed upon, either for teaching their disciples or for carrying out the rites of their idolatrous worship, was in the recess of some grove or wood. An oak-grove was supposed to be the favorite of the gods whom they ignorantly worshiped, and therefore the Druids declared the oak to be a sacred tree. The ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... to make her rough house a pleasant home for her husband. She had been reared like him amid the luxuries of an eastern city, and her hands had never been trained to work. But the influences of nature around her, and the almost idolatrous love which she cherished for her husband, cheered and sweetened the homely ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... the noon-day sunshine streamed rich and mellow on the gray head in that prominent central pew, was the devout offering of Thomas Barnard and Almira, his wife, in testimony of their abandonment of the faith of their fathers and the adoption of that which in school days they had held to be idolatrous. Wilbur Cranston well recalled how in his school days Tom Barnard's honest, sturdy form went trudging by at nightfall from the long day's labor with the railway gang of which he was "boss," but Tom was a division superintendent when the lawyer's boy came ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... this evening. Antoinette, forgetful of idolatrous practices, devoted the concentration of her being to the mysteries of her true religion. The excellence of the result affected Pasquale so strongly that with his customary disregard of convention he insisted on Antoinette being summoned to ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... that Bertram, arrogant, wayward, and heartless, does not justify this ardent and deep devotion. But Helena does not behold him with our eyes; but as he is "sanctified in her idolatrous fancy." Dr. Johnson says he cannot reconcile himself to a man who marries Helena like a coward, and leaves her like a profligate. This is much too severe; in the first place, there is no necessity that ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... reverenced in Mecca, and gives sanctity to the whole, is a square stone building, called the Caaba. Before the time of Mahomet, this temple was a place of worship for the idolatrous Arabs, and is said to have contained no less than three hundred and sixty different images, equalling in number the days of the Arabian year. They were all destroyed by Mahomet, who sanctified the Caaba, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... extraordinary expences this yeare for ornaments, etc." And another Puritan scribe tells us that "At the east end of the cathedral they have placed an Altar as they call it dressed after the Romish fashion, for which altar they have lately provided a most idolatrous costly glory cloth or ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... with nothing but God and the service of God: and yet the Lord Jesus told them that they were in a worse state, greater sinners in the sight of God, than they had ever been; that they, who hated idolatry, were filling up the measure of their idolatrous forefathers' iniquity; that the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth was to fall on them; that they were a race of serpents, a generation of vipers; and that even He did not see how they could escape the damnation ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... never forgotten your rescuing her from under the feet of the idolatrous rabble of Lisbon. She is still a strong friend of yours, and will be delighted to see you, as soon as she is mistress of a ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... attention. It has been suggested, in this view of the origin of the waits, which many writers consider to be the real source of the custom, that they are altogether anti-christian, and of heathen and idolatrous foundation, and of consequence have neither allusion to, nor connexion with, our festivities at Christmas at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various

... O Israel!" And when they had received the law, written by the finger of God, and were somewhat humbled under the correction of their sins, how few were there, who carried out its injunctions in their genuine spirit, and how many were there, who from time to time, defiled themselves by the idolatrous service of other gods. Even when brought by a strong hand, and an outstretched arm, attended by many palpable miracles which were wrought on their behalf, they were seated in the "Land flowing with milk and honey," which had been promised to their fathers; how prone were they constantly ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous

... came to a fair large River—doubtless the Ancient River Adonis, so famous for the Idolatrous Rites performed here in Lamentation of Adonis. We had the Fortune to see what may be supposed to be the Occasion of that Opinion which Lucian relates, concerning this River, viz. That this Stream, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... fear of idolatry, Paul, that turns me from Jerusalem. The world will always be idolatrous in some sort of fashion. Bear that well in mind whither thou goest. The world cannot ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... name, but of the skin of the offender. The adherents of modern theological systems dismiss these objects of the love and fear of a hundred generations of their equals, offhand, as "gods of the heathen," mere creations of a wicked and idolatrous imagination; and, along with them, they disown, as senseless, the crude theology, with its gross anthropomorphism and its low ethical conception of the divinity, which satisfied the pious souls ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... educated, and that he owned The Gaffs, her old rival. And that there it stood, a fortune—a refuge—a rock—offered to her and her daughter, offered by a man who, whatever his other faults, was brave and dashing, sincere in his idolatrous love for her daughter. That he would make Alice happy she did not doubt; for Mrs. Westmore's idea of happiness was in having wealth and position and a splendid name. Having no real heart, how was it possible for her to know, as Alice could know, the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... far-away expression. He wore a tufted crown, which made him look somewhat war-like. It is but natural that this Joss should be a blind man. The Greek gods and goddesses have Greek countenances. The idolatrous nations fashion their deities after their own likeness. And what are these but deified human beings? It is so in Greek and Roman mythology. The Egyptian Osiris is an Egyptian. It is true that some of the ancients outside of Hebrew Revelation had a better conception of ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... to an empire in executing the persecuting or oppressive principles of the body politic. A pure, chaste virgin is used to symbolize the true church of God; whereas a corrupt harlot is chosen to represent an apostate church, and fornication her idolatrous worship. ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... an early period, to the different settlements; and Jesuits were particularly employed, as the address and subtlety which always distinguished that order of priests peculiarly fitted them for the difficult task of christianizing the idolatrous savages. Their power was slowly progressive; but, in time, they acquired an ascendancy, which was extended to the minutest of the secular, as well as spiritual concerns of ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... Indies: who have had to confess that the cruelty, avarice, blasphemies, and wickedness of the Spaniards have utterly estranged the poor Indians from the religion that these Spaniards professed. And all write that they are of less worth than the idolatrous Indians, for their cruel treatment of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... he thus acquired of his own worth made him credit the excessive and almost idolatrous adoration that was paid to his understanding; which but for this increased self-complacency, must have necessarily recalled him from his aberrations. For the present, however, this universal voice was only a confirmation of what his complacent vanity ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... temple of their idol,—all these things together constitute a parable of which no reader of Milton's day could possibly mistake the interpretation. More obscurely adumbrated is the day of vengeance, when virtue should return to the repentant backslider, and the idolatrous crew should be smitten with a swift destruction in the midst of their insolent revelry. Add to these the two great personal misfortunes of the poet's life, his first marriage with a Philistine woman, out of sympathy with him or his cause, and ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... and lang-nebbit things frae the neist warld. But Father Vaughan thinks himself a privileged person—set him up and lay him down!—I'se be caution the warst stibbler that ever stickit a sermon out ower the Tweed yonder, wad lay a ghaist twice as fast as him, wi' his holy water and his idolatrous trinkets. I dinna believe he speaks gude Latin neither; at least he disna take me up when I tell him the learned names o' ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... good example to the natives. I did so, on my part, very regularly until Christmas Eve, when having witnessed the ceremonies of the midnight mass, I determined on remaining at home in future. I shuddered with horror at the idolatrous rites, as they appeared to me, which were enacted on that occasion. The ceremonies commenced with the celebration of mass; then followed the introduction of the "Infant Jesus," borne by four of the choristers, attired in surplices of white ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... into the East. The Dominicans, meeting with some of the half-christianized converts, soon gave them to understand that nothing less than eternal damnation would be the lot of all such as did not forsake their ancient superstitious and idolatrous practices; and especially that of sacrificing to their deceased relations in the Hall of Ancestors. The Franciscans having joined the Dominicans they represented to the Pope the abominable practices of the Jesuits, who had persuaded ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... so much genuine, delicate, universal devotion manifested for woman as among the Americans. Have you seen a boy of fourteen, shy, awkward, uncouth in manner, rough in speech, but with a great, tender heart thumping in his bosom? And did you know of the idolatrous worship he could not wholly conceal for some fair, sweet, good girl older than himself, a woman, even—a worship, which was not love, if love be other than a high and tender sentiment, but which was capable of filling his being to overflow with its glory and richness? I liken our American ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... that AEschylus felt a gratification in putting down the monstrous rhapsodies to Bacchus and the other deities, with which the idolatrous priests of that day blindfolded and deceived the people; his plays having frequent cuts upon the gross superstition which then darkened the heathen world. For some expressions which were deemed impious he was condemned to die. Indeed christian scholars particularly ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... gloom. The frightful genius of pagan worship seemed to brood in silence over the place, breathing its spell upon every object around. Here and there, in the depths of these awful shades, half screened from sight by masses of overhanging foliage, rose the idolatrous altars of the savages, built of enormous blocks of black and polished stone, placed one upon another, without cement, to the height of twelve or fifteen feet, and surmounted by a rustic open temple, enclosed with a low picket of canes, within which might be seen, in ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... visited by several of the clergy and gentry in his cell; among others, by the Popish priest whom he had robbed, Father O'Flaherty, before mentioned, who attended him likewise in his last moments (if that idolatrous worship may be called attention), and likewise by the Father's patron, the Bavarian Ambassador, his Excellency ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Nightingales of the West, as they tripped upon merciful errands, like good angels, and left paths of sunshine behind them. The soldiers had seen none of their countrywomen for months, and they followed these ambassadors with looks half-idolatrous, half-downcast, as if consciously ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... interject here in full testimony the nevertheless fact that such a pagan city as Rome, or licentious Corinth or idolatrous Ephesus were lifted into cleanness and moral decency, not by legislative action, by reorganization of local conditions, but by the regeneration of one individual at a time until the divine sanity and personal spirituality enthroned in them built up societies, assemblies of such heaven-given health ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman

... he had been at Eton together. Geoffrey, four years the senior, a member of "Pop," and an athlete of many colours, found himself one day the object of an almost idolatrous worship on the part of a skinny little being, discreditably clever at Latin verses, and given over to the degrading habit of solitary piano practicing on half-holidays. He was embarrassed but touched by a devotion ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... was a bambino, a holy infant, done in wax, and covered with cheap ornaments such as a little girl would like to beautify her doll with. Many a good Protestant of the old Puritan type would have felt a strong impulse to seize this "idolatrous" figure and dash it to pieces on the stone floor of the little church. But one must have lived awhile among simple-minded pious Catholics to know what this poor waxen image and the whole baby-house of bambinos mean for a humble, unlettered, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... defend his people against it? See you not how it fills the air with red devouring tongues of flame! ... the thick smoke reeks of blood! ... Al-Kyris the Magnificent, the pleasant city of sin, the idolatrous city, is broken in pieces and is become a waste of ashes! Who will join with me in a lament for Al-Kyris? I will call upon the desert of the sea to hear my voice, . . I will pour forth my sorrows on the wind, and it shall carry the burden of grief to the four quarters ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... together. I recollect with pleasure the influence of your conversation and eloquence upon the opinions of this country in the beginning of the present controversy. You first taught us to shake off our idolatrous attachment to royalty, and to oppose its encroachments upon our liberties with our very lives. By these means you saved us from ruin. The independence of America is the offspring of that liberal spirit of thinking and acting, which followed the destruction of the sceptres of ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... sword, young man? Thou should'st be friend of righteousness to know That zealous patriot and pure-minded man, Of whom thou spakest; surely he hath taught thee More than mere classic lore—wisdom and faith To help this stricken people from the thrall Of their idolatrous, ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... prohibit, under a severe penalty, the smoking of tobacco, which was compared to the smoke of the bottomless pit. Drinking of healths, and wearing long hair, were also forbidden, under the same penalty: the first was considered as a heathenish and idolatrous practice, grounded ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest

... Canaan and swear to the Lord of hosts (xix. 18); and when Nebuchadnezzar led away the first captivity, many of the people had fled from Palestine to the old "cradle of the nation." Jeremiah (xliv) went down with them to prophesy against their idolatrous practices and their backslidings; and Jewish and Christian writers in later times, daring boldly against chronology, told how Plato, visiting Egypt, had heard Jeremiah and learnt from him his lofty monotheism. Doubt was thrown in the last century ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... heathenish; ethnic, ethnical; gentile, paynim[obs3]; pantheistic, polytheistic. Judaical, Mohammedan, Brahminical[obs3], Buddhist &c.n.; Romish, Protestant &c.n. bigoted &c. (prejudiced) 481, (obstinate) 606; superstitious &c. (credulous) 486; fanatical; idolatrous &c. 991; visionary &c. (imaginative) 515. Phr. "slave to no sect" [Pope]; superstitione tollenda religio ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... to the assembled multitude, "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you," and then began to preach Jesus Christ and His great salvation. But so far from imitating this example, they, in many instances, took part in their idolatrous and superstitious ceremonies. It is vain to attempt an excuse of these Englishmen by saying either that it was the fashion of the times to pass by the heathen without a thought for their wretched lost condition, ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... anxiously, "But you are not going?" Jane was slow in shaking off the limitations of the doctrine that branded all religions in a foreign country as idolatrous and contaminating. ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... angels, then my father's soul doth see, And adds this even to full felicity, That valiantly I hell's wide mouth o'erstride; But if our minds to these souls be descried By circumstances and by signs that be Apparent in us not immediately, How shall my mind's white truth by them be tried? They see idolatrous lovers weep and mourn, And style blasphemous conjurors to call On Jesus' name, and pharisaical Dissemblers feign devotion. Then turn, O pensive soul! to God, for he knows best Thy grief, for he put it ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... those professors, by the bad example of your practical atheism. You who imagine you believe in the Godhead of Christ are, in reality, prophets and priests of the false gods. You serve them, as the idolatrous Hebrew princes served them, in high places, in the presence of the people. You serve, in the high places, the gods of ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... we had a Chaucer Club in Andover at that time; a small company, severely selected, not to flirt or to chat, but to work. We had studied hard for a year, and most of us had gone Chaucer mad. This present writer was the unfortunate exception to that idolatrous enthusiasm, and—meeting Mr. Emerson at another time—took modest occasion in answer to a remark of his to say ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... is a prophecy of evil unfulfilled! It's not that he considers I've gone to work, incorrigible vagabond that I am; it's the fact that my intolerable idling has produced money which sets his teeth on edge—money, the golden calf of Uncle Peter's narrow idolatrous soul." ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... belief, I shall guess you one of those who need a figure-head to remind them of a vessel's sex. There are minds which find a certain romance in figure-heads. To me they seem a frigid, unintelligent device, not to say idolatrous. I have known a crew to set so much store by one that they kept a tinsel locket and pair of ear-rings in the forecastle and duly adorned their darling when in port. But this is materialism. The true personality ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the Volhynian of Vladimir, and Nicetas of Belgorod. Assisted by Dobrina, the uncle of the "Great Prince," who had long governed in Novgorod, the new bishop Joachim threw the statue of Peroun into the Volkoff, and broke down the idolatrous altars without any opposition on the part of the citizens; for they, too, like the inhabitants of Kieff, from their comparative degree of civilization and from their relations of intercourse with the Greeks, were in all probability already favorably disposed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... softened by chivalry. There the stern Kempe-warriors of the North stand like stone images, and the gentle gleam and the more refined breath of Christianity have not as yet penetrated their iron armor. But little by little a light dawns in the old Teutonic forest; the ancient idolatrous oak-trees are felled, and we see a brighter field of battle where Christ wars with the heathen. This appears in the saga-cycle of Charlemagne, in which what we really see is the Crusades reflecting themselves with their religious influences. And now from the spiritualizing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... which, in the second century, we had so liberally granted to Justin or to Irenaeus. If the truth of any of those miracles is appreciated by their apparent use and propriety, every age had unbelievers to convince, heretics to confute, and idolatrous nations to convert; and sufficient motives might always be produced to justify the interposition of heaven. And yet, since every friend to revelation is persuaded of the reality, and every reasonable man is convinced ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... though he regarded all that was passing with a peculiar air of still and earnest attention; and wherever he moved, his calm, penetrating gaze seemed to diffuse a singular uneasiness about him. Now his eye was fixed with a quiet scrutiny on the idolatrous statues, with their votive adornments—now it followed earnestly the young forms that were wreathing in the graceful waves of the dance; and then he turned towards the tables, loaded with every luxury and sparkling with wines, where the devotion ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Mr. Turner thus informs us ('History of the Anglo-Saxons,' vol. i, p. 169): 'It was the invariable policy of the Roman ecclesiastics to discourage the use of the Runic characters, because they were of pagan origin, and had been much connected with idolatrous superstitions.' And if any one be incredulous, let him read this from Sir Thomas Brown: 'Some have delivered the polity of spirits, that they stand in awe of charms, spells, and conjurations; letters, characters, notes, and dashes.' And ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... where a Jew, on a Rhine boat, inspired or increased his aversion to works of sacred art, as being "idolatrous." About 1542-43 he was reading with pupils at Cambridge, and was remarked for the severity of his ascetic virtue, and for his great charity. At some uncertain date he translated the Helvetic Confession of Faith, and he was more of a Calvinist than a Lutheran. In July 1543 he returned ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... the godly minded, it hath this comfortable commoditie, that in this trade their Factours, bee they their seruants or children, shall haue no instruction or confessions of Idolatrous Religion enforced vpon them, but contrarily shall be at their free libertie of conscience, and shall find the same Religion exercised, which is most agreeable ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... request he went to the Academy to look at the pictures in question. Yes; the faces were ugly: Millais' "Mariana" was a piece of idolatrous Papistry, and there was a mistake in the perspective. Collins' "Convent Thoughts"—more Popery; but very careful—"the tadpole too small for its age"; but what studies of plants! And there was his own "Alisma Plantago," which he had been drawing for "Stones of Venice" (vol. i., plate ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... of the subject, is capable of going at all, except swiftly to perdition? These Austrians have taken a great deal of ruining, first and last! Their relation to the then Sea-Powers, especially to England embarked on the Cause of Liberty, fills one with amazement, by no means of an idolatrous nature; and is difficult to understand at all, or to be ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... daughter, and this daughter had not died like her two sons. She lived, she throve in the freshness of childhood, and Elizabeth loved her with idolatrous tenderness! ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... convey his sense of its quality, clear it is, by his way of illustrating its peculiar merit, that, in his opinion, these huge strides of Neptune's have something supernaturally grand about them. But, waiving this solitary instance in Homer of the sublime, according to his idolatrous critics—of the pseudo sublime according to ourselves—in all other cases where Longinus, or any other Greek writer has cited Homer as the great exemplary model of [Greek: hypsos] in composition, we are to understand him according to the Grecian sense ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... the doorkeepers to bring out from the temple of Jehovah all the things that were made for Baal and for the Canaanite goddess of fortune, and for the Babylonian star gods. And he burned them outside Jerusalem in the lime-kilns by the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. He also put away the idolatrous priests, whom the rulers of Judah had appointed to offer sacrifice at the temples on the heights in the towns of Judah and in the places about Jerusalem; those also who offered sacrifices to Baal, to the sun, the moon, and the planets and ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman

... Pretyman who must not be left out. He was a combination valet and teacher, and the most pedantic and idolatrous person that ever moused through dusty tomes. With a trifle more adipose and a little less intellect, he would have made a most successful and awful butler. He seemed a type of the English waiter who by some chance had acquired ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... case. Human nature has produced many monsters; but, amongst a thousand crimes, there has proverbially lingered in each some one seedling of a virtue; and when we consider the corruption of manners in old Rome, the idolatrous flatteries hemming in the prince, the universal lie that hid all things from his better perceptions, we can fancy some slight extenuation for his mad career. Not that it ever was my aim, in modern fashion, to excuse villany, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... of whose visage we can read the stormy passions that have chosen religion for their outlet. Woe to the wretch that shall seek mercy there! At his back is slung an axe, wherewith he goes to hew down the carved altars and idolatrous images in the Popish churches; and over his head he rears a banner, which, as the wind unfolds it, displays the motto given by Whitefield,—Christo Duce,—in letters red as blood. But the tide is now ebbing; and the general ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and it is at issue not upon this rite or that ceremony, on this or that school opinion, but upon this one question of an Establishment, as unchristian, unlawful, contrary to the Gospel and to natural right, Popish and idolatrous. These are the principles violently and fanatically held and pursued,—taught to their children, who are sworn at the altar like Hannibal. The war is with the Establishment itself,—no quarter, no compromise. As a party, they are infinitely ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the pure theology of the gospel, because the orators of Greece and Rome were regarded as blind guides of erring reason and seducers to the paths of sin and destruction. Virgil and Horace were looked upon merely as the advocates of a profane and idolatrous mythology, and Cicero was regarded as a vain declaimer, impiously elated with the talent of Pagan eloquence, but the infidel charge that the church has always been in the way of scientific education, expressed in unqualified terms, is simply ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various

... children, does not give them the sacred writings in their own tongue; it would surely be better to see them good Protestants, if these would lead them to be so, than entirely ignorant of God's message to man. For my part, I would much prefer to see the Africans good Roman Catholics than idolatrous heathen. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... worshipped for a raritie by an implicite faith, without anie benefit to those who did esteem of it a far off: so it was just with God that it should fall into the hands of those that in all things follow an Idolatrous waie, to blinde men with shewes without all realitie of substantial virtue, which is onely eminent in this, that it becometh profitable unto all, by dilating the light of knowledg, and the love of grace and goodness in the hearts of all men, that are fit to receiv the one ...
— The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) • John Dury

... and thought it possible to obtain from them information of the unknown parts of the African continent. I soon discovered that the Mohammedan natives of Soudan were much farther advanced in mind, than the idolatrous inhabitants of the coast.—Several blacks of Haoussa and Adamawah related to me that they had taken part in expeditions against a nation called Niam Niams, who had tails. They traced their route, on which they encountered tigers, giraffes, elephants, and wild ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... crime consisted in not going to mass, and in practising private worship at home. They confessed the offence, for they protested that they could not endure to see the profanation of their Saviour's name in the idolatrous sacraments. They were asked what rites they practised in their own house. One of the sons, a mere boy, answered, "We fall on our knees, and pray to God that he may enlighten our hearts, and forgive ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... are at their idolatrous 'messe,' and I am here, that is in the Refectoire. I should like uncommonly to be in the dining-room at home, or in the kitchen, or in the back kitchen. I should like even to be cutting up the hash, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... wealth, to rise in society, to leave their descendants higher than themselves, to be (in some sense) among the founders of families. Scott was in the same town nourishing similar dreams. But in the eyes of the women these dreams would be foolish and idolatrous. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... participle of Kufr Infidelity i.e. rejecting the mission of Mohammed. It is insulting and in Turkish has been degraded to "Giaour." Here it means black, as Hafiz of Shiraz terms a cheek mole "Hindu" i.e. dark-skinned and idolatrous. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... Heeren reminds us, that both by Jewish and Grecian writers there is frequent mention of the scribes or secretaries who constantly attended the person of the Persian monarch —on occasion of festivals [232], of public reviews [233], and even in the tumult of battle; and, with the idolatrous respect in which despotism was held, noted down the words that fell from the royal lip. The ingenious German then proceeds to show that this custom was common to all the Asiatic nations. Thus were formed the chronicles or archives of the Persians; and by reference ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in Chaldea. We do not know by what route he passed the Syrian desert, but he halted at Shechem, situated in a fruitful valley, one of the passes of the hills from Damascus to Canaan. He then built an altar to the Lord, probably among an idolatrous people. From want of pasturage, or some cause not explained, he removed from thence into a mountain on the east of Bethel, between that city and Hai, or Ai, when he again erected an altar, and called upon ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... to win them over. "I have before paid them a visit, when they received me in a friendly way," he observed. "I know how to treat them; and though they are still heathens, they look upon me with respect, and may listen to what I say, however little inclined they are to renounce their idolatrous practices." ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... then," cried Margaret, "tell it if you will, for I do love the emperor! My heart bows down before him in idolatrous admiration, and if he loved ME, I would not envy the angels their heaven! He does not return my love—nor do I need that return to make me cherish and foster my passion for him. No scorn of the world can lessen it, for it is my pride, my religion, my life! And now go and repeat ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... compete with deified Benares in the matter of divine merit that may be conferred on the pilgrim entering its gates and threading its narrow and filth-smeared streets. There two hundred thousand people live and fatten upon the half million devotees coming annually to the idolatrous fountainhead. The sacred city attracts this tide of pious humanity from all the tribes and nations of many-peopled India: they journey to Benares brimming with love and trustfulness, and after a season spent in her temples, at her shrines, and by her sacred stream, she sends ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... vital truth in its earliest ages, but it became obsolete, and Protestantism arose, flourished, and deteriorated. The doctrines of ZOROASTER were the best which the ancient Persians were fitted to receive; those of CONFUCIUS were fitted for the Chinese; those of MOHAMMED for the idolatrous Arabs of his age. Each was Truth for the time. Each was a GOSPEL, preached by a REFORMER; and if any men are so little fortunate as to remain content therewith, when others have attained a higher truth, it is their misfortune ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Protestant congregations! Of painting the Reformer spoke with admiration, but so rarely! What could art be in the life of a man who was fighting for his soul's salvation? Calvin saw more clearly the dangers to the soul from the seductions of this world's transitory charm. Images he thought idolatrous in churches and he said outright: "It would be a ridiculous and inept imitation of the papists to fancy that we render God more worthy service in ornamenting our temples and in employing organs and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... consequence a pestilence befell them in which so many thousands of them perished; God sent the prophet Gad to him not before but after the deed and denounced punishment. 5. Solomon was allowed to establish idolatrous worship. 6. After him many kings were allowed to profane the temple and the sacred things of the church. 7. And finally that nation was permitted to ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... confidence of his flock the more eloquent preachers whom he had introduced. The incredible rumor even gained currency that the hot-headed prelate went through his diocese casting down the images and sparing no object of idolatrous worship in the churches.[151] But, however improbable it may be that Briconnet ever engaged in any such iconoclastic demonstrations, it is a strong Roman Catholic partisan who has preserved the record of this significant warning given ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... was a quaint, white-faced, solemn-eyed creature, as she had been from the first. She said "old" things, her black nurse declared, and she knew her little "missy" was under a spell. If so, the spell was tempered by an almost idolatrous love on ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... or any of the other mediatory saints, which is accounted for by the circumstance, that, at this time, an open rebellion against the Romish Church had begun, and the worship of saints was by many rejected as idolatrous. For the second kind of St. Vitus' dance, Paracelsus recommended harsh treatment and strict fasting. He directed that the patients should be deprived of their liberty, placed in solitary confinement, and made ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... joyous and lepid consul, he jokes upon neutral flags and frauds, jokes upon Irish rebels, jokes upon northern and western and southern foes, and gives himself no trouble upon any subject; nor is the mediocrity of the idolatrous deputy of the slightest use. Dissolved in grins, he reads no memorials upon the state of Ireland, listens to no reports, asks no questions, ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... the sect were: a boundless respect for Kabala, an almost idolatrous worship of Cadeks and a deep, pious and unshakeable aversion toward Edomites (foreign ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... of this lady, of this "one idolatrous and purely ideal love" of his boyhood, was cherished to the last. The name of Helen frequently recurs in his youthful verses, "The Paean," now first included in his poetical works, refers to her; and to her he inscribed the classic and exquisitely ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... desultory talking with the natives, but perseverance was rewarded. Those who came to talk would return to take lessons, and some impression was gradually made even on the older men attached to their idolatrous rites. Many years after Patteson's death it was still the most civilized of the islands with a ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... presented to him, adds: 'It is in such passages as these that we see how completely Knox identified his action with that of the Hebrew prophets' (vol. i. 84), the passage founded upon being one in which Knox points out that 'the same obedience that God required of his people Israel,' even in idolatrous Babylon, was required by Him of the 'Scottish men' in France, and was actually given by 'that whole number during the time of their bondage,' not merely by the one unnamed prisoner who flung the painted 'board' into the Loire. One ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... However sincere his repentance may have been, he relapsed into his former life when he was removed from his office by Solomon, who filled all position with new incumbents at his accession to the throne. Finally he abandoned his idolatrous ways wholly, and became so pure a man that the was favored by God with the gift of prophecy. This happened on the day on which the man of God out of Judah came to Jeroboam, for the grandson of Moses is none other than the old prophet at Beth-el who invited the man of God out ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... Bear"; they apply to it the name Kamui, which has been translated god; but it is a word applied to all strangers, and so only means what catches attention, and hence is formidable. In the religion of the Ainos "the Bear plays a chief part," says one writer. The Bear "receives idolatrous veneration," says another. They "worship it after their fashion," says a third. Have we another case of "the heathen in his blindness"? Only here he "bows down" not to "gods of wood and stone," but to a live thing, uncouth, ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... indistinctly recall the fact itself—what wonder that I have utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it? And, indeed, if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged Ashtophet of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... that its great blessing and fruit, and the purpose for which we are commanded to cherish it, is that thereby we may become like Him in whom we trust. 'They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.' That is the key to the degradations that inhere in idolatrous worship, and that principle is true about all worship—as the god so is every one that trusteth in it. 'As the mountains are round about Mount Zion,' God is round about the people that are ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Jesus, Pilate, newly settled in the position of governor of Judaea, resolved to remove the headquarters of the Roman army from Caesarea to Jerusalem; and the soldiers entered the Holy City with their standards, each of which bore the image of the emperor. To the Jewish mind these images were idolatrous, and their presence in Jerusalem was looked upon as a gross insult and desecration. The foremost men of the city poured down to Caesarea, where Pilate was staying, and besought him to remove them. He refused, and for five days the discussion went on. At length he was so irritated that ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... appeals irresistibly to his sympathies, if he be not more than usually cold-hearted: and I remember well that, though myself a faithful son of the Scotish church, I was once seduced by such an occasion into an involuntary act of idolatrous compliance with popery. It was at Orleans: the day was splendid: the bells proclaimed a festival: a vast procession of a mixed composition, religious and military, was streaming towards the cathedral; and by a moral compulsion, rather than by any physical pressure of the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... they that be clothed therewithal? slow- bellies, evil wolves, godless swine, persecuting and dishonoring the word of God.Just in the same way have they much noble music, especially in the abbeys and parish churches, used to adorn most vile, idolatrous words. Wherefore we have undressed these idolatrous, lifeless, crazy words, stripping off the noble music, and putting it upon the living and holy word of God, wherewith to sing, praise and honor the same, that so ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... conflicts between sentiment and justice, between intuitive and utilitarian morals. Every human reform is the reassertion of the primary interests of man against the authority of general principles which have ceased to represent those interests fairly, but which still obtain the idolatrous veneration of mankind. Nor are chivalry and religion alone liable to fall into this moral superstition. It arises wherever an abstract good is substituted for its concrete equivalent. The miser's fallacy is the typical case, and ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... many hours. It went hard with the "soft Danes," and idolatrous Swedes, as Olaf had foreseen: after a short struggle they turn and fly. But Jarl Eric in his large ship the "Iron Beard" is more than a match for Olafs lighter vessels. One by one their decks are deluged with blood, their brave defenders swept into the sea; one by one they are cut adrift and sent ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... withdrew after an episcopate of twelve years and retired across the Channel. Returning in answer to the entreaties of Laurentius, "the Londoners would not receive Bishop Mellitus, choosing rather to be under their idolatrous high priests." Eventually he succeeded Laurentius at Canterbury. And for a second ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... the sanction of oaths, and as a channel for gratitude not pointing to a human object. If so, the answer is easy: religion was degrading: but heavier degradations would have arisen from irreligion. The noblest of all idolatrous peoples, viz. the Romans, have left deeply scored in their very use of their word religlo, their testimony to the degradation wrought by any religion that Paganism could yield. Rarely indeed is this word employed, by a Latin author, in speaking of an individual, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... which could reconcile the security of all with the independence of each. [Sismondi, Histoire des Francais, vol. iii. p. 174.] So also in all chivalric feelings, in enthusiastic religious zeal, in almost idolatrous respect to females of gentle birth, in generous fondness for the nascent poetry of the time, in a keen intellectual relish for subtle thought and disputation, in a taste for architectural magnificence, and all ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... could be done to relieve them, but it was hoped that out of this calamitous state of affairs would be evolved, through the overruling of Providence, a signal moral and spiritual benefit to the people generally. Here was a large band of boys and girls taken out of native society, cut off from idolatrous training and associations, and made over in the most plastic season of their lives to be moulded by those whose supreme aim would be to strengthen and elevate their character, and prepare them for ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... line and plummet will never sound his depth. You often speak of his strength; but, Leo, hardness is not always strength; and he is hard, hard. I never saw a man with a chin like his, who was not tyrannical, and idolatrous of his own will. My dear, such men are as uncomfortable to live in the same house with, as a smoky chimney, or a woman with shattered nerves, or creaking doors, or draughty windows. They are a sort of everlasting east wind that never veers, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... contending emotions. The severity of her voice, that voice that hitherto had fallen upon his ear like the warble of a summer bird, filled him with consternation. The idea of having offended her, of having seriously offended her, of being to her, to Henrietta, to Henrietta, that divinity to whom his idolatrous fancy clung with such rapturous devotion, in whose very smiles and accents it is no exaggeration to say he lived and had his being, the idea of being to her, even for a transient moment, an object of repugnance, seemed something ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... divine the legislative wisdom of the man,—manly strength, manly truth, manly justice, manly courage, Hercules with his club, Jupiter with his thunderbolt, so Baal, representing the primeval power of nature, became the object of idolatrous worship. After Christ, partly because of the new spirit which pervaded the world, and largely because the carnal heart, ruled by Satan, is glad of any pretext to neglect Christ, Mary, the mother, became preferable to Christ the Son. Salvation depends upon faith in Christ. Whosoever ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton

... holies is full of shrines and gods, gigantic candlesticks, colossal lotuses of gilded silver, offerings, lamps, lacquer, litany books, gongs, drums, bells, and all the mysterious symbols of a faith which is a system of morals and metaphysics to the educated and initiated, and an idolatrous superstition to the masses. In this interior the light was dim, the lamps burned low, the atmosphere was heavy with incense, and amidst its fumes shaven priests in chasubles and stoles moved noiselessly over the soft matting round the high altar on which Kwan-non is enshrined, lighting ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... that narrated by St. Luke, when, after the preaching of Paul, many of the Ephesians "which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it 50,000 pieces of silver" (Acts xix, 19). Doubtless these books of idolatrous divination and alchemy, of enchantments and witchcraft, were righteously destroyed by those to whom they had been and might again be spiritually injurious; and doubtless had they escaped the fire then, not one of them would have survived to the present time, ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades

... stood in the Salt Lake Tabernacle (which is "Joseph Mack's" capitol and vatican) and addressed a multitude that had assembled not more to honor the Chief Executive of the nation than to pay their almost idolatrous tribute of devotion to the head of their Church, who was reigning there in the pulpit with President Taft. "Joseph Mack" no longer fears Deputy Marshals—he appoints them; and the present United States Marshal of Utah would refuse to serve ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... Roman Catholicism on the South American continent as a species of heathenism. The Church, to gain proselytes, accepted the old gods of the Indians as saints, and we find idolatrous superstition and Catholic display blended together. The most ignorant are invariably the most pious. The more civilized the Criollo becomes, the less he believes in the Church, and the priest in return condemns him to ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... worship of our Teutonic ancestors, according to their views of the correspondence of the two mythologies; and the Quakers, in rejecting these names of days, have cast aside the most ancient existing relic of astrological as well as idolatrous superstition. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... silently on your sorrow till you made it a cause of protest against God's will! And worst and strangest of all is this frenzied idea of yours to fly to the Church of Rome for shelter from yourself and your secret misery, and there give yourself over to monasticism and a silent, idolatrous worship,—not of Mary, the Mother of Christ,— but of the mere picture of the woman you loved! And you would pray to THAT?—you would kneel before THAT?—you would pass long hours of fasting and vigil, gazing at that face, till, like the 'stigmata,' it is almost ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... wished to have the trial finished off, and their victim executed as quickly as possible, that they might be ready at the festival-day to sacrifice the Paschal lamb, not knowing, miserable wretches as they were, that he whom they had dragged before the tribunal of an idolatrous judge (into whose house they would not enter, for fear of defiling themselves before partaking of the figurative victim), that he, and he alone, was the true Paschal Lamb, of which the other was ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... Rather for thee the fate Of those hieratic Carthaginian queens Who needs must vanish through the gods' own gate, Even holy Flame, with music and great threnes Idolatrous, as on soft gorgeous wings, If Time's least kiss had subtly disallowed Their beauty's sacred unisons?—Fair things Desire their revel-raiment be their shroud. Yet, fierce insurgent, cease vain wars to wage! Art thou so pure as to decline, forsooth, These ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor

... gold; a free license given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers, employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony, sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous people! ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... the same old useless loafing. Been up in the North Woods for some hunting and fishing," he snarled. His voice always grew contemptuous when he spoke of himself, but idolatrous when he spoke of her—as now when he asked: "I heard you had gone back abroad. But ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... time had come at which the Roman Empire of the West was to collapse and Gaul was to become France, God did not allow such a noble part of Christendom to remain long under idolatrous princes; and wishing to hand over to the kings of the French the keeping of his Church, which he had formerly intrusted to the emperors, he gave not to France only, but to the whole Western world, a new Constantine in the person ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... must not bless light and spices of idolatrous Gentiles, nor light and spices of corpses, nor light and spices before an idol. They must not bless the light until ...
— Hebrew Literature

... excommunication,[xxxi] in consequence of Edwy's refusal to put away Elgiva, immediately after the coronation; since which the guilty pair had never communicated at the altar, or even attended mass. Their lives had been practically irreligious, nay idolatrous, for they had ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... elaborated and as highly finished as those of Meissonier himself, whose cherished pupil he was; and I could not but smile, while examining them, at the notion of an enthusiastic young Philadelphian, an almost idolatrous worshipper of Fortuny, that he could imitate this incomparable work by a rapid and free sort of sketching, and all on the faith of two pictures of the master which he had had the happiness to see at an exhibition in Broad street. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... fiction shelf of our libraries. I venture to reply that we shall be, on the contrary, in the position of the man in Bunyan's riddle who found that "the more he threw away, the more he had. "We get rid, to begin with, of the idolatrous or iconographic worship of Christ. By this I mean literally that worship which is given to pictures and statues of him, and to finished and unalterable stories about him. The test of the prevalence of this is that if you speak or write of Jesus ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... them. The matter is easy of comprehension when once explained. The benighted inhabitants of Italy, a land, lost in the darkness of error, still persist in their fasts, notwithstanding the evident folly of their ways—and the Norwegian sailors provide them with large quantities of fish for their idolatrous customs, bringing back their wines ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... Almighty interposed) was a kind of republic administered by a judge and the elders of the tribes. Kings they had none, and it was held sinful to acknowledge any being under that title but the Lord of Hosts. And when a man seriously reflects on the idolatrous homage which is paid to the persons of kings, he need not wonder that the Almighty, ever jealous of his honour, should disapprove of a form of government which so impiously ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine

... merits, I must separate myself from them entirely. I have hardly ever found either truth or profundity in their remarks; and these critics seem to me to be but stammering interpreters of the general and almost idolatrous admiration of his countrymen. There may be people in England who entertain the same views of them with myself, at least it is a well- known fact that a satirical poet has represented Shakspeare, under the hands of his commentators, by Actaeon worried ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... Mexico. It lay overgrown with huge timber in the midst of a dense forest, far remote from any settlement, and near the crater of a long extinct volcano, on whose perpendicular walls, 300 or 400 feet high, were aboriginal paintings of warlike and idolatrous processions, dances, and other ceremonies, exhibiting like the architectural sculptures on the temples, a state of advancement in the arts incomparably superior to all previous examples. And as the good Padre had proved veracious ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez

... offer the most rational vindication that can be suggested of idolatrous worship, sufficient to cover the absurdity of it; could it be called a raising of the divine attributes in a suitable manner, to direct the worshipper to admire and seek for the image of them in beasts of the most vile and contemptible ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... purpose to describe the religions and superstitions of Africa.[99] To do this would occupy a book. The world knows that this poor people are idolatrous,—"bow down to wood and stone." They do not worship the true God, nor conform their lives unto the teachings of the Saviour. They worship snakes, the sun, moon, and stars, trees, and water-courses. But the bloody human sacrifice which they make is the most revolting feature of their spiritual ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... concealed motive of this outrage on Pope to the election the dying poet made of Warburton as his editor. A mortal hatred raged between Bolingbroke and Warburton. The philosophical lord had seen the mighty theologian ravish the prey from his grasp. Although Pope held in idolatrous veneration the genius of Bolingbroke, yet had this literary superstition been gradually enlightened by the energy of Warburton. They were his good and his evil genii in a dreadful conflict, wrestling to obtain the entire possession of the soul of the mortal. Bolingbroke and Warburton ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... coming from God, did not bring God down to the level of human debasement, but demanded that man should be raised to His elevation,—which placed the holiness of God in the centre, and founded upon it the requirement that its possessors should be holy;—but it would be the soft, sensual, idolatrous doctrine which flattered human corruption, because from that it had its origin. Thus the Jehovah of the Israelites became in reality what they sometimes called Him by way of alternation—a Baal. And the matter was now much more dangerous than if they ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... returned whence it came. This little lonely heathen child, blown by seemingly cruel and adverse winds, was tossed upon our Christian shores by the good hand of God. The ship which brought him touched other and idolatrous lands, but he was not to put his feet down till they could be planted in the ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker

... they were a lazy and an idolatrous people; therefore they were desirous to bring us into bondage, that they might glut themselves with the labors of our hands; yea, that they might feast themselves upon the ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... finely decorated temple upon wheels, drawn by devotees, many of whom danced wildly around, while others bore torches aloft, making altogether a very gorgeous display. Priests stood at each side performing mysterious rites as the cortege proceeded. It was my first sight of an idolatrous procession, and it made a deep impression upon me, carrying me back to Sunday- school days, and the terrible car of Juggernaut and ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... Paradise of Adam and Eve, Satan and his followers did not return to Hell, but remained on earth, the fallen angels becoming the evil gods of various idolatrous nations and Satan engaging in every kind of evildoing which he knew would vex the Powers of Heaven. All the time he was troubled by the thought of the heavenly foe who he had been told would one day appear on earth to crush him ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... singer, stark mad with love of him and love of France and pride in her great deeds and old renown, and smothered him with their embracings; but Joan was there first, hugged close to his breast, and covering his face with idolatrous kisses. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... in him, but that he has bestowed them on one object, and they are claimed for another. To which they are most due is a question of justice; he may be wrong in his decision, and his worship may be idolatrous; but so also may be the worship which his opponents call upon him to render. If, indeed, it can be shown that a man admires and reverences nothing, he may be justly taxed with want of humility; but this is at variance with the very notion of an earnest character; for its earnestness consists in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... not mean what they say; but that helps matters very little, for the fault lies precisely in saying what they do say; the language used is idolatrous. And a queer thing about it is that they do mean more than half of what they say. When degenerate love runs riot, it dethrones the Almighty, makes gods of clay and besots itself ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... is a prisoner in a gloomy cell of stone and iron, from which there is no possible extrication. A bloody death awaits her. Her husband is a fugitive, pursued by human blood-hounds more merciless than the brute. Her daughter, the object of her most idolatrous love, is left fatherless and motherless in this cold world. The guillotine has already consigned many of those whom she loved best to the grave. But a few more days of sorrow can dimly struggle through her prison windows ere she must be conducted to the scaffold. Woman's nature triumphs ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... assist the preacher by some whip of penalties on those who remained obstinate after a due amount of hearing. They held, in fact, that every State is bound to use its power towards Christianizing all its subjects, and may also institute missions for the propagation of true Christianity in idolatrous or heathen lands. To all this the Baptists, or some of their leaders, had learnt to oppose an emphatic "No." They held that the world, or civil society, and the Church of Christ, were distinct and immiscible. They held that the sword of the Temporal Power must never, under any circumstances, aid ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... physicians, or "medicine-men;" and in both roles they deceive the credulous and ignorant votaries of superstition. The mode of offering sacrifices is described. In the mission village at Taytay, certain idolatrous rites have been secretly practiced, under the influence of the heathen priestesses; but this is revealed by the faithful among the natives to the missionaries, who promptly eradicate the evil and demolish the idols. All the heathen priestesses are ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... shrine, to find to their dismay that they had omitted to bring either chalice or wine for the Eucharist. Several of the monks were sent into the town to buy these, but in all Corseul they could find no one willing to sell either cup or wine, because of the hostility of the idolatrous folk of the place. At last the Saint performed a miracle to provide these necessaries, but he never forgave the insult to his religion, and while he founded monasteries broadcast over his diocese he avoided Corseul, and as Christianity became more and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence



Words linked to "Idolatrous" :   loving, idolatry



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com