"Ritual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grinding tyranny and abject superstitions. The "Conventicle Act," prohibiting more than five persons, exclusive of the family, to meet together for religious worship according to any other than the national ritual, had been passed, and was rigidly enforced; the dominant party thus endeavouring to deprive the people of one of the most sacred rights of man,—that of worshipping God according to the dictates of conscience. England's debauched king, secretly ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... These chambers were low, dark, mysterious, accessible only to the priests and king. They were given a certain dignity by being raised upon a sort of platform above the general level, and reached by a few steps. They were sumptuously decorated internally with ritual pictures in relief. The hall was sometimes loftier, but set on a slightly lower level; its massive columns supported a roof of stone lintels, and light was admitted either through clearstory windows under the roof of ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... the fathers, and as we are both inclined to heterodoxy on these points, we make the more prominent our observance of the best of the old-time habits. I might preach a pleasant little sermon just here, taking as my text the "survival of the fittest," and illustrating the truth from our own domestic ritual; but the season preaches its own sermon, and I should only follow the example of some ministers and get between the text and my congregation if I made the attempt. For weeks we have all been looking forward to this eventful evening, and the still ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... towards the brethren! To the Church of Christ, wherever I find it! When will Christians learn to remember the points on which they agree, rather than those on which they differ? The questions of form and ceremony; of Church government and ritual; how small they are, how unutterably trivial, compared to the great facts of the Fatherhood of God, and the sacrifice of Christ! Did the Power who made every one of us with different faces and different forms, expect us all ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... curious reserve, seems to be the most interesting. He held in all things to the essential and not to the accidental; he preferred the dry grain of musk to a diluted flood of perfume. An Italian by birth and deeply moved by all things Italian, he never visited Italy; a lover of ritual and a sympathizer with all the mysteries of the Roman creed, he never joined the Catholic Church; a poet whose form and substance alike influenced almost all the men of his generation, he was more than forty years of age before he gave his verse to the public; a ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... to break bread (Acts 20:7). Upon THE, not A, first day they broke bread; and upon THE first day, the collections were made for the poor saints (1 Cor 16:1,2). With such concurrent and ample testimony we must conclude that the seventh day Sabbath, with its Jewish ritual, is dissolved, and the first day has taken its place. The Saviour said, 'It is finished'; and from that moment to the end of the inspired volume, the seventh day is swallowed up in the glories of the first day of the week. Let Jews ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The others wanted to leave, but he said, "I haven't danced with my girl Rhona." His tongue was thick, his mind was blurred, and yet he could read the strange expression on her face—pretty Rhona, who'd always flirted with him, who'd made a ritual of flirting with him. Pretty Rhona, who now looked as if she were ...
— The First One • Herbert D. Kastle
... counsel." Sotumpa wrote of the strength of the immaculate purity in tea which defied corruption as a truly virtuous man. Among the Buddhists, the southern Zen sect, which incorporated so much of Taoist doctrines, formulated an elaborate ritual of tea. The monks gathered before the image of Bodhi Dharma and drank tea out of a single bowl with the profound formality of a holy sacrament. It was this Zen ritual which finally developed into the Tea-ceremony of ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... complications of a technical system, frozen into sterility; and they have no more meaning and no more appeal to the audience at whom they are thrown in such profusion than the details of the performance of the Mosaic ritual, or the genealogies of the legendary heroes of the Hebrew Bible. We want neither edifying lessons drawn from the wanderings of Israel or the Book of Joshua; nor brilliant 'word-painting' of some of the scenes described in the ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... marriage. A man who makes no profession of religious belief, is an unsafe guardian of any woman's peace of mind. You who have been reared almost in the shadow of the altar, accustomed to hearing grace at your meals, to family prayers, to strict observance of our ritual, will feel isolated indeed, when transplanted to the home of a godless man, who rarely darkens the door of the sanctuary. 'Be ye not unequally yoked together ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... lasted on into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, though losing the higher sentiment which inspired it—the coronation of the poets with the laurel wreath. The origin of this system in the Middle Ages is obscure, and the ritual of the ceremony never became fixed. It was a public demonstration, an outward and visible expression of literary enthusiasm, and naturally its form was variable. Dante, for instance, seems to have understood it in the sense of a half-religious consecration; he desired to assume the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... proportion to the works, as it always is, but she was really active in that way, under the vague obligation, which we now all feel, to be helpful. She was of the church which seems to have found a reversion to the imposing ritual of the past the way back to the early ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Rolfe[490] says that the Levitical traditions in the earlier system of decoration in the Christian Church had a far stronger hold on the popular mind than we are willing now to admit; and that the five Levitical colours, gold, blue, purple, red, and white, were retained in the Christian ritual. Whenever we come across figures of Anglo-Saxon bishops, the liturgical vesture entirely ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... however had once taken place, the whole Anglo-Saxon name attached itself to the Roman ritual. Among the motives for this change those which corresponded to the naive materialistic superstition of the time may have been the most influential, yet there were other motives also which touched the very essence of the matter. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... spectacle—the curious will find a contemporary account in the Appendix—but one characteristic detail may be mentioned. As she was climbing the fatal ladder, covered, for the occasion, with black cloth, she stopped, and addressing the celebrants of that grim ritual, "Gentlemen," said she, "do not hang me high, for the ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... the people on the common street; to meet them in the market-place on equal terms; to live among them not as saint or monk, but as a brother man with brother men; to serve God not with form or ritual, but in the free impulse of the soul; to bear the burden of society and relieve its needs; to carry on its multitudinous activities in the city, social, commercial, political, and philanthropic—this is the religion of the ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... revolution. They had been left for the most part to the worst and most ignorant of the clergy, the mass-priest, whose sole subsistence lay in his fees. Burgher and artizan were left to spell out what religious instruction they might from the gorgeous ceremonies of the Church's ritual or the scriptural pictures and sculptures which were graven on the walls of its minsters. We can hardly wonder at the burst of enthusiasm which welcomed the itinerant preacher whose fervid appeal, coarse wit, and familiar story brought religion into the fair and the market ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... generous, sweet and kind; He tells of worthy precedents, displays The example of the past to after days, Consoles affliction, and disease allays. Had Rome no poets, who would teach the train Of maids and spotless youths their ritual strain? Schooled by the bard, they lift their voice to heaven, And feel the wished-for aid already given, Prom brazen skies call down abundant showers, Are heard when sickness threats or danger lowers, Win for a war-worn land the smiles of peace, And crown the ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... the scale really belongs to Christianity. It is difficult to say to what religion a man belongs, as the same person may profess two or three. The emperor himself, after sacrificing according to the ritual of Confucius, visits a Tao-sse temple, and afterwards bows before an image of Fo in a Buddhist chapel. ('Melanges Asiatiques de St. Petersbourg,' vol. ii. ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... desiring peace and prosperity for England, the keynote of Elizabeth's policy in Church and in State was conciliation and compromise. So the Church of England was to a great extent a compromise, retaining as much as the people would bear of external form and ritual, for the sake ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... ritual began. Breaking off a bit of the putty, Mrs. Pawket welded it on the jar near the other protuberances; while the putty was soft she fixed in it the screw, arranging that implement by a method best calculated to display its screw characteristics. Then Mrs. Pawket's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... figures. He recognized the Winnebagos, clad in bathing suits and bathing caps, and covered with their ponchos, calmly having their Ceremonial Meeting in the pouring rain. The song over, they sat down in a circle and went through their ritual with the water streaming over their firelit faces. A play was enacted, which he made out to be a pantomime presentation of "Cinderella," and he recognized Nyoda in the guise of the fairy godmother. Hinpoha ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... two sowings. The first is a good-luck ritual done religiously on March 17th—St. Patrick's Day. Rain or shine, in untilled mud or finely worked and deeply fluffed earth, I still plant 10 or 12 seed potatoes of an early ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... paltriness of character of the gods believed in by earlier centuries also strikes later centuries with surprise. We shall see examples of it from the annals of Catholic saintship which makes us rub our Protestant eyes. Ritual worship in general appears to the modern transcendentalist, as well as to the ultra-puritanic type of mind, as if addressed to a deity of an almost absurdly childish character, taking delight in toy-shop furniture, tapers and tinsel, costume ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... entirely alone, and that it was a rather large order to fold in his arms a swearing parrot, a shivering, hairless dog, a robust Mexican orphan, a bride and a dope fiend, for he made not the first gesture of the above ritual. ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... always existed in human form, but not in human soul; and that in His Person there was a real Trinity; that the bible was to be understood in a spiritual sense, which was first revealed to Swedenborg. Their ritual, which was based on that of the Anglican Church, included a splendid ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... instituted in honor of Serapis by pious kings or citizens. On feast-days, and during daily worship, the chant of priestly choirs might be heard, or the murmur of prayer; and the eye might watch the stolists who crowned the statues with flowers and ribbons, as required by the ritual, or the processions of priests in their various rank. Carrying sacred relics and figures of the gods on trays or boats, with emblematic standards, scepters, and cymbals, they moved about the sacred precinct in prescribed order, and most of them fulfilled ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... be noted, in order to bring out more vividly the force of the figure, that Paul here speaks of the libation being poured 'on' the sacrifice, as was the practice in heathen ritual. The sacrifice is the victim, 'service' is the technical word for priestly ministration, and the general meaning is, 'If my blood is poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice ministered by you, which is your faith, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... through the powdered locks beneath her sweeping veil. The bridegroom at her side wore a red uniform and many decorations. Slowly they approached the altar, where an old man in black vestments and a heavy white wig was awaiting them. They stood before him, and I could see that he was reading the ritual ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... see you, turning the corner, mothers and sons; you, you, you. I hasten, I follow. This, I fancy, must be the sea. Grey is the landscape; dim as ashes; the water murmurs and moves. If I fall on my knees, if I go through the ritual, the ancient antics, it's you, unknown figures, you I adore; if I open my arms, it's you I embrace, you I draw ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... church today is not higher criticism, elaborate ritual, hair-splitting creeds, but fearless fighting for public health, for good government, for righteous labor conditions, for clean courts of justice. It was the leader of a darky revival who, when asked why he didn't sometimes read the Old Testament, replied: "No, sah. Dem commandments ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... age, in 1809, was celebrated at Newstead by such festivities as his narrow means and society could furnish. Besides the ritual roasting of an ox, there was a ball, it seems, given on the occasion,—of which the only particular I could collect, from the old domestic who mentioned it, was, that Mr. Hanson, the agent of her lord, was among the dancers. Of Lord Byron's own method of commemorating the day, I find the following ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... native talent to many hostile lookers-on. Men of their pursuits and modes of thought, aliens in an unknown country, perhaps sufficiently free of speech to alarm the narrow-minded, no great observers of ritual or ceremony, were too likely under any circumstances to attract the notice of the Inquisition in a place so wholly given over ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... through any Master of Arts. The ceremony will well repay a visit, for it is picturesque, it should be dignified, it is sometimes amusing. But it is more than this; in the conferment of University Degrees are preserved formulae as old as the University itself, and a ritual which, if understood, is full of meaning as to the oldest University history. The formulae, it is true, are veiled in the obscurity of a learned language, and the ritual is often a mere survival, which at first sight may seem trivial and useless; but those who care for Oxford will wish ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... among the emotions that dominate mankind. Mill's article proclaiming these views appeared in 1835, just at the time when the Oxford Movement was stirring up a wave of enthusiasm for the dogmas and ritual which he treated as obsolete and nonsensical; nor is there anything more remarkable or unexpected in the political changes of the last sixty years, than the discomfiture of those prophets who have foretold the decay of all liturgies and the speedy dissolution of ecclesiastical ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... though many of them make the fatal mistake of despising preaching. They rely partly on what they call 'definite Catholic teaching,' including frequent exhortations to the practice of confession; and partly on appeals to the eye, by symbolic ritual and elaborate ceremonial. Their more ornate services are often admirably performed from a spectacular point of view, and are far superior to most Roman Catholic functions in reverence, beauty, and good taste. The extreme section ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... form of various magic rites and ceremonies, which were important healing factors. The ancient Druidic charms are still in use among the Irish peasants, the titles of pagan deities being replaced, however, by the name of Christ and words of the Christian ritual. In this form they are regarded as magic talismans, when repeated over the sick, and the peasants have a strong faith in these mystic formulas, which have a powerful hold upon their imaginations, having been transmitted to them through ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... does not decay: you know more of such flimsy things than I do. But you, on your side, must grant me that there is Something which does not enter into your systems. That has perished, and I mean to mourn it all the days of my life. Pray do not interfere with that peculiar ritual." ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... pass dim and so, sacred. The wanton breeze, caught in the maze of tufted pinnacles, filtered its chastened way, a pensive organist, learned to draw grave litanies from the boughs and reverently voice the air of sanctity. The fresh familiar scent hung for a smokeless incense, breathing high ritual and redolent of pious mystery. No circumstance of worship was unobserved. With one consent birds, beasts and insects made not a sound. The precious pall of silence lay like a phantom cloud, unruffled. ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... beginning that the exigences of bodily life gave consciousness its first articulation. A bodily feat, like nutrition or reproduction, is celebrated by a festival in the mind, and consciousness is a sort of ritual solemnising by prayer, jubilation, or mourning, the chief episodes in the body's fortunes. The organs, by their structure, select the impressions possible to them from the divers influences abroad in the world, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... this speaker resemble. Against whom does he rage? What Church is it whose sacred vessels, lamps, and ornaments he is pillaging, whose ritual he overthrows? Whose golden patens and silver chalices, sumptuous votive offerings and rich treasure, does he envy? Why, the man is a Lutheran all over. With what other cloak did our Nimrods[4] cover their brigandage, when they embezzled the money of their Churches and wasted ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... his possessions. But if, as commonly happened, both parties produced the requisite oath-helpers, there was nothing for it but the ordeal by fire or water; the man who sank was innocent, he who floated guilty; and the only rational element in the ritual was its supervision by the priests, who knew something of their parishioners' character. Military tenants, however, preferred their privilege of trial by battle. Now Henry began to teach men to rely upon their judgment; and by degrees a distinction was even made ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... of Master Silas that he would help him in his ghostly endeavours, by repeating what he called the PRELIMINARY prayer; which prayer I find nowhere in our ritual, and do suppose it to be one of those Latin supplications used in our learned ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... accept the basic premise that discipline, even within the military establishment of the United States, is not a ritual or a form, but is simply that course of conduct which is most likely to lead to the efficient performance of an assigned responsibility, it will be seen that morale does not come of discipline, ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... the institution of the Jewish ritual was to preserve the Israelites from the idolatry which at that time prevailed among every other people. Dogs were held in considerable veneration by the Egyptians, from whose tyranny the Israelites had just escaped. Figures of them appeared on the friezes of most of ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... wasn't by any means his first entanglement with the law, but heretofore his occasions had been marked by a very different ritual. He recalled, phlegmatically, that whenever, in the old days, a member of the motorcycle squad had shot past him, and signalled to him to stop, the man had always treated him more or less fraternally, in recognition of the fellowship of high ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... who was shivering with cold, and understood little of this dark talk, began to mumble his ritual, skipping those parts of it which he could not remember. So another grain was planted in the cornfields of death and immortality, though when and where it should grow and what it should bear he neither knew nor cared, who wished to escape from fears ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Righteousness and His Power than by His Grace, manifest as all three have been throughout His dealings with Israel. The worship of other gods is forbidden and so is every attempt to represent Himself in a material form. His ritual is purged of foolish, unclean and cruel elements. Witchcraft ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... inclusion of Dr Vance Smith among the revisers, against the nomination of Dean Stanley to be select preacher in the university of Oxford, and against the address in favour of toleration in the matter of ritual, followed in succession. In 1876 Burgon was made dean of Chichester. He died on the 4th of August 1888. His life was written by Dean E.M. Goulburn (1892). Vehement and almost passionate in his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... down before us, in silence or with words that we thought were petitions, moving not confusedly but with a manner of ritual. The Admiral took a necklace and placed it round the throat of the young man who first had dared, and in his hand put a hawk bell. That was enough for himself to do, who was Viceroy. Three of us finished the distribution. They who had brought presents ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... picture of the defective education and backward ways of the ghetto, which the critic denounces, with remarkable subtlety, in the name of civilization and progress. Besides, he published two volumes on the Napoleonic wars; one volume, under the title Hamat Damesek (1840), on the ritual murder accusation at Damascus; a history of Russia; a translation of the Alexandrian Philo's account of his mission to Rome; and a treatise on style (Debir). He was very successful with his works, and all of them were published ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... each regarded his opponent as no better than a pagan [a]. The dispute lasted more than a century, and was at last finished, not by men's discovering the folly of it, which would have been too great an effort for human reason to accomplish, but by the entire prevalence of the Romish ritual over the Scotch and British [b]. Wilfrid, Bishop of Lindisferne, acquired great merit, both with the court of Rome and with all the Southern Saxons, by expelling the quartodeciman schism, as it was called, from the Northumbrian kingdom, into which the neighbourhood ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... abruptly interrupted by a rhythmic, snarling chant from the vast horde of rat-men in the cavern above. The chant rose and fell in a rude cadence that was suggestively ritual in nature. ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... household service, the ritual of our feastings and mournings; and often it rehearsed for us the tales of many lands, or, best of all, the legends of our own. I see him, a silver-haired minstrel, touching melodious keys, playing and singing in the twilight, within sound of the rote of the sea. There he lingers late; the ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... meeting a literary lady in London, repeated them to her, and then to a literary assembly at her house; and the presence of a new poet was at once acknowledged. If the "Midnight Mass for the Dying Year" in its form and phrase and conception recalled a land of cathedrals and a historic religious ritual, and had but a vague and remote charm for the woodman in the pine forests of Maine and the farmer on the Illinois prairie, yet the "Psalm of Life" was the very heart-beat of the American conscience, and the "Footsteps of Angels" was a hymn ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... those we have named, were informally inducted into the organization, in the parlor of B. F. Stevenson, who at the first national encampment a few weeks later was made provisional Commander-in-chief; the ritual and unwritten work was communicated to the new members, and they were fully empowered to organize posts in Massachusetts, General Devens being appointed provisional Grand Commander of the department. On returning from Pittsburg there was something of a rivalry ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... for a secret purpose that seemed to have to do with the abduction of a certain young white woman for reasons connected with their tribal statecraft or ritual, which is the kind of thing that happens not infrequently among obscure and ancient African tribes. Well, they had abducted their young woman and were in sight of safety and success in their objects, whatever these ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... a small chapel they sought, situated at the extreme end of the straggling street, and the worshippers were few. At the conclusion of the ritual and the sermon the two walked forth together in silence, their former brief intimacy a mere memory, neither realizing exactly how best to resume a conversation which had been interrupted by so solemn a service. It was Miss Norvell who first ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... that is so often made by religious organisations, which depend so largely upon symbolism, is the terrible limiting of this symbolism to traditional ceremonies and venerable ritual. It has been said that religion is the only form of poetry accessible to the poor; and it is true in the sense that anything which hallows and quickens the most normal and simple experiences of lives divorced from intellectual ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... pleasure, had by no means lost their power. To what extent even the nations of the north still clung to them is proved by our own Liturgy, framed in the tumult of war with Rome, yet so worded as to leave the utmost resemblance to the old ritual consistent with the spirit of the Reformation. Far more imposing were they in their effect upon the imagination of Italians, who had never dreamed of actual rebellion, who possessed the fountain of Apostolical privileges in the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... public meeting which had been passed even by the women present. She was severe and decisive, and without recognition of anything there but the tariff of the house, and sold her refreshments as in a simple yet exacting ritual which she despised, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... young printer was thrust down into the depths and made to wrestle with the powers of darkness; and in the remorse of soul that came over him he made a liturgy to be repeated night and morning, and at midday. There were many items in this ritual—all of which were corrected and amended from time to time in after-years. Here are a few paragraphs that represent the longings and trend of the lad's heart. ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... fascinating mixture of cooperation with dominance on the one hand, and exclusiveness on the other. The central fact is the community, which seeks some common end in ritual, or in beneficent activity. But at an early period leaders became invested, or invested themselves, with a sanctity which led to dominance. Not the power of force, but that of mystery and the invisible raised the priest above the level ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... pleased Pharaoh, the just and perfect, to depart to his everlasting habitation in Osiris. Make it known that this god is dead, and that I rule alone in Egypt. Send hither the priest of Osiris, that he may repeat the Ritual of Departing, and ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... the outset to say clearly what is the aim of the present volume. The title is Ancient Art and Ritual, but the reader will find in it no general summary or even outline of the facts of either ancient art or ancient ritual. These facts are easily accessible in handbooks. The point of my title and the real gist of my argument lie perhaps in the word "and"—that is, in the intimate connection which I have tried to show exists between ritual and ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... in times when Moslem fanaticism ran riot. In truth, the underlying cause of Turkey's troubles is the ignorance and fanaticism of her people. These evils result largely from the utter absorption of all devout Moslems in their creed and ritual. Texts from the Koran guide their conduct; and all else is decided by fatalism, which is very often a mere excuse for doing nothing[86]. Consequently all movements for reform are mere ripples on the surface of Turkish life; they never touch its dull depths; and ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... alike in their ceremonial aspects; short or long, solemn-spoken ancient ritual or commonplace legal form, the essence of them all is that this man and this woman say, "I will." So it was in Walter Drury's study. And then the little group seated itself about the pastor; Marty with Alma Wetherell, soon to become ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... Buddhism, older than all records of the human imagination. Of this more anon. As was his custom, Wagner drew from whatever source seemed to him good and fruitful; and though he doubtless thought himself at liberty to receive suggestions from the Roman Catholic ritual, as well as the German Lutheran, it is even possible that he had also before his mind scenes from Christian Masonry. This possibility was once suggested by Mr. F. C. Burnand, who took the idea from the last scene of the ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the ceremony was made as formal and stately as possible. Norman guards kept order about the place; a long procession of clergy moved into the church, with the duke and his supporting bishops at the end. Within, the old ritual of coronation was followed as nearly as we can judge. Englishmen and Frenchmen were asked in their own languages if they would have William to be king, and they shouted out their approval; William then took oath to defend ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... of the sacrament together, and Dr. Osborn, President of the Conference, gave the opening address. The Oecumenical Conference did not aim at determining any debated condition of Church membership, or at defining any controverted doctrine, or settling any question of ritual; it met for consultative, not legislative purposes. As such, the gathering brought about the thing which is written: "Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing... Then thou shalt ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... tenderness the various manuals and movements of nightly devotion which her own religious fervor and the zeal of her spiritual advisers had enjoined upon her. Christianity, when it entered Italy, came among a people every act of whose life was colored and consecrated by symbolic and ritual acts of heathenism. The only possible way to uproot this was in supplanting it by Christian ritual and symbolism equally minute and pervading. Besides, in those ages when the Christian preacher was utterly destitute of all the help which the press now ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Bethlehem. Jewish history for centuries headed towards this culmination; this was the matchless blossom that bloomed out of all that growth from Abraham to Joseph and Mary. Priest and prophet, tabernacle and temple, gorgeous ritual and streaming altar, sacrifice and psalm, kingdom and captivity, triumph and tragedy were all so many roots to this tree. These were the education and discipline of the chosen people, preparing them as soil out of which the Messiah could spring. The great ideas of the unity ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... with love; she was born to be a priestess of love's religion. She had waited for this hour—that she might take his hand, and lead him into the temple, and teach him the ritual. It was a ministry that she entered upon with the joy of all her being. "Ah, let me teach you how to love!" she would cry. "Ah, let me teach you ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... of swine, which has formed an item in the dietetic ritual of the Egyptians, the Hebrews, and Mahometans, has been defended in all ages, from Manetho and Herodotus downwards, on the ground that the flesh of an animal so foully fed has a tendency to promote cutaneous disorders, a belief ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... communication is possible between him and the spirit world. In order to bridge this chasm a class of men and women called sorcerers (mo-han and sheng-po) has come into being, whose work it is to be the spokesmen of the gods. With deliberate intent and elaborate ritual they develop the mediumistic gift, and learn how to attain conditions of frenzy and of trance during which period the body is controlled by a spiritualistic force. Not only as the medium of the gods, but also as a resting-place for longer or shorter periods ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... covenant with Abraham is sealed by circumcision, and the purchase of Machpelah gives Abraham legal right to a footing in the promised land. In other words the interests of this source are legal and ritual. This becomes abundantly plain in the next three books of the Pentateuch, but even in Genesis it may be justly inferred from the unusual fulness of the narrative at these four points. [Footnote 1: The curious ch. xiv. is written under the influence of P. Here also ritual interests play ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... which I was a member there was a ritual in the formation of partnership, an association within the association. Two boys, fond of each other and desiring to become partners, would link little fingers, while a third boy acting as a sort of priest—an elder of the gang—would raise his hand and strike the link, shouting, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Kings and courts had passed away; old Ionian myths and religious usages, unknown to the Homeric poets, had come out into the light; commerce and pleasure and early philosophies were the chief concerns of life. Yet the poems continued to be aristocratic in manners; and, in religion and ritual, to be pure from recrudescences of savage poetry and superstition, though the Ionians "did not drop the more primitive phases of belief which had clung to them; these rose to the surface with the rest of the marvellous Ionic genius, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... always a bowl—of silver usually—put on a small high table. A white napkin on the table inevitably suggests a restaurant rather than a ritual and is therefore unfortunate, and most people of taste prefer to have the table covered with old church brocade and an arrangement of flowers either standing behind or laid upon it so that the stems are toward the center and covered by the base ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... noble 'doubter,' but speak the words of truth and soberness. Mr. Willcoxen was married privately, when and where I said, to a beautiful, fair-haired lady, whose name heard in the ritual was Marian. And my husband, Olly Murray, was the secret witness ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... before he ever got to Lockerbie's that night. It was part of the Naapu ritual not to drink just before you reached your host's house, and that ritual, it soon became evident, Schneider had not observed. I saw Lockerbie scowl, and Follet wince, and some of the others stare. I could ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of the song, the "Keeper of the Deer Medicine," who is master priest of the occasion, leads off in the recitation of a long metrical ritual, in which he is followed by the two warrior priests with shorter recitations, and by a prayer from another priest (of uncertain rank). During these recitations, responses like those of the litany in the Church of England may ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... confronted in due time with a document that would not yield its secrets to dialectic, a kind of ritual in words that initiated his intuition into self-knowledge. Intense devotion was needed, imagination, and will-power. The Gnosis came gradually, perhaps after the manuscript had been laid aside; it was the effort towards ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... scores of superstitious practices, as distinguished from these remains of actual ritual of which I have spoken, still in use among country-folk. In Devonshire they still take a sick child, very early in the morning, and hold it over a stream which is running east, with a long thread tied to its finger, so that as the water carries ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... and the ritual for casting out demons, bearing a piece of the true cross, before which no evil being can prevail, we rode away at so rough a pace withal, through constant urging and imprecations of the men at arms, as caused us to ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... the rest of the table. "You don't have to listen to this," he said in despair. "I have to go through it with O'Barreton every time he comes here. It's a sort of ritual." Then, turning to the tormenting guest, he explained carefully: "Once upon a time the Earl of Dundredge had three daughters. The eldest—my mother—married an American husband. The second married an Englishman—she ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... band of hieroglyphs, springing from the belt and running down to the feet, contained no doubt some formal funeral ritual, or rather, the names and titles of the deceased, a problem which Dr. Rumphius ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... spirit and its life. Suddenly he felt himself removed, as it were, to an almost impossible distance from the heaven into which, as he had complacently flattered himself, he should enter by the door of mere ritual observances, when the sad hour came for giving up the delightful things of this pleasant world. No wonder that Mr. Braxton was disturbed—no wonder that, in his first convictions touching those more interior truths, which made visible the sandy foundations whereon he ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... told her that she had done them good. But she could never tell them about having seen Christ, they don't understand. The egoism of her faith is shown by her statement that, having met Christ in practical life, she had no more use for any church or ritual. Her great hope was for the future. When she passed away, she was to develop her powers more and when reincarnated was to come back with the big minds of the world. Once she had a vision of herself in some high trees and the "Master mind" told her ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... for it, when it sees money being showered upon hygienic devices for its comfort, even upon trifles for its distraction, when it sees brains all bent on discovering the best, nicest ways of dealing with its instincts, when it sees itself the center of a magnificent pageant, ritual, devotion, almost worship, it naturally lifts its chin, puts its shoulders back, steps out with a spring, and glances down confidently upon the whole ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... being all alone, and not able to leave His Majesty the Cham, I could not go to visit the church above-mentioned, which is twenty days' journey distant.... I had been in treaty with the late King George, if he had lived, to translate the whole Latin ritual, that it might be sung throughout the extent of his territory; and whilst he was alive I used to celebrate mass in his church according to the Latin rite." The distance mentioned, twenty days' journey from ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... be further from the actuality. The details of rule and ritual, of dress and duties, of privileges and punishments are set forth in accordance with a full first-hand and intimate acquaintance with all available evidence touching the Vestals; including all known inscriptions relating to them, every passage in Roman or Greek literature in any ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... books were roads open to adventures; he saw skies in books, and books in skies, and in every orderly section of social life magic possibilities of vagrancy. But he was also a Cockney, a lover of limit, civic tradition, the uniform of all ritual. He liked exceptions, because, in every other instance, he would approve of the rule. He broke bounds with exquisite decorum. There was in all his excesses something of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... to the second essential incident of the tale—the surrender of the estate during the owner's lifetime. This is a well-marked feature of early custom, and Du Chaillu has preserved something like the survival of the ritual observances connected with it in his account of the Scandinavian practice. On a visit to Husum he witnessed the ceremonial which attended the immemorial custom of the farm coming into possession of the eldest son, the father still being alive. The following is Mr. Du Chaillu's description, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... yet he had a way of kneeling, of stretching out his arms and of looking up to the humble gilded cross in front of him, that revealed all the ardour of fervent prayers. Occasionally he turned towards the back of the church to pronounce the ritual words. His face was serious and kindly, framed in a youthful beard—the face of an apostle, with the glow of faith in his eyes. And I was surprised to see underneath his priest's vestments the hems of a pair of red trousers, and feet shod in large ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... out of hatred to the Christians. A second was published about the year 175, by Theodotion, a native of Ephesus, some time a Christian, but a disciple first of the heretic Tatian, then of Marcion. At length he fell into Judaism, or at least connected obedience to the Ritual Law of Moses with a certain belief in Christ. His translation, which made its appearance in the reign of Commodus, was bolder than that of Aquila. The third version was formed about the year 200, by Symmachus, who having been first a Samaritan, afterwards, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... kept before her eyes, from first to last, was the preservation of peace—peace within the Church and without. Her natural inclination was towards the more ornate ritual of the Roman Church, but the necessity she was under of gaining the support of the Protestants, whom even the fires of Smithfield had failed to suppress, inspired restraint. All her actions were marked with caution ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... the time appointed, and read the prayers. He also read, in the course of the service, the twenty-ninth chapter of Matthew, which narrates the closing scenes of our Saviour's life. This was, in fact, the regular lesson for the day, according to the Episcopal ritual, which assigns certain portions of Scripture to every day of the year. The king supposed that the bishop had purposely selected this passage, and he thanked him for it, as he said it seemed to him very appropriate to the occasion. "May it please your majesty," ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the only religion I know that can expose the mysteries of its ritual to the vulgar gaze and yet retain the devotion of its worshippers. There is nothing a British audience so loves as to be taken behind the scenes and shown how it is done—or not done; and then it will attend the next ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... instinct or organ, or any external object or agent. How could Carpenter have so far forgotten his own definition of health as to applaud the primitive ritualistic worship of the glories of the human body and the procession of the stars? That ritual was itself the symptom of the break-up of man's character into multiplicity, and the insubordination of specific organs. Surely when man has gained centrality of health, he will worship the unifying will which is dominant ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... persons holding office under the government of England were compelled to take the oath of supremacy and of allegiance, to declare against transubstantiation, and to take the sacrament according to the ritual of the established church. In 1689 the Toleration Act was passed, exempting dissenters from the Church of England from the penalties of non-attendance on the service of the established church. This was followed by a bill abolishing episcopacy in Scotland. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... dogmatic religion cannot be vital and sincere. Religious emotions tend always to anchor themselves to earth by a chain of dogma. That tendency is the enemy within the gate of every movement. Dogmatic religion can be vital and sincere, and what is more, theology and ritual have before now been the trumpet and drum of spiritual revolutions. But dogmatic or intellectually free, religious ages, ages of spiritual turmoil, ages in which men set the spirit above the flesh and the emotions above the intellect, are the ages in which is felt the emotional significance ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... who shaped us last of living forms Has long enough been served by creeping things, Reptiles that left their foot-prints in the sand Of old sea-margins that have turned to stone, And men who learned their ritual; we demand To know him first, then trust him and then love When we have found him worthy of our love, Tried by our own poor hearts and not before; He must be truer than the truest friend, He must be tenderer than a woman's love, A father better than the best of sires; Kinder than she ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... reiteration of the same tone in music—as in pedal point on an organ composition—may be made the foundation of beauty, for the harmony weaving about that one basic tone produces a consistent, insistent quality not felt in pure variety of chord sequences. In like manner the intoning voice in a ritual may—though it rarely does—possess a solemn beauty. But the public speaker should shun the monotone as he would ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... of these fraternities is quite impossible. Commonly, thirty-two are reckoned, but many have vanished or have been suppressed, and there are sub-orders innumerable. Each has a "rule" dating back to its founder, and a ritual which the members perform when they meet together in their convent (kh[a]nq[a]h, z[a]wiya, takya). This may consist simply in the repetition of sacred phrases, or it may be an elaborate performance, such as the whirlings of the dancing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... and for a very few purely verbal changes in matter of style, Mrs. Parker's original manuscript is untouched by me. It seems necessary to mention these details, as I have, in other works, expressed my own opinions on Australian religion and customary law. [MAKING OF RELIGION, second edition; MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION, second edition.] These opinions I have not, so to speak, edited into the work of Mrs. Parker. The author herself has remarked that, beginning as a disciple of Mr. Herbert Spencer in regard to the religious ideas of the Australians—according to that writer, mere ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... surprised to find how rich is the provision there for every part of his spiritual nature. Each service satisfies or surfeits. Twice, or even three times a week, this feast is spread for him. The thoughts are deeper than his own, the faith keener, the worship loftier, the whole ritual more reverent and splendid. What more natural than that he should gradually exchange his personal religion for that of the congregation? What more likely than that a public religion should by insensible stages supplant his individual faith? What more simple than to content himself ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... isolated from the rest. Her prey is an adult, medium-sized Acridian (Locust or Grasshopper.—Translator's Note.), such as the White-banded Sphex pursues. The captive of the one would not be despised by the other. Gripped by the antennae, according to the ritual of the Sphex, the victim is trailed along on foot and laid beside the nest, with the head pointing towards the opening. The pit, prepared in advance, is closed for the time being with a tiny flagstone and some bits ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... condemnation, "With a spirit of contradiction which we may be pardoned for esteeming narrow-minded, the fathers of the Scottish Kirk rejected even on this most solemn occasion the form of an address to the Divinity, lest they should be thought to give countenance to the ritual of Rome or of England." And he seizes the opportunity to applaud the liberal judgment of the present Scottish clergymen who avail themselves of the advantage of offering a prayer, suitable to make an impression ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... even to-day a number of persons avowedly united in the same 'Belief' and recognizing each other as the self-constituted social vanguard should not form a recognized spiritual community centering round some kind of 'religious' edifice and ritual, and agree to register and consecrate the union of any couples of the members according to a contract which the whole community should have voted acceptable. The community would be the guardian of money deposited or paid ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... of the Church. At all times such problems, asking for attention and solution, emerge to every thoughtful disciple's sight. In our own time they seem to multiply upon one another with an importunate demand—problems doctrinal, ritual, governmental, social; the strife of principles and tendencies within the Church; all that is involved in the relations between the Church and the State, and again between the Church and the world, that is to say, ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... pleasure. But now that you have taken the plaster off her mouth, and given her free respiration, I cannot see the sense of keeping up the irritation about the claim to sit in Parliament. Unopposed, the Catholic superstition may sink into dust, with all its absurd ritual and solemnities. Still it is an awful risk. The world is in fact as silly as ever, and a good competence of nonsense will always find believers."[50] That is the view of a strong and rather unscrupulous politician—a moss-trooper in politics—which Scott certainly was. He was thinking evidently ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... point only: [Greek: Peligua ton mageiron labe hapd thest metrost], which is in effect: 'A cook is it that you want? Why, then, you cannot do better than take mine. The man is a reliable table of sacrifices; he knows the whole ritual of those great official and sacred dinners given by the late king, your father. He is acquainted with the whole cuisine of the more mysterious religions, the Orgiacs' (probably from the neighbouring Thrace), 'and all the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... a stockade. This latter condition had been the result of allowing the church to interfere unwarrantedly in what was not its affair. Religion had calmly usurped this, the most potent of the motives of humanity; or, rather, it had fastened to it the ludicrous train of ritual. That laughable idea that God had a separate scrutinizing eye, like the eye of a parrot, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... front of the parish, so that no one shall be talked of but the Misses ——. Anything is seized upon, that will afford an opening for posing before the world of the parish, whether it be an extreme fashion in dress or in ritual. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else. Different from Zuleika, he cared for his wardrobe and his toilet-table not as a means to making others admire him the more, but merely as a means through which he could intensify, a ritual in which to express and realise, his own idolatry. At Eton he had been called "Peacock," and this nick-name had followed him up to Oxford. It was not wholly apposite, however. For, whereas the peacock is a fool even ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... beggar and a stranger as it were in a foreign land. In 1246, however, the Pope having threatened excommunication, the King gave way, and Richard at once began to reform his diocese, to discipline his priests, and to restore the ritual of his cathedral, and indeed of all the churches in his diocese. He lived a life of severe asceticism, and gave so much in alms that he was always a beggar. Usurers were punished by excommunication, and Jews were forbidden to build new synagogues. It was he, too, who first established ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... my boy friends is not worth recording. They were puppets wondrously decked out by my fertile imagination, worshipped as heroes for a while with all the ritual of German friendship cult - and later, when in their personal life they showed no resemblance to my ideal expectations, rudely dismantled and cast aside and hated. I can still see a photograph of one of them lying in my washbowl with pierced eyes, curling and charring under the avenging ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... harm that he could do in the church," pursued the other, "would be to encourage the substitution of form for spirit. The more religious faith is shaken, the greater is the temptation to supply its place by a ritual, and this temptation seems to me the most imminent and deadly peril ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... persisted in styling the "Sultan of the Soudan." King John wanted a port, the restoration of Bogos, and an Abouna or Coptic Archbishop from Alexandria, to crown him in full accordance with Abyssinian ritual. Gordon replied a port was impossible, but that he should have a Consul and facilities for traffic at Massowah; that the territory claimed was of no value, and that he certainly should have an Abouna. He also undertook to do his best to induce the British Government to restore to King John ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... they bore hard upon Miss Graythorpe, our mind would go back to the Temple in Jerusalem, and a morning nearly two thousand years ago. The voice that said who was to cast the first stone is heard no more, or has merged in ritual. But the Scribes and Pharisees are with us still, and quite ready to do the pelting. We should be harder on the Colonel, no doubt, with our prejudices; only, observe! he isn't brought up for judgment. He never is, any more than the other party was that day in Jerusalem. But, then, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... religious rites, clear evidence of belief in the existence of the Divine. The valleys of the Nile, of the Euphrates, and of the Tigris have revealed facts for the theologian's benefit that are almost exhaustless. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and in the religious hymns and the ritual of which they formed part in the sacred literature of Babylonia, there is proof that four thousand years ago hymns were sung in honour of the gods, and prayers were offered to propitiate them and secure their favour. But belief in God had place long before these ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... kind. There was a most impressive array of pageantry, of processions, a sort of grand ritual, with their arts and their religion broadly blended. The very babies joined in it. To see one of their great annual festivals, with the massed and marching stateliness of those great mothers, the young women brave and noble, beautiful and strong; and then the ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... side of the Konigstrasse, east, stood an historical relic of the days when Austria, together with the small independent states, strove to shake off the Napoleonic yoke. In those days students formed secret societies; societies full of strange ritual, which pushed devotion to fanaticism, which stopped at nothing, not even assassination. To exterminate the French, to regain their ancestral privileges, to rescue their country from its prostrate humiliation, many sacrificed ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... fastened to the four corners of the arba kanfot (literally, "four-corners"), a garment worn by all pious males underneath the jacket or frock coat, usually with the fringes showing. The latter play a part in the daily ritual. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... government was just and beneficent; the arts and sciences were cultivated—indeed the workers in these fields, guided as they were by occult knowledge, achieved tremendous results; religious belief and ritual was still comparatively pure—in fact the civilization of Atlantis had by ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... the good, in ritual trained, Pure from the bath, with thoughts restrained, Hasted those verses to repeat Which make the sacrifice complete. The hosts celestial came in view, And Rama to the cot withdrew, While a sweet sense of rapture stole Through the unequalled hero's soul. He paid the Visvedevas(332) due. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the whole house; for the tree seems to be regarded as in some sense forming a ladder or path of communication with the superior powers. The same opinion seems to be expressed in the importance attached to fire and smoke in prayer and ritual. Fire, if only in the form of a lighted cigarette, is always made when prayers are offered; it seems to be felt that the ascending smoke facilitates in some way the communication with ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... she, by reason of their ignoble interferences and persecutions, yield her own allegiance to the Higher Light? Not she! Rather would she fling herself, heart and soul, into the freshening tide of her own visible church. Out of its ritual only, could she gain new fervour to bear and endure and then, if need be, fight for her spiritual freedom. It was only what the martyrs of old had done; only the work which fell upon the upholders of any ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... followers of the despised Nazarene, the little band of outcasts, who for fear of the people worshipped their God in the silent watches of the night, when the city was asleep—worshipped Him without gorgeous ritual or templed home, and standing ready, well knowing that as each day dawned the setting sun might cast its rays upon their lifeless bodies lying uncared ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... of fire. In him, however, there was all the time something hard and reckless and defiant, which stood apart. She was absolutely gone in her own incantations. She was absolutely gone, like a priestess utterly involved in her terrible rites. And he was part of the ritual only, God and victim in one. God and victim! All the time, God and victim. When his aloof soul realised, amid the welter of incantation, how he was being used,—not as himself but as something quite different—God and victim—then ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... the midnight hour. From dark hallways men and women pour forth and hasten to the Maronite church. In the loft of the dingy old warehouse wax candles burn before an altar of brass. The priest, in a white robe with a huge gold cross worked on the back, chants the ritual. The people respond. The women kneel in the aisles, shrouding their heads in their shawls; a surpliced acolyte swings his censer; the heavy perfume of ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... her. The agonizing agitation passed from her and a great quiet fell upon her soul. The struggle was done. She had made the ancient sacrifice demanded of women since ever the first man went forth to war. It remained only to complete with fitting ritual this ancient sacrifice. She rose from her ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... sign that she may always return to it. Rich brides wear nothing but white and orange blossom; but pale blue and a coronet of silver ribbon are more in accordance with the national custom. The religious ceremony has all the ritual and grandeur of the Greek Church. The bride has to prostrate herself before her husband in token of entire submission. The best man attends the bride, not the bridegroom, and is chosen by her. Seven o'clock in the evening is the time for Russian weddings ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... ten short commands, which could be counted off on the ten fingers. Two Decalogues are given in Exodus, as coming from Moses at Sinai. One is in Exodus 34. 17-28. The other is the well-known Decalogue in Exodus 20. The former has to do largely with sacrifices and ritual observances. The latter, with its stern demands for right conduct toward one's fellow men, and for the worship of Jehovah rather than idols, expresses well the new moral and religious impulses which came to the Hebrews under the leadership of ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... burnt tembaki and haschish still in the bowl. Ashes now are they all, and dry yellow bone; but in the houses of Phanar and noisy old Galata, and in the Jew quarter of Pri-pacha, the black shoe and head-dress of the Greek is still distinguishable from the Hebrew blue. It was a mixed ritual of colours here in boot and hat: yellow for Mussulman, red boots, black calpac for Armenian, for the Effendi a white turban, for the Greek a black. The Tartar skull shines from under a high taper calpac, the Nizain-djid's from a melon-shaped head-piece; the ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... the commencement or the fag end, for he was not above praying odd bits of the service twice over, and even sometimes prefaced or supplemented his synagogal performances by solo renditions of the entire ritual of a hundred pages at home. The morning services began at six in summer and seven in winter, so that the workingman might start his ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... have murdered more human beings than any other form of plague. The blasphemy of sham religion has insulted the majesty of the Creator more than any other form of sin, and He has answered it by His Supreme Silence. The man who attends a ritual of prayer which he does not honestly believe in, merely for the sake of social custom and observance, is openly deriding his Maker and the priests who gain their living out of such ritual are trading ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... though their own meal were never finished. And this was not servility, it was the dignity of a religious conception. Paolo regarded us as belonging to the Signoria, those who are elect, near to God. And this was part of his religious service. His life was a ritual. It was very beautiful, but it made me unhappy, the purity of his spirit was so sacred and the actual facts seemed such a sacrilege to it. Maria was nearer to the actual truth when she said that money was ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... their better days in circumstances of the utmost respectability; and shocked at the poverty of the display he had been glad to learn that a more Christian gift of tea, clothes, snuff, and tobacco was added outside the Church door when the ceremony was over. But even so its ritual had not attracted him: it had lost its human values, and seemed to have been kept in life ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... phrases, in the tone of a person buying a ha'-porth of tin-tacks, told them to sit down, filled a form or two, took some of Herbert's money, and told them that that was all, and that they could go. So they went, secretly surprised. This was the august ritual, and this the imposing theatre, provided by the State in those far-off days for the solemnizing of the most important act in a citizen's life. It is different now; the copy of Keats's Directory is a ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... to use a natural but not flippant simile, take it for granted that the soul is cast into the troubled waters of life without the power to swim, or even the possibility of learning to float, dependent upon the bare chance that some one may throw it the life-buoy of ritual religion as its only conceivable means of salvation. And the opponents of each particular form of faith invariably take just such good men and women, with all their limitations, as the only true exponents of that especial creed, which they then proceed ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... ritual was observed in such appeals, when the fight was to the death. The combatants confessed, and received, what to one was probably his last Communion; and thus avowing in the most solemn way their innocence ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... sailors, who had come to a determination to make an honest woman of Poll and an ass of himself at one and the same time. The ceremony took place on the quarter-deck. "Who gives this woman away?" said I, with due emphasis, according to the ritual. "I do," cried the boatswain, in a gruff voice, taking the said lady by the arm and shoving her towards me, as if he thought her not worth keeping. Everything went on seriously, nevertheless. The happy pair were kneeling down on the union-jack, which had been folded on the deck in consideration ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... charm and power have necessarily diminished the influence of ceremonial worship, which is the artistic expression of the soul's faith and love, of its hopes and yearnings. We are, indeed, still subdued by the majesty of dimly lighted cathedrals, by solemn music, and the various symbolism of the ritual, but we feel not the deep awe of our fathers whose knees furrowed the pavement stones, and whose burning lips kissed them smooth; and to blame ourselves for this would serve no purpose. To those who find no pleasure ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... eternal duties of morality, is the pure and simple religion of the Evangel, the true theism. The other, established in one country only, gives that country its own gods, its own tutelary patrons; it has its own dogmas and ritual, and all foreigners are deemed to be infidels. Such were all the religions of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the orthodox clergy (exemptions from regular taxes and benefit of the clergy).... Christianity becomes a monopoly defended by the state.... Psychological power and attraction in the elaborate symbolism and ritual of the church.... Allegory put an end to all literary criticism.... Flourishing of the miraculous; any unusual or startling occurrence attributed to the intervention of either God or the Devil.... Older conceptions of disease ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... Cartwright from the Margaret Professor's chair was teaching the exclusive and divine claims of the Geneva platform of discipline, and in defiance of the bishops and the government was denouncing the received Church polity and ritual as Popish and anti-Christian. Cartwright, an extreme and uncompromising man, was deprived in 1570; but the course which things were taking under the influence of Rome and Spain gave force to his lessons and warnings, and strengthened ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... in Folk-Custom 1. The External Soul in Inanimate Things 2. The External Soul in Plants 3. The External Soul in Animals 4. The Ritual of Death and Resurrection ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer |
