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Congregation   Listen
noun
Congregation  n.  
1.
The act of congregating, or bringing together, or of collecting into one aggregate or mass. "The means of reduction in the fire is but by the congregation of homogeneal parts."
2.
A collection or mass of separate things. "A foul and pestilent congregation of vapors."
3.
An assembly of persons; a gathering; esp. an assembly of persons met for the worship of God, and for religious instruction; a body of people who habitually so meet. "He (Bunyan) rode every year to London, and preached there to large and attentive congregations."
4.
(Anc. Jewish Hist.) The whole body of the Jewish people; called also Congregation of the Lord. "It is a sin offering for the congregation."
5.
(R. C. Ch.)
(a)
A body of cardinals or other ecclesiastics to whom as intrusted some department of the church business; as, the Congregation of the Propaganda, which has charge of the missions of the Roman Catholic Church.
(b)
A company of religious persons forming a subdivision of a monastic order.
6.
The assemblage of Masters and Doctors at Oxford or Cambrige University, mainly for the granting of degrees. (Eng.)
7.
(Scotch Church Hist.) The name assumed by the Protestant party under John Knox. The leaders called themselves (1557) Lords of the Congregation.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Congregation" Quotes from Famous Books



... positively or only implied, it is never fulfilled at the time. She is never in her seat at church, till almost every body else is in, and the services have commenced; although the kind, but too indulgent parson waits some five or ten minutes for his whole congregation—whom, alas! he has unwittingly trained to delay. In short, she does nothing, and performs nothing, punctually, not even going to bed; for this is deferred to a very ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... of a mischievous boyhood spent in a Jesuit establishment. The fathers had stuck to him nobly until he had mixed red paint with the holy water, and one of the fathers, while administering the service, had suddenly beheld his whole congregation marked on the forehead with damnatory crosses like criminals of old time. That ended his school days. He introduced us to an officer, whose business it was to search for spies, a restless man who ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... approaching upon the forest pathway, with an air of bodily weariness, yet of mental alertness and anxiety. As she drew near, he recognized a worthy Canadian matron, whom he had, more than once, seen in his congregation in the school-house at the village ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... I can tell you is that you have made an ass of yourself or, as a Frenchman would say, played the donkey to hear yourself bray. The best thing you can do is to go and hunt up a congregation ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... companion, "What's that?" The other replies: "Oh, it's only Isaiah talking to the people. He is a good man, that Isaiah, a well-meaning, earnest man, but a little too intense, I fear." And they pass on to the temple service. By and by Isaiah stops. The moving congregation scatters. He slips quietly down to his house, and under the Spirit's holy, brooding presence writes down a part of what he has been saying. So there grew up the rolls to which his ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... smashing has been to marvelously stir up the officers of the law, our legislature, and public sentiment all over the State. Mrs. Nation was let out of jail on the bond signed by Rev. J. B. McAfee, an esteemed member of my congregation here. Her bond now is a bond to keep the peace, and her smashing is ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... "The Bowmen" must be true, that my share in the matter must surely have been confined to the elaboration and decoration of a veridical history. It seemed that my light fiction had been accepted by the congregation of this particular church as the solidest of facts; and it was then that it began to dawn on me that if I had failed in the art of letters, I had succeeded, unwittingly, in the art of deceit. This happened, I should think, some time in April, and the snowball of rumour that was then set ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen

... look on some native life. Every morning, as soon as he had fed the fowls, Taniera set the bell agoing in the small belfry; and the faithful, who were not very numerous, gathered to prayers. I was once present: it was the Lord's day, and seven females and eight males composed the congregation. A woman played precentor, starting with a longish note; the catechist joined in upon the second bar; and then the faithful in a body. Some had printed hymn-books which they followed; some of the rest filled up with "eh—eh—eh," the Paumotuan tol-de-rol. After the hymn, we had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was finished, and the congregation filed out of the church into the yard, where all immediately began shaking hands with ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... a touching and impressive, though short, sermon. At its conclusion the whole congregation rose and surrounded the missionary. The men shook his hands, the women kissed them, the children clung to his legs. It was a ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... dozen schemes laid out. One was to build a free but expensive library; another was to pave the main road with brick; third was to give stained-glass windows and velvet cushions to the meetin' house, so's the congregation could sleep comfortable in a subdued light. The stained-glass idee put him in close touch with the minister, Reverend Edwin Fisher, and the minister suggested the men's club. And he took to that men's club scheme like ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... battalions is in charge of the program. Major Grassie is equal to the occasion, quiet, ready resourceful. With him associated is Major Watts, Adjutant of the 9th, as Musical Director; in peaceful times organist and choir master of a Presbyterian congregation in Edmonton far away. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... when subordination was broken, and awe was hissed away; when any unsettled innovator, who could hatch a half-formed notion, produced it to the publick; when every man might become a preacher, and almost every preacher could collect a congregation. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... therefore, after the first promulgation of the Law, Holy Writ holds out to man many inducements to hope, even by way of warning or command, and not merely by way of promise, as in the Law; for instance, in the Ps. 61:9: "Hope [Douay: 'Trust'] in Him all ye congregation of the people," and in many other ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... trailing outside over one of the big windows ... and then the tall clock by the front door made a grating noise deep down inside its body—it was the Presentation clock, large and hideous, given by the congregation of his church—and, dreading the booming strike it seemed to threaten, I made a quick decision. If others beside myself were about in the night, the sound of that striking might ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood

... instincts and social organisation. A society composed of men resembling that child, but with the intelligence, force, and consistent purpose of manhood, would, I should have thought, be little better than a congregation ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... look over the heavenly walls and see the writhing agony of all sinners in the burning lake below. When his eloquence reached this climax he would cease pounding his open Bible and glare over the top of his tall pulpit at the assembled congregation, in the hope, perhaps, of discovering among them some Unitarian sinner who could thus be made to ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... was completed soon after Brother Pohlman left for Hongkong. As he had done so much of the work in gathering the congregation and had originated the idea of the building and had watched its erection with so much interest, we were desirous that he should be present at its consecration. We therefore delayed opening the building for worship until we received the definite news ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... family at chapel: and, thither I went in to them, and sat out the sermon; where I heard Jervas Fulwood, now their chaplain, preach a very good and civantick kind of sermon, too good for an ordinary congregation. After sermon I with my Lady, and my Lady Hinchingbroke, and Paulina, and ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... perfect apse; and occupying therein, during the course of the service, very nearly the same position which the figure of Christ does in that of the Cathedral of Pisa. But I nevertheless believe that the Scotch congregation are perfectly right, and have restored the real arrangement of the primitive churches. The Chevalier Bunsen informed me very lately, that, in all the early basilicas he has examined, the lateral pulpits are of more recent date than the rest of the building; that he knows of none placed in the position ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... them take oath to carry out their promise. "Also I shook out my lap," Nehemiah writes in his memoirs, "and said, So God shake out every man from his house, and from his labor, that performeth not this promise; even thus be he shaken out and emptied. And all the congregation said 'Amen,' and praised the Lord. And the people did according to ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... could neither draw nor paint, but he made stories of babies' deathbeds on squares of canvas with china angels solidly suspended from the ceiling of the nursery, pointing upward, and he gave them titles out of the hymnbook, which caused them to be bought with eagerness by all the members of the congregation ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... is the location of the organ and altar at the eastern end and the reading desk and lofty wineglass pulpit, with sounding board overhead, at the western end. This compels the rector to conduct part of the service at each end of the church and obliges the congregation to change to the other seat of the pews in order to face in the opposite direction. In the adjoining churchyard are buried many distinguished early residents of the city, including ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... interfering by color of my authority, I would like to have it specifically made known to me. If, after all, what is now sought is to have me put Dr. McPheeters back over the heads of a majority of his own congregation, that, too, will be declined. I will not have control of any church on ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... heavy cloak, and a long veil fell into the folds made by her skirts. The raiment of a gothic angel, an angel like those in the portico at Rheims, has these same straight, stern lines. "Black is sometimes as suggestive of white," was the reflection of one member of the congregation, "as white may be suggestive of mourning." Sir Edmund Grosse, who had known Rose from her childhood, felt some new revelation in her movements; there was a fuller development of womanhood in her walk, ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... others taken at St Andrews, he was condemned to the French galleys, but was released in 1549, abjured the reformers, entered the service of Mary of Guise, and was rewarded with some considerable legal appointments. Subsequently he went over to the lords of the congregation and then betrayed their plans. After Mary's arrival in Scotland he became one of her secretaries, in 1565 being reported as her greatest favourite after Rizzio.[1] He obtained the parsonage of Flisk ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... Standish was born about 1580, the son of a Lancashire gentleman of a large estate. He entered the army of Queen Elizabeth and served for some time in the Netherlands. There he met the congregation of English Puritans with their pastor, Robinson, and although he did not become a member of their Church, he sailed with them in the Mayflower in 1620. He was entrusted with the defence of the new colony, and held, besides, ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... best-read man in the whole county, and his voice went far when he spoke, but for over a year his place among the "Ameners" had been vacant—also his pew in Graves' church. The Dominie needed such men as Bill in his congregation if he would win his fight against the squatters. These thoughts were prominent in his mind when the door admitted a great gust of wind—and the famous Bill Hopkins. The parson caught his breath. Bill spoke a genial ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... Adams stood up, and with a loud voice pronounced, "I publish the banns of marriage between Joseph Andrews and Frances Goodwill, both of this parish," &c. Whether this had any effect on Lady Booby or no, who was then in her pew, which the congregation could not see into, I could never discover: but certain it is that in about a quarter of an hour she stood up, and directed her eyes to that part of the church where the women sat, and persisted in looking that way during the remainder of the ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... with its marble floor of almost spotless beauty, its lofty columns and noble simplicity of architecture, represented my beau-ideal of a Christian temple. There was not a single seat or chair—which I believe is the case with all Basilicas, the congregation standing and kneeling only—and this fact greatly adds to the apparent vastness of this noble structure, which forms a beautiful and suitable monument to the great and good ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... whether he was dreaming or awake. And so eventful were his slumbers, and so real the events therein, that his dreams and his waking moments became painfully intermingled. As, for instance, when he entered the cathedral. For a moment he stood still, overcome by its vastness and by the size of the congregation. Truly an imposing assemblage! And the great edifice was ablaze with light. A wedding, apparently, for there, before the altar, stood the bride, awaiting ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell

... broke in, "that Kate Kerrigan has a pretty history behind her. I'll bet she was an actress once. I've seen her stage poses ... then her name, catchy ... and the way she rolls her eyes and looks at that congregation of elders, and deacons and female saints, when she sets them shivering ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... say, be hivins, I think I'd stand firm; but—well, if some wan come to me an' said, 'Dooley, here's fifty thousan' dollars f'r ye'er vote to betray th' sacred inthrests iv Chicago,' I'd go to Father Kelly an' ask th' prayers iv th' congregation. ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... shines out a Christian Divine, who, in the inestimable individual Dr. Madden, collects a whole Society of Patriots; a venerable Man, not alone the Guide of his particular Congregation, but a pure, also clear and lasting Light of Perfection, and noble Imitation, to ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... and beseech; mirth and jollity. Later on, the Prayer-Book, which was written in the years 1540 to 1559, keeps up the habit: and we find the pairs acknowledge and confess; assemble and meet together; dissemble and cloak; humble and lowly. To the more English part of the congregation the simple Saxon words would come home with kindly association; to others, the words confess, assemble, dissemble, and humble would speak with greater force and clearness. —Such is the phenomenon called by Professor Earle ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... that when ten persons pray together the Shechinah is with them? In Ps. lxxxii. 1, where it is written, "God standeth in the congregation of the mighty." And where do we learn that when two sit together and study the law the Shechinah is with them? In Mal. iii. 16, where it is written, "Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it." ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... This greatly alarmed the congregation, particularly the intended bride and bridegroom, whom he first accosted and desired to speak with them apart. After they had been talking some little time, the people were greatly surprised to see Sir Charles stand motionless and his bride cry and faint away in the stranger's arms. This ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... more than you might have expected of him—he's a thorough nigger-hater—keeps a pew behind the organ of his church for coloured people, and will not permit them to receive the sacrament until all the white members of his congregation are served. Why, I don't see what on earth induced ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... a mahogany bracket, erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention between his prayer-book and the boys. Suddenly, just at the commencement of the communion service, when the whole congregation is hushed into a profound silence, broken only by the voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the stone floor of the aisle with astounding clearness. Observe the generalship of the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... to an execution the condemned pirates were taken to church to listen to a sermon while they were "exhibited" to the crowded and gaping congregation. On the day of the execution a procession was formed, which marched from the gaol to ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... and the tank, we found this usual place of congregation deserted. Now indeed was I thoroughly alarmed, likewise my companion, and of one accord, without waiting to visit the constable's compound, we turned our horses' heads in the direction of the home ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... alterations, at Hastings. They would not have been printed but at the urgent request of very many who heard them preached. It should be remembered that they are not a theological treatise, but a course of plain words addressed to an ordinary congregation. It seemed desirable to awaken interest in a subject which has dropped out of English Christian thought, and almost out of people's knowledge. The Addresses are an attempt to explain what can be known about the Intermediate ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson

... regard as the first Pope says to all Christians: "Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light" (1 Pet. 2, 9). To the local congregation of believers, which is to deal with an offending brother, even to the extent of putting him out of the church, Christ says: "If he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. Verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... including the clergy, were prejudiced against Kingsley by his Radical views. On one occasion he had to face a painful scene in a London church, when the vicar who had invited him to preach rose after the sermon and formally protested against the views to which his congregation had been listening. Bishop Blomfield at first sided with the vicar; but in the end he did full justice to the sincerity and charity of Kingsley's views and sanctioned his continuing ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... divergence of opinion on many points, yet attend the mosques and the Moulla teachings, and comply with all the outward forms of religion, in order to avert the anger which continued absence from the congregation would draw upon them from hostile and bigoted neighbours. Two of them were suddenly taxed in the Musjid with holding heterodox opinions, and were then accused of being Babis. The discussion was carried outside and into the bazaar, the accusers loudly reviling and threatening them. ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon

... congregation which had remained after the usual morning service, sat Sir Arthur Maxwell. A year ago he would have been inclined to laugh at the idea of his son sacrificing all his brilliant worldly prospects to enter the Church. He was, as has already been said, a deeply religious man himself, but still, ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... reached their shoulders. Their small accident now began to take on the character of a ceremonial—an immersion incident to some religious rite or observance; and the little Sunday crowd collecting on the water's edge might have been members of some congregation sympathetically welcoming a pair of converts to ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... the chief church, probably near the altar, though the precise spot cannot be determined. A portrait in oil, hung up in the church, testifies to the estimation in which he was held by the congregation, for besides his, there are only the portraits of a few General Superintendents, and none of any of his predecessors ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt

... held a hurried conference with his companions, then, stepping forward, ran a searching eye over the assembled boys and girls. The more ambitious contestants of both sexes carried music rolls containing the selections they intended to offer, but the majority of that carefree congregation aspired to nothing higher than the chorus, looking upon the whole ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... lest any part of it should be forgotten or escape attention, it was read three times. The whole concluded with hymns, which were first sung by the grown people, and afterwards by the children. The service thus performed was very long; but the neat and cleanly appearance of the congregation, the devotion that animated every countenance, and the innocence and simplicity of the little children, prevented the attendance from becoming wearisome. In about half an hour afterwards we again assembled to prayers, and at sunset service was repeated; ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... vestments chucked off, lights quenched, jewels stolen, the pomp and circumstances of worship annihilated; . . . the royal arms for the crucifix; huge ugly boxes of wood, sacred to preachers, frowning on the congregation in place of the mysterious altar; and long cathedral aisles unused, railed off, like the tombs (as they were) of what had been and was not." [5] Newman praises in "The Christian Year" what he calls its "sacramental system"; and to the unsympathetic reader it seems as though Keble saw ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... young men, who he insisted were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, to walk into a blast furnace, guaranteeing non-combustion. They did not return. I have seen nothing of this kind, but I have attended a negro church. They pray, or are caused to pray by themselves in this country. The congregation were moved by the spirit to groans and tears, and one of them danced up the aisle to the mourners' bench. The motive may have been genuine. The movements of the shaken body were those of a Zanzibar stick dance, such as you see at Aden on the coal-boats, and even as I watched the ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... mental powers, some must perform extemporary prayer with much imperfection; and in the eagerness and rashness of contradictory opinions, if publick liturgy be left to the private judgment of every Minister, the congregation may often ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... where there was a gathering round one of the persecuted minister, and alas! her stepdaughters had suspected her, and accused her to their father. He pursued her, caused the train-bands to break in on the congregation and the minister to be carried off to prison. It was this that had brought on the sickness of which she declared that she ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... every Wednesday evening. Sing Sing became an inquirer himself while translating the gospel to others. He was soon able to hold cottage lectures in the town, and after some years the Bishop had the happiness to ordain him as minister to his people. There was a large congregation of Chinese at the Sunday services before we left, and it was a good proof of the sincerity of these converts, that while all their heathen countrymen worked at their trades on Sunday as well as other days, our Christians ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... myself had a chance to go to Great Britain last year," he said. "Our congregation offered us the trip with Cook's tickets, for ten weeks, to show their appreciation of my services. But after reflection, we decided not to undertake the tour. I have no wish to see England as it is to-day. Such illusions as are left to me I would rather keep. It would depress ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... indeed, that she had heard some remarks made of late with regard to Dora's position at St. Damian's somewhat unfavourable to her cousin. It was said that she was jealous of co-operation or interference on the part of new members of the congregation in the various tasks she had been accustomed for years past to lay upon herself in connection with the church. She was universally held to be extraordinarily good; but both in the large shop, where she ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... he had gone with a numerous army to protect the Pope, was crowned by the Pontiff Emperor of the West. On Christmas day Charles entered the Church of St. Peter, as if merely to take his part in the celebration of the mass with the rest of the congregation. When he approached the altar and stooped in the act of prayer the Pope stepped forward and placed a crown of gold upon his head; and immediately the Roman people shouted, "Life and victory to Charles the August, crowned by God the great and pacific Emperor of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... with tongues," and could be translated by the speaker or a bystander in any way he saw fit, without responsibility for the saying. This was an easy way of calling a man names without standing behind it, so to speak. The congregation saw visions, read messages on stones picked up in the field—messages which disappeared as soon as interpreted. They had fits in meetings, they chased balls of fire through the fields, they saw wonderful lights in the air, in ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... Then the congregation dispersed, each family departing for the cabins and quarters where they lodged during the long, long voyage ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller

... matters," saying voluntarily with a soft implied reproof of the noise around her—that if she were in a wood, that is in a quiet place, she could hear the voices coming towards her. She added (going on, one could imagine, in a musing, forgetting the congregation of sinners about her) that it seemed to her a noble voice, and that she believed it came from God, and that when she had heard it three times she knew it was the voice of an angel; the voice always came quite clearly to her, and she ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... frame buildings and some tents stuck around in the sagebrush; some streets had been marked out, but no grading had been done. Dust, heat, and sagebrush were the main features of the place. In October I preached the first sermon ever delivered by any minister in the new village. The congregation numbered forty-one. On February 5, 1905, I organized the first church with seventeen members; on May 23, 1909, we dedicated the present edifice at a cost of $18,000, ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... he, "to publish the banns of marriage between——" here he made a little pause, and all the congregation were on the tenterhooks of expectation; "between," he continued, "Monsieur Louis Norbert, Marquis de Champdoce, a minor, and only legitimate son of Guillaume Caesar, Duke de Champdoce, and of his wife Isabella de Barnaville, now deceased, but who both formerly resided in this parish, and Desiree ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... account of them; but the truth was, that he had gratified his curiosity one day, by hearing Daniel Burgess in the pulpit, and those words were a memorial hint of a remarkable sentence by which he warned his congregation to "beware of thorough-paced doctrine, that doctrine, which, coming in at one ear, passes through the head, and goes out at ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... the livelong day, and which now assembled on all sides, like misfortunes and disasters around a sinking empire and falling monarch. Still, however, his dying splendour gave a sombre magnificence to the massive congregation of vapours, forming out of their unsubstantial gloom the show of pyramids and towers, some touched with gold, some with purple, some with a hue of deep and dark red. The distant sea, stretched beneath this varied and gorgeous canopy, lay almost portentously still, reflecting ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... of time—I gave him about a thousand years—and at the end of 'em I went into one of his temples near Andover to see how he prospered. There was his altar, and there was his image, and there were his priests, and there were the congregation, and everybody seemed quite happy, except Weland and the priests. In the old days the congregation were unhappy until the priests had chosen their sacrifices; and so would you have been. When the service began a priest ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... common-sense in what he did and said, a universal character in his religion, which struck men in these evil days. They drew nearer to each other under his influence; and I recollect this great building thronged in one of the last months that men continued here, with a congregation of all orders and all divisions of opinion, who met to pray together, and listen to Host. He stood yonder, Charles, as nearly there, I think, as I can tell from the ruins; he was rapt by his own discourse, and his face was as the face of an angel. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... addition to his hostility for the unearning branch for which I am responsible. I'm sorry for it, because I may need his good word for my inchoate scheme later on. It came up over some maintenance-of-way charges. He is as shrewd as he is unscrupulous, and he knows well how to pile the sins of the congregation on the back of the poor scapegoat. To make a better showing for the main line, and at the same time to show what a swilling pig the Plug Mountain is, he had the branch charged up with a lot of material we didn't ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... emerge, expand, and flutter forth in an ample suit of shiny broadcloth. For Mr. Meech was the pastor of the Hard-Shell Baptist Church in Clayton, and if his domestic economy was a matter of open gossip, there was no question concerning the fact of his learning. It had been the boast of the congregation for years that Judge Hollis was the only man in town who was smart enough to understand his sermons. When Mr. Meech started out in the morning with a book under his arm and one sticking out of each pocket, Sandy would pull up on his elbow to watch proceedings. He loved to ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... the Court House and the Town Hall, stands the Congregational Church, where Eugene Field crunched caraway-seed biscuits when on a visit to his grandmother, and back of this stands another church, spotless in the white paint of Puritan New England meeting-houses, but deserted by its congregation of Baptists, which had dwindled to the vanishing point. In the centre of the village green is a grove of noble elms under whose grateful shade, on the day of my visit to Newfane, I saw a quartette of gray-headed attorneys, playing quoits with horse-shoes. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... the pope, sequestered all the estates and effects of the Jesuits in that kingdom, which amounted to considerable sums, and reduced the individuals of the society to a very scanty allowance. Complaint of their conduct having been made to the pope, he appointed a congregation to examine into the affairs of the Jesuits in Portugal. In the meantime the court of Lisbon ordered a considerable number of them to be embarked for Italy, and resolved that no Jesuits should hereafter reside within its ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... great scholar, and she signed also in her maiden name for the last time, and the priest signed, and at his bidding Emlyn Stower, who could write well, signed too. Next, as though by an afterthought, Father Roger called several of the congregation, who rather unwillingly made their marks as witnesses. While they did so he explained to them that, as the circumstances were uncommon, it was well that there should be evidence, and that he intended to send copies of this ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... hour before the second ringing of the bell, individuals of the congregation begin to appear. The earliest is invariably an old woman in black, whose bent frame and rounded shoulders are evidently laden with some heavy affliction, which she is eager to rest upon the altar. Would that the ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of the religious service, before the congregation had dispersed, "the general rose up," says the chaplain's record, "and ordered each captain to appoint a certain number of men out of his company to draw the boats from the lake and string them along the Susquehanna ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... the close of their novitiate, for the enrichment of the library. Among notably valuable libraries, several of which still survive, were those of Monte Cassino in Italy, the Abbey of Fleury in France, St. Gall in Switzerland, and that of the illustrious congregation of St. Maur in France. The latter had at one time no less than one hundred and seven writers ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... is not permissible (according to the decrees of the Congregation of Rites), to accompany the celebrant on the organ at the Orations, Preface, or Pater Noster etc. The laudable custom of not accompanying the Choir for the responses is also ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various

... have been expected, therefore, that soon after civil liberty had been established there would be conflicts between the traditional, authority of the minister and the claims of the now free and independent congregation. So it was, in fact, as for instance in the case which follows, for which the reader is indebted to Miss Lamed's book, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... especially in the circumstances. This, he says, was inconsistent with Balfour's "character." Wodrow remarks, "I cannot hear that this gentleman had ever any great character for religion among those that knew him, and such were the accounts of him, when abroad, that the reverend ministers of the Scots congregation at Rotterdam would never allow him to communicate with them." In Scott's reading of Burley's character, there was a great deal of the old Adam. That such a man should so resent the insolence of a soldier is far from improbable, and ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... closing in we caught sight, in the far distance, of a congregation of huts, and the pilot gave the captain the welcome information, that he might shorten sail, and prepare to come to an anchor. By the time we had made everything snug darkness closed down upon us. We could just see a few lights twinkling ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston

... I failed, the consequences might be so ruinous, not merely to my own character, but to noble and even royal lives. I now felt the whole truth of Hamlet's description—the ways of the world "flat, stale, and unprofitable;" the face of nature gloomy; the sky a "congregation of pestilent vapours." It was not the hazard of life; exposed, as it might be, in the midst of scenes of which the horrors were daily deepening; it was a general undefined feeling, of having undertaken a task too difficult ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... unprecedented circumstance to find choir, congregation, organist, organ-blower, bell-ringer and verger all conspicuous by their absence. Mr. James went to the cottages near to make inquiries as to the cause. The first was locked up, but by knocking long and loudly at the door of ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... the sermon is over, and we are still sitting here in this Miserere, let us read aloud a page from the old parchment manuscript on the lettern before us; let us sing it through these dusky aisles, like a Gregorian Chant, and startle the sleeping congregation! ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... organ. She was playing the prelude to one of the evening hymns, when the lover, whose features she dreaded to be once more forgetting, appeared in the curtained enclosure. A stoppage in the tune, and a prolonged squeal of the instrument, gave the congregation below matter to speculate upon. Wilfrid put up his finger and sat reverently down, while Emilia plunged tremblingly at the note that was howling its life away. And as she managed to swim into the stream ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... needed more time and quietness in which to compose his sermon. If this supposition is correct, it may account for the fact that the members of the Mount Pisgah congregation pronounced his sermon that day, from the text, "All is vanity," one ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... a minister kept telling his congregation that different parts of the Bible were myths, legends, etc., and not historical. One of his members cut out of her Bible every section he said was not true. When he made a pastoral call she showed him her mutilated Bible. Upon his remonstrance, she replied that he had ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... obtaining for him the humble living of A——. To this primitive spot the once jovial roisterer cheerfully retired—contrived to live contented upon an income somewhat less than he had formerly given to his groom—preached very short sermons to a very scanty and ignorant congregation, some of whom only understood Welsh—did good to the poor and sick in his own careless, slovenly way—and, uncheered or unvexed by wife and children, he rose in summer with the lark and in winter went to bed at nine precisely, to save coals and ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... The studiously remote and painfully inaccessible locations chosen for the site of many fine, roomy churches must astonish any observing traveller on the byroads of New England. Too often, alas! these churches are deserted, falling down, unopened from year to year, destitute alike of minister and congregation. Sometimes, too, on high hilltops, or on lonesome roads leading through a tall second growth of woods, deserted and neglected old graveyards—the most lonely and forlorn of all sad places—by their broken and fallen headstones, which surround a half-filled-in and ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... heaven from every happy face; Again I longed for that sweet time when friend shall meet with friend, "When congregations ne'er break up, and Sabbath has no end." I hope to meet that minister—that congregation, too— In that dear home beyond the stars that shine from heaven's blue; I doubt not I'll remember, beyond life's evenin' gray, The happy hour of worship in that model church to-day. Dear wife, the fight will soon be fought—the victory soon be won; The shinin' goal is just ahead; the ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... knew so constant an attendant on church as Washington. And his behavior in the house of God was ever so deeply reverential that it produced the happiest effects on my congregation, and greatly assisted me in my pulpit labors. No company ever kept him from church. I have often been at Mount Vernon on the Sabbath morning when his breakfast-table was filled with guests; but to him they furnished no pretext for neglecting his God and losing ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... supposed, had sunk back into paganism for want of teachers. His thoughts and his desires grew, and the first difficulty presented itself in the form of a doubt as to whether it was allowable to forsake his congregation. Besides, several near relations as well as wife and children were dependent on him for sustenance, which increased ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... The sorrow of the survivors, like the decease of the departed, was to be considered as God's doing, and therefore right. Hence in the very moment of the death of a loved one, when grief was most poignant, the survivor stood forth before the congregation and praised God. And so the Burial Service is named in Hebrew 'Zidduk Ha-din,' i.e. 'The Justification of the Judgment.' A few sentences in it ran thus (Prayer Book, p. 318): 'The Rock, His work is perfect.... He ruleth below and above, He bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up again.... ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... was over, and it was some time before it was over, for the crowd had to be fed, we assembled for worship. The congregation was too large for the little room, so the men built a beautiful arbor out of bamboo cane. When Maddox told me we were to hold services under an arbor I was dissappointed, for somehow there had come ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray

... admirably humorous figure is this same Darby O'More! Out of the Poor Scholar alone, that inchoate masterpiece, you could illustrate a dozen phases of Carleton's mirth, beginning with the famous sermon where the priest so artfully wheedles and coaxes his congregation into generosity towards the boy who is going out on the world, and all the while unconsciously displays his own laughable and lovable weaknesses. There you have the double vision, that helps to laugh with the priest, and to laugh ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... Silence fell upon the congregation, and Tessibel commenced her walk down through the sea of faces to the pulpit. She gave no glance toward Teola as she passed, but kept her eyes fixed upon Dominie Graves, who, without noticing her, had turned to the little flight of steps that led to his pulpit. ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... where I was a student. He is just as tender and sympathetic with his patients as that famous director of the Prussian Royal Clinical Hospital has been. As to the medicines of Dr. Pierce, I recommended them to members of my congregation, who told me that they did them good. Dr. Bastian, of Dansville, N.Y., a druggist, told me that your medicines are bought by the same persons again and again. I consider this to be the best recommendation. A medicine which is of no effect will not be bought ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... rough pulpit on which lay the copy of the Bible that they had brought with them from Virginia, their Ark of the Covenant on the way, seized it, and faced them again. He strode toward the congregation as far as the benches would allow—not seeing clearly, for he was ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... beat! drums!—blow! bugles! blow! Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force, Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation, Into the school where the scholar is studying; Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride, Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain, So fierce you whirr and pound you ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... discipline. Minister and parishioner stand, we repeat, in this matter, on exactly the same level. Nor have ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand, twenty thousand, or a hundred thousand lay parents, or yet ten, twenty, a hundred, or a thousand clerical parents, whether existing as a congregation or hundreds of congregations on the one hand, or as a Presbytery, Synod, or General Assembly on the other, rights in this matter that in the least differ in their nature from the rights possessed by the single clergyman, Dr. Guthrie, or by the single layman, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... wonderful proof of the wisdom of Providence," said Kenelm, "that whenever any large number of its creatures forms a community or class, a secret element of disunion enters into the hearts of the individuals forming the congregation, and prevents their co-operating heartily and effectually for their common interest. 'The fleas would have dragged me out of bed if they had been unanimous,' said the great Mr. Curran; and there can be no doubt that if all the spiders in this commonwealth ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... he entered the church, cast a look towards the group, but had taken his place among the congregation before they separated themselves. He knelt down with the air of a man who has something burdensome on his mind; but when the service was ended, he seemed free from anxiety, as one who had referred himself and his troubles to the disposal of Heaven. The ceremony of High Mass ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... the Company and to the States-General. The two Reformed pastors used the most strenuous endeavors through the classis of Amsterdam to defeat the petition, under the fear that the concession of this privilege would tend to the diminution of their congregation. This resistance was successfully maintained until at last the petitioners were able to obtain from the Roman Catholic Duke of York the religious freedom which Dutch Calvinism had failed to ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... boyhood, that you were a bit of a goose. Your parochial affairs are governed with exemplary order and regularity; you are as powerful in the vestry as Mr. Perceval is in the House of Commons,—and, I must say, with much more reason; nor do I know any church where the faces and smock-frocks of the congregation are so clean, or their eyes so uniformly directed to the preacher. There is another point, upon which I will do you ample justice; and that is, that the eyes so directed towards you are wide open; for the rustic has, in general, good ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... road runs right past the new brick church, which is almost finished, and which will be opened in a few weeks. Beyond the cross, the road leads along the glebe, and about a quarter of a mile beyond the corner there opens upon it the big, heavy gate that the members of the Rev. Alexander Murray's congregation must swing when they wish to visit the manse. The opening of this gate, made of upright poles held by auger-holes in a frame of bigger poles, was almost too great a task for the minister's seven-year-old son Hughie, who always rode down, standing on the hind ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... tell you what I do. When I first came to Plymouth Church I gave the sexton strict orders that if he saw any person asleep in my congregation he should go straight to the pulpit and wake ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various

... more particularly a Bible and a Virgil, cartoons for the Louvre, and designs for tapestry; but at length he expostulated:- "It is impossible for me," he said to M. de Chanteloup, "to work at the same time at frontispieces for books, at a Virgin, at a picture of the Congregation of St. Louis, at the various designs for the gallery, and, finally, at designs for the royal tapestry. I have only one pair of hands and a feeble head, and can neither be helped nor can my labours be ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... metropolis, I was offered an opportunity of preaching in a church, made famous by the eloquence of one of the popular pulpit-orators of our time. In accepting the proposal, I felt naturally anxious to do my best, before the unusually large and unusually intelligent congregation which would be assembled ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... it has done to those that have embraced it, and what distress it has brought upon others. This made the whole congregation of Israel tremble to think that any of their brethren should give countenance ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan



Words linked to "Congregation" :   denomination, Congregation of the Inquisition, social group, aggregation, assembly, accumulation, faithful, fold, gathering, assemblage



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