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Sermon   Listen
noun
Sermon  n.  
1.
A discourse or address; a talk; a writing; as, the sermons of Chaucer. (Obs.)
2.
Specifically, a discourse delivered in public, usually by a clergyman, for the purpose of religious instruction and grounded on some text or passage of Scripture. "This our life exempt from public haunts Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones and good in everything." "His preaching much, but more his practice, wrought, A living sermon of the truths he taught."
3.
Hence, a serious address; a lecture on one's conduct or duty; an exhortation or reproof; a homily; often in a depreciatory sense.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sermon" Quotes from Famous Books



... woraciousness —'top dat dam slappin' ob de tail! How you tink to hear, 'spose you keep up such a dam slappin' and bitin' dare? Cook, cried Stubb, collaring him, I wont have that swearing. Talk to 'em gentlemanly. Once more the sermon proceeded. Your woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don't blame ye so much for; dat is natur, and can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... of course, that women have repaid the compliment by adopting it. They are, in fact, indifferent Christians in the primitive sense, just as they are bad Christians in the antagonistic modern sense, and particularly on the side of ethics. If they actually accept the renunciations commanded by the Sermon on the Mount, it is only in an effort to flout their substance under cover of their appearance. No woman is really humble; she is merely politic. No woman, with a free choice before her, chooses self-immolation; the most she genuinely desires in that direction is a spectacular martyrdom. No ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... that we belong to God in actual fact of spiritual property and profoundest relationship. She had much to learn in this direction yet—as who has not who is ages in advance of life?—but this night came back to her, as it had often already returned, the memory of a sermon she had heard some twelve months before on the text, "Glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." It was a dull enough sermon, yet not so dull but it enabled her to supply in some degree its own lack; and when she went out of the dark church into the sunshine,—and heard ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... whatever else it may be thought well to do. When what a Boston worthy once termed "a holy alacrity" is observed, on the part of both minister and singers, even the aggregated services of Morning Prayer, Litany, and "Ante-Communion," together with a sermon five-and-twenty minutes long, can easily be brought within the compass of an hour and a half—a measure of time not unreasonably large to be given to the principal occasion of worship on the Lord's Day. As for the Evening ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... Epistles of S. Paul, in company with the Marchioness. Accordingly he repaired to this place, and was graciously received by the noble lady. She courteously remarked that he would probably enjoy a conversation with Michelangelo more than a sermon from Brother Ambrose, and after an interval of compliments a servant was sent to find him. It chanced that Buonarroti was walking with the man whom Francis of Holland calls "his old friend and colour-grinder," ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... the conversation just given, and therefore somewhere about the Christmas holidays of the year 1821, Pere Jerome delighted the congregation of his little chapel with the announcement that he had appointed to preach a sermon in French on the following sabbath—not there, ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... the editor of the "Annals of Newgate," published in 1754, relates a curious sermon which, he says, a friend of his heard delivered by a street-preacher about the time of Jack's execution. The orator, after animadverting on the great care men took of their bodies, and the little care they bestowed upon their souls, continued as follows, by way of exemplifying the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... the languid. It is a clear and full embodiment of the gospel of energy which awakens and upbraids the weak. In the original, its rush of rhymes produces on the nerves an almost delirious excitement. If it is taken as an oration, it is responded to as a great civic appeal; if as a sermon, it is sternly religious, and fills the heart with tears. In the solemn mountain air, with vague bells ringing high up among the glaciers, no one asks exactly what Brand expounds, nor whether it is perfectly coherent. Witnessed on the living stage, it takes ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... disavowing any personal ill will towards me, and solemnly declaring he had never uttered the words charged. I think Mr. Granger either showed me, or said there were affidavits of at least half a dozen respectable men who were present at the sermon, and swore no such expressions were uttered, and as many equally respectable who swore the contrary. But the clergyman expressed his gratification at the dismission of the prosecution. I write all this from memory, and after too long an interval of time to be certain of the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... youth Sam McPherson was new in the city he went on a Sunday afternoon to a down-town theatre to hear a sermon. The sermon was delivered by a small dark-skinned Boston man, and seemed to the young McPherson scholarly and ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... as the gyrations of a sea-gull seem the poet's moods and movements. We have now the reveries of a love-sick maiden, now the picture of a soul wrestling with despair and death; here a study from rural life, or a study in character, there a sermon on politics, or a descent into the depths of psychological truth, or a sketch from nature. But nothing could be more concentrated than the power employed to shape each fragment into form. What Pope says of the ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... this my first sermon, horrors to preacher as well as to "preachees." As I sat in the pulpit beside our pastor, listening to the tremulous tones of the organ which followed the prayer, and gazing at the sea of upturned faces, they seemed taunting me with ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... Dalton. "You'll never have any excuse for wearing so much gold. Have you heard what one of the boys said after the chaplain preached the sermon to us last Sunday about leading the children of Israel forty years ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... great popular chief were conveyed to Dublin, and on the 5th of August they were interred in the Glassnevin Cemetery. The day preceding the Reverend Dr. Miley preached his funeral sermon at the Metropolitan Chapel, Marlborough Street. It was an eloquent eulogy upon the character of the departed; his errors, personal and political, were passed over, and the idea pervaded the discourse that the departed was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... impossible for any human voice to reach his furthest hearers. Yet every word of the great preacher went with silvery tone and moving power, as if wafted on angel breathings, to the ears of sinners whom chance or grace had brought to join the immense crowd that surrounded his rude platform. Each sermon brought hundreds to repentance. Eyes that were long dry melted into tears, and hearts that were strangers to every sweet and holy influence throbbed with emotion. Efforts to check the pent-up feelings were expressed by louder and convulsive sobs; some knelt and prayed, others beat their breasts ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... doing that I was not taught at my mother's knee. And as for her, dear, simple soul, if you had asked her what was the Categorical Imperative (having explained beforehand the meaning of the words), she would have said, "The Sermon on the Mount." ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... little smiles and bows on acquaintances and friends. She markedly drew back her lips in speaking, being in no way ashamed of her long white teeth, and wore a practically perpetual smile when there was the least chance of being under observation. Though at sermon time on Sunday, as has been already remarked, she greedily noted the weaknesses and errors of which those twenty minutes was so rewardingly full, she sat all the time with down-dropped eyes and a pretty sacred smile on her lips, and now, when she spied on the other side of ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... starting, the whole corps marched to the cathedral; where mass was celebrated, a sermon preached, and a blessing solemnly prayed for for them. The boys had asked their father if he had any objections to their taking part in this ceremonial, in a Roman Catholic Church; but Captain Barclay had at once ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty

... was obliged to add that as he entertained the highest veneration for the clergy he could not "contemplate the magnificence of the cathedral without reflecting on the abject condition of those 'tatter'd crapes,' who are said to ply here for an occasional burial or sermon, with the same regularity as the happier drudges who salute us with the cry of 'coach, sir,' or 'chair, your honour.'" Somewhat late in the eighteenth century St. Paul's coffee-house had a distinguished visitor in the person of Benjamin Franklin, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... was sputtering out the last words of his sermon over the white caps of the peasant women, and the rough or pomatumed heads of the men. The large baskets of the farmer's wives who had come from a distance to attend mass, were on the ground beside them, and the heavy heat of a July day caused them all ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... the roofs of the ugly little clachan of Kilmaclavers, and the rigging of the fine new kirk of Threepdaidle. It was a Sabbath afternoon in the hot weather, and the man had been to kirk all the morning. He had heard a grand sermon from the minister (or it may have been the priest, for I am not sure of the date and the King told the story quickly)—a fine discourse with fifteen heads and three parentheses. He held all the parentheses and ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... Chapel is omitted. The full Liturgy is divided into two services—I forget the laws—and a kind of sermon in Mota is given; and in the afternoon, the Bishop, or one of the ordained members of the Mission, usually goes down to the town to relieve Mr. Nobbs in his service for ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... abundance of his heart, while tears streamed down his honest face, he gave utterance to his feelings of gratitude to God, and to them, for the blessedness of this holy day. The pathos and eloquence of the sermon had completely overcome him. David was a farmer, and after having been in your grandfather's employ, at first one thing and then another, for a year or two, he finally accepted an advantageous offer, to take charge ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless

... the opposite side; and after the erection of the Octagon was again placed there; in 1770 it was removed to the six eastern arches of the Cathedral, the space under the Octagon and the two bays eastward of it being used as a sermon-place.[38] It was again removed in 1852, and now commences at the eastern side of the Octagon, extending to the length of seven bays, (the stalled portion occupying three of them,) leaving the two eastern ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous

... aside for Longfellow, as Marjorie would do by and by, and, in his turn, she had given up Longfellow for Tennyson and Mrs. Browning, as, perhaps, Marjorie would never do. She had brought Jean Ingelow with her this morning to try "Brothers and a Sermon" and the "Songs of Seven" with Marjorie. Marjorie was a natural elocutionist; Miss Prudence was afraid of spoiling her by unwise criticism. The child must thoroughly appreciate a poem, forget herself, and then ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... cleansing themselves from every particle of the black paint with which they had been bedaubed. When the novices, now novices no more, emerged from the water, the high priest, standing on the river bank, preached to them an eloquent sermon on the duties and responsibilities which devolved on ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... people had collected to see how she would cry. The parson, a young fellow ambitious of becoming a great preacher, began his sermon and pointed to Marie. 'There,' he said, 'there is the cause of the death of this venerable woman'—(which was a lie, because she had been ill for at least two years)—'there she stands before you, and dares not lift her eyes from the ground, because she knows that the finger ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... is fruit, next the cereals, then the vegetables. All pure poets have abstained almost entirely from animal food. Especially should a minister take less meat when he has to write a sermon. The less meat the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... in her royal style; Fop-land the greatest part of this great isle! Nature did ne'er so equally divide A female heart 'twixt piety and pride: Her waiting-maids prevent the peep of day, And all in order at her toilet lay Prayer-books, patch-boxes, sermon-notes, and paint, At once t'improve the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... Negro the readiest appeal. Red is his favorite color simply because it is the most pronounced of all colors. The principle holds in the sphere of religion. In some of our communities Negroes are known to "get happy" in church. It is, however, seldom a sermon on the rule of faith or the plan of salvation that awakens such ecstasy, but rather a vivid portrayal of the beauties of heaven, with the walls of jasper, the feast of milk and honey, and the angels with palms in their hands. The appeal is primarily sensuous, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... Parson there [this was above seven years ago, in old Marischal's reign [See Letters to Marischal, "Leipzig, 9th March, 1761," "Breslau, 14th May, 1762:" in OEuvres de Frederic, xx. 282, 287.]] had set forth in a sermon, That considering the immense mercy of God, the pains of Hell could not last forever. The Synod shouted murder at such scandal; and has been struggling, ever since, to get the Parson exterminated. The affair was of my jurisdiction; for your Royal Highness must ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... discourses. As I nibble a peppermint from the bag before me—lingeringly, for the supply is being fast depleted—and the frail yet pungent odor fills my nostrils, I am once more in that half-filled church, on a Sabbath morning in early Spring, dozing through the sermon, with my head tumbling sleepily now and then against my father's shoulder. Slowly the scene comes back, in every least detail, the smallest sights and sounds of that morning all here, but all thin and faint and frail, spun of the gossamer web of memory. Can I hold ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... stupefying surprise as Mr Rumbold walked from his stall to the pulpit for the sermon. Generally he gave out the number of the short anthem which accompanied this manoeuvre, but today he made no such announcement. A discreet curtain hid the organist from the congregation, and veiled his gymnastics with the stops and his antic dancing on the pedals, and now when Mr Rumbold ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... does. When did you hear Mr. Wyvern preach a sermon without insisting on justice and unselfishness and love of our neighbour? If we try to be just and unselfish, and to love our neighbour as ourself, we help the cause of Socialism. Mr. Wyvern doesn't deal with politics—it is not necessary he should. That ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... ideas, practises them with the fanatic ardor of a neophyte. With his sister and several other religious people, he locks himself into his house to pray; he sings vespers and matins. In the meanwhile Matvey decides that he must read Jacob a sermon. ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... a tall, staid, solemn man, who walked slowly with long strides. He spoke very little, and generally looked as if he were pondering next Sunday's sermon. His head was grey, and a little bent, as if he were gathering truth from the ground. Once I came upon him in the garden, standing with his face up to heaven, and I thought he was seeing something ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald

... or call it sermon if you will, is meant principally for young girls, girls between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. If a girl has reached the age of twenty-eight or thirty and is willing to enter upon illicit sexual relations ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... special manner and a special store of jokes. When leading such through Palestine he always had a Bible up before him on the saddle; and every night would join them after dinner and preach a sermon on the subject of the next day's journey. This he would make as comical as possible for their amusement, for clergymen, he often used to say to me, are fond of laughter of a ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... in Lincoln about eight thousand German-Russian people; the most of them cannot follow an English sermon ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek

... ministers, now only traditional, who drank their half-mug of flip at funerals, went to balls to look benignantly on the scene of pleasure, came home at ten o'clock to write "the improvement" to their Sunday's sermon, took the other half-mug, and went to bed peaceably and in charity with the whole parish. They have gone, with the stagecoaches and country-newspapers; and the places that knew them will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... Mrs. Brett. "I just had three hours to spare while William was busy over his sermon for next Sunday. He is writing a new sermon—he hasn't done that for quite six months—and he said he wanted the house to himself, and no excuse for any one to come in. And he just asked me if I'd like to have a peep into ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... continually for better and cleaner government as the evils of boss rule became more visible. One of them, Bishop Potter, of New York, gained wide hearing through a sermon preached at the centennial of the Constitution, in 1887, in which he turned from the usual patriotic congratulation to discuss actual government. The keenest interest in the subject was aroused by the American Commonwealth ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... add reasons of weight, which might materially advantage you and your father's house, thereby to determine you to abide at Wolf's Crag, until this harvest season shall be passed over. But what sayeth the proverb, verbum sapienti—a word is more to him that hath wisdom than a sermon to a fool. And albeit we have written this poor scroll with our own hand, and are well assured of the fidelity of our messenger, as him that is many ways bounden to us, yet so it is, that sliddery ways crave wary walking, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... Father S—— concluded to give us the sermon before he did the bride. He was afraid some of his audience would leave. Accordingly there ensued a prayer half an hour long, after which eight verses of a long meter psalm were sung to the tune of Windham. ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes

... nothing said, any more than as if he were a brute beast, did not seem befitting the obsequies of so old a man and so faithful a Christian. The family had natural feelings on that subject. They wanted to have a funeral sermon. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... Caroline stood in awe, she had allowed her eye to seek Robert's pew, and to rest awhile on its occupant. He was there alone. Hortense had been kept at home by prudent considerations relative to the rain and a new spring chapeau. During the sermon he sat with folded arms and eyes cast down, looking very sad and abstracted. When depressed, the very hue of his face seemed more dusk than when he smiled, and to-day cheek and forehead wore their most tintless and sober olive. By instinct Caroline ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... purpose; the speaker's whole design is to exalt and enthrone one of the two, and he uses the other only as a foil and to enable him the better to give effect to his purpose. Obviously, with us, it is usually Hellenism which is thus reduced to minister to the triumph of Hebraism. There is a sermon on Greece and the Greek spirit by a man never to be mentioned without interest and respect, Frederick Robertson, in which this rhetorical use of Greece and the Greek [145] spirit, and the inadequate exhibition of them necessarily consequent upon this, is almost ludicrous, and would ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... woman, and on the sweet young head and innocent countenance of the little child so close to her side. Ah, often has the Rector, standing in the shadow, gazed with love and gratitude on this scene—a scene of heaven upon the earth, a picture artists love to paint, a sermon without words, an evening incense, the strong, prevailing prayer of Youth ...
— Irish Ned - The Winnipeg Newsy • Samuel Fea

... every variety of quality, and, from sheer poverty of thought, or fear of saying anything definite, wrap up everything indiscriminately in this characterless domino, speaking at the same breath of a nice cheese-cake, a nice tragedy, a nice sermon, a nice day, a nice country, as if a universal deluge of niaiserie—for nice seems originally to have been only niais—had whelmed the whole island." Nice is as good a word as any other in its place, but its place is not everywhere. We talk very properly about a nice distinction, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... of the Buddha's Fire Sermon (which corresponds in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken, will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren's Buddhism in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one of the great pioneers of ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot

... or an atheist, it is very difficult for him to be anything like a Christian. Even my devotion yesterday was not worth much, for my thoughts went vagabondising off to Charlotte Halliday in the midst of a very sensible practical sermon. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... "that she will never try to spoil her voice with opera. The great singers give me the chills, and the creeps, and the shivers, the most terrible feeling, which I never had since the day Monsignor preached his first sermon, and broke down." ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... what book it was I have forgotten, if I ever knew. No matter for that; the quotation is, that "stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant." If it has reference to the pleasures which I have enjoyed with Eliza, I like it hugely, as Tristram Shandy's father said of Yorick's sermon; and I think ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... subject, if you please," interrupted the Admiral, with a mingled look of impatience and disgust. "You are not a missionary, you tell me, and I'm hanged if I'm going to listen to a sermon in my own cabin just now. Yet I have already given you as much of my time as if you were one. But don't trespass on ...
— Officer And Man - 1901 • Louis Becke

... and State, and the first article of their creed would be—slavery is a divine institution. He quoted largely from the Old and New Testaments—from Moses and St. Paul, to prove the divinity of slavery, and said the sermon on the Mount had been mistranslated. His argument is cogent to prove that monarchy and aristocracy should favor slavery as the best means of keeping down, the working classes, now clamoring in England for the right ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... given, I regret to say, cannot convey any adequate idea of this powerful, excellent, and appropriate sermon. It was listened to with intense interest by the congregation, many of whom were affected to tears. In the afternoon we attended church again, when we heard a good, plain, and practical discourse from the rector; but, unfortunately, he had neither the talent, nor the natural ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... what? Oh me! I have hearde such a long Sermon on Marriage-duty and Service, that I am faine to sit down and weepe. But no, I must not, for they are waiting for me in the Hall, and the Guests are come and the Musick is tuning, and my Lookes must not betray me.—And now farewell, Journall; for Rose, who first bade me keepe you (little ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... works? By mere outward forms and ceremonies, church-goings, psalm-singings, sermon-hearings? Not so. These are right and good; but they are dead works, which cannot take away sin, any more than could the gifts and sacrifices, the meats and drinks of the old Jewish law. Those, says St. Paul, could not make him that did the sacrifice perfect as pertaining ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... tired and excited, and his brain, full of pictures. This was his first wedding, and he was haunted by a vision of his sister's little white form, and her face with its starry eyes. She was gone—his no more! How fearful the Wedding March had sounded on that organ—that awful old wheezer; and the sermon! One didn't want to hear that sort of thing when one felt inclined to cry. Even Gordy had looked rather boiled when he was giving her away. With perfect distinctness he could still see the group before the altar ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... experience have increased the admiration of it. Time and criticism have not shaken it. It stands with ordinance and law, charter and constitution, prophecy and revelation, whether we read them in the history of Babylon, the results of Runnymede, the Ten Commandments, or the Sermon on the Mount. But, however worthy of our reverence and admiration, however preeminent, it was only one incident of a great forward movement of the human race, of which the American Revolution was itself only a larger incident. It was not so ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... take up this little word "Come!" Sometimes people forget the text of a sermon; but this text will be short enough for any one to remember. Let me ring out a chime of Gospel bells, every one of which says, "Come!" The first bell ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody

... must decrease, but He must increase." He held up Jesus Christ and introduced Him to the world, and Herod had not power to behead him until his life work had been accomplished. Stephen never preached but one sermon that we know of, and that was before the Sanhedrim; but how that sermon has been preached again and again all over the world! Out of his death probably came Paul, the greatest preacher the world has seen since Christ left this earth. If a man is sent by Jehovah, there is no such thing ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody

... Fourth of July and muster, of course, were not forgotten, and while Christmas was almost unnoticed Thanksgiving we never failed to mark with all its social and religious significance. Almost everybody went to meeting, and the sermon, commonly reviewing the year, was regarded as an event. The home-coming of the absent family members and the reunion at a bountiful dinner became the universal custom. There were no distractions in the way of professional football or other games. The service, the family, and plenty ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... room for them in the inn) to the crowning death on the hill of Calvary outside the city wall, all of its important events took place out-of-doors. Except the discourse in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, all of its great words, from the sermon on the mount to the last commission to the disciples, were spoken in the open air. How shall we understand it unless we carry it under the free sky and interpret it in ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... Carmelite monk who came to preach at a village and after his sermon, he went to dine with a lady, and how he stuffed out his ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... church, but he was a reproof even unto his elders. One Sunday afternoon, in the Connecticut village where my brother-in-law used to spend his summers, when half of the congregation was slumbering under the combined effect of the heat, a lunch of cheese and apples, and the sermon, my nephew, then aged five, sat bolt upright in the pew, winkless as a demon hearing a new candidate suspected of shakiness on a "a card'nal p'int," and mortified almost to death poor old Mrs. Pringle, who, compassionating his years, had handed him a sprig of her ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow

... can; God will judge in the matter!' He had to complain besides of indifference and immorality in his immediate neighbourhood, among his Wittenbergers. Thus he addressed, on Midsummer Day 1534, after his sermon, a severe rebuke to drunkards who rioted in taverns during the time of Divine service, and he exhorted the magistrates to do their duty by proceeding against them, so as not to incur the punishment of the ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... of the church, and it was as though the congregation sat there under shimmering glass. The waves of light shifted, rose and fell above the bonnets and hats and bare heads, and all the little choir boys fell asleep during the sermon. ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... du Magnet., p. 183) relates the case of a young man, possessed of an ordinary memory, but who, in somnambulism, could repeat almost word for word a sermon he had heard or a book he ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... sermon was over everybody in that part of the church had their handkerchiefs to their noses, and they looked at Pa and Ma scandalous, and the two ushers they come around in the pews looking for a dog, and when the minister got over his sermon, and wiped the perspiration off his face, he said ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck

... quick succession of ideas necessary for a successful author. Not only was he master of writing, but of the kindred art of rhetoric. He makes a correction in the accentuation of Corporal Trim, who begins to read a sermon with ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... of Mrs. Johnson in the church of Bromley, in Kent, to which he was probably led by the residence of his friend Hawkesworth at that place. The funeral sermon which he composed for her, which was never preached, but having been given to Dr. Taylor, has been published since his death, is a performance of uncommon excellence, and full of rational and pious comfort to such as are depressed by that severe affliction which ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... is the greater evil. I think if there is no other way to constructive service except through test oaths and declarations, one must take then. This is a particular case that stands apart from all other cases. The man who preaches a sermon and pretends therein to any belief he does not truly hold is an abominable scoundrel, but I do not think he need trouble his soul very greatly about the barrier he stepped over to get into the pulpit, if he felt the call to preach, so long as the preaching be honest. A Republican ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... the navy who volunteered for land service. On the 30th October, a seven days' fast was ordered, to secure the Divine blessing on the undertaking, and the chaplain was directed to preach an appropriate sermon. ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph

... faithful in a very little.' Some of you may remember a recent sermon on the previous part of this parable, in which I tried to bring out an explanation of the small sum with which these servants were entrusted—the pound apiece for their little retail businesses—and found reason to believe that the interpretation of that gift was the Gospel ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... be carried farther. A reversion to the letter of the New Testament writers has been often attempted by considerable religious leaders of our time, especially Tolstoi and the Quakers. They have gone back to the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount, and tried literally to abide by them. But it has become apparent to all but fanatics that such procedure would be fatal to civil government and civilized life. It is the spirit not the letter of the teaching of Jesus which is life-giving. In just the same way an acceptance ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... of mind D.W.]. I do not know any one rule so unexceptionably useful and necessary in every part of life. I shall therefore take it for my text to-day, and as old men love preaching, and I have some right to preach to you, I here present you with my sermon upon these words. To proceed, then, regularly and PULPITICALLY, I will first show you, my beloved, the necessary connection of the two members of my text 'suaviter in modo: fortiter in re'. In the next place, I shall set forth the advantages and utility resulting from a strict observance of the precept ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... upon him from without, too little a force within him which he has been helped to develop, such as is alone powerful enough to contend with a desire itself arising spontaneously from within. And when the sermon is accompanied by exhortations to pray against temptation, it is sometimes not only useless, but (again in the case of the ordinary boy) positively harmful. For to get into the habit of praying against temptation means to get into the habit of thinking about it, to become self-conscious, and ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... who a sermon flies!" retorted Ronald, laughingly. "And a man is easy to hit who sits down with folded hands, like him of whom my rhythmic shaft has just made a target. But, to speak seriously, do you wonder that true ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... ended, there was a sermon from a high priest who stood out imperious among his fellows. But this was not a sermon to the flock. It was aimed at the scanty audience of strangers with words of unblushing directness. How men and women may continue pure in the constant hearing and repetition ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... Why we are here, whence we come, whither we go—these are questions which man is organically framed and forced to ask himself, and that would not be the case if they could not be answered. As for churches depending on councils, the first council was held more than three centuries after the Sermon on the Mount. We Syrians had churches in the interval; no one can deny that. I bow before the divine decree that swept them away from Antioch to Jerusalem, but I am not yet prepared to transfer my spiritual ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... then filling the largest area ever tilled on British soil with their fat promise. Wheat, oats, and barley stood once more erect, roots were saved, and the young vicar of Ipscombe was reflecting as he walked towards Great End Farm that his harvest festival sermon might now after all be rather easier to write than had seemed probable during the foregoing anxious weeks of chill ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... abbot. "Gart, my son, call the atheist to dinner. I'll hit him with a spoon on the forehead; an atheist understands a sermon best of all if you hit him ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... part in this ceremony; but they replied that being Catholics they could not make offerings at an altar of which they disapproved. So the herald king returned, much put out at the harmony of the assembly being disturbed by this dissent; but the alms-offering took place no less than the sermon. Then, as a last attempt, he sent to them again, to tell them that the service was quite over, and that accordingly they might return for the royal ceremonies, which belonged only to the religion of the dead; and this time ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... felt that he must cast everything aside, and offer himself for the fray. But then he had called himself a Christian, he believed in the teaching of the Prince of Peace. How could a man, believing in the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount, accepting the dictum, "Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you," do his utmost to murder men who believed in the same ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... says, "They are more than we are, and stand against us, like the trench round a garden bed." Rav Huni says, "Everyone has a thousand on his left hand, and ten thousand on his right hand." Rabba says, "The want of room at the sermon is from them, the wearing out of the Rabbis' clothes is from their rubbing against them, bruised legs are from them." "Whosoever wishes to know their existence, let him take ashes passed through a sieve, ...
— Hebrew Literature

... daughter of John Simpson, proprietor of an inn near Banff. Having quarrelled with her husband, Robert Buchan, a potter of Greenock, she settled with her children in Glasgow, where she was deeply impressed by a sermon preached by Hugh White, minister of the Relief church at Irvine. She persuaded White and others that she was a saint with a special mission, that in fact she was the woman, and White the man-child, described in Revelation xii. White was condemned ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... agitation, painful agitation.... Yet, strange to say, the eager, bright, laughing something, which had struck me at my first glance at Tarhov, still did not leave that agitated, that troubled face! I could not make up my mind whether or no to congratulate myself on the success of my sermon, when Tarhov suddenly got up, and pressing both my hands, said, speaking very quickly, 'Thank you, thank you. You're right, of course, ... though, on the other side, one might observe ... What is your Baburin you make so much of, after all? An ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... the slightest degree with the incriminated book. He had also seen the Grand Penitentiary, that tall old man, with fleshless, ascetic face, of whom he had previously caught a glimpse at the Boccanera mansion, and from whom he now only drew a long and severe sermon on the wickedness of young priests, whom the century had perverted and who wrote most abominable books. Finally, at the Vatican, he had seen the Cardinal Secretary, in some wise his Holiness's Minister of Foreign ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... new ones. Nothing but the levity of the pews could be guilty of such a suspicion. The preacher knows that one squeezing does not take all the juice out of an orange; and how much jucier a fruit is a good sermon! Moreover, the pews are so pachydermatous, so rhinoceros-skinned, that nothing but an incessant pelting upon the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... Johnson," said he, "Grandfather's chair came into the possession of Roger Williams. He was a clergyman, who arrived at Salem, and settled there in 1631. Doubtless the good man has spent many a studious hour in this old chair, either penning a sermon or reading some abstruse book of theology, till midnight came upon him unawares. At that period, as there were few lamps or candles to be had, people used to read or work by the light of pitch-pine torches. These supplied ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... public some larger account of the life and character of this illustrious person, than I could conveniently insert in my sermon on the sad occasion of his death, I was secure, that if Providence continued my capacity of writing, I should not wholly disappoint the expectation; for I was furnished with a variety of particulars which appeared to me worthy of general notice, in consequence of that ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge

... associated (though only as sleeping partner) in a book which can stand by itself in an independent unity on the shelves of libraries. For there is always this drawback from the pleasure of printing a sermon, that, whereas the queasy stomach of this generation will not bear a discourse long enough to make a separate volume, those religious and godly-minded children (those Samuels, if I may call them so) of the brain must at first lie buried in an undistinguished ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... touch this fair but unsavory plant, as a kind of men that are supercilious beyond comparison, and to that too, implacable; lest setting them about my ears, they attack me by troops and force me to a recantation sermon, which if I refuse, they straight pronounce me a heretic. For this is the thunderbolt with which they fright those whom they are resolved not to favor. And truly, though there are few others that less willingly acknowledge the kindnesses I have done them, yet even ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... home, nothing was to be read in his crusty face of all that he had suffered and planned that day. The young wife and Valentine had to listen to a sermon on unfounded imaginings, for the story had proved to be as it was, not as Valentine had imagined it in his fear. He spoke of Fritz Nettenmair's trip as one which his son had had in contemplation for a long time but to which he had not consented until today. Apollonius ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... the Baccalaureate sermon from Gen. 5:24. All the graduates are Christians; all but two of the Academy, and three-fourths of the grammar pupils of the year have ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various

... best reply I could make was: "You'll undoubtedly be hanged sometime; and if I were a minister, nothing would give me more satisfaction than to be present at your execution and preach your funeral sermon." He replied: "Now, Colonel, you don't mean that. You don't think I'll ever be hanged!"—"Indeed I do, if you don't stop your profanity and general cussedness."—"I'll be hanged, if I will," was ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... a body got was just seein' a tired, stray pony eatin' grass. The first time he tried that game they gathered up a posse an' ran him down; but he pulled a Bible on 'em showin' where he got his commission from, threw a sermon into 'em 'at converted two an' made one other sign the pledge, an' that put an end to any unsolicited interference in his line o' work. He was a big man with two right hands, an' some one gave him the name of Friar ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... eat bread, hence a mere willing slave to the beck of his lord and master, the patron, and but a parrot in the pulpit, the schoolmaster not only endeavoured to pour his feelings and desires into the mould of his prayers, but listened to the sermon with a countenance that revealed no distaste for the weak and unsavoury broth ladled out him to nourish his soul withal. When however the service—though whose purposes the affair could be supposed to serve except those of Mr Cairns ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... get a meenister like auld Angus McGregor!" said Store Thompson. "Ah jist heerd him once, but it was a veesitation, aye, jist a veesitation, like. D'ye mind yon sermon, Lauchie, on 'Simon Peter, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... Bible would kindle me into glowing resentment, expressed with no less sincerity than earnestness, and as a matter of duty I devoted some time every Sabbath-day to the perusal of God's word, with which I had become more extensively acquainted by reading it during sermon-time at church. I well know that even then, and at a much earlier period too, conviction of my own sinfulness was working very deeply, though not permanently, in my mind: it was not an abiding impression, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... appeared, and the talkers were silent until the litany ended and the organ began again. Under the prolonged rustle of settling for the sermon, more whispers passed. ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... head in reply. The frame was too small for even the slim Cicely to squeeze through. The girls sat down and surveyed the piles of treasure around them with dismay. If they had required a sermon on the vanity of riches, it was there without ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... sermon, and to Mary's thinking was very disagreeable, and not at all deserved. Did her husband really mean to tell her that, because his sisters chose to dress themselves down in the country like dowdy old maids whom the world had deserted, she was to ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... powerfully, the Gospel of St. John, too much Greek metaphysics, too much gnosis;[250] granted that this Gospel might have looked too like what he knew already to be a total surprise to him: what, then, would he have said to the Sermon on the Mount, to the twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew? What would have become of his notions of the exitiabilis superstitio, of the "obstinacy of the Christians"? Vain question! yet the greatest charm ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... day, the banners of the company and the royal standard were consecrated in the cathedral church of Panama; a sermon was preached before the little army by Fray Juan de Vargas, one of the Dominicans selected by the government for the Peruvian mission; and mass was performed, and the sacrament administered to every soldier ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... proof of his kinship with the preadamite family of the Saurians. Shall we send missionaries to the Bear to warn him against raw chestnuts, because they are sometimes so discomforting to our human intestines, which are so like his own? One sermon from the colic were ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... unnecessary violence; but the principle is the same: there are no false pretences involved: the child learns in a straightforward way that it does not pay to be inconsiderate. Also, perhaps, that Mamma, who made the child learn the Sermon on the Mount, is ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... nowadays? Where shall we be if the finest specimens of them have no leisure to perpetuate the race? Are only the stupid and unoriginal, unattractive ones to have this responsibility? I wish I dared get up a sermon on these lines; ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... some bear's-grease," said Miss Jessamine, tying a knot in her pocket-handkerchief)—not to burst in at the parlor door, not to talk at the top of his voice, not to crumple his Sunday frill, and to sit quite quiet during the sermon, to be sure to say "sir" to the General, to be careful about rubbing his shoes on the doormat, and to bring his lesson-books to his aunt at once that she might iron down the dogs' ears. The General arrived, and for the first day all went well, except that ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing

... sermon preached in Christ Church, London, on charity schools, May 9th, 1745, recognizes the principle that the property of the state should educate the children of the state. "Formerly," says he, "not only the education of poor children, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... one instant Barbara would burst into the gayest laughter, and the next have to restrain her tears. Rarely would Wingfold enter a sick-chamber, especially that of a cottage, with a long face and a sermon in his soul; almost always he walked lightly in, with a cheerful look, and not seldom an odd story on his tongue, well pleased when he could make the sufferer laugh—better pleased sometimes when he had made him sorry. He did not find those that laughed the readiest the hardest ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... terms which were those no less of her character than of her time, in the lasting enjoyment of a publicity which her husband denied it in his lifetime; but it had no more to say now than it had so many, many years ago. As, a piece of personal history it is amusing enough, and as a sermon in stone it preaches whatever moral you choose to read into it. But as the masterpiece of the sculptor it testifies to an ideal of his art for which the world has reason to be grateful. Criticism does not now put Canova on the height where we once looked up to ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... readers); Friedrich being found ready. He signs the Oath, as well as audibly swears it: whereupon his sword is restored to him, and his prison-door opened. He steps forth to the Town Church with his Commissioners; takes the sacrament; listens, with all Custrin, to an illusive Sermon on the subject; "text happily chosen, preacher handling it well." Text was Psalm Seventy-seventh, verse eleventh (tenth of our English version), And I said, This is my infirmity; but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Host High; or, as Luther's version more ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... had folded her arms, and for the last minute or two sat like a person compelled to listen to a sermon. Now she unfolded her arms, and looked at Fraisier as she said, "Monsieur, all that you say concerning your interests has the merit of clearness; but my own interests in the matter are by no ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... public meeting to organize a church congregation. The Rev. Elisha Mosely, a Presbyterian minister, was thereupon engaged for six months, and during that period held the first regular religious services in Cooperstown. He preached the first Thanksgiving sermon in the village, on November 26, 1795, in ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... resignation. William de Lorris took him by the hand and led him to the garden of the Rose. The illustrious Chaucer invited him to follow the gay troop of pilgrims along the highroad to Canterbury. The grave Gower, announcing in advance a sermon of several hours, begged him to be seated, and to the murmur of his wise talk, his head leaning on the window ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... that the dissatisfaction was with some of the methods adopted in the proceedings, and not with the prosecutions themselves. Increase Mather and Samuel Willard signed the paper indorsing Deodat Lawson's famous sermon, which surely drove on the prosecutions; and the former expressed, in print, his approbation of his son Cotton's "Wonders of the Invisible World," in which he labors to defend the witchcraft prosecutions, and to make it out that those who suffered were ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... ABOUT COOKING OR SEWING OR HOUSEKEEPING.—I am inclined to make my answer to this question somewhat concise, after the manner of a text without the sermon. Like this: To be the "best wife" depends upon three things: first, an abiding faith with God; second, duty lovingly discharged as daughter, wife and mother; third, self-improvement, mentally, physically, spiritually. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... chasuble. Hearing, however, that there might be some opposition, he did not wait till the day proposed. On Christmas-day, 1521, he preached in the parish church on the necessity of quitting the mass and receiving the sacrament in both kinds. After the sermon he went to the altar, pronounced the words of consecration in German; then, turning to the people, without elevating the host, he distributed the bread and wine to all, saying, "This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant." At the end he gave a public absolution ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston

... by so short a question, to draw such a sermon on yourself? I daresay you did not. But the consequences of foreign education are alarming to me, as an American. I sin, therefore, through zeal, whenever I enter on the subject. You are sufficiently American to pardon me for it. Let me hear of your health, and be assured of the esteem ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... one to preach the Thanksgiving sermon, I found one of the rarest men that it has ever been my privilege to know. This was the Rev. Robert C. Bedford, a white man from Wisconsin, who was then pastor of a little coloured Congregational church in Montgomery, Ala. Before going to Montgomery to look ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington

... it was some better motive than the sightseer's that at least partly caused me to make myself part of the congregation listening to a sermon in the Abbey on the Sunday afternoon of my last visit. But the stir of the place's literary associations began with the sight of Longfellow's bust, which looks so much like him, in the grand simplicity of his looks, as he was when he lived; and then presently the effigies of all the "dear sons ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... a rather dreadful thing. I am going to divide criticism into six heads. By the bye, I am not sure that sermons now-a-days are any better than they used to be in the good old times, when there were always three heads at least to every sermon. Criticism should be—1. Appreciative. 2. Proportionate. 3. Appropriate. 4. Strong. 5. Natural. ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... Sergeant Mahoney portrayed in these accounts. On July 31, 1855, it is recorded under his name: "1 Flask $.75". On August 20th, the same officer paid seventy-five cents for a bottle of cider. And the chaplain would have had an excellent illustration for his next sermon on intemperance if he could have read, as we can to-day, this melancholy note made in the sutler's book on October 17th: "Sergeant Mahoney, Cash ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen

... attend church each Sunday. The same church was used by the slave owners and their slaves. The owners attended church in the morning at eleven o'clock and the slaves attended at three o'clock. A white minister did all of the preaching. "De bigges' sermon he preached", says Mr. Lewis, "was to read de Bible an' den tell us to be smart an' not to steal chickens, eggs, an' butter, fum our marsters." All baptising was done by this ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... to get away and think it over, but the solemn Sunday must be observed. She must fold away her church things, put on another frock and come down to the oppressive Sunday dinner, hear Deacon Brown's rheumatism discussed, or listen to a long comparison of the morning's sermon with one preached twenty years ago by the minister, now long dead upon the same text. It was all very hard to keep her mind upon, with these other thoughts rushing pell-mell through her brain; and when Aunt Amelia asked her to ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... pen; for vain were the fancy, by treatise or sermon or poem or tale, to persuade a man to forget himself. He cannot if he would. Sooner will he forget the presence of a raging tooth. There is no forgetting of ourselves but in the finding of our deeper, our true self—God's idea of us when ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... every Sunday morning, and from his fiddling dragged straight to church. It was the only thing man could have done for his conversion, for then his heart was open, But I fear the prayers would have closed it before the sermon came. He should rather have been compelled to take his fiddle to church with him, and have a gentle scrape at it in the pauses of the service; only there are no such pauses in the service, alas! And Dooble Sanny, though not too religious ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... to the great scene in 'Nathan the Wise'. Saladin wants truth, Philip wants a man. Both the prophets prepare themselves for their ordeal in a brief soliloquy. Both monarchs get their wish, and a friendly relation ensues. Both scenes are purple patches of didacticism,—the author preaching a sermon to his contemporaries. Unfortunately Schiller did not have at hand a matchless fable to make his doctrine concrete and give it human interest. In places his language is abstract and difficult to follow, but taken as a whole the scene is admirable in its denotation of Posa's manly independence ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... misconstrue what he had said under privilege of a jest, but after what had once passed between them she had not considered that love, even in the abstract, might serve as a mocking text for any humour or jesting sermon from a man who had asked her what he once asked—the man she had loved enough to weep for when she had refused him only because she lacked what he asked for. Knowing that she loved him in her own innocent fashion, scarcely credulous ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... couch in the recess. Chests of gold. A pirates' lair. The ancient coins. Peculiar articles of ornament. The lid with mocking lock. Rings; bracelets. The buccaneers. The sermon. Ghastly relics. A perceptible movement in the atmosphere. Startling supposition. A possible outlet in the side of the hill. The slab of carbonate. The writing on it. An accident and the finding of other skeletons. The light shining into the cave. Discovery of the outlet. View of the cataract ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay

... time the culprits were usually taken to St. Mary's Church, where the officiating clergyman preached their funeral sermon. Next they would inspect their graves, and sometimes even test their capabilities by seeing if they were large enough to hold their remains. Frequently they would put on their shrouds, and in various ways try to show that they were indifferent to their impending fate. Then they ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews



Words linked to "Sermon" :   preaching, discourse, lecture, kerygma, kerugma, church, Sermon on the Mount, sermonize, speech, baccalaureate



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