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Heathenism   Listen
noun
Heathenism  n.  
1.
The religious system or rites of a heathen nation; idolatry; paganism.
2.
The manners or morals usually prevalent in a heathen country; ignorance; rudeness; barbarism.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Heathenism" Quotes from Famous Books



... or a policy like that of Mary, would have been. Down even to the very close of the reign of Elizabeth, the people were in a state somewhat resembling that in which, as Machiavelli says, the inhabitants of the Roman empire were, during the transition from heathenism to Christianity; "sendo la maggior parte di loro incerti a quale Dio dovessero ricorrere." They were generally, we think, favourable to the royal supremacy. They disliked the policy of the Court of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... be traced the unyielding devotion of the Jews, after the Captivity, for the rites and forms and ceremonies which are found in the books of the Law. The legalisms of the Scribes may be traced to him. He reigned but twelve years after his great reformation,—not long enough to root out the heathenism which had prevailed unchecked for nearly seventy years. With him perished the hopes of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... altercation, and they said exceedingly naughty things to each other in loud voices, but at last they came to an agreement, and Laban said he would give up his children, grandchildren and cattle, but he was bound to have his "gods" or know the reason why. The entire story is a curious mixture of heathenism and belief ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley

... impossible for him to discriminate calmly between the good and the pernicious, between the purely human and poetic and the depraved elements in the sports practised by his people during their period of heathenism. There was nothing halfway about Malo. Having abandoned a system, his nature compelled him to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... that one savage tribe will enslave another, or in the sense that the cynical politicians of recent times watched with a horrible hopefulness for the evanescence of the Irish. Both conquerors and conquered were heathen, and both had the institutions which seem to us to give an inhumanity to heathenism: the triumph, the slave-market, the lack of all the sensitive nationalism of modern history. But the Roman Empire did not destroy nations; if anything, it created them. Britons were not originally proud of being Britons; but they were proud of being Romans. The ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... deeply impressed and gave orders that the reforms called for by the new law should be carried out. Officers went all up and down the villages and towns of Judah tearing down the little temples, or "high places," where so much heathenism had been practiced. And the people were told that several times each year they were to bring their sacrifices to the temple at Jerusalem. Those were also good days for the common people. There was a king now who "judged the cause of the ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... satisfactory. Dr. Begg, too, in his striking and able pamphlet on the "Ecclesiastical and Social Evils of Scotland," refers to "symptoms of a nation's degeneracy which seem multiplying in Scotland;" also to a "growing amount of heathenism and drunkenness." ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... "Look at the mothers in Oraibi to-morrow. See what heathenism has done for them." He passed on and Van Shaw who had stared at Masters as he spoke said to Helen—"They're queer beggars, ain't they. But I don't believe in trying to change them. They belong here. Might as well let 'em go on the way they've been ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... (discourses) on theology every year,—and this, twenty, thirty, fifty years together. They read a great many religious books besides. The clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except what they preach themselves. A dull preacher might be conceived, therefore, to lapse into a state of quasi heathenism, simply for want of religious instruction. And on the other hand, an attentive and intelligent hearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers, might become actually better educated in theology than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... the notion of faithfulness. It is not possible in heathenism. 'Dumb idols,' which have given their worshippers no promises, cannot be thought of as faithful. By its grand conception of Jehovah as entering into a covenant with Israel, the Old Testament presents Him to our trust ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... would scarcely expect the most disturbed period in the history of the European people to have produced a Venantius Fortunatus, the greatest and most celebrated poet of the sixth century. His whole personality, as well as his poetry, shewed the blending of heathenism and Christianity, of Germanism and Romanism, and it is only now and then among the Roman elegists and later epic poets that we meet a feeling for Nature which can be compared to his. Like all the poets of ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... was taken by the Slavs in the Crusades. They had hardly any of the spirit of chivalry, and their belief, during their period of barbaric heathenism, was not so romantic and ideal ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... at Corinth there were two different sections of society; first there were those who had been introduced into the church through Judaism, and afterwards those who had been converted from different forms of heathenism. Now it is well known, that it was the tendency of Judaism highly to venerate the marriage state, and just in the same proportion to disparage that of celibacy, and to place those who led a single life under a stigma and disgrace. Those converts therefore, entered ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... There comes a recrudescence of heathenism. Yet faith sees still the leaven at work. An old man's daughter went away to our Santee School and returned a believer in the Christian way. She taught her father what she had learned, and prayed for him. He yielded to her faith and threw away his fetishes after a hard struggle with all the past ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen

... long and far a sin reaches! Solomon's idolatry bears fruit in the breaking up of the nation and the lapse of half of it into heathenism. What a disappointment to God, who had done and borne so much for ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... at an earlier time (I. Kings xviii. 27). A desire to convert the heathen, by proving the absurdity of their idol-worship, may be inferred from the last clause of v. 27, compared with vv. 5, 25. As the history of Susanna deals with errors of Jewish practice, so does this writing with the errors of heathenism. ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney

... when we mentioned it to the guides, they appeared completely horror-struck at the notion of it. Here, as elsewhere in the neighbourhood of volcanic activity, the common people have a superstitious dread of a presiding deity; in this place, especially, where they are scarcely rescued from heathenism, we were not surprised to find it. This, and their personal fears, (no human being ever having, as the natives assured us, entered the crater in darkness,) we then found insuperable: all we could do was to take the best guides we were able to procure with us by daylight, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... and orderly retribution under Providence for family sins and the old spurning of the law. 'T was right, in her exalted view, that she should struggle and agonize and wrestle with Satan for much time to come, before she should fully cleanse her bedraggled skirts of all taint of heathenism, and stand upon the high plane with herself, among ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... country, their separation from pagan degradation and cruelty, has been attended with many advantages to themselves. They have seen neither the superstitions of idolatry, nor the unnatural cruelties of heathenism. They are not destitute of those sympathies and attachments which would adorn the most polished circles. In demonstration of this, we have only to make ourselves acquainted with the fervour and tenderness ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb

... They take top-boots and mackintoshes from across the water, and caricature our fashions; they read a little, very little, Shakespeare, and caricature our poetry: and while in David's time art and religion were only a caricature of Heathenism, now, on the contrary, these two commodities are imported from Germany; and distorted caricatures originally, are still farther distorted on passing ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... since we have seen one of your profession, or attended religious services, that the days seem too much alike; there is little here to remind us that the Sabbath should be kept holy. O, it is so dreadful—so like heathenism—to live without the ordinances of the gospel! No Sunday school for our children and youth, no servant of God to counsel the dying, comfort the bereaved, and point the ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... working together, her eyes set, all the slow years of ruin that had eaten into her brain rising before her, all the tainted blood in her veins of centuries of slavery and heathenism struggling to drag her down. But above all, the Hope rose clear, simple: the trust in the Master: and shone in her scarred face,—through ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... this passage as dating the time and place of the poem relatively to the times of heathenism. Cf. the opening lines, In days of yore, etc., as if the story, even then, were ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... there arose in the midst of a gross heathenism, with all its great immoralities, a rapidly growing community, which demanded purity of life and conduct from its communicants and supreme allegiance to Christ, the Lord and Saviour; how strong it was is shown by the fact that the Roman Empire tried to stamp it out, failed, ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... the gods, and the numerous and extravagant demands of a cunning and avaricious priesthood, made the heathenism of ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... seems to have been 'the better man of the two'; and Aquila drops comparatively into the background. Now, such a couple, and a couple in which the wife took the foremost place, was an absolute impossibility in heathenism. They are a specimen of what Christianity did in the primitive age, all over the Empire, and is doing to-day, everywhere—lifting woman to her proper place. These two, yoked together in 'all exercise of noble end,' and helping one another in Christian work, and bracketed together by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... grey. It seemed well to seek out some young Japanese thinker and take his view of that "heathenism" concerning which Uchimura had delivered himself so unsparingly. Let me speak of my first visit ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... that a song may be almost wholly ancient, that is, composed anterior to the Conquest, and yet display a few later allusions introduced by the person who preserved it in writing, so as to remove from it the flavor of heathenism. Some probable instances of this kind will be pointed out in ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton

... sang of blood, wood, white shirts, and thorns; of the throng that would arise from the burial-ground, in which there were more graves than molehills in the shire. He cried against the heathenism of the Church, the wickedness of Church tithes, and against ungodly book-prayers and ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans

... in torments rather than sacrifice to Serapis; and of the final victory, and the soldier who, in presence of the trembling mob, clove the great jaw of the colossal idol, and snapped for ever the spell of heathenism, Philammon's heart burned to distinguish himself like that soldier, and to wipe out his qualms of conscience by some more unquestionable deed of Christian prowess. There were no idols now to break but there was philosophy—'Why not carry ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... be of great value as giving a bird's-eye view of the fascinating struggle of the Church with heathenism during those ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... writings of those philosophers are much inferior to those of Moses and the prophets. The poetry and philosophy of the Hebrews, as presented in the Bible, surpasses Homer and Aristotle. And their independent religion, existing amidst the heathenism of the surrounding pagan nations, was the only religion calculated, by virtue of its "one God" to worship, to unite the human family in one great brotherhood. It is conceded upon all sides that the Bible is the most remarkable book that the world ever read. How base ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various

... to time. It must be remembered that Corinth was one of the most wicked cities of ancient times and that the church was surrounded by heathen customs and practices. Many of its members had but recently been converted from heathenism to Christianity and the ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... confusion of ideas, which has been bequeathed to us by our ancestors of the Middle Ages. To them all stone circles and megalithic monuments were the work of heathens, if not of the devil himself. Heathenism and all its works was roundly condemned, whether it be Celtic, Mahomedan, or Pagan; and the condemnation was as concise and universal as the phrase "Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics" of the Christian Prayer ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens

... them. We never feared that they would. We knew that we should not make them pagans by teaching them justly to admire the poetry, the philosophy, the personal virtues of pagans. And, in fact, the few who since the revival of letters have deserted Christianity for what they called philosophic heathenism, have in almost every case sympathised, not with the excellences, but with the worst vices of the Greek and Roman. They have been men like Leo X. or the Medici, who, ready to be profligates under any religion, found in heathenism only an excuse for their ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... pagans, are we savages, are we devils? Search the records of heathenism, and sentiments more hostile to the spirit of the gospel, or of a more black and blasphemous complexion than these, cannot be found. I believe that they are libels upon the character of my countrymen, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... of these lands were not all alike, and hence it came to pass that as the language of Rome was transformed in various ways, and passed into the different yet cognate tongues of the Romance nations, so the religion of the Empire, combining with various forms of heathenism, passed into several national religions, the differences of which are at least as conspicuous as their similarity. In Italy Christianity appears to be a system of local deities, each village worshipping its own Madonna or saint. In Holland worship consists almost entirely of preaching. In ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... forever,—we have a right to say that the man who held such beliefs and indulged in such imaginations and expressions is a burden and not a support in reference to the creed with which his name is associated. What heathenism has ever approached the horrors of this conception of human destiny? It is not an abuse of language to apply to such a system of beliefs the ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... fire I was enabled to snatch one brand from the burning, namely, the negro lad, Jeekie, to whose extraordinary resource and faithfulness I owe my escape. After a long hesitation I have been able to baptize him, although I fear that the taint of heathenism still clings to him. Thus not six months ago I caught him sacrificing a white cock to the image, Little Bonsa, in gratitude, as to my horror he explained, for my having been appointed an Honorary Canon of the Cathedral. I have told him to take that ugly mask which has been ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... (continues the Report,) that there is but a small part of the population yet brought within the reach of the influence of enlightened Christian teachers, while the great mass by whom they are surrounded are but little removed from actual heathenism." Another missionary, page 33, says, it is the opinion of all intelligent Christian men, that "nothing save the furnishing of the people with ample means of education and religious instruction will save them from relapsing into a state of barbarism." And another, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... large flat stone usually composed the altar; and the whole religious mountain was usually enclosed by a low mound, to prevent the intrusion of the profane. "There was something in the Druidical species of heathenism," exclaims Mr. Whitaker, in a style truly oriental, "that was well calculated to arrest the attention and impress the mind. The rudely majestic circle of stones in their temples, the enormous Cromlech, the massy Logan, the huge Carnedde, and the magnificent ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... could not have applied the word better than to the strong Norman thief, aimed cap-a-pie, without one particle of ruth or generosity; for a person to be a pink of gentility, that is heathenism, should have no such feelings; and, indeed, the admirers of gentility seldom or never associate any such feelings with it. It was from the Norman, the worst of all robbers and miscreants, who built strong castles, garrisoned them with devils, and tore out poor wretches' eyes, as ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... Ionian lady but half reclaimed from idolatry, though baptized and accredited as a member of the Christian church, still lingered lovingly on the confines of old heathenism, and if she did not believe, still cherished with pleasure the poetic legends of Apollo and Venus, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... ended in the "Partus Virginis" of Sannazzaro. They were still indisputably vigorous, and working in accordance with the movement of the modern spirit. Yet the synthesis they attempted to effect between heathenism and Christianity, by a sheer effort of style, and by indifferentism, strikes us from the point of view of art alone, not reckoning religion or morality, as unsuccessful. Still, if it be childish on the one hand to deplore that the Christian earnestness of the earlier masters had failed, it would ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... celebrated historian came more near the heathen than the Christian belief respecting the future state. In truth, this is little more than the old fable of the infernal Styx. Procopius, we believe, lived before the decay of heathenism, and, as we would gladly disbelieve much which he hath told us respecting our ancestor and predecessor Justinian, so we will not pay him much credit in future in point of geographical knowledge.—Meanwhile, what ails thee, Achilles Tatius, and why ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... mentioned book [Baxter's] are ungainsayable; I shall conclude in almost his words. He that teaches such a doctrine, if through ignorance he believes not what he saith, may be a Christian; but if he believes them, he is in the broad path to heathenism, devilism, popery, or atheism. It is a solemn caution (Gal., i., 8): 'But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.' I hope you will not misconstrue ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... and even happy, under the warm Syrian sun, watching with earnest, loving eyes the development of barbarism and heathenism into civilization and Christianity, though it seemed very much to her sometimes as if she had lost her place and personality in the world. She was swallowed up in the great pagan East, and was nothing to the land that owned her—to the people that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... of the cross have fallen on this field, where a desperate battle has been waged between darkness and light, heathenism and religion, the wooden gods of men and the only true God who made heaven and earth. Many have been mortally touched by the poisonous breath of African fever, and, like the sainted Gilbert Haven, have staggered back to home and friends to die. Few of the white teachers ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... Alexandria admit that God had appointed the stars as legitimate objects of heathen worship, in order to preserve throughout the world some tolerable notions of natural religion. It seemed a middle point between Heathenism and Christianity; and to it certain emblems and ordinances of that faith seemed to relate. The advent of Christ was announced by a Star from the East; and His nativity was celebrated on the shortest day of the Julian Calendar, the day when, in the physical commemorations ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... of the season, and at the same time regretted, much to his amusement, that he, as one of the old stock of Abyssinians, who are the oldest Christians on record, should have forgotten this rite; but I hoped the time would come when, by making it known that his tribe had lapsed into a state of heathenism, white teachers would be induced to set it all to rights again. At this time some Wahaiya traders (who had been invited at my request by Rumanika) arrived. Like the Waziwa, they had traded with Kidi, and they not only confirmed what the Waziwa ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... which he was created, that of reducing the islands from a state of anarchy and constant warfare to one of peace and unity under the rule of one king. With the accession of Kamehameha II. to the throne the tabus were broken, the wild orgies of heathenism abolished, the idols thrown drown, and in their place was set up the worship of the only living and true God. His was the era of the introduction of Christianity and all its peaceful influences. He was born to commence the great moral revolution which began with ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV

... horn, and was going to kill all who were in the town, but Kjartan, Gissur, and Hjalte, with the other Icelanders who had become Christians, went to him, and said, "King, thou must not fail from thy word—that however much any man may irritate thee, thou wilt forgive him if he turn from heathenism and become Christian. All the Icelanders here are willing to be baptized; and through them we may find means to bring Christianity into Iceland: for there are many amongst them, sons of considerable people in Iceland, whose friends can advance the cause; but the priest ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... would henceforth try to serve so good and merciful a God, and love that dear Son who had been punished instead of him. Thus Harry became a Christian; and, I believe, a much better Christian than very many on board. Of course, when we found him his mind was imbued with the same dark heathenism as were the minds of the savages among whom ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... supposed that by the 'fulness of time' Paul means to indicate that Christ came at the moment when the world was especially prepared to receive Him, and no doubt that is a true thought. The Jews had been trained by law to the conviction of sin; heathenism had tried its utmost, had reached the full height of its possible development, and was decaying. Rome had politically prepared the way for the spread of the Gospel. Vague expectations of coming change ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... others, they can justly declare it. But to think or speak of me in any manner as a Christ, is sacrilegious. Such a statement would not only be false, but the absolute antipode of Christian Science, and would savor more of heathenism than ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy

... recent discoveries in physical science. Even civilized men would find it difficult to boil a pot without the aid of solar energy. Call him what we will,—Ioskeha, Michabo, or Phoibos,—the beneficent Sun is the master and sustainer of us all; and if we were to relapse into heathenism, like Erckmann-Chatrian's innkeeper, we could not do better than to select him as our chief ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... right, or that of any other created worm, to formulate for the special behoof of Negroes any sort of artificial creed unbelieved in by yourself, having the function and effect of detective "shadowings" of their souls. Away with your criminal suggestion of toleration of the hideous orgies of heathenism in Hayti for the benefit of our future morals in the West Indies, when the political supremacy which you predict and dread and deprecate shall have become an accomplished fact. Were any special standard of spiritual excellence required, our race has, in Josiah Henson and Sojourner Truth, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... the transmutation of species reappeared, however, in the Romish Church in a religious form; the old heathenism, which had never been wholly banished from the minds of men, thus reasserting itself. About the tenth century some began to teach that the bread of the communion of the Lord's Supper was transubstantiated, and the wine also, into the body, and blood, and soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... were again the first men to approach the gates of the building after the shock that had been heard within it. The struggle for the possession of the temple had assumed to them the character of a holy warfare against heathenism and magic—a sacred conflict to be sustained by the Church, for the sake of her servant who had fallen a martyr at the outset of the strife. Strong in their fanatical boldness, they advanced with one accord close to the gates. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... children in this sinful world, without the knowledge of God; wandering in the darkness of heathenism amongst the ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce

... and disillusion, and a despair of all progress. That is why wild revolutionists in their youth are always obstinate Conservatives in their old age. The wandering sheep are footsore, and they fling themselves down by the wayside. That is why heathenism presents to us the aspect that it does. There is nothing about it that seems to me more tragical than the weary languor that besets it. Do you ever think of the depth of pathetic, tragic meaning that there is in that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... people of the ancient world, both Jews and Gentiles, we may come down, with a few brief notices in passing over the long subsequent periods, towards our own times. For any attempt to prosecute the object through the ages and regions of later heathenism, (with the infatuated Judaism still more destructive to its subjects,) would be to lose ourselves in a boundless scene of desolation, an immense amplitude of darkness, frightfully alive throughout with the activity of all noxious and ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... saucy in comparison with their converted sisters. The gentle converts try hard to regard their heathen songs with indifference, and to show by their very correct deportment the superiority of meekness, virtue, and Christianity over gaudy clothes, vulgar silver jewellery, and heathenism. The whole scene reminds one very forcibly of a gang of wicked street-boys at home, poking fun at a Sunday-school procession or a platoon of Salvation Army soldiers ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... and amiability better fitted to repress hostility than the presence of an armed, suspicious, and brawling soldiery. So the good Father Jose said matins and prime, mass and vespers, in the heart of sin and heathenism, taking no heed to himself, but looking only to the welfare of the Holy Church. Conversions soon followed, and on the 7th of July, 1760, the first Indian baby was baptized,—an event which, as Father Jose piously records, "exceeds the richnesse of gold or precious jewels or the chancing upon ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... seemed to dance in fiendish glee on the grass. The men laughed and chattered, and at last shouldered their burden and trotted off as merrily as if they were going to a matsuri. I never before felt the cruelty of heathenism so keenly. No punishment in the next world can equal the things they miss in this life by a lack of ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... Jerusalem, then, means for us just now beginning with the Turkish Empire. And with that, in this rapid run through, we may for convenience group Arabia and Persia and Afghanistan. This is the section where Mohammedanism, that corrupt mixture of heathenism with a small tincture of Christian truth, has its home, and whence it has gone out on its ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... the matter and arranged it with the Polish Authorities, opens a communication with Hermann von der Salza, at Venice, on the subject; "Crusading is over in the East, illustrious Hochmeister; no duty for a Teutsch Order there at present: what is the use of crusading far off in the East, when Heathenism and the Kingdom of Satan hangs on our own borders, close at hand, in the North? Let the Teutsch Order come to Preussen; head a Crusade there. The land is fruitful; flows really with milk and honey, not to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... of Maryville had expressed themselves through The Intelligencer, so did those of Knoxville find a spokesman in The Presbyterian Witness. Excoriating those who had for centuries been finding excuses for keeping the slaves in heathenism, the editor of this publication said that there was not a solitary argument that might be urged in favor of teaching a white man that might not be as properly urged in favor of enlightening a man of color. "If one has a soul that will never die," said he, "so has the other. Has one susceptibilities ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... cherished of classical studies for pure Christianity, he saw one danger: 'that under the cloak of reviving ancient literature paganism tries to rear its head, as there are those among Christians who acknowledge Christ only in name but inwardly breathe heathenism'. This he writes in 1517 to Capito. In Italy scholars devote themselves too exclusively and in too pagan guise to bonae literae. He considered it his special task to assist in bringing it about that those bonae literae 'which with ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... thunder of the captains and the shouting, and so we came on to the banquet, from whence there puffed out such an incense of unctuosity into the nostrils of our Gods of Church and State, that Lucullus or Apicius might have sniffed it in their Hades of heathenism, so that the smell of their own roast ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... lapses into heathenism in Ireland, not characterised by "idolatry," but by wizardry, dealing in charms, and fidlanna, perhaps a kind of divination with pieces of wood.[880] But it is much more likely that these had never really been abandoned. They belong ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... many who have received the true light of the Gospel, that he was excluded from all hope of salvation, and by his very birth and colour handed over irretrievably to eternal damnation. It is possible to put a charitable interpretation on many doctrines of ancient heathenism, and the practical missionary is constantly obliged to do so. Let us only consider what these doctrines are. They are not theories devised by men who wish to keep out the truth of Christianity, but sacred traditions which millions of human beings are born and brought up to believe in, as we ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... are many cruel parents—heathenism, you know, does not teach people to be kind and loving—but many love their children as much as your parents love you. In fact they are over-indulgent to them, and let them do just what they please when they are small. And you may imagine that ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett

... abnegation of Simeon attract that various other pillars, marking the ruins of art and greatness gone, in that vicinity, were crowned with pious monks. The thought of these monks was to show how Christianity had triumphed over heathenism. Imitators were numerous. About then the Bishops in assembly asked, "Is Simeon sincere?" To test the matter of Simeon's pride, he was ordered to come down from ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard

... 'go forward' on account of my age. My wife was a Cameronian; and to them, though I knew nothing of their principles, I had an aversion. But for her to hold up the child while I was in the place, was worse than heathenism—was unheard-of in the parish. The nearest Episcopal chapel was at Kelso, a distance of ten miles. The child still remained unbaptized. 'It hasna a name yet,' said the ignorant meddlers, who had no higher idea of the ordinance. It was a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... of religion who have lent their superior abilities or opportunities to carry out the wishes of the ignorant populace, and debased religion or watered down its prohibitions, to please and retain hold of them. The Church has incorporated much from heathenism. Roman Catholic missionaries have permitted 'converts' to keep their old usages. Protestant teachers have acquiesced in, and been content to find the brains to carry out, compromises between sense and soul, God's commands ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... enthusiasm. You affirmed that an equal number of devotees streamed formerly round the Irmensaeule and to Jupiter's temple; an equal number of votaries, with like exultation, ascended the stake kindled in honor of Brahma. "Can the very feeling," you added, "which you found so detestable in heathenism prove the truth of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... his class of perceptions. I thought of the measure with which I had been meting to him when Brother Robinson was here last Thursday, and told me that a poor little quotation I was making from the Georgics savoured of vain babbling and profane heathenism. He went so far as to say that by learning other languages than our own, we were flying in the face of the Lord's purpose when He had said, at the building of the Tower of Babel, that He would confound their languages so that they should not understand each other's speech. As Brother Robinson ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... in every revolt they were first in the field and last to leave it. One hundred and fifty thousand Galilean youths perished in the final war with Rome. For the great festal days, they went up to Jerusalem marching and camping like armies; yet they were liberal in sentiment, and even tolerant to heathenism. In Herod's beautiful cities, which were Roman in all things, in Sepphoris and Tiberias especially, they took pride, and in the building them gave loyal support. They had for fellow-citizens men from the outside world everywhere, and lived in peace with them. To ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... Yet "I bear them record, that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge." In England, at this day, there are multitudes of whom it may be said, "God is not in all their thoughts." And the heathenism spread about us is as bad in its developments as in any other part of the world, and more aggravated in its character because of its immediate proximity with the light and truth of our blessed Christianity. There is in this land, too, an absorbing of men in worldliness: this, perhaps, ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... Church. And there were difficulties and dangers in plenty, some of them unforeseen. The nobles were rapacious, the people were divided, the ministers leaned to dogmatism, the lawyers leaned to Erastianism, the Lowlands were menaced by Episcopacy, the Highlands were emerging from heathenism, and between them both there stretched a broad belt of unreformed Popery. There were a hundred difficulties like these, but they were all accepted as in the long day's work. For in Scotland the dayspring was now ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... who understand my parable, has the awful thought never struck you that such may be God's answer to the prayers of a nation which leaves in its midst such barbarism, such heathenism, as exists in every great town of this realm? And what if you were told next that the laws of His kingdom were eternal and inexorable, and that one of His cardinal laws is—that as a man sows, so shall he reap; that every sin punishes ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... as their metropolitan. He extended his influence to Greece; prohibited simony in Gaul; received into the bosom of the Church Spain, now renouncing her Arianism; sent out missionaries to Britain, and converted the pagans of that country; extirpated heathenism from Sardinia; resisted John, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who had dared to take the title of universal bishop; exposed to the emperor the ruin occasioned by the pride, ambition, and wickedness of the clergy, and withstood him on the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... which they occurred. They knew that there must be large tracts of unbelief, profanity, and false worship in every so-called Christian nation, left utterly unaffected by any of the true associations of Christ's real people; besides the huge wilderness of heathenism and idolatry lying all round in the dark lands of the world. It was on the platform of this contemplation that the Independents generally and the Baptist section of them had parted company. The Independents generally held that it was the duty of the civil power in ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... masters; in none of these are we to seek the way of life. For eighteen hundred years the spirit of these writers has been engaged in weaponless contest with the Sermon on the Mount, and those two sublime commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets. The strife is still pending. Heathenism, which has possessed itself of such siren forms, is not yet exorcised. It still tempts the young, controls the affairs of active life, and haunts the meditations ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... indeed, the blessings resulting from our efforts may make themselves felt in the very ends of the earth—in the solitary wilds of New Holland. But otherwise, if we continue to neglect our own people, and disgrace our profession of Christianity by encouraging tacitly the growth of heathenism around us, then we may judge by the moral and social evils which have already resulted from this course what the final consequences are likely to be. "If the salt have lost its savour wherewith shall it be salted: it is therefore good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... apostolic age many other attempts to spread the gospel have been made, which have been considerably successful, notwithstanding which a very considerable part of mankind are still involved in all the darkness of heathenism. Some attempts are still making, but they are inconsiderable in comparison of what might be done if the whole body of Christians entered heartily into the spirit of the divine command on this subject. Some think little about it, others are unacquainted with the state of ...
— An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens • William Carey

... followed the period of the Saxon wars, as much a crusade against German heathenism as the vindication of old and dubious claims to suzerainty. The first campaign against the Saxons had taken place in 772; their final submission was not made till 785. The Saxons were still in that ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... (1777; Deane somewhat earlier: Franklin remained till 1785.) the sons of the Saxon Puritans, with their Old-Saxon temper, Old-Hebrew culture, sleek Silas, sleek Benjamin, here on such errand, among the light children of Heathenism, Monarchy, Sentimentalism, and the Scarlet-woman. A spectacle indeed; over which saloons may cackle joyous; though Kaiser Joseph, questioned on it, gave this answer, most unexpected from a Philosophe: "Madame, the trade ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... came, Fergus the White, an old grey-haired man, who had been foster-brother to Cathleen's grandfather. He had seen three generations pass away, he had watched the change from heathenism to Christianity, and of all the chief's family, to which his loyal devotion had ever clung, there remained but this one young girl, and he loved her as his own child. Fergus did obeisance to his liege lady, and kissed her hand kneeling ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... carelessness in her brother!" exclaimed Mr. Linton, turning from me to Catherine. "I've understood from Shielders"' (that was the curate, sir) '"that he lets her grow up in absolute heathenism. But who is this? Where did she pick up this companion? Oho! I declare he is that strange acquisition my late neighbour made, in his journey to Liverpool—a little Lascar, or an ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... policy. We gained nothing by it. We lowered ourselves in the eyes of those whom we meant to flatter. We led them to believe that we attached no importance to the difference between Christianity and heathenism. Yet how vast that difference is! I altogether abstain from alluding to topics which belong to divines. I speak merely as a politician anxious for the morality and the temporal well-being of society. And, so speaking, I say that to countenance the Brahminical idolatry, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... same reckless exposure of life, the same supreme contempt for the claims of art in comparison with the demands of religion. The Minerva of Phidias or Praxiteles was no safer from the iconoclastic frenzy of the new convert from heathenism than the rude idol of a less cultivated age. The command, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," had not excepted from its prohibition the marvellous products of the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... characterized the English Church as a whole was unpleasantly varied here and there by instances of grave and monstrous scandal. The system of Pluralities left isolated parishes in a condition of practical heathenism. Even bare morality was not always observed. In solitary places clerical drunkenness was common. On Saturday afternoon the parson would return from the nearest town "market-merry." He consorted freely with the farmers, shared their habits, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... which occupy so large a portion of Mr. Gladstone's book, sink into insignificance. In no part of the world since the days of Theodosius has so large a heathen population been subject to a Christian government. In no part of the world is heathenism more cruel, more licentious, more fruitful of absurd rites and pernicious laws. Surely, if it be the duty of Government to use its power and its revenue in order to bring seven millions of Irish Catholics over to the Protestant Church, it is a fortiori the duty of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... there. The fathers of Portugal, to whom the Malucas Islands belong, plan to send more laborers there. The king has been converted, as well as nearly all the princes of the kingdom; and only the queen persists in her heathenism. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... first impulse, the progressive fire of a saint rolled on like a snow-ball down a mountain-side, gathering up into itself whatever lay in its path, fact or legend, appropriate or inappropriate, sometimes real jewels of genuine old tradition, sometimes the debris of the old creeds and legends of heathenism; and on, and on, till at length it reached the bottom, and was dashed in pieces ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... Foo may boast of the superiority of heathenism as long as pauperism shows itself to be a vast ulcer, as in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various

... even the exclusion of Ham is to be considered as an unavoidable fate resting upon him. Heathenism alone knows such a curse. The subjective conditions of the curse imply the possibility of becoming free from it. To this, there is an express testimony in the circumstance, that the promise to the Patriarchs ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... of my discerning Goodness in God: it bade me simply to infer Goodness from Power,—that is to say, establish the doctrine, "Might makes Right;" according to which, I might unawares worship a devil. Nay, nothing so much distinguished the spiritual truth of Judaism and Christianity from abominable heathenism, as this very discernment of God's purity, justice, mercy, truth, goodness; while the Pagan worshipped mere power, and had no discernment of moral excellence; but laid down the principle, that cruelty, impurity, or caprice in a God was to be treated reverentially, and ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... that self is the person who is governed. How our race troubles would disappear if the dominant Saxon would but obey, in his treatment of the weaker races, the authority of the fundamental laws on which his own institutions rest! The problem of to-day is not how to convert the heathen from heathenism, it is how to convert the Christian from heathenism; not to teach the physician to heal the patient, but to heal himself. The Indian problem is not chiefly how to teach the Indian to be less savage in his treatment of the Saxon, but the Saxon to be less ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... erroneously," said the astronomer, "in the darkness of heathenism, and the first dawn of philosophy. The nature of the soul is still disputed, amidst all our opportunities of clearer knowledge; some yet say, that it may be material, who, nevertheless, believe it to ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... their criticism of men's ideas of the gods. We shall not dwell here on this aspect of the matter; we are concerned with the theory only. Detailed expositions of it occur in numerous writings, from the passages in the Old Testament where heathenism is attacked, to the defences of Christianity by the latest ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... being converted to the faith of Christ, and daily the light of heavenly learning is beaming on the peoples thereof—who, hitherto unacquainted with the law of God, and under the yoke of the demon, were groping their way in the dark places of unbelief; but now, rejecting the errors of heathenism, are revering and following the name of our Savior Jesus Christ: therefore our beloved son, the master-general of the Order of Preachers [21] [Dominicans], has determined to send thither professed members ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... the Republicans than of any other political party, and not without strong reasons of a personal kind, people said, on the part of some of them. Had not Mr. Henry Neville, for example, been heard to say that he was more affected by some parts of Cicero than by anything in the Bible? If heathenism like that infected the Republican opposition, what could any plain honest Christian do but support ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... British Empire succeed only for the socialistic "vision" which inspires it. But the chief fault of this "vision" is that it is so busy making black men clean and "Christian" that it has no vigour left to clean up and "Christianise" the dirt and heathenism at home. It would rather, metaphorically speaking (I had vowed never to use that expression again in the New Year, but—well, there it is!), bring the ideals of Western civilisation into the jungles of Darkest ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... this singular proposition, the legate said that the Britons had been converted by the See Apostolic, "not one by one, as in other countries, as clocks increase the hours by distinction of times," "but altogether, at once, as it were, in a moment." The Saxons had brought back heathenism, but had again been soon converted; and the popes {p.168} had continued to heap benefit upon benefit on the favoured people, even making them a present of Ireland, "which pertained to the See of Rome." The country ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... succeeded by his son Eorpwald, who was converted by missionaries sent by Edwin king of Northumbria. His reign, however, was short, and at his death the people again relapsed into heathenism. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell

... whether they will all come to speak English, is doubtful; but probably in the long run English will prevail and become the common speech of the southern half of the continent. They will also lose their heathenism (though many superstitions will survive), and will become, in name at least, Christians. Thus they will form to a far greater extent than now a homogeneous mass pervaded by the same ideas ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... uncertain ladies get in and out of love, and serve themselves of every chance that fortune offers them of having their own way. We shrink from the unmorality of the Latin races, but Hardy has divined in the heart of our own race a lingering heathenism, which, if not Greek, has certainly been no more baptized than the neo-hellenism of the Parisians. His heroines especially exemplify it, and I should be safe in saying that his Ethelbertas, his Eustacias, his Elfridas, his Bathshebas, his Fancies, are wholly pagan. I should not dare to ask how ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the Church. Might children be admitted to membership in infancy, or must they wait until they were adult? The Church decided that they were admissible, provided there were reasonable assurance that they would be Christianly brought up. Why should a child grow up in heathenism? Had not the Lord said, "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not"? There seemed no reason why children should not be brought at once within the sphere of ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... few years after our visit, this same island was brought under missionary influence, the idols were overthrown, heathenism and all its abominable practices disappeared, and the inhabitants became a thoroughly well-ordered, God-fearing, and law-obeying Christian community. The same account may be given of the larger number of the islands which stud the wide Pacific, and ships may now sail from north to ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... in its favor. But, then, we must also renounce Protestantism; for Protestantism has only eighty or ninety millions against a hundred and forty millions who are Catholics. And, still further, we must renounce Christianity in favor of Heathenism; since all the different Christian sects and churches united make up but three hundred millions, while the Buddhists alone probably exceed that number. Moreover, truth is always in a minority at first,—usually in a minority of one; and, if men ought to wait until it ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... be disastrous; something or other happens that dismays the whole of the little Christian community; something or other happens that lifts them up into pride; the Christians are like little islands of Christianity isolated in a vast ocean of heathenism, and the waves seem to threaten to swallow them up. The missionary, simply by going and putting in an appearance, or by giving a little simple advice, or by speaking a few words of encouragement, or by devising a few simple methods, or making a few simple ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... Nevertheless, I must confess to a certain amount of mental disquietude and uneasiness when I think of books worth 50,000 denarii—or, speaking roughly, say L18,750,[1] of our modern money being made into bonfires. What curious illustrations of early heathenism, of Devil worship, of Serpent worship, of Sun worship, and other archaic forms of religion; of early astrological and chemical lore, derived from the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks; what abundance ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades

... attacks (SS43, 45, 46). Many of these institutions had accumulated wealth, and some had gradually sunk into habits of laziness, luxury, and other evil courses of life. The Danes, who were full of the vigorous virtues of heathenism, liked nothing better than to scourge those effeminate ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... were, we are told, to be found among the inhabitants of Persia, Media, Parthia Proper, and even Bactria. The infusion, however, was not sufficient to leaven to any serious extent the corrupt mass of heathenism into which it was projected; and we cannot say that the general character of the Parthian empire, or of the manners and customs of its subjects, was importantly affected by the new religion, though it had an ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... a Trinitarian inscription is dated 542-3. About the same time the Church in Abyssinia, founded in the time of S. Athanasius, received the national religion of the country through the conversion of the Negus at the end {112} of the fifth century. While the land of Safar at times relapsed into heathenism and massacred Christians, the Abyssinians remained firm in the faith. Procopius tells that Ellesthaeos, an Ethiopian king, during the reign of Justin I., invaded the land of the Homerites to avenge their persecutions and to suppress the Jewish ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... ground, and the walls, narrowing gradually towards the top, are fifteen feet wide at the base and twelve feet high. They are truly grand monuments of humanity in the midst of the barbarous institutions of heathenism, and it shows a considerable degree of enlightenment that even rebels in arms and fugitives from invading armies were safe, if they reached the sacred refuge, for the priests of Keawe knew ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... Japan—in many cases most reluctantly arrived at—that the former ascendency of Buddhism has for ever passed away. "A dull apathy as regards religion has settled down upon the educated classes of Japan. The gods of heathenism have crumbled to nothing before modern science and civilization, and the glimmer of light and truth to which they pointed has gone as well."(34) Sometimes, again, Christianity is spoken of by Buddhists in terms which encourage us to hope that there are those who, while they have ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.

... fifty years together. They read a great many religious books besides. The clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except what they preach themselves. A dull preacher might be conceived, therefore, to lapse into a state of quasi heathenism, simply for want of religious instruction. And on the other hand, an attentive and intelligent hearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers, might become actually better educated in theology than any one of them. We ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... for us it is difficult to fancy the change produced in the mind of the early disciples of Christ by the reception of the truths which he revealed. During the first three centuries, while converts were constantly being made from heathenism, brought over by no worldly temptation, but by the pure force of the new doctrine and the glad tidings over their convictions, or by the contagious enthusiasm of example and devotion,—faith in Christ and in his teachings must, among the sincere, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... tribes of friendly Indians at Croatan, and, alas! lost ere long every vestige of Christianity and civilization; and those who came to shed light on the darkness of paganism, in the mysterious providence of God ended by relapsing themselves into the heathenism they came to remove. It is a sad picture of ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... duty in relation to the subject.] The Christian ought not to rest satisfied with the vague general idea that Hinduism is a form of heathenism with which he has nothing to do, save to help in destroying it. Let him try to realize the ideas of the Hindu regarding God, and the soul, and sin, and salvation, and heaven, and hell, and the many sore trials of this mortal life. He will then certainly ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... be applied to all places. Suppose a missionary conform to the society around him. Instead of raising up the heathen from their degradation, he would become a heathen himself. The descent to heathenism is easy. The influence of comparing ourselves with ourselves, and measuring ourselves by ourselves, is felt by those living among barbarians as well as at home, though the insidious influence leads in another direction. If there is a man on earth, who, more than any other, ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble

... acknowledged that this has not been the mood of most of our hearers where we are well known. Many are eager to defend their own position as Hindus, and to attack Christianity because it wages war with their religion. Heathenism in ancient times, heathenism now as we see it in India, was and is very liberal. It is ready to let Christianity alone, if Christianity will let it alone. It is the exclusiveness of Christianity which is so offensive. We are continually told that Christianity is excellent for us; ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... "Moses" of San Pietro in Vincoli; the luxury and pomp of the Papal Court and Church are manifest in the architecture of St. Peter's, whose dome is swollen with earthly pride; the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel betrays the recoil toward heathenism from the vices and corruptions that then hung round Christianity; and the Sacristy of San Lorenzo is the saddest and grandest exhibition that those days afforded of the infidelity into which the best men ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... on crags and rocks where they were neither taught nor received spiritual instruction. In such places they lived and died like wild savages, worshipping idols as in the time of their Inca tyrants and of their blind heathenism. Orders were given to stop their public drinking bouts, their concubinage and worship of their idols and devils, emancipating and freeing them from the tyrannies, of their curacas, and finally giving them a rational life, which was ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... population of the world. Under the beneficent influence of a few Christian leaders this ancient empire has been lifted off its hinges and a new life and spirit of progress have been infused into a civilization, hoary with centuries of stagnant heathenism. In this wonderful transformation, effected by trained Christian teachers, the church and the world have seen the fulfillment of the Bible prediction, "A nation shall be born ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... Scriptures, however, is not that there is so much reliance on this trance experience as that there is so little. The Hebrew Scriptures were the expression of a people living in the midst of heathen surroundings; and heathenism always has laid stress upon the virtue of these abnormal experiences. Granting all allowances for mental states induced by eating an opiate, or by whirling like the dervish, or by fasting like the Hindu, the fact ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell

... character, should have power to affect the eternal state of the departed; and that all saints, angels, demons, and the ghosts of the departed, should support, with great variations indeed, the corrupt dealings of a corrupt priesthood—form a creed worthy of the darkest and most unworthy days of heathenism. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... Columba crossed to Scotland, founded the monastery at Iona, and began the conversion of the Scots. After the Angles and Saxons and Jutes had overrun eastern and southern Britain there was a period of several generations during which this portion of the island was given over to Teutonic heathenism. In 597 Saint Augustine, "the Apostle to the English," landed in Kent and began the conversion of the people, that year succeeding in converting Ethelbert, King of Kent. In 626 Edwin, King of Northumbria, was converted, and in 635 the English of Wessex accepted Christianity. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... comments of a passing crowd. Venus is an armless figure from the Louvre; Dionysos does not mean to us divine possession, the gift of tongues, or immortality; Attis brings no salvation. But to antiquity the 'pagan' cults were no mockery. They were as real as Polynesian heathenism or Christianity to-day." (James T. Shotwell: "The Religious Revolution ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... have sung gratulations announcing that the great strife was over—that man was inoculated with the truth; or have adopted the impressive language of a Latin father, that "the owls were to be heard in every village hooting from the dismantled fanes of heathenism, or the gaunt wolf disturbing the sleep of peasants as he yelled in winter from the cold, dilapidated altars." Even this victorious consummation was true only for the southern world of civilization. The forests of Germany, though pierced already to the south in the third and fourth centuries by ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... less pure than the reformed service now happily established in this Island, yet it was calculated, by its address to the senses, to keep alive the remembrance of the faith of the Gospel, and to prevent the warring Baron and his rude vassals from relapsing into heathenism. Let it also be remembered, that Monks, odious as we are wont to consider them, were at one time, the only inhabitants of Christendom, who were at all acquainted with such sciences as then peered above the mists of overwhelming ignorance. Of history, they ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts

... likely to be concerned in that "brand of ultimate failure which has invariably been stamped on all its most promising schemes and efforts":[26:1] first, a disposition to compromise the essential principles of Christianity by politic concessions to heathenism, so that the successes of the Jesuit missions are magnified by reports of alleged conversions that are conversions only in name and outward form; second, a constantly besetting propensity to political ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... the combined experiences of many missionaries and travellers in China without forming the opinion that the condition of women in China is as nearly satisfactory as could be hoped for, in a kingdom of "civilised and organised heathenism," as the Rev. C. W. Mateer terms it. The lot of the average Chinese woman is certainly not one that a Western woman need envy. She cannot enjoy the happiness which a Western woman does, but she is happy in her own way nevertheless. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... one important object of the Spanish invasion, an object which Cortes as a good Catholic dared not overlook—the conversion of the Aztec nation from heathenism. The bloody ritual of the teocallis was still observed in every city. Cortes waited on Montezuma, urging a request that the great temple be assigned for public worship according to ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... in the effort to retain and solidify its power in Europe while meeting the burden of new establishments in America and the Philippines. That in the very years when Spaniards were accomplishing the unique work of redeeming an oriental people from barbarism and heathenism to Christianity and civilized life, the whole might of the mother-country should have been massed in a tremendous conflict in Europe which brought ruin and desolation to the most prosperous provinces under her dominion, and sapped her own powers of growth, is one of the strangest ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... Baumann, who secretly longs for another calling. A short time ago he brought me a report of the horrors of heathenism on the African coast, and said, 'I must go, Wohlfart; the time is come.' 'Who will attend to the calculations?' asked I; 'and what will become of the department which you and Balbus keep so entirely in your own hands?' 'Ay, indeed,' cried Baumann, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... the Book of Acts is passed. They contain the Spirit's after-teaching regarding much which the disciples were not yet able to receive from Jesus' own lips. They were written to churches that were far from ideal. They were composed largely of people dug out of the darkest heathenism. And with the infinite patience and tact of the Spirit Paul writes to them with a pen ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon

... book existed before 400 B.C., it would doubtless have stood in the second division. But the contents themselves demonstrate its date; contemporary history being wrapped in a prophetic form. Having some affinity to Esther as regards heathenism and Greek life, the book was put next to the latter. To Ezra and Nehemiah, which were adopted before the other part of the Chronicle book and separated from it, were added the so-called Chronicles. Such was the original succession of the third division or c'tubim; but it did ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson

... Jezebel led her to adopt a corrupt religion, to reject a pure and holy worship, and to cling to the dark and cruel rites of heathenism, the voice of conscience was not silenced, the light of the soul was not entirely extinguished. She felt the need of some faith—she clung to the altars of her gods. But Athaliah seems to have sunk into the brutishness of those who own "no God." She seems ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... be godfather in the holy rite of baptism, to one whom it is our duty, as Christian men, to rescue from the dangerous condition of worse than unregenerate heathenism." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... nature is a sealed book. Where the word of God is not, the works of God fail either to excite admiration or to impart instruction. The Sandwich Islands present some of the sublimest scenery on earth, but to an ignorant native—to the great mass of the people in entire heathenism—it has no meaning. As one crested billow after another of the heaving ocean rolls in and dashes upon the unyielding rocks of an iron-bound coast, which seems to say, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther," the low-minded ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... struggling with the Formalism of the Papacy,—the Papacy being entirely heathen in all its principles. That officialism of the leaves and their ribs means Apostolic succession, and I don't know how much more, and is already preparing for the transition to old Heathenism again, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... beliefs and such means of repressing free enquiry were not confined to one branch of the Christian Church. Protestants as well as Roman Catholics, when they had the power, suppressed many of the practices of heathenism after a cruel fashion, but at the same time fostered the superstitions and Pagan beliefs which had originated these practices, and punished those who protested against these beliefs. The same method ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier



Words linked to "Heathenism" :   religion, faith, pagan religion, druidism, religious belief, paganism



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