"Seraphim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Moses was encouraged to undertake the deliverance of his countrymen when God appeared to him in the burning bush, [68:6] and as Isaiah was emboldened to go forth, as the messenger of the Lord of hosts, when he saw Jehovah sitting upon His throne attended by the seraphim, [68:7] so Paul was stirred up by an equally impressive revelation to gird himself for the labours of a new appointment. He was about to commence a more extensive missionary career, and before entering upon so great and so perilous an undertaking, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... steady purpose of finding in them some illustration of spiritual truth. He rose from reading Insect Architecture, with the observation, "God reigns in a community of ants and ichneumons, as visibly as among living men or mighty seraphim!" ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... making of graven things or the likeness of anything is not forbidden except as to the point of their being worshipped as gods—for God commanded an image of the Seraphim [Vulg.: Cherubim] to be made and placed in the tabernacle, as related in Ex. 25:18—Augustine more fittingly unites these two, "Thou shalt not have strange gods before Me," and, "Thou shalt not make ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... choir Sings songs of jubilee at her release From this dull earth; I heard and am at rest; Who praise His hosts, praise the Eternal Sire. I know she is in Heaven with the blest, 'Midst flow'rs whose glory time can never dim Singing God's praise, and blest by seraphim. Nought but the truth from my glad lips shall fall, In Heaven she is, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... and she could take a prince; nobles, and she could take a noble; where there were men handsome, charming, magnificent, and she could take an Adonis: whom did she take? Gnafron! She could choose from the midst of meteors and thunders, the mighty six-winged seraphim, and she chose the larva crawling in the slime. On one side were highnesses and peers, all grandeur, all opulence, all glory; on the other, a mountebank. The mountebank carried it! What kind of scales could there be in the heart of this ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... performance since that date. In the year mentioned I sang as a boy in the chorus, and experienced a great and novel joy that I have never known since. I revelled in the rehearsals, and when the week's performances came I seemed to be up in the clouds amid cherubim and seraphim. Indeed, when at the last performance the National Anthem was sung and the meeting came to an end I could have sat ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... series of emanating hypostases, Intellect, Universal Soul, Nature, Matter, and so on, is wanting in the "Hegyon ha-Nefesh."[151] Form is the highest thing he knows outside of God; and the purest form, which is too exalted to combine with matter, embraces angels, seraphim, souls, and all forms related to the upper world.[152] With the exception of the names angel, seraphim, souls, this is good Aristotelian doctrine, who also believes in the movers of the spheres and the active intellect in man ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... worshippers in the great act of worship. And the splendid pillars, brought from Baalbek of the old heathen days, wrought on the capitals with intricate carvings, with emblems and devices and monograms, the finely decorated doors, and the gigantic mosaic seraphim on the walls, still in the twentieth century dimly image something of the glowing worship of the {27} sixth. Then the "splendour of the lighted space," glittering with thousands of lights, gave "shine unto the world," ...
— 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
... Steve, "want to be left behind. I wanted to be in the fight with the rest of the boys. So the captain said, says he, 'Well, you can try it, for we need all the good fighters we've got, but if you find you're too weak to go on, fall out! Maybe some good Seraphim ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... spheres of different sizes, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Fixed Stars, and the Empyrean, enclosed one within the other, and revolved by the Angels, Archangels, Princedoms, Powers, Virtues, Dominations, Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim. Beyond these orbs, whose whirling motions cause "the music of the spheres," lies a tenth circle, the real heaven (a Rose), where "peace divine inhabits," and of which the Divine Essence or Trinity forms the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... he did. The gates of hell were swung wide, and for the time being, not the hosts of the Seraphim and Cherubim,—not the armed Bodhisatvas and Dhyanis,—could have forced them back on their hinges: "the ripple of effect," we read, "thou shalt let run its course." But in the ideal world he erected ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... her face, to hear her voice, Hushed in an endless silence! Strange that she, Whose rich love beggared our return, should bear Such separation! Though engirdled now By heavenly hosts of saints and seraphim, I cannot fancy it. What! shall her child, Whose lightest sigh reechoed in her heart, Have need of her and cry ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... spirits] Angel.— N. angel, archangel; guardian angel; heavenly host, host of heaven, sons of God; seraph, seraphim; cherub, cherubim. ministering spirit, morning star. saint, patron saint, Madonna; invisible helpers. Adj. angelic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... seer Isaiah did befall: In spirit he beheld the Lord of all On a high throne, raised up in splendor bright, His garment's border filled the choir with light. Beside him stood two seraphim which had Six wings, wherewith they both alike were clad; With twain they hid their shining with twain They hid their feet as with a flowing train, And with the other twain they both did fly. One to the other thus aloud did cry: "Holy is God, the Lord of Sabaoth! Holy is God, the Lord ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... and upward." The story is plausible. Impecunious princes and potentates have been known to replenish their purses in this way, though hitherto usually by private sale rather than market quotations. It is not probable that our ingenious countryman has the Order of the Seraphim or of the Annonciade at disposal, or that he can supply the Golden Fleece to whoever will "gif a good prishe," or even that he would pretend to furnish the Black Eagle of Prussia in quantities to suit purchasers. He can hardly be the medium of creating many Knights of the Garter, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... offspring of the love and faith that gave it birth. Modern Spiritualism is as great a solvent of creeds, dogmas, codes, scientific sophisms, as is the sunlight of the substances contained in earth and air, revealing by the stages of intermediate life, from man, through spirits, angels, archangels, seraphim, and cherubim, to God, the glorious destiny of every soul. There is a vine growing in the islands of the tropic seas that thrives best upon the ancient ruins or crumbling walls of some edifice built by man; yet ever as it thrives, the tiny tendrils penetrate between the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Rebel capital. He was learned in military lore, had visited Europe, and made war after the European pattern. But in a war of ideas and principles, the mere taking of an enemy's capital cannot end the contest. In such a strife there is the war of invisible forces,—the marshalling of Cherubim and Seraphim against rebellious hosts,—the old contest of the heavenly fields renewed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... circle of the Powers of the Heavens in the Byzantine rendering. I. Wisdom; II. Thrones; III. Dominations; IV. Angels; V. Archangels; VI. Virtues; VII. Potentates; VIII. Princes; IX. Seraphim. In the Gregorian order, (Dante, Par. xxviii., Cary's note,) the Angels and Archangels are separated, giving altogether nine orders, but not ranks. Note that in the Byzantine circle the cherubim are first, and that ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... fragments; perhaps at that time were added the present heraldic orphrey, morse, and border, probably fifty years later than the other portions of this matchless specimen of the far-famed 'Opus Anglicum.'" "Of angels," the "nine choirs," and the three great hierarchies, Cherubim, Seraphim, and Thrones, are figured here. Led a good way by Ezekiel, but not following that prophet step by step, our mediaeval draughtsmen found out for themselves a certain angel form. To this they gave a human shape, that of a comely youth; clothing him with ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... it a creature of our own imagination, more than this dwelling on winds and snows and bitter frosts, so alien from the fragrant nights of Palestine. But Milton's hymn is like a symphony, embracing many thoughts and periods of varying melody. The music of the seraphim brings to his mind the age of gold, and that suggests the judgment and the redemption of the world. Satan's kingdom fails, the false gods go forth, Apollo leaves his rocky throne, and all the dim Phoenician ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... bad. Also I have found it hard work to get into expression, though I began rhyming from my very infancy, much as you did (and this, with no sympathy near to me—I have had to do without sympathy in the full sense—), and even in my 'Seraphim' days, my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth,—from leading so conventual recluse a life, perhaps—and all my better poems were written last year, the very best thing to come, if there should be any life or courage to come; I scarcely know. Sometimes—it is the real truth—I have haste ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... assumed a tone of moral superiority. Lamb was so galled by Coleridge's air of virtue and piety, at a moment when the humorist was suffering terribly in consequence of his sister's calamity, that he sent the transcendental poet a list of stinging questions. One of them asked whether one of the seraphim could fall, and another whether a man might not ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... is past, the glory is congealing, The fervor of the heart grows dead and dim; I gaze all night upon a whitewashed ceiling, And catch no glimpses of the Seraphim." ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... merchant, born near Ledbury, Herefordshire, about 1807. She began to write verse when only ten years of age, and gave early proofs of great poetical genius. At the age of seventeen, she published An Essay on Mind, with other Poems, and her reputation was widely extended by The Seraphim and other Poems, published in 1838. In 1846, she was married to Robert Browning, the poet, and they lived for many years in Italy. In 1851, she published Casa Guidi Windows, the impressions of the writer upon events in Tuscany, and in 1856, appeared Aurora ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... the household of King Pharaoh. I would like to call the attention of my readers to the dignity of this profession, which some young women affect to despise. The fact that angels eat, shows that we may be called upon in the next sphere to cook even for cherubim and seraphim. How important, then, to cultivate one's gifts in ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... "Of Heavenly Seraphim None else to seek thee out and bid thee come." "I only care that thou art come from Him, Unbody me—I'm tired—and ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... tongue of Seraphim hain't competent to tell what I seed then! That country hain't rugged and on-eend like this here, but is spread out smooth and soft and keerful, with nary ragged corner nowhar', and just enough roll to tole the eye along. Thar I, beheld the wide, green pastures I had heared tell ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... has lost its power of seeing, the ear of hearing, the heart of throbbing, and the limbs of moving. Quickly a thought of glory breaks in upon the mind, and we imagine the dear departed soul to be arrived at its long-wished-for rest. It is surrounded by cherubim and seraphim, and sings the song of Moses and the Lamb on Mount Zion. Amid the solemn stillness of the chamber of death, imagination hears heavenly hymns chanted by the spirits of just men made perfect. In another moment, the livid lips and sunken eye of the clay- cold corpse recall our thoughts to earth and ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite; nor to be obtained by the invocation of dame memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... brother came to the throne, the plots of the party above referred to were happily overthrown. But unhappily Seraphim, the metropolitan, with several other prelates, and one or two fanatical monks, had for some years entertained unfriendly feelings towards the Institution. The new emperor's Ukaz was ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... looked twice at Anthony. Such hearts, however, as had bleated for their sympathy had either bleated altogether in vain, or, finding the sympathy vouchsafed not at all what they wanted, bleated more fiercely than before. All the same, the two were not seraphim. They were mortal enough, and, if more than ordinarily attractive, revealed upon close examination a very ordinary collection of failings. The wonder was not in themselves. The fact that their natures were in just accord, was, at ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... found its commonest objects in the editors of newspapers. An obnoxious leading article was not infrequently followed by deportation to some small and barren rock, inhabited by a handful of fishermen. Not Cherubim and Seraphim, said Mr. Gladstone, could work such a system. A British corporal with all the patronage in his hands, said another observer, would get on better than the greatest and wisest statesman since Pericles, if he had not the patronage. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... greater good, which is created and formed, so we confess that to be a lesser good which is made capable of creation and form, yet still good. We say however that Scripture hath not set down, that God made this formlessness, as also it hath not many others; as the Cherubim, and Seraphim, and those which the Apostle distinctly speaks of, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers. All which that God made, is most apparent. Or if in that which is said, He made heaven and earth, all things ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... Lying like a log—for pain neither permitted us to stir nor groan—still rattled on, hard and quick, the rumbling bass and shrill tenor of that most inappropriately jubilant composition—"cherubim and seraphim," "fire, hail, and snow," succeeding each other with a railway velocity that there was no resisting; no sooner had we got to "stands ever fast," than round again we went to the "boundless realms of joy," and so on, on, on, through each dreary minute of those dreary hours, an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Dionysius the Areop'agite, the angels are divided into nine orders: Seraphim and Cherubim, in the first circle; Thrones and Dominions, in the second circle; Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels, in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... humble cottage while he slept lifted up its thatched roof and became a noble mansion. The one room and small became many and vast. The little windows became arched and beautiful, looking out upon vast estates all his. The fireplace became an altar, o'er which hung seraphim. The chimney became a golden ladder like that which Jacob saw, and his children, living and dead, passed like angels bringing treasure up and down. And thus, while the human heart muses and dreams, God builds His sanctuary ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Heaven to Heaven Magnifical He goes, Until the last of all the seven To greet His coming glows; While He the Eternal long left lone To meet Him doth upstand, Then sets His Son upon the Throne Once more at His right hand. Whereat with one triumphal hymn Majestically blent The Cherubim and Seraphim The Universe have rent. Last, from the splendrous mercy seat, Of Father and of Son, To Earth, their purpose to complete, Descends ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... betrayed To evil power, I claim thine aid, By every step that thou hast trod To holy shrine and grotto dim, By every martyr's tortured limb, By angel, saint, and seraphim, And by the Church of God! For mark:- When Wilton was betrayed, And with his squire forged letters laid, She was, alas! that sinful maid By whom the deed was done - Oh! shame and horror to be said! - She was a perjured nun! No clerk in all the land, like her Traced quaint and ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... surrounds their sight A Globe of circular light, That with long beams the shame-fac't night array'd, The helmed Cherubim And sworded Seraphim, Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displaid, Harping in loud and solemn quire, With unexpressive ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... And what doos the lovin' gen'rous, faithful little soul git? He gits his labor for his pains. He hears folks say right to his face that nobody wants him and everybody wants Gay. And if he didn't have a disposition like a cherubim-an-seraphim (and better, too, for they 'continually do cry,' now I come to think of it), he'd be sour and bitter, 'stid o' bein' good as an angel in a picture-book from ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... yonder chords fast-thronging come Soul-breathing notes with rapturous speed, As when from out their heavenly home The new-born seraphim proceed; The strains pour forth their magic might, As glittering suns burst through the night, When, by Creation's storm awoke, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the Seraphim ardentes do not manifest their virtues by the way of vision and theory; and whether practice be not a sub-celestial ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... to him, in the smoke of the altar, seated on a throne and surrounded by seraphim, a sense of his own unworthiness filled him with fear, but an angel purified his lips with a live coal, and he heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" and he replied, "Here am I; send ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... voice was that of the porter of the monastery, Father Seraphim, a strapping Vetlugan) "a spectre walks ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... ye enwraptur'd souls that serve the Lord Cherubim! Seraphim! Angels and Spirits! Love ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... and told the Tipperary men to pay Smith-Barry no rent. If they paid a penny they were traitors, slaves, murderers, felons, brigands, and bosthoons. If they refused to pay they were patriots, heroes, angels, cherubim and seraphim, the whole country would worship them, they would powerfully assist the Ponsonby folks in the next county, they would be ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... pretended discoveries, and to receive them, if rational how long soever I have been used to another way of thinking.' Let all ministers, then, young and old, resolve to stoop with Jonathan Edwards, who shines, in his life and in his works, like the cherubim with knowledge, and burns like the seraphim with love. ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... we may remember the harsh contortions of dry cachinnation indulged in by the rebel spirits, when they have succeeded in toppling over with their artillery the armed hosts of Seraphim. Milton certainly did not intend to subtract all humour from the celestial regions. The only pity was that he had not himself emerged beyond the childish stage, which finds its deepest amusement in the disasters and ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "aw us't to think I could ha' done a bit, forty year sin—an' I could, too—though I say it mysel. I remember gooin' to a oratory once, at Bury. Deborah Travis wur theer, fro Shay. Eh! when aw yerd her sing 'Let the bright seraphim,' aw gav in. Isherwood wur theer; an' her at's Mrs Wood neaw; an' two or three fro Yawshur road on. It wur th' grand'st sing 'at ever I wur at i' my life.... Eh, I's never forget th' practice-neets 'at we use't to have at owd Israel Grindrod's! ...
— Th' Barrel Organ • Edwin Waugh
... of what should be thy shame. Life's fitful fever over, he rests well. Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? From star to star the living lightnings flash. And glittering crowns of prostrate seraphim. That morning, thou that slumber'd'st not before. Habitual evils change not on a sudden. Thou waft'd'st the rickety skiffs over the cliffs. Thou reef'd'st the haggled, shipwrecked sails. The honest shepherd's ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Original Letters of Bishop Bedell; Memoir of Thomas Dodd, author of the "Connoisseur's Repertorium" (with a Portrait); Chaucer's Monument, and Spenser's Death, by J. Payne Collier, Esq.; Christian Iconography, the Heavenly Host, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones, by J.G. Waller, Esq.; Gothic Windows, by Sharpe and Freeman; Diary of John, Earl of Egmont, Part II., Memoir of Andre Chenier; Parker's Introduction to Gothic Architecture; The British Museum Catalogue and the Edinburgh Review. With Notes ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... it was to him An emblem of the Seraphim; The upward motion of the fire, The light, the heat, the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... round the great white throne all nations stand, When Jew and Gentile meet at God's right hand, When thousand times ten thousand raise the strain— 'Worthy the Lamb that once for us was slain!' When the bright Seraphim with joy prolong Through all eternity that thrilling song— The heathen's universal jubilee, A music sweet, O Saviour Christ, to Thee— Say, 'mid those happy strains, will not one note,— Sung by a hapless nation once remote, But now ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... said Philip, smiling. "I never heard a seraphim play on the violin, but I am sure ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... Island, eleven miles up the lake, and owns also Sugar Island, between which and the former the steamer runs; these, I think, were all beside ourselves. In the saloon was some kind of musical instrument, cherubim or seraphim, to soothe the angry waves; and there, very properly, was tacked up the map of the public lands of Maine and Massachusetts, a copy of which I had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... Thought awaits thee there. God loves the silent worshipper. The grandest hymn That nature chants—the litany Of the rejoicing stars—is silent praise. Their nightly anthems stir The souls of lofty seraphim In the remotest heaven. The melody Descends in throbbings of celestial light Into the heart of man, whose upward gaze, And meditative aspect, tell Of the heart's incense passing up the night. Above the crystalline height The ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... fall upon the children of disobedience, our Saviour invites us, in gentle accents, to the green pastures and the still waters of the Heavenly Canaan; to cities resplendent with pearls and gold; to mansions of which God is the architect; to the songs of seraphim, and the flight of cherubim, exploring on tireless pinion the wonders of infinity; to peace of conscience and rapture dwelling in pure heart and to blest companionship loving and beloved; to majesty of person and loftiness of intellect; to appear as children and as ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... ere the spavined dactyls could be spurred Into recitative, in great dismay Both Cherubim and Seraphim were heard To murmur loudly through their long array; And Michael rose ere he could get a word Of all his foundered verses under way, And cried, "For God's sake stop, my friend! 'twere best—[551] 'Non Di, non homines'—you know ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... personalities and principles in mystic revelation; the esoteric meaning in Mythology; are there gods and mortals? the ark in religious symbology; its interior meaning; what were the "tablets of stone?" the reality of the "cherubim" and the "seraphim;" the inner meaning of the symbolical "ark of the Covenant;" is spiritual love devoid of sex?; what is the symbolical "flaming sword?"; why the Jews claimed to be God's "chosen people;" what makes for "immortal godhood?"; the symbolism of the "life-token" stories; the symbolism ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... flames and red flames In a world all dark; Blue flames and red flames, And a tiny spark Hurrying to heaven, lest it should be late; Lest the cautious seraphim close the shining gate, And leave the little wanderer forevermore to fly Like an orphan angel through ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... or thinks that the Word of God has become like to all heavenly orders, so that for the cherubim He was a cherub and for the seraphim a seraph, in short, like all the superior ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... ecclesiastical affairs pertains to Christ alone; they are the authorized administrators of all the laws by which his household is to be governed. (Heb. xiii. 7, 17.)—The language of adoration here is the same uttered by the seraphim. (Isa. vi. 3) The "holiness" of God is that adorable character which is most attractive to holy angels and redeemed sinners, being the principal feature of the divine image reflected by themselves. (Matt. xxv. 31; ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... dear brothers! the harp that I hold No craftsman could string and no artisan mould; He shaped it, He strung it, who fashioned the lyres That ring with the hymns of the seraphim choirs. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... and rubies seem wet, and make veiled beings in the shadow below weep, their sides bruised with the hair shirt and their iron-tipped scourges, their breasts crushed with wicker hurdles, their knees excoriated with prayer; women who think themselves wives, spectres who think themselves seraphim. Do these women think? No. Have they any will? No. Do they love? No. Do they live? No. Their nerves have turned to bone; their bones have turned to stone. Their veil is of woven night. Their breath under their veil resembles the indescribably tragic respiration of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the meaning of this flood of light? No longer straggling beams through iron-grated windows, no longer the bare floor and earth-polluted garments, but linen white and clean. Was it an angel bending over him,—whose eyes of love and infinite tenderness looked into his own? Was it one of the seraphim that pressed her lips to his, that dropped tears upon his cheeks? Were there tears in Heaven? Surely this must be Paradise! The eyes closed, the vision faded, but the angel still was ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... and for this bread that feeds, By law of man's weak flesh, our daily needs, Let every tongue, the Father's praises sing; The Father Who on His exalted throne, O'er Cherubim and Seraphim, alone Reigns in ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... fiery trees, under all that golden foliage, and fruits like monstrous jewels, as innocent as Adam before the Fall. He would see sights almost as fine as the flaming sword or the purple and peacock plumage of the seraphim; so long as he did not go near the Tree ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... wisdom of leaving the solid, reliable land, and trusting myself to the fickle and deceitful sea. In a few moments these disquieting hints had grown to a positive clamor, and my head and heels were feeling very much as do those of gentlemen who have been dining out with "terrapin and seraphim" and their liquid accompaniments. At this time Miss R—— gave out utterly and went below, but I was filled with the idea that seasickness can be overcome by an effort of will, and stayed on, making an effort to "demonstrate," as the Christian Scientists say, and trying to look as if nothing ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... having asked him in Latin, "Ubi censebaris quando mane oriebaris?" He replied, "Between the seraphim." They said to him, "Pro signo exhibe nobis patibulum fratris Cephae;" the devil extended his arms in the form of a St. Andrew's cross. They said to him, "Applica carpum carpo;" he did so, placing the wrist of one hand over the other; then, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... such pride of place in the angel host? Yes—once. The Devil wanted to be at the top, and he fell. The other angels are content where they are, and they remain angels. If they began pushing ahead of each other, cherubim wanting to be above seraphim, and angels envious of archangels, what a falling there would be from heaven! Falling stars indeed! All turning into devils. Look at the Blessed Trinity. God the Son says, "My Father is greater than I." He places Himself in the lowest rank. He calls Himself "The Son of Man"; ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... is ever conscious of such musing and poetry "as is not to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her twin daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the transport-tumult driven, Doth the music gliding swim; From the strings, as from their heaven, Burst the new-born Seraphim. As when from Chaos' giant arms set free, 'Mid the Creation-storm, exultingly Sprang sparkling thro' the dark the Orbs of Light— So streams the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... of good human nature, send him to heaven for relief, where he can have the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the company of the noble army of martyrs, and amuse himself suggesting improvements upon the vocal selections of cherubim and seraphim! Impress the idea upon ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... swims into the splendours of Francis Thompson as one might take refuge from a wooden farmhouse unprotected by trees, in a Gothic spire, a Byzantine altar-piece, or a series of Moorish arabesques. It is a frightful descent from the heaven of Crashaw and the places of the Seraphim in "The Hound of Heaven," by Francis Thompson, to ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... interference with our greatest institution, leading legitimately and logically to disunion and war. Is it right, is it generous, is it patriotic to drive us to such an alternative? We only ask to be let alone. You assail a sacred ark where dwell the seraphim and cherubim of our liberties, of our honor, of our interests, of our loyalty itself. To this ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... church of St. George of Cappadocia might have served for the ballroom of a palace. It was lofty, and proportionately spacious, with a grooved ceiling painted with all the court of heaven. Above the broad and richly-gilt cornice floated a company of seraphim that might have figured as the Cupids of Albano. The apartment was crowded, for there and in some adjoining chambers were assembled the cardinals and prelates, and all the distinguished or official characters, who, in a few minutes, were ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... saw the obsequious seraphim Their rosy fleece of fire bestow; For well they now can spare their wings, Since Heaven itself lies here below. Well done! said I; but are you sure Your down, so warm, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... up. Every man sees that he is that middle point whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant. He hears and feels what you say of the seraphim, and of the tin-peddler. There is no permanent wise man except in the figment of the Stoics. We side with the hero, as we read or paint, against the coward and the robber; but we have been ourselves that coward and robber, and shall be again,—not in the low circumstance, but ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... thy chain. Sweet Lady, how Little a linking of the hand to you! Though I should touch yours careless for a year, Not one blue vein would lie divinelier blue Upon your fragile temple, to unsphere The seraphim for kisses! Not one curve Of your sad mouth would droop more sad and sweet. But little food love's beggars needs must serve, That eye your plenteous graces from the street. A hand-clasp I must feed on for a ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... Christ, Son of the living God, who suffered for thee; in the name of the Holy Ghost, who was poured forth upon thee; in the name of the Angels and Archangels; in the name of the Thrones and Dominations; in the name of the Principalities and Powers; in the name of the Cherubim and Seraphim; in the name of the Patriarchs and Prophets; in the name of the holy Apostles and Evangelists; in the name of the holy Martyrs and Confessors; in the name of the holy Monks and Hermits; in the name of the holy Virgins and of all the Saints of ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by seraphim, whose footfalls twinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels He hath sent thee Respite—respite and nepenthe from my memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... was of the Lord upon a Throne, high and lifted up, surrounded by Seraphim crying to one another, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts! the whole earth is full of His Glory! And their voices rocked the Temple and filled it with smoke. Here are a Presence, Awful Majesty, Infinite Holiness and Glory, blinding the seer and crushing his ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... place. A deep silence reigned throughout. There was a blast of trumpets; every one stood up, and the King came down the same little staircase we had. He looked very majestic in his splendid robes of ermine, over which hung the blue Order of the Seraphim, the highest order in Sweden, and of course all his other decorations. The crown he wears is magnificent, made of costly jewels, and, I should think, very heavy, causing the King to hold his head very straight and steady. He looked up at the loge of the diplomats, ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... a diminutive of Cherubim, a name bestowed by its present owner upon the wretched puppy that he had rescued from an abandoned emigrant wagon high up in the California Sierras, because like Cherubim and Seraphim he "continually did cry." The little one was nearly dead, and its mother, lying beside it, was quite so, when they were discovered by the tender-hearted engineer. He had fought his way through a blinding snowstorm and high-piled drifts to the ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... aloft into those diamond palaces on high, or, as Paul calls it, "caught up into paradise," where he heard "unspeakable words, which it is not possible for a man to utter," and the throne of God, with all the seraphim and cherubim, archangels and angels, became visible and their conversation intelligible to the enraptured and transported mystic, in a fit of hallucination, when the bewildered imagination sees objectively ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... It is curious to consider how those great masters of the Latin tongue who used to sup with Maecenas and Pollio would have been perplexed by "Tibi Cherubim et Seraphim incessabili voce proclamant, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth;" or by "Ideo cum angelis et archangelis, cum ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... power, and, alas! seems never to lose its appropriateness: 'Because thou art neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of My mouth.' We ought to be like the burning beings before God's throne, the seraphim, the spirits that blaze and serve. We ought to be like God Himself, all aflame with love. Let us seek penitently for that Spirit of fire who will dwell in us ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Montaiglon a continuation of the actual hills of wood and heather whereof they were, the culmination. He saw, it seemed to him, the myriad peaks, the vast cavernous mountain clefts of a magic land, the abode of seraphim ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... from the Polar Bear, Comes down the freezing air, And stiffens all things with its deadly chill. He who doth God resist— God's old antagonist— Would snap the chain that binds all things to him; And in his godless pride, All peoples would divide, And scatter even the choirs of seraphim. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... transepts on the same level have almost disappeared, except the Prodigal Son and a border to what was once a Saint Lawrence, on the north; and, on the south, part of a window to Saint Apollinaris of Ravenna, with an interesting hierarchy of angels above:—seraphim and cherubim with six wings, red and blue; Dominations; Powers; Principalities; ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... and seraphim, occupied unceasingly with the praise of the Lord. I recommend them to your holy prayers, and ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... and completely overawes and melts him down. The elders of Israel "saw God," yet the most distinct impression of anything seen is of the beautiful pavement under His feet. Isaiah's most definite impression, when the great vision came to him, was of a train of glory, seraphim and smoke and a voice. Ezekiel has rare power in detailed description. He has overpowering visions of the "glory of Jehovah." Yet the most definite that he can make the description is a storm gathering, a cloud, a fire, a centre spot of brightness, a clearness as of ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... holiness, or subverting its justice. In the nature of the divine Persons thus counselling for man's redemption, it is not for him, blind, and erring, and impotent, it is not for angels, it is not for cherubim or seraphim, for a moment to look. The inner glory of the divine nature burns with a blaze, if I may so with reverence speak, too intense, too radiant, for finite vision. But in its manifestations, in its outer, its ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out His Seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases." His lips were touched at last. In the quiet retreat of his home in Bunhill Fields he mused during these years of persecution and loneliness on the "Paradise ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... raised to a seventh heaven of delight by a Bach fugue played on a clavichord by Mr. Dolmetsch, feeling as if angels were ministering unto them, or to a still higher heaven of delight by a Tschaikowsky symphony or a string quartet of Grieg, feeling that here the seraphim continually do cry, or they may enter into the very presence of the most High through some subtly exquisite and psychic song of an American composer, for some of the younger American composers are indeed approaching "Truth's very heart of ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... Evidently he had become accustomed to detect his presence and hear his voice. Those still small accents which had fallen on the ear of his great prototype had thrilled his soul. He, too, had seen the Lord high and lifted up, had heard the chant of the seraphim, and had felt the live coal touch his lips, as it had been caught from the altar ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... way of the tree of life and the guardians of the Soma in the Veda and Avesta, as deserving attention, and we should like to see the etymological derivation of Cherubim from [Greek: gryphes], Greifen, and of Seraphim from the Sanskrit sarpa, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... hands to her heart, and drove back the outward expression of her agony with superhuman courage. Yes, he is already singing in heaven, amidst the angelic choir—among the innumerable seraphim! that was the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... almond walks I tread And greet the figures of the dead. Mirandula walks here with him Who lived with gods and seraphim; Yet where Colonna's fair feet go There passes ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... of his entranced vision from the series of external facts to which his consciousness had returned. Isaiah gives us the date of his vision in the Temple—"the year that King Uzziah died"—and if afterwards the mighty-winged seraphim were present with him as he trod the street, he doubtless knew them for images of memory, and did not cry "Look!" to ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... stood before that mysterious Light that coruscated in the darkness of the Holy of Holies. But this High Priest is promised an access on all days and at all times; and that He may stand there, beside and like the seraphim, who with one pair of wings veiled their faces in token of the incapacity of the creature to behold the Creator; 'with twain veiled their feet' in token of the unworthiness of creatural activities to be set before Him, 'and with twain did fly' in token of their willingness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... facetiously when at length they started to run down, "what happens to a man if he marries an angel? Does he become angel-consort or one of those seraphim arrangements?" ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... possibility of attaining it. You perceive that, though allied on the one side to the dust you tread on, you are allied on the other side to heaven; that though connected by ties of consanguinity to the worm you are also connected, or may be, with angels and archangels, and cherubim and seraphim, in the glorious work of unceasing progress upward toward the throne of God. Will you not, then, hail with joy, every effort of every being who would assist your spirit ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... placed on a bed in a sitting posture, beneath a tester of ragged check-furniture; large sheets of white linen were spread around the walls in lieu of tapestries, and covered with various devices wrought into fantastic images of flowers, angels, and seraphim. A large, fresh-gathered posy in the bosom of the deceased had a most striking effect, when contrasted 30with the pallidness of death; over the lower parts of the corpse was spread a counterpane, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... his inconceivable throne, and far around him, rank after rank, angels and archangels, seraphim and cherubim, resting on their silver wings and lifting their dazzling brows, rose and swelled, with the splendors of an illimitable sea of immortal beings, gleaming and fluctuating to the remotest borders of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... tassels, the saints and the "ex voto" paled before the reliquary in which Don Juan lay. The body of the blasphemer was resplendent with gems, flowers, crystals, diamonds, gold, and plumes as white as the wings of a seraphim; it replaced a picture of Christ on the altar. Around him burned wax candles, which threw out waves of light. The good Abbot of San Lucas, clad in his pontifical robes, with his jeweled mitre, his surplice and his golden crozier reclined, king of the choir, in a large armchair, amid all his clergy, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... try for the speling prize but fear I cannot get it. I would not care but wrong speling looks dreadful in poetry. Last Sunday when I found seraphim in the dictionary I was ashamed I had made it serrafim but seraphim is not a word you can guess at like another long one outlandish in this letter which spells itself. Miss Dearborn says use the words you CAN spell ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the room my silent servants wait,— My friends in every season, bright and dim Angels and seraphim Come down and murmur to me, sweet and low, And spirits of the skies all come and go Early and late; From the old world's divine and distant date, From the sublimer few, Down to the poet who but yester-eve Sang sweet and made us grieve, All ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... she answered, when they sought To know her inmost, earnest thought, With look as of the seraphim "I only strive ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... some good-natured friendship in return. Henrietta fagged for her, did as many of her lessons as she could, applauded all her remarks, amply rewarded by Miranda's welcoming smile and her, "I've been simply pining for you, my child; come and hear me my French at once, like a seraphim." ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... possible to regard each person in the Divine Trinity triply, so in each Hierarchy there are three orders which contemplate diversely. It is possible to consider the Father having regard to none but Him; and this is the contemplation of the Seraphim, who see more of the First Cause than any other Angelic Nature. It is possible to consider the Father according as He has relation to the Son, that is, how He is apart from Him, and how united with Him; and this is the contemplation of the Cherubim. It is possible again to consider ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... cherubim and seraphim, or the highest order of spirits, who have always been pure and holy. They constitute the next rank of the ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... whose banners, like sails, wavered for an instant, then suddenly vanished in the shade. One saw again the pale "daughters of Mary," who, as they entered, still sang with their voices like those of seraphim. ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... we find the prose Which, paraphrased by her, a poem grows; A devout rapture! so divine a hymn, It may become the highest seraphim! For they, like her, in that celestial choir, Sing only what the Spirit does inspire. Taught by our Lord, and theirs, with us they may For all but pardon ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... eternal peace, and she will one day glide from grief to glory, for she can claim the promise of our Lord, 'The pure in heart shall see God.' No purer heart than Vashti Carlyle's throbs this side of the throne where seraphim and ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Hall, Norfolk, at the expense of H.R. Evans, Esq., then Registrar to the Dean and Chapter; the centre contains a figure of the Saviour in an aureole: He is represented as holding a globe in His left hand, and is surrounded by the sun, moon, and stars; on either side are Cherubim and Seraphim bearing scrolls containing the words "Holy! Holy! Lord God of Sabaoth." The eastern centre contains a shield on which is the dextra Domini, the "right hand of the Lord," as an emblem of the Creator; the corners are enriched with foliage, ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... tribute levied on each golden gale Thy treasuries, if thou canst hear the wail Of women martyred by the turbaned crew, Whose tenderest mercy was the sword that slew, And lift no hand to wield the purging flail? We deemed of old thou held'st a charge from Him Who watches girdled by his seraphim, To smite the wronger with thy destined rod. Wait'st thou his sign? Enough, the unanswered cry Of virgin souls for vengeance, and on high The gathering blackness of the frown ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... pass over the mind like some drowsy chime but in the bitter day of anguish and bereavement, when the body is racked, the soul darkened, shine out like stars to the mariner; seem then first to swell to their real size and meaning, and come to writhing mortals like pitying seraphim, divinity on their faces and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Father Seraphim, the deacon, the acolytes, and Sofya Ivanovna, a lady who always lived near the hermitage and tended Father Sergius, begged him to bring the service to ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... as he so wondrously does in his treatise on prayer. To use the language of Milton—'These are works that could not be composed by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases, without reference to station, birth, or education.' The tent-maker and tinker, the fisherman and publican, and even a friar or monk,[123] became the honoured ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... not fully apparent. They have "vials full of odors, which are the prayers of saints." The four beasts are evidently of the same order as the "living creatures" in Ezek. 1:5; the cherubim of Ezek. 10:20, and the seraphim of Isa. 6:1. The entire hosts of the redeemed are thus represented as interested spectators in the visions which are ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... similar conception of the office filled by the angels. In every case one is looking up with a rapt expression of joy, while the other is more contemplative, drooping the head as if in reflection. The contrast suggests the distinction of early theology between the seraphim and cherubim, the former being, according to etymological significance, the spirits who love and adore, and the latter, those who know and worship. This distinction was scrupulously adhered to in early art by representing ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... things which surpass the knowledge of all men without exception, not that they are in themselves unknowable, but on account of a defect in human knowledge; such as the mystery of the Trinity, which was revealed by the Seraphim saying: "Holy, Holy, Holy," ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the appetites, in which we chiefly place earthly happiness, themselves take on an aesthetic tinge when we remove ideally the possibility of loss or variation. What could the Olympians honour in one another or the seraphim worship in God except the embodiment of eternal attributes, of essences which, like beauty, make us happy only in contemplation? The glory of heaven could not be otherwise symbolized than by light and music. Even the knowledge of truth, which the most sober theologians made ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... conviction that, where the church was pure, and the faith true, and the congregation pious, these guardian angels, so chosen, would accept the office assigned them. They were generally chosen from the Seraphim and Cherubim—those who, according to St. Paul (1 Colossians xvi.), represented thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers. According to the Hebrew traditions, St. Michael was the head of the first order; Gabriel, of the second; Uriel, of the third; and Raphael, of the fourth. St. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... he was carried along by the curious sermon in which the preacher likened the orders of the hierarchy below to that of the nine orders of the Angels, making the rank of Cardinal correspond to that of the Seraphim, aglow with love. Of that holy flame, the scarlet robes were the type to the spiritualised mind of Colet, while others saw in them only the relic of the imperial purple of old Rome; and some beheld them as the token that Wolsey was one step nearer the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of it; for we cannot imagine it: and if we tried to, we should only lower it to our own low fancies. But is it not reasonable to suppose, that there God the Father does, perhaps, in some unspeakable way, shew forth his glory? That there, in the heart of all the worlds, Cherubim and Seraphim continually adore him, crying day and night, 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth: Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory!' before his throne from which goes forth light, and power, and life, to all worlds ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the growth of human ills Than human love had reached no higher, But Seraphim with lips of fire Have won me to the shining hills— I cannot hide my soul in art— I cannot mend my life's defect— This thunderous space of intellect God gave ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... The hovering seraphim were in the attitude of service. They are probably represented as fiery forms, but are spoken of nowhere else in Scripture. The significance of their attitude has been well given by Jewish commentators, who say, 'with two he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... is not raised in the heat of youth or the vapors of wine, or by "invocation to dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altars to touch and purify the lips ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... elders, beating the breast, 'So the lowly deed is the lofty test! And whatever is done from the heart to Him Is done from the height of the Seraphim!'" ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... spot, for they had been made white in the blood of the Lamb. Their voices were one, for all praised the Lord. Now the glory of the Ancient of Days filled me with awe. He sat upon a throne of light, with seraphim on the right and cherubim on the left, and I could read the foundations of his throne. Legions of bright angels and happy saints were around him. I fell down with them to worship at his feet, when he touched me and raised ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... consistently bad. All the side-altars have broken arches, and the high altar is built of rough blocks of marble to represent Mount Sinai, on which a melodramatic statue of Moses receives the tables of the law from God the Father, with frescoed seraphim in the background. For the same reason, I suppose, that the devout prefer a hideous Bambino and a Madonna in crinoline to the most graceful artistic conception of those sacred personages, San Moise is the most popular church ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... holy, holy! All Heaven's triumphant choir shall sing, When the ransomed nations fall At the footstool of their King: Then shall saints and seraphim, Hearts and voices, swell one hymn Round the throne with full accord, Holy, ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... the souls that have fallen into their clutches. One has caught in the net that he has just thrown a mitred abbot and two other monks. As the dead rise from their tombs the justiciary angels bar the way of the wicked who strive to approach the Judge. A seraphim holds the closed book of life, upon which these words are carved: 'Hic signatur liber vitae.' On various parts of the portal are numerous inscriptions, some of which, like the following, are in ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Uriel and his Seraphim are hammering a shield; And twice along the valley has the horn of Roland pealed; And Cleopatra on the Nile, Iseult in Brittany, And Lancelot in Camelot, and Drake upon the sea; And behind the young Republic are the fellows with the flag, And ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... much too modest and too wise to expect the patronage of two editors in succession, that I expect both my poems in a return cover, by every twopenny post. Besides, what has Theodore Hook to do with Seraphim? So, I shall leave that poem of mine to your imagination; which won't be half as troublesome to you as if I asked you to read it; begging you to be assured—to write it down in your critical rubric—that it is the very finest composition you ever read, next (of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... the city, sir. We pride ourselves on our music, and always have the best. People often come for that alone." And the old gentleman looked as satisfied as if a choir of cherubim and seraphim "continually did cry" ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Pleasure's breeze,— No flapping sail before the idle wind,— No music pulsing out its great wild heart In sweetest passion-beats the noontide through,— No lovers gliding down sun-chequer'd glades, In dreams that open wide the Eden gate, And waft them past the guardian Seraphim. Sleep over all the Present and the Past— The Future standing idle at the gate, Gazing amazed, like one who, in hot haste Bearing great tidings to some palace ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... folk shall not personate this blessedness for us. Who is your next-door neighbor? One face shines serenely before me, and says, "The world is redeemed!" One voice, sounding clear through all discords, has an echo, fine, true, and eternal, in the midst of the Seraphim's praise. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... trying to sing in unison with the weather, drew in the air with a howl, while the logs, as though waking up, burst into bright flame and hissed angrily, red patches began dancing on the log walls, and over the head of the sleeping man could be seen first the Elder Seraphim, then the Shah Nasir-ed-Din, then a fat, brown baby with goggle eyes, whispering in the ear of a young girl with an extraordinarily blank, and indifferent ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Nature, how in every charm supreme! Whose votaries feast on raptures ever new! O for the voice and fire of seraphim, To sing thy glories with devotion due! Blessed be the day I 'scaped the wrangling crew, From Pyrrho's maze, and Epicurus' sty; And held high converse with the godlike few, Who to the enraptured heart, and ear, and eye, Teach beauty, virtue, truth, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... are the questions which they will Urge equally; and therefore I the first Of that will treat which hath the more of gall. Of seraphim he who is most enskied, Moses, and Samuel, and either John, Choose which thou wilt, nor even Mary's self, Have not in any other heaven their seats, Than have those spirits which so late thou saw'st; ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... young lady told me that Professor Storozhenko had related to her the following anecdote. The Sovereign liked the Kreutzer Sonata. Pobyedonostsev, Lubimov, and the other cherubim and seraphim, hastened to justify their attitude to Tolstoy by showing his Majesty "Nikolay Palkin." After reading it, his Majesty was so furious that he ordered measures to be taken. Prince Dolgorukov was informed. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... how nice 'twas to have her there, it tickled her e'en a'most to death. She'd lived alone with her mother an' two old-maid aunts, an' she didn't know nothin' about men-folks; I al'ays thought she felt they was different somehow,—kind o' cherubim an' seraphim,—an' you'd got to mind 'em as if you was the Childern of Isr'el an' they was Moses. Josh never meant a mite o' harm, I'll say that for him. He was jest man-like, that's all. There's lots o' different kinds,—here, Mis' Niles, you know; you've buried your third,—an' Josh was the kind that can't ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... to declare their names by the mouths of their victims. Their names and deeds are deposited upon this table. They are called Astaroth, of the order of Seraphim; Eazas, Celsus, Acaos, Cedron, Asmodeus, of the order of Thrones; Alex, Zebulon, Cham, Uriel, and Achas, of the order of Principalities, and so on, for their number is infinite. For their actions, who among us has not been ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... enchantments rose 'Mid those wild woodlands at the matin prime— Or when the vesper song at evening's close Wafted the soul beyond the cares of time, To that Elysium of a brighter clime Where thro' heaven's portals golden vistas gleam, And the high harps of Seraphim sublime Came o'er the spirit like a prophet's dream, Till faded earth away on ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... the now destroyed dome of the little church of Megale Panagia at Athens, a dome which was only about 12 ft. across. At the centre was Christ enthroned, next came a series of nine semicircles containing the orders of the angels, seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominations, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels and angels. Below these came a wide blue belt set with stars and the signs of the zodiac; to the east the sun, to the west the moon. Still below these were the winds, hail and snow; and still lower mountains ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... boundless realms of joy, Exalt your Maker's name; His praise your songs employ Above the starry frame: Your voices raise, Ye cherubim And seraphim, To sing ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... Seraphim, and saints in wonder, Lift their songs where Christ is set, And employ, in sacred homage, Harp, and ...
— Hymns from the Morningland - Being Translations, Centos and Suggestions from the Service - Books of the Holy Eastern Church • Various
... Where the mountains afar are dim 'Neath the tremulous tread of the seraphim, Shall not our querulous hearts prevail, That have prayed for the ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... fatui Index indices or indexes [3] Lamina laminae Magus magi Memorandum memoranda or memorandums Metamorphosis metamorphoses Parenthesis parentheses Phenomenon phenomena Radius radii or radiuses Stamen stamina Seraph seraphim or seraphs Stimulus stimuli Stratum strata Thesis theses Vertex ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... into nine classes, or choirs, according to their rank or office, and, as theologians tell us, arranged from the lowest to the highest and named as follows; angels, archangels, virtues, powers, principalities, dominations, thrones, cherubim, and seraphim. Archangels are higher than angels and are so called because sent to do the most important works. It was the Archangel Michael who drove Lucifer from Heaven and the Archangel Gabriel who announced to the Blessed Virgin that she was to be the Mother of God. The angels receive their names ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... last surrounds their sight A globe of circular light, That with long beams the shame-faced night array'd; The helmed cherubim, And sworded seraphim, Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd, Harping in loud and solemn quire, With unexpressive notes, to ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... of God on the ladder,[12] and later on they appear to him at Mahanaim.[13] In all these cases the angels, like the Mal'akh Yahweh, are connected with or represent a theophany. Similarly the "man" who wrestles with Jacob at Peniel is identified with God.[14] In Isaiah vi. the seraphim, superhuman beings with six wings, appear as the attendants of Yahweh. Thus the pre-exilic literature, as we now have it, has little to say about angels or about superhuman beings other than Yahweh and manifestations of Yahweh; the pre-exilic prophets hardly mention angels.[15] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... loved. In all his poems, he has idealized fidelity and constancy in love. All the heroes of his poems are faithful and constant, from Conrad, Lara, Selim, all those of the Oriental poems of his youth, up to those of his latter life, to his Biblical mysteries. Even the angels, the seraphim, in that beautiful poem, written shortly before his death, "Heaven and Earth," prefer suffering to inconstancy,—to forfeit heaven rather than return there without their beloved. In vain the archangel Raphael ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli |
