Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




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








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Heathenism" Quotes from Famous Books



... enthusiastic religionist. His strength is the strength of God. No wonder, then, that the Roman Catholic priest should cherish hopes of rescuing the entire new world from heresy, which he considered worse than heathenism, and should enlist all his energies in so grand a cause. It is almost certain that extensive plans were formed for the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... 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 ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... Behind the desk, where sat Dr. S——, was hung up a missionary map of the world, drawn on canvas, and illuminated from behind. It was an excellent device. All missionary prayer-meetings should be furnished with one. Those parts where the Gospel is already preached were light, the realms of Heathenism dark, the lands of Popery ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... doubtless, think 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, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... 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 ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... the prophets in the olden days of Israel. The astonishing peculiarity about the 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 remains that in the main, the visions of the writers of our Scriptures ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell

... not be found guilty before the bar of natural religion? What heathen will not need an atonement, for his failure to live up even to the light of nature? Nay, what is the entire sacrificial cultus of heathenism, but a confession that the whole heathen world finds and feels itself to be guilty at the bar of natural reason and conscience? The accusing voice within them wakes their forebodings and fearful looking-for of Divine judgment, and they endeavor to propitiate the ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... they had dedicated their temple, under Antiochus Epiphanes, to the Greek Jupiter. Their keeping the commands of Moses even more strictly than the Jews, that it might seem they were really of Israel, was not denied; but their heathenism, it was said, had been proved by the discovery of a brazen dove, which they worshipped, on the top of Gerizim. It would have been enough that they boasted of Herod as their good king, who had married a daughter of their people; that he had been free to follow, in their country, his Roman tastes, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... explanation. Either they will be found to appeal to those instinctive feelings of our nature already spoken of which supersede argument and proof in the judgments we form of persons or bodies; as in St. Paul's reference to the idolatry of Athenian worship, or to the extreme moral corruption of heathenism generally. Or, again, the criterion of doctrine which they propose to the private judgment of the individual turns upon the question of its novelty or previous reception. When St. Paul would describe a false ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... 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 ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... have despaired of reclaiming these islands from heathenism. The usage they have in every case received from the natives has been such as to intimidate the boldest of their number. Ellis, in his 'Polynesian Researches', gives some interesting accounts of the abortive attempts made by the ''Tahiti Mission'' to establish a branch ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... would not submit were driven out of the German settlements, so within their boundaries the germs of Christianity, which had already spread in the island, were as good as annihilated. Among the victorious Germans the Northern heathenism existed in full strength. In many names of places, at the water-springs, the watersheds, in the designations of the days of the week, the names of the gods of Germany and the North appear; the kings trace their descent directly from ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... work a companion book was written by Orosius, who had been Augustine's disciple. This was a compendium of Universal History, and it was designed to exhibit the troubles that had afflicted mankind in the ages of heathenism. It became the established manual of history, and continued to be so throughout our period; and Orosius was for ages the only authority for the general course of history. This explains how it came to be one of ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... in Central, Northern, Eastern, and Southern Asia, and it gradually absorbs whatever there is left of aboriginal heathenism in that vast ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... gravely, 'the upshot is that she is so aghast at the state of heathenism and wickedness that the village children are in, that she is going to start a Sunday School herself next Sunday, and I expect she hopes to enlist some of us as teachers. Will you go, Gates? ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre

... the subjective in the third. Had the 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 ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson

... never felt the need to be delivered from the temptation of strange loves. Still we were as God and Nature had made us, and therefore had little right to reproach each other, or even to set that down as virtue which was but lack of leaning. Moreover, this Otomie, her sin of heathenism notwithstanding, had been a great-hearted woman and one who might well dazzle the wandering eyes of man, daring more for her love's sake than ever she, Lily, could have dared; and to end with, it was clear that at last I must choose between wedding her and a ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." 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, ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... system of slavery, as it is presented to us, in the laws of the slave States; and what do we find here? Why, that the system is as bad as the practice under it. Here we find the most diabolical devices to keep millions of human beings in a state of heathenism—in the deepest ignorance and most loathsome pollution. But you will tell me, that I do not look far enough to find the true theory of slavery; and that the cruelties and abominations, which the laws of the slave States have ingrafted on this theory, are not acknowledged by ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... 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. Some of the smaller images ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... respected worship, however far they went in 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 Fathers ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... strange mixture of heathenism and Greek church Christianity. The czar's soldiers have a very short and effective manner of converting the subjugated races which bow before their swords, by driving the whole batch at the point of the bayonet into the nearest stream, whilst ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... 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 ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... well-being, is, perhaps, the most interesting aspect of the history of Christianity; it is certainly shown in an absorbingly interesting way in the development of the Christian feast of the Nativity. The conflict is keen at first; the Church authorities fight tooth and nail against these relics of heathenism, these devilish rites; but mankind's instinctive paganism is insuppressible, the practices continue as ritual, though losing much of their meaning, and the Church, weary of denouncing, comes to wink at them, ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... getting 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 to ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... 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 ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... were 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 ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... 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 ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... oddly decorated for a Christian temple. A statue of Venus stood on one side of the porch, a statue of Hercules on the other. The two divinities, whose attributes could not be mistaken, had been converted from heathenism into two very respectable saints. I forget their christian names. Nor is this the most amusing metamorphosis I have seen here. The transformation of two heathen divinities into saints, is matched by the apotheosis of two modern sovereigns into pagan deities. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... one word of property or right in him, save the right of love as one of the brotherhood. "NOT NOW AS A SERVANT, but above a servant, a brother beloved, especially to me, but how much more to thee!" Onesimus had left the "slave" in his heathenism; in Christ he became the "brother" of Philemon and Paul. Instead of sanctioning chattelism, it positively denies it by affirming voluntary service, the equality of men as brethren, to ...
— Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible? • Isaac Allen

... substantiated these two are 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 intrigue.[27:1] It is hardly to be doubted that both had their part in the prodigious failure ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... 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 ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... in this country, and consequently have become so familiarized with heathenism, that my feelings, though deeply wounded at this sight, were not so keenly affected as were those of my new associate, Mr. Chandler. He has been on heathen ground but a short time. When they tied the man to the beam, he ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder

... was composed of noble-minded men whose pitying attention was fastened upon the bondage, afflictions and heathenism of their black brothers, in ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker

... supplanted by Christian poetical legends and Bible lays produced in rivalry of the popular lays of their heathen predecessors. Finding that the people would listen to nothing but these old lays, the missionaries affected their spirit and language, and borrowed the words and phrases of heathenism" (Metcalfe's ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... which have been universally used are, burial and burning. It has so happened that burial has been associated with Christianity, and burning with heathenism; but I shall admit at once that the association is not essential, though it would be hard, without very weighty reason indeed, to deviate from the long-remembered 'earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... half understood by the later story-teller. Among these are "The Dream of Rhonabwy," "The Lady of the Fountain," and "Peredur the son of Evrawc"—the three which happen to come first in the Red Book. These are Christian, but with distant glimpses of Celtic heathenism. The adventures are all grouped around Arthur and his knights; and a kind of connection is given to the three tales by the presence of Owen and his ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... learned Agelastes, it shows that that 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, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... popular devotion. In those early centuries there had been manifested the 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 ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... his dress suit to business. So anxious are they to be thought civilized. There is nothing that hurts a gentleman's feelings in Japan more than to hear one say, "They have such a beautiful country and when they are converted from heathenism it will be ideal." There is a strong Episcopal church and ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... stranger, it's d——d heathenism,' replied the farmer, who, take him all in all, is a superior specimen of the class of small planters at the South; and yet, seeing polygamy practiced by his own slaves, he made no effort to prevent it. He told me that if he should object to his darky ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... seventeenth century the Reformed Protestant Church of Scotland zealously endeavoured, as the English Church under King Edgar had long before done, to "extinguish every heathenism, and forbid well-worshippings, and necromancies, and divinations, and enchantments, and man-worshippings, and the vain practices which are carried on with various spells, and with elders, and also with ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... watchword of the Herald. It is the watchword of the most thickly coppered Copperheads. Genuine, pure convictions and principles are always radical. Christianity could not have been established were not the first Christians most absolute radicals. They compromised not with heathenism, compromised not with Judaism, which in every way was their father. Radicals—true ones—look to the great aim, forget their persons, and are not moved by ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... 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 ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... twenty years. "No union with slaveholders!" No compromise with injustice for an election, or for an hour, not even for a good ultimate purpose! Colonization proposed a double purpose, the final extinction of slavery, and a meanwhile redemption of Africa from the midnight gloom and horror of heathenism. "Get thee behind me, Satan," was the thundering response and just rebuke of it by the Abolitionists! "Let us compromise with the South, and buy up their slaves," said Elihu Burritt and his overgrown mushroom convention, at Cleveland. "Our curse on your slave trade, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... interpretation of the law of human and divine justice in relation to the gospel of Christ—the lower and enslaved body of the heathen being represented by St. Philip's convert, ("Christians like these the Ethiop shall condemn")—the noblest state of heathenism is at once chosen, as by Giotto: "What may the Persians say unto your kings?" Compare ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... this notion, that the Catholic missionaries in New Mexico were fain to wink at it, and perform the sacrifice of the mass in the same building where the flames were perpetually burning, that were not to be allowed to die until Montezuma and the fabled glories of ancient Anahuac with its heathenism should return.[144-2] Thus fire became the type of life. "Know that the life in your body and the fire on your hearth are one and the same thing, and that both proceed from one source," said a Shawnee prophet.[144-3] Such an expression was wholly in the spirit ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... and even merry methods, for he was a witty, jocund man, and had a fine ringing laugh in him, and clear pregnant words ever ready,—or if soft methods would not serve, then by hard and even hardest he put down a great deal of miscellaneous anarchy in Norway; was especially busy against heathenism (devil-worship and its rites): this, indeed, may be called the focus and heart of all his royal endeavor in Norway, and of all the troubles he now had with his people there. For this was a serious, vital, ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... to 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." ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... 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

... scaffold burials still go on, and the air in the neighborhood of the village is sometimes foul from the adjacent cemetery. Buffalo heads and poles with red streamers, as offerings or invocations to spirits, surmount many of the lodges and bear witness to the heathenism of the people. Many of the men are terribly scarred on the shoulders, breast and arms with the cruel practices of the sun dance. Men and women alike wear the dress of their savage life. There has been as yet little success from schools or church work. Few care for schools, and the attendance ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various

... for Origen to have stated, that though Christians do not call upon demons and the subordinate divinities of heathenism to aid {141} them, yet that they do call upon the ministering spirits, the true holy angels, messengers and servants of the most High God! But whilst speaking of them, and magnifying the blessings ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... and in modern times the student notices a great undergrowth of superstition clinging parasitically to all religions, though formally recognized by none. Whether we call it fetichism, shamanism, nature worship or heathenism in its myriad forms, it is there in awful reality. It is as omnipresent, as persistent, as hard to kill as the scrub bamboo which both efficiently and sufficiently takes the place of thorns and thistles as the curse ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... prudence and moderation, and themselves retired to the service of their muses. Others again, broke away altogether from the Christian faith and the principles of Christian morality. They took delight in a new life of Heathenism, devoted sometimes to sensual pleasures and gross immoralities, sometimes to the indulgence of refined tastes and the enjoyment of art. These latter never raised a weapon against the Church, but for the most part accommodated themselves to her forms. In her teachings, her ordinances, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... strongly to brook confinement within the bounds of Ireland itself. Patrick, the first missionary of the island, had not been half a century dead when Irish Christianity flung itself with a fiery zeal into battle with the mass of heathenism which was rolling in upon the Christian world. Irish missionaries laboured among the Picts of the Highlands and among the Frisians of the northern seas. An Irish missionary, Columban, founded monasteries ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... Mothers brought their daughters, and fathers their sons. These days of horror had multiplied the little Christian congregation to a church of ten thousand members. Caracalla turned hundreds from heathenism by his bloody sacrifices, his love of fighting, his passion for revenge, and the blindness which made him cast away all care for his eternal soul to secure the enjoyment of a brief existence. That the sword which had slain thousands ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... 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 ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... us have Christianity and civilization to leaven the mass of heathenism and paganism among the Indian tribes; let us have a wise and paternal Government faithfully carrying out the provisions of our treaties, and doing its utmost to help and elevate the Indian population, who have been cast upon our care, and ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... 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 had ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... possible to overdo a good thing, and then came back at the President with an anecdote of a good priest who converted an Indian from heathenism to Christianity; the only difficulty he had with him was to get him to pray for his enemies. "This Indian had been taught to overcome and destroy all his friends he didn't like," said Bleeker, "but the priest ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... length of time as the Negro was, would come out of it in no better condition, and would, perhaps, show no better record in forty years than this race has shown, and especially so if that bondage were preceded by heathenism. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... first heard the pure Gospel, but afterward went back and fell away to human doctrines, until even upon herself all abominations have come up; so that her last end has become worse than her first, in that she is now far more hopeless in her heathenism than she ever was before she heard the word ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... darkened the heathen world. For some expressions which were deemed impious he was condemned to die. Indeed christian scholars particularly mark a passage in one of his tragedies in which he palpably predicts, the downfall of Jupiter's authority, as if he had foreseen the dispersion of heathenism. The multitude were accordingly going to stone him to death when they were won over to mercy by the remonstrances and intreaties of his brother Amynias who had commanded a squadron of ships at the glorious battle of Salamis, and was regarded as one of the principal saviours of his country. This ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... 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 ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... about it and gild it with the beams of glory. And such a monument she has. When the clouds and mists of earth are dissipated we shall see it, sinking its base deep as the darkness of a world of heathenism, and lifting its summit high ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy

... be saved by Easter decorations. I don't know what my nephew may have done to offend you, Mr Morgan; but it is very sad to us, who have very strong convictions on the subject, to see him wasting his time so. I daresay there is plenty of heathenism in Carlingford which might be attacked in ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... 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 savage in his ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... 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

... classic nerves, such as Life abounded in before Christ came. He makes, indeed, a pathetic struggle to idealize this type, rather than the "conscience-stricken" Renaissance one. He lets his fingers stray more than once over the red-stained limbs of real sun-burnt "Pompeian" heathenism. He turns feverishly the wanton pages of Petronius to reach this unsullied, "imperial" Animal. But he cannot reach him. He never could reach him. The "consecrated" dagger of the Borgia gleams and scintillates between. Even, therefore, in the sort of "wickedness" ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... become quite contented, 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 were her people. She was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... (Before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee and made thee a prophet unto the nations). Thus it is that Declan was sanctified in his mother's womb and was given by God as a prophet to the pagans for the conversion of multitudes of them from heathenism and the misery of unbelief to the worship of Christ and to the Catholic faith, as we shall see later on. The very soft apex of his head struck against a hard stone, as we have said, and where the head came in contact with the stone it made therein a hollow and cavity of its own form and ...
— The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore • Anonymous

... in the year 1701. During the eighteenth century the British Colonies of the New World constituted the principal field of missionary endeavor for this organization. There were then in North America 250,000 settlers, whole colonies of whom were living in heathenism while others were adhering to almost every variety of strange faiths. The work of proselyting these people was too important to be intrusted to individual enterprise and too extensive to be successfully prosecuted by the heads of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... the years 1054 and 1057, or about 50 years after the establishment by law of the Christian religion in that island; hence it is easy to imagine that many heathens, or baptized favourers of the old mythic songs of heathenism, may have lived in his days and imparted to him the lays of the times of old, which his unfettered mind induced him to hand down ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... 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 ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... sense 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 Roman steel was at least ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... Death Of Theodosius The Great, 395 Chapter I. The Church And Empire Under Constantine 58. The Empire under Constantine and His Sons 59. Favor Shown the Church by Constantine 60. The Repression of Heathenism under Constantine 61. The Donatist Schism under Constantine 62. Constantine's Endeavors to Bring about the Unity of the Church by Means of General Synods: The Councils of Arles and Nicaea Chapter II. The Arian Controversy Until The Extinction Of The Dynasty Of Constantine 63. The Outbreak ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... a somewhat saddened heart that I pass my thoughts around the globe, and consider how distant is yet that triumph. There are the realms on which the crescent beams, the monstrous many-headed gods of India, the Chinaman's heathenism, the African's devil-rites. These are, to a large extent, principalities and powers of darkness with which our religion has never been brought into collision, save at trivial and far separated points, and in these cases the attack has never ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... visited the island A.D. 45, and the conversion of Sergius Paulus, the proconsul at Paphos, by their preaching, was the first seed of Christianity implanted in Cyprus at the period when the inhabitants were steeped in heathenism; but some of the superstitions at present existing are hardly less degrading than pagan rites, and in the kissing of the Virgin's cave at Trooditissa for the purpose already described, we can trace an affinity with ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... this messenger of peace, much good has now been accomplished. Bad as it is, the Sabbath is better observed than formerly, not only in the townships but on the stations; and depravity is on the wane. But, at the time of which we write, the state of moral darkness was as great as any heathenism extant. To the work of enlightenment, had Mr. Wigton sanctified himself; and his name had already become revered, in many places in the solitude of the bush, where he had been the instrument of ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... commending themselves to God, as is the duty of every good Christian in like peril; instead of which they commend themselves to their ladies with as much devotion as if these were their gods, a thing which seems to me to savour somewhat of heathenism." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... at first in stealth and silence, and then more openly as it increased in strength and gained control of the minds of men, the mystery of iniquity carried forward its deceptive and blasphemous work. Almost imperceptibly the customs of heathenism found their way into the Christian church. The spirit of compromise and conformity was restrained for a time by the fierce persecutions which the church endured under paganism. But as persecution ceased, and Christianity entered the courts and palaces of kings, she laid aside ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... of Africans having at first been justified on the ground of their heathenism, the nation that to baptize them would make it unlawful to hold them in bondage was frequent among owners in the seventeenth century, and operated to deter them from permitting the Christianizing of their slaves. "I may not forget ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor

... Judaism and heathenism mixed up together, the worship of God and the worship of idols side ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton

... be eminently fitted for parochial distribution and, by God's blessing, may do its part towards removing English heathenism. ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various

... soliciting; (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 French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Mosaic ministry, the nature of its commission, and the seal of it in a life which is always martyrdom (iii. 1-vi. 13). St. Paul concludes this section with a short appeal to the Corinthians to avoid contamination from heathenism (vi. 14-vii. 1). ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... 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 found utterance even from the lips of Roman courtier poets, and a feeling of unrest and anticipation ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... 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 church was far ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... 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 ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... even out of this hell 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 ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... those which, about a hundred years ago, still lingered at the Beltane fires in the Highlands of Scotland, that is, among a Celtic people who, situated in a remote corner of Europe and almost completely isolated from foreign influence, had till then conserved their old heathenism better perhaps than any other people in the West of Europe. It is significant, therefore, that human sacrifices by fire are known, on unquestionable evidence, to have been systematically practised by the Celts. The earliest description of these sacrifices has been ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... 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

... Haye reproached me with the heathenism of my ideas, told me that I must abandon such impious ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... stranger, it's d——d heathenism," replied the farmer, who, take him all in all, is a superior specimen of the class of small-planters at the South; and yet, seeing polygamy practised by his own slaves, he made no effort to prevent it. He told me that if he should object to his darky cohabiting ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore

... In applying these tests, it should be remembered 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 ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton

... 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 of ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy

... to speak of the great missionary work that is now honeycombing and undermining the foundations of heathenism in this pagoda-land. We came to Burma to see what God has wrought. The labors and sufferings of Adoniram Judson appealed to us even in our childhood. We wished to see how the mustard-seed which Judson ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... 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

... away; he held his branded cheek in the full view of men, that they might be compelled to interpret the disgrace to which they were so indifferent. Men dislike to hear the outcries of a sensitive spirit, and dread to have their heathenism called by Christian names. How much better it would be, they think, if philanthropy never made an attack upon the representatives of cruelty! they would soon become converted, if they were politely let alone. No doubt, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... connection with any of the activities of this religious body of which she was a member. Otherwise she might have known that this was a great gathering of students, many of whom were young volunteers for the army of the King that was fighting sin far away in the stronghold of heathenism. She would have heard, too, that the man up there in the pulpit, with every eye set unwaveringly upon him, was one who had stirred the very pulses of her native land by his call to the laymen of the church to a wider vision of their duty to the world. But poor Elizabeth knew very little ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... converts, wisely endeavouring rather to leaven the mass by grafting Christian truths on the old superstitions than to court certain defeat, possible expulsion or massacre, by striving to overthrow at once all the symbols of heathenism. ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous

... doctrine cannot 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

... which it so much resembles. The more characteristic Eddaic poems—that is to say, the most characteristic parts of Icelandic poetry—must date from Heathen times, or from the first conflicts of Christianity with Heathenism in Iceland; and this leaves them far behind us.[160] On the other hand, the work which we have in Provencal before the extreme end of the eleventh century is not finished literature. It has linguistic interest, the interest of origins, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... scandal will not offend the wise, as beneath their notice; and cannot offend the ignorant, as above their knowledge.'] or at all events recognizing their existence. Now it is quite intelligible that the early Christians, living in the midst of a still rampant heathenism, should have objected, as we know they did, to 'dies Solis,' or Sunday, to express the first day of the week, their Lord's-Day. But when the later Friends raised their protest, the case was altogether different. The false gods whose ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... spend our strength for naught. A day is coming, and now is, when every minister of Christ shall speak with unction, when all the servants of God shall preach with power, and when colossal systems of heathenism shall be scattered to the winds. The shout shall be heard, "Alleluia! Alleluia! the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." For that day do I look; it is to the bright horizon of that second coming that I turn my eyes. My anxious expectation is, that the sweet Sun of righteousness will ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... come to your knowledge,' Earwaker asked of him, 'that Bruno Chilvers is exciting the orthodox world by his defence of Christianity against neo-heathenism?' ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... through the prayers and sermons of Wesleyan ministers, as instruments in the hands of God, if they believe the founder of their Church was a wicked calumniator! Go to the islands of the sea, to the burning sands of Africa, and ask the benighted converts from heathenism, through the instrumentality of Wesleyan ministers, if they believe the venerable founder of their Church was a ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... that the Roman Empire at this period exhibited such a scene of moral pollution. There was nothing in either the philosophy or the religion of heathenism sufficient to counteract the influence of man's native depravity. In many instances the speculations of the pagan sages had a tendency, rather to weaken, than to sustain, the authority of conscience. After unsettling the foundations of the ancient superstition, the mind was ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... sat between the elderly wife of baronial councillor von Padden and a somewhat younger Mrs. von Titzewitz. The former, an excellent old lady, was in every way an original, and sought by means of orthodox German Christianity to counteract the tendency toward Wendish heathenism, with which nature had endowed her, especially in the prominent structure of her cheek bones. In her orthodoxy she went so far that even Sidonie von Grasenabb was in comparison a sort of esprit fort. The elderly dame, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... foreigners undergoes the same process. 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

... Koos, which means chief or captain, addressed to the Church authorities and asking that a new Teacher might be sent to take the place of him who had died, also to rebuild the church and the school. If this were not done, said the messengers, the tribe would relapse into heathenism, since the Zulu and anti-Christian party headed by an old witch-doctor, named Menzi, was strong ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... could the better angel of mankind 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 ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... sacrament until he had been married. But God our Lord did not allow him to fulfil this desire, on account of which he deferred holy baptism until he paid for the delay by an untimely death. Besides dying as he did, in his heathenism, and very hastily, the character of his death was violent and horrible; for he was carried away by a poison which caused the flesh to fall from his body in pieces. Another man was continually ill, and, fearing that any day he might ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... or 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 ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... have been expected that a people who had spent generations in slavery, and before that generations in the darkest heathenism, could at first form any proper conception of what an education meant. In every part of the South, during the Reconstruction period, schools, both day and night, were filled to overflowing with people of all ages and conditions, some being as far along in ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington

... deep places of the human heart. The woes and wrongs unutterable which attend this dreadful violation of natural justice, the stripes, the tortures, the sunderings of kindred, the desolation of human affections, the unchastity and lust, the toil uncompensated, the abrogated marriage, the legalized heathenism, the burial of the mind, are but the mere incidentals of the first grand outrage, that seizure of the entire man, nerve, sinew, and spirit, which robs him of his body, and God of his soul. These are but the natural results and outward demonstrations of slavery, the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... up the heathenism. Neither the fanaticism, Nor the paganism, Or my idiotism, Could ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas

... and chiefly, perhaps, to the new position henceforth assumed by the military medical and hospital service. To the same source we may fairly attribute the great improvements wrought in the whole conduct of that distinctively Christian charity, unknown to heathenism, the hospital system: the opening of a new field of usefulness to educated and devoted women of good position, as nurses in hospitals and out; and the vast increase of public interest in and public support of such agencies. Even the Female ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... a thing of the past. Human sacrifices, thank God, are to be found nowhere on the earth. There is not one of those islands without its Christian church, and in some of them the last vestige of heathenism has passed away. They have thousands of Christian men and women under their native pastors. Surely this is no time to talk about the failure of ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple

... healthy sites which had formerly been 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



Words linked to "Heathenism" :   druidism, faith, pagan religion



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com