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Altar   /ˈɔltər/   Listen
Altar

noun
1.
The table in Christian churches where communion is given.  Synonyms: communion table, Lord's table.
2.
A raised structure on which gifts or sacrifices to a god are made.



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"Altar" Quotes from Famous Books



... made it most interesting to Redclyffe, because it had stood there such a weary while. It was too common an object to excite in his mind, as it did in Redclyffe's, visions of the long ago time when it was founded, when mass was first said there, and the glimmer of torches at the altar was seen through the vista of that broad-browed porch; and of all the procession of villagers that had since gone in and come out during nine hundred years, in their varying costume and fashion, but yet—and this was the strongest and most thrilling part of ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... such occasions... And so, as a friend, I should advise you to be more cautious. The air of these parts is very dangerous. How many handsome young men, worthy of a better fate, have I not seen departing from here straight to the altar!... Would you believe me, they were even going to find a wife for me! That is to say, one person was—a lady belonging to this district, who had a very pale daughter. I had the misfortune to tell her that the latter's colour would be restored after wedlock, and ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... day, While Justice grasped the sword to hold her throne, And on her altar our loved Lincoln's own Great ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy

... the body may be dog-tired, the mind is white and lucid, like that of a man from whom a fever has abated. It is bare of illusions. It has a sharp focus, small and star-like, as a clear and lonely flame left burning by the altar of a shrine from which all have gone but one. A book which approaches that light in the privacy of that place must come, as it were, with honest and ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... so," admitted Matthew, puffing smoke like a shifting engine, "but that's the fault of the marriage service, an' I'll stand to it at the Judgment Day yes, suh, in the very presence of Providence who made it. I tell you, 'twill I led that woman to the altar she was the meekest-mouthed creetur that ever wiggled away from a kiss. Why, when I stepped on her train jest as I swung her up the aisle, if you believe me, all she said was, 'I hope you didn't hurt yo' foot'; an', bless my boots, ten minutes later, comin' out of church, she whispered in my year, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... power superior to the Church—even in Mexico, that Paradise of padres. Gold will outweigh any scruples about the performance of the marriage ceremony, however suspicion! the circumstances under which the intending bride and bridegroom may prevent themselves at the altar. The lancer colonel is well aware ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... concentric circles and horseshoes is a single flat tabular block generally known as the "Altar Stone." From this slab, now almost buried beneath the remains of a fallen Trilithon, the visitor may look in a north-easterly direction, and through the arches of the outer circle observe the "Hele Stone" or "Friar's Heel," which stands at some considerable distance from the main structure. ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens

... like,—and on my asking him whence these came, he told me that they had been recently taken out of the cathedral by the architect who was "restoring'' it. After my purchases were made, he went with me to this great edifice, one of the finest in Europe; and there I found that, on each side of the high altar, the architect had taken out several brackets, or corbels, of the best mediaeval work, and substituted new ones designed by himself. One of these corbels thus taken out the government photographer had in his possession. It was very striking, representing the grotesque ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... Mrs. Buckley and Mary Hawker, dressed all in white, looking as beautiful as morning. Frank Maberly stood beside a little table, which the women had made into an altar, with the big Prayer-book in his hand. And we all stood around, and the servants thronged in, and Sam, taking Alice's hand, went up ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... whence this history started. The parson was there in his surplice, by the altar; the bride was there in her white frock, by the chancel rails; her father, by her side, was looking at his watch; and the parishioners thronged the nave, shuffling their feet and loudly speculating. For ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... absolve you from blame. I will say that the fault was theirs, that your kindness was meant for kindness and nothing else, a proof, if you will, of a generous nature. What does it matter? These men have poured out their lives upon the altar of your vanity. They have given you their love, and you have given them—nothing. I honestly believe nothing. I will believe that theirs was the fault, that you are not heartless nor vain nor indifferent. Only I am not going to be as these men, Emily. I love you—no one but ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... Church were darkened with thick black curtains, the altar was heavily draped, the strains of the mournful Mass of the Dead swayed to the responses of a sorrowing people. In the midst, raised upon a lofty catafalque whose sable drapery was surrounded with a starry maze of candle-lights, lay the silent remains ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... the wedge, the essential element of all those groups which make up cuneiform writing, became for the Assyrian one of the holy symbols of the divine intelligence. Upon the stone called the Caillou Michaud, from the name of its discoverer, it is shown standing upon an altar and receiving the prayers and homage of a priest.[52] It deserved all the respect it received; thanks to it the Babylonian genius was able to rough out and hand down to posterity the science from which Greece was to ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... sets the fashion to win confidence, and trust, And to teach the mighty lesson, Self-Control, We can lift the great Sex passion from the darkness and the dust, And enshrine it on the altar of the soul. ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... invisible foe, who had so long besieged us—as yet he had made no breach: it must be my care that he should not, secretly undermining, burst up within the very threshold of the temple of love, at whose altar I daily sacrificed. The hunger of Death was now stung more sharply by the diminution of his food: or was it that before, the survivors being many, the dead were less eagerly counted? Now each life was a gem, each human ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... They waited the bride's coming; she was five minutes late, ten minutes late; but came at last. With her were two ladies, kinsfolk of hers. Had Iris risen from a sick bed to go through this ceremony, she could not have shown a more disconcerting visage. But she held herself up before the altar. The book was opened; the words of fate were uttered; the golden circlet slipped onto her trembling hand; and Mrs. Dyce Lashmar passed forth upon her husband's arm to ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... Two ladies have come with posies in tall silver vases and a white altar cloth for this table. The preacher's coming over from Folsom, and there will be church held here in one hour. He's a busy man today. An infant will be given a license to travel the long and uncertain road to heaven, and a pair of happy lovers will ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... of Fire, goest mightily across the earth; thou sittest brilliantly on the altar at the sacrifice. The prophets carry Thee as the Purifier; ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... is the spark that lights the flame on the altar of the inner man, dear, and you'll have to sparkle when your time comes," he warned me, as I hurried what might have been a very tender parting, the last ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... lengthened, deepened, mingled together into a pool of twilight in which the flower-beds glowed like coloured embers; whiffs of heavy scent came to me as if the dusk of this hemisphere were but the dimness of a temple and the garden an enormous censer swinging before the altar of the stars. The colours of the blossoms deepened, losing their glow one ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... with thee?" He looked at David closely, then smiled sardonically, but with friendliness to David in his eyes. "Nahoum has prayed to work with thee, to be a slave where he was master? He says to thee that he would lay his heart upon the altar of Egypt?" Mordant, questioning humour was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... I was congratulated on my happy prospects; but, alas! alas, for me; the more memory reverted to the past, my feelings revolted from the present. I sometimes used to stand where I could see him pass in the street, and exclaim 'oh, heaven! can I marry that man! can I stand before God's altar, and promise to love and honor him, when I abhor his presence.' Time was hasting; one night I went down into the study; ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... early—go out in the rain—Oh, it isn't true! I'm only bragging," he broke off, with a groan. "I've done both and shall do them whenever he wants me to. I'm a poor creature, Miss Falconer." "A martyr on the altar of friendship," she said. "Mr. Orme must ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... marriage now, or at the altar. But I will not do that; for to do that would be only to disappoint or grieve them. But my vengeance must strike a deeper blow. It must degrade and ruin them. I will wait until they have been married some time. Then, in the hour of their ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... of Napoleon, were themselves the greatest tyrants in the universe, and whose sole aim in destroying Napoleon's power was to rivet the chains of slavery upon the inhabitants of the whole civilized world, and who have since sworn upon the altar of the Holy Alliance to maintain an indissoluble union, for the purpose of extinguishing every spark of freedom, wherever it may arise. Napoleon was the enemy, the successful enemy of these tyrants; and under his sway, despotic as it might apparently be, and governed ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... of the Divine Scriptures, and exercise themselves so much in the works of righteousness, that many could readily be met with there, who were fit to take up ecclesiastical office, that is, the service of the altar." Bede goes on to mention six men from Hild's monastery, who afterwards became bishops. The most famous was perhaps S. John of Beverley, who was first bishop of Hexham, and afterwards of York, and who was noted for his piety ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney

... the first year, at least, there came no cloud to dim their happiness. Their cup of joy was full to overflowing, so my mother often told me, when, on the night of April 15,1735, a child was born to them. It was a boy, and a week later, before the altar of the little Westover church, its worthy rector christened the child "Thomas Stewart," the fifth of his ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... taken ill, desired the holy Sacrament of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. He died immediately upon receiving it. When he saw that his sickness was very violent and he was near death, he prayed that his body might be placed on an altar and worshiped as Cod. But the goodness and providence of God had resolved to put an end to his great error and to silence him forever. Accordingly, God did not omit to work this great miracle, which was very ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... the besotted soul who cannot bend the knee of humble adoration before nature's altar, where sacrifices are offered to the Jehovah, pavilioned in invisibility. There is an ardent love of nature as far removed from gross materialism or subtle pantheism on the one hand as from stupid inappreciation on the other. There is such a thing as looking "through nature up to nature's God," ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... Bowes. It is after this, also, that we come to the unlovely episode of his second marriage. He had been left a widower at the age of fifty-five. Three years after, it occurred apparently to yet another pious parent to sacrifice a child upon the altar of his respect for the Reformer. In January 1563, Randolph writes to Cecil: "Your Honour will take it for a great wonder when I shall write unto you that Mr. Knox shall marry a very near kinswoman of the Duke's, a Lord's daughter, a young lass not above sixteen years of age." (1) He adds that ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... intents and purposes a new house. And the cure had looked upon it again, much nearer by; for before a bride dared enter a house so nearly new, it had been deemed necessary for him to come and, before a temporary altar within the dwelling, to say mass in the time of full moon. But not yet was the house really a dwelling; it, and all Carancro, were waiting for the wedding. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... happiness to divulge. I did once hear an old gentlewoman, who had been conversant with the world, declare that if every man was obliged to confess the secrets of his life before marriage, few young women would be persuaded to go up to the altar. I hope it is not true; but whether it is or not, it does not exactly bear upon the subject in agitation. I again thank you for your candour, and disclaim all wish to know any further. I believe I ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... renunciation. Does the French language contain a more touching record than that of the great Navarre's farewell to his Huguenot brethren? What bitter tears shed Jeanne d'Albret's son ere he could bring himself to sacrifice conscience on the altar of expediency and a ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... curiosity is soon satisfied. Dull and bare outside, the churches are gaudy and dull within. When you have seen one, you have seen all. A crippled beggar crouching at the door, a few common people kneeling before the candle-lighted shrines, a priest or two mumbling at a side-altar, half-a-dozen indifferent pictures and a great deal of gilt and marble everywhere, an odour of stale incense and mouldy cloth, and, over all, a dim dust-discoloured light. Fancy all this, and you will have before you a Roman ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey

... changeful existence by abandoning the life of the home. Let us light again the flame put out on our hearths, make sanctuaries for ourselves, warm nests where the children may grow into men, where love may find privacy, old age repose, prayer an altar, and the fatherland ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... his mother to the temple of Athene, and there the priestess made her one of the temple-sweepers; for there they knew she would be safe, and not even Polydectes would dare to drag her away from the altar. And there Perseus, and the good Dictys, and his wife, came to visit her every day; while Polydectes, not being able to get what he wanted by force, cast about in his wicked heart how he might get ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley

... Celts, the Druids, built fires on the hill-tops in France, Britain, and Ireland, in honor of the sun. At this last festival the Druids of all the region gathered in their white robes around the stone altar or cairn on the hill-top. Here stood an emblem of the sun, and on the cairn was a sacred fire, which had been kept burning through the year. The Druids formed about the fire, and, at a signal, quenched it, while deep ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... Mr. Francis Crane I erect this Altar of Friendship, and leave it as an eternall witnesse of ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... spots made holy By deeds or lives of love, Has shrines where high and lowly Alike, their hearts may prove; This age, when faith might falter Mid shriek of shot and shell, Has added one more altar, The ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens

... they fell to powder. The heat inside must have been terrific, for all the features of the church had disappeared, and we were surrounded by merely a mass of debris. In the apse a few fragments of old gold brocade buried beneath masses of brick and mortar were all that remained to show where the altar had been. ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar

... her children what took place in Paris October 16, 1793. She had them all summoned. They found her dressed in deep black, with tears in her eyes; and she led them without a word to the chapel in the royal palace of Naples, and there, before the altar, she told them that the people of regicides had just put their aunt to death upon the scaffold. Then she bade them all to pray together for the peace of the victim's soul, and probably there mingled with Marie Caroline's prayer thoughts of wrath and vengeance. From that time she ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... its myriads, immolated on the altar of outward respectability and of a regard for the opinion ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... was surely more than a vision, was the Vision of Grace. One of the fiery attendants, who hovered on quivering wing ready to execute the orders of the Divine King, receiving a command by some unexplained mode of communication, flew to the altar, and, taking up the tongs, seized with them a stone from the altar fire. It was neither a coal, as our rendering gives it, nor a brand, but a heated stone, such as was used, and is used at the present day, in the East, for conveying heat to a ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... disappeared, and you'll have five minutes grace." As she spoke, she caught Monica by the arm, and whisked her into the Capilla del Condestable. Once behind the iron lattice, she darted away as if moved by a sudden passion to gaze at the carved altar piece. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the girl herself, young and beautiful, advances toward the altar on which fagots have been piled high. In her hand is the lighted torch which is to kindle her ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... am I lonely here to-night With empty eyes, the cause is this, Your face it was that gave me sight, My heart ran over with your kiss. Still do I think that what I laid Before the altar of your face, Flower of words that shall not fade, Were worthy ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... recall the beloved ugliness, the fondly cherished hideousness and incongruity of the average Catholic churches of their remembrance, and it did this and more: it added an effect of its own; it offered the spectacle of a swarthy old Indian kneeling before the high altar, telling his beads, and saying with many sighs and tears the prayers which it cost so much martyrdom and heroism to teach his race. "O, it is only a savage man," said the little French boy who was showing them the place, impatient of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the midst of his nobles; though meanly habited. The doctors of divinity, and members of parliament, openly declared that there was some thing supernatural in her conduct. She sent for a sword, which lay in the tomb of a knight, which was behind the great altar of the church of St. Katharine de Forbois, upon the blade of which the cross and flower-de-luces were engraven, which put the king in a very great surprise, in regard none besides himself knew of it. Upon this he sent her ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... pouring rain, whilst a crowd of people were waiting for the ceremony to begin. My wife, like all French girls, would have liked an imposing and important marriage, and lo! there was nothing at all, not even an altar, or a ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... pine logs was erected near the lodge of We-lo-lon-nan-nai, and a buffalo bull, freshly captured for the purpose, driven to the spot, killed, and his hide taken off. The entire carcass was lifted with much ritualistic observance upon the altar, and then the whole tribe, in obedience to the order of the head medicine-man, prostrated themselves on the ground. Touching a torch to the pile, and wrapping himself in the bloody skin of the animal, the medicine-man took a position ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... certain, she had forgiven all. She had moved heaven and earth to save her husband. In the Dominican church, at high mass, she had thrown herself upon the King's confessor, demanding before that awful Presence on the altar that the priest should refuse to absolve the King unless he ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... bell upon the table, and the white-robed servant reentered, and, bowing low, held open the door. The little yellow man, first kneeling upon the carpet before the divan as before an altar, hurried from the apartment. As the door was reclosed, and Madame found herself alone again, she laughed lightly, as Calypso laughed when Ulysses' ship appeared off the shores of ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... there, where there are only a tribe of brown gnomes to see her? But I have not given her that one out of the ring which I stole, nor three others that I conjured out of the crozier of the priest as I knelt at the altar, and they thought I was rehearsing a prayer to ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow

... would serve to reform Harry, no doubt. It isn't always that a matchmaker can be sure of being a benefactor to both sides. One of the most remarkable things in nature, however, is the willingness of women to lay a girl's life on the altar for the chance of saving the morals of a scapegrace man. If a pious mother can only marry her son Beelzebub to some "good, religious girl," the chance of his reformation is greatly increased. The girl is neither here nor there ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... not both indulged the ardent wish to be released from each other. Mamma is too young and too beautiful to be willing to have a grown-up daughter who is not ugly by her side, and I was too old to be locked up any longer in the nursery, so I stepped literally from the nursery to the altar, and became the wife of Lord Elliot; so mamma and myself were freed from the presence of each other, and I thought that a time of joy and liberty would bloom for me. But, alas, I have only changed my cage; formerly I was confined in ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... daily companion. He needed no picture to recall her countenance; often he had longed for the skill of an artist, that he might portray that grave sweetness, that impassioned faith, to be his soul's altar-piece. Lost, lost! and, with her, lost the uncompromising zeal of his earliest manhood. Only too consciously he had descended to a lower level; politics tempted him because they offered a field in which he could exercise his most questionable faculty, and earn with it a speedy ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... must be recognized by our religious leaders. Current evangelicalism has (to change the figure) laid the altar and divided the sacrifice into parts, but now seems satisfied to count the stones and rearrange the pieces with never a care that there is not a sign of fire upon the top of lofty Carmel. But God be thanked that there are a few who care. They are those ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer

... very mistaken ones. According to the teachings of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, it must be a greater sin to burn down the cottage of a poor widow, and turn her out at midnight into the streets to die, than to plunder for gain the richest altar ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott

... is also an oasis of peace amid the sharp contentions of Welsh life. To bring into it any note of politics or sectarianism or public controversy, even when these things are rousing the most passionate emotions outside, seems to a Welshman like the desecration of an altar. That is just what the militants did, and Welsh interest in their cause fell dead on the spot. But even then they were not happy. They were still encumbered by the good-will of perhaps a hundred Tory M.P.'s. But they proved entirely equal to the task of antagonizing them. They began smashing windows, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... Bede informs us in his history of the English CHurch (S99), some of the converts were too cautious to commit themselves entirely to the new religion. One king, who had set up a large altar devoted to the worship of Christ, set up a smaller one at the other end of the hall to the old heathen deities, in order that he might make sure of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... church, she pushed open one of the heavy, swinging doors, and cast a glance around; there was no one in sight, but the gabble of boys' voices in some vestry close by reached her ear, and a laugh rang after it, which echoed noisily in the quiet aisles. The high altar was lit up by a light from a side-window and her eye was arrested by it. Still, whether she saw and heard, or was deaf and blind, she scarcely knew. Her feet were drawn by some irresistible attraction towards the grave where her husband ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... tongue wither at the roots—ah, good Saint Giles, save me from the fire. May he be cursed in life and may the flesh shrivel on his bones and his soul be eternally damned with another candle and fifty gold pieces to the altar of ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... brightest of bright mornings at East Endelstow Church, and you and I stood by the font. Far away in the chancel Lord Luxellian was standing alone, cold and impassive, and utterly unlike his usual self: but I knew it was he. Inside the altar rail stood a strange clergyman with his book open. He looked up and said to Lord Luxellian, "Where's the bride?" Lord Luxellian said, "There's no bride." At that moment somebody came in at the door, and I knew her to be Lady Luxellian who died. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... reminiscence. Now she could only take into account her sacrifices of feeling, of time, of care; the illnesses she had nursed, the garments that she had made and mended—ah, how many! laid votive on the altar of Leander's vigor and his agility, for as he scrambled about the crags he seemed, she was wont to say, to climb straight out of them. The recollection of all this—the lesser and unspiritual maternal values, perchance, but essential—surged ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... poor way to help my brothers and the handmaidens of the Anointed, and the holy women who often volunteered to give me presents and to lay their jewels on my altar; but these I always gave back to them, even though they were hurt by it; and I have so lived my life, for the hope of the life eternal, that none may find the least cause of offence in my ministry; that my least act might not tarnish my ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... me when so many characters are so difficult to solve that many young people rush headlong into matrimony without striking a match, except the match they strike at the marriage altar. A girl sees a young man today; he's handsome, talks well, and she falls in love with him, dreams about him tonight, sighs about him tomorrow and thinks she'll surely die if he doesn't ask her to marry him. Yet she knows nothing about his parentage or his character. ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... surrounded by daggers and swords. In this vault, and amidst this gloomy apparatus, the inhabitants of Metz brought their patriotic gifts, (that is, the arbitrary and exorbitant contributions to which they were condemned,) and laid them on the altar of the Guillotine, like the sacrifice of fear to the infernal deities; and, that the keeping of the whole business might be preserved, the receipts were signed with red ink, avowedly intended as expressive ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... the huge barometer to which both speculative and investing Wall Street looks for guidance. Whom that bank protects is as safe as was the medieval fugitive who laid hold of the altar in the sanctuary; whom that bank frowns upon in the hour of stress is lost indeed if he have so much as a pin's-point area of heel that is vulnerable. Melville, president of the National Industrial, was a fanatically religious man, with as keen a nose for ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... Gray Nunnery to the English Church, which I like much better than the French Cathedral. There is a general tone of oakiness, solid, substantial, sincere, like the England of tradition,—set off by a brilliant memorial window and a memorial altar, and other memorial things which I have forgotten, but which I make no doubt the people who put them there have not forgotten. Here also we find, as all along in Canada, vestiges of his Royal Highness, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... it only in the dignitaries of the Church that Johnson required a particular decorum and delicacy of behaviour; he justly considered that the clergy, as persons set apart for the sacred office of serving at the altar, and impressing the minds of men with the aweful concerns of a future state, should be somewhat more serious than the generality of mankind, and have a suitable composure of manners. A due sense of the dignity of their profession, independent of higher motives, will ever prevent them from ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... remember that day in June, eight years ago, when you walked down the aisle of Old Trinity. Do you remember how the sun shone in at the windows, flecking the darkness of the old pews with golden motes? John Schuyler met you at the altar; and to him you said, 'For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne

... When Georgia, the altar for human sacrifices, perfumed by the odor of cooked human flesh, travailed, she brought forth the prodegy of the nineteenth century, whose cries for blood would startle Catherine De Medici and cause Bloody Mary to ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... Largnen wroth, and set out himself for the cell of Kemoc. But he found the saint in the little church, and before the altar were the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... which are supported and encouraged hereby; nay, more, take away hospitality and the use of victuals and the worship and honor of the gods will sink and perish; the sun will have but small and the moon yet smaller reverence if thy afford men only light and heat. And who will build an altar or offer sacrifices to Jupiter Pluvius, or to Ceres the patroness of husbandmen, or to Neptune the preserver of plants and trees? Or how can Bacchus be any longer termed the donor of all good things, if ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... are on the side of an old theory. Meanwhile, on the material plane, culture kept advancing, the crafts and arts arose; departments arose, each needing a god; thought grew clearer; such admirable ethics as those of the Aztecs were developed, and while bleeding human hearts smoked on every altar, Nezahuatl conceived and erected a bloodless fane to 'The Unknown God, Cause of Causes,' without altar or idol; and the Inca, Yupanqui, or another, declared that 'Our Father and Master, the Sun, must have ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... dauntless bosom bore Good King Robert's heart—the priceless— To our dear Redeemer's shore! Lo! we bring with us the hero— Lo! we bring the conquering Graeme, Crowned as best beseems a victor From the altar of his fame; Fresh and bleeding from the battle Whence his spirit took its flight, Midst the crashing charge of squadrons, And the thunder of the fight! Strike, I say, the notes of triumph, As we march o'er moor and lea! Is there any here will venture ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... our hearts upon his altar, and willing knelt before the shrine, witness ye bright birds and perfumed flowers!—ye green myrtles and mimosas!—witness ye blue skies of Anahuac! Ye ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... punish that injury of Jus violati hospitii. Not long after, as the Eagle again wanted meat to feed his young, he saw that on a place in the field they sacrificed to Jupiter. The Eagle flew thither, and quickly snatched away a piece of roast from the altar and brought the same to his young, and flew again to fetch more; but it happened that a hot coal hung to one of the pieces; the same, falling into the Eagle's nest, set it on fire; the young Eagles, not able to fly, were burned with the nest and fell to the ground. ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... subjects. L'ETAT C'EST MOI had unfortunately been practically their ruling principle long ere Louis XIV ventured to put it into words. To them the Court was the universe, the aristocracy the nation, and the Church the corner-stone of the proud altar upon which they had enthroned themselves, and beyond which they cared not either to look or listen. A fatal mistake fatally expiated! Yet, as we have already remarked, the system, dangerous and hollow as it was, endured for centuries—endured until crime was ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... are here to foster patriotism, in view of the most tremendous sacrifice ever willingly made by a people on the altar of nationality. That the sacrifices of the Civil War deserve this rank will appear from the fact that they were made—in the main—by volunteers. We were not fighting directly to defend our altars and our fires; we were not driven to arms to repel an ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger

... Sunday at Rugby. And then the old memories rushed back again, but softened and subdued, and soothing him as he let himself be carried away by them. And he looked up at the great painted window above the altar, and remembered how, when a little boy, he used to try not to look through it at the elm-trees and the rooks, before the painted glass came; and the subscription for the painted glass, and the letter he wrote home for money to give to it. And ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... churches were usually called "Reformed" or "Presbyterian" and represented a more radical deviation than Lutheranism from Roman Catholic theology and ritual, holding the Lord's Supper to be but a commemorative ceremony, doing away with altar- lights, crucifixes, and set prayers, and governing themselves by synods of priests or presbyters. In the eighteenth century Presbyterianism was still the established religion of Scotland, and of the Dutch Netherlands. In France ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... that part of the room where the banquet was prepared. Aspasia filled a golden basket with Athenian olives, Phoenician dates, and almonds of Naxos, and whispering a brief invocation, placed it on a small altar, before an ivory image of Demeter, which stood in the midst of the table. Seats covered with crimson cloth were arranged at the end of the couches, for the accommodation of women; but the men reclined in Asiatic fashion, while beautiful damsels ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... furniture than a square table in white wood, and four straw-seated chairs. In addition to this the dining-room was ornamented with an antique sideboard, painted pink, in water colors. Out of a similar sideboard, properly draped with white napery and imitation lace, the Bishop had constructed the altar ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... clear of wood for a certain space, and there, overlooking all the Dale, was the Mote-stead of the Dalesmen, marked out by a great ring of stones, amidst of which was the mound for the Judges and the Altar of the Gods before it. And this was the holy place of the men of the Dale and of other folk whereof the tale shall ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... Rome practically carried out. Professors are in the habit of quoting Plato, but Plato was too highly gifted not to understand that the state after all consists merely of men. Plato regarded the state not as an idol on whose altar the citizen was obliged to sacrifice himself, but as an educational institution. He says that really virtuous citizens could only be reared by an intelligently organised state, and for this reason he attached ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... envying them. These blockheads know nothing holier than an altar-cloth, and feel richer than you and me with 30,000-mark incomes. Besides, you can't be judge of a man who from childhood has lived from palette to mouth. Try to get at his finances: it's an arithmetic ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind

... the marvel of the fire come down from heaven to smite the altar. It was the comfortable miracle of the daily manna. Had my goddess departed from her divinity, my queen from her throne, my star from her heaven? Rather, in becoming mine she had become myself, and if there were a loss, that loss was in my own ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... midnight before Holy Saturday, April 4, 397; and his body reposes in a vault under the high altar of the basilica of Milan—the church that he had served so long and so well. His feast is kept in the Latin Church on December 7th, and he is justly regarded as one of the most illustrious ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... the Times, considerably soiled, and known as "Angelica's work," which nobody had ever seen opened, was found in the oriel room on the seat of the chair sacred to the duke himself; and a cricket cap of Diavolo's was discovered on one of the tall candles which stood on the altar in the private chapel of the castle, as if it had been used as an extinguisher, A peculiar intentness was also observed in the expression of the children's countenances which was thought to betoken mischief, because always hitherto it had been noticed ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... to this error, the more needful is it to remember that, along with it and uttering itself through it, may be a depth of devout trust in Christ, which should shame us. Many a poor soul that clasps the base of the crucifix clings to the cross; many a devout heart, kneeling before the altar, sees through the incense-smoke the face of the Christ. The faith that is tied to form, though it be no faith for a man, though in some respects it darken God's Gospel, and bring it down to the level of magical superstition, may yet be, and often is, accepted by Him whose merciful eye recognised, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... us to the point of vantage! I thought how amusing it would be if a visitor to an English cathedral—where money usually has to pass, as it is—were surrounded by the Dean, Archdeacon, Canons and Minor Canons, with outstretched hands, and had to buy his way to a sight of the altar, according to the status of each. The spectacle would be as odd to us, as it must be to the French or Italians—and even perhaps Americans—to see a demand for an entrance fee on ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... Laura, pale and tense. She smiled at him and squeezed his hand. There was silence, then the organ, and now he was taking her up the aisle. Strange faces stared. His jaw set hard. At last they reached the altar. An usher quickly touched his arm and he stepped back where he belonged. He listened but understood nothing. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... corporal or temporal benefit; the inference, therefore, was, that the motive, in the first place, justified the act, which was in se a pious one; and, besides, had the woman been a thief, she would have stolen the plate and linen belonging to the altar; but she did not, therefore there existed on her part no consciousness nor ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... strictly, however, forbidding me to take any revenge on the Prussian ambassador, I having sworn, in the first transports of anger, to punish him wherever I should find him, even were it at the altar's foot. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... are going on throughout our camps. It does seem to many as though gross incompetency or treachery must have influenced the authorities having immediate oversight of the affair, and that our fallen braves have been needlessly immolated upon their country's altar. ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... instruction, which may easily be given them. Let all who have either time, money, or ability, give a helping hand; and, above all, assist by their unfeigned and earnest prayers. It may be very advisable to pray publicly for them in places of worship, and at the family altar, after visiting them in the highways and hedges. It might impress those of them who attend, with a grateful sense of the gracious care of God, and lead Christian congregations to think more of them, and to do more for them. May the merciful God of heaven ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb

... way into the old ruined church through the door frames, from which the doors had long been lost. The stone floor, and the stone altar still remained; all else within ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... distrust that cut her to the heart. Still, her love for him was so intense that she obeyed his order. Soon after she took the vows; and in the convent chapel, shaken with sobs, she knelt before the altar and assumed the veil of a cloistered nun. Abelard himself put on the black tunic of a Benedictine monk and entered the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... uncle, according to the form which had been previously agreed upon.[929] The bridal procession then entered the cathedral by a lower platform, which extended through the nave to the choir. Here Henry, having placed his bride before the grand altar to hear mass, himself retired with his Protestant companions to the episcopal palace, and waited for the service to be over. When notified of its conclusion by Marshal Damville, Henry and his suite returned ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... had looked to spend it differently. As he walked up the shingle his thoughts were hanging about a cottage in the Place du Vier Prison. He had hoped to loiter in a doorway there, and to empty his sailor's heart in well-practised admiration before the altar of village beauty. The sight of Guida's face the day before had given a poignant pulse to his emotions, unlike the broken rhythm of past comedies of sentiment and melodramas of passion. According to all logic of custom, the acuteness of yesterday's impression ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... than in yielding to the beginnings of evil. "He that is unjust in the least, is also unjust in much" saith he who could not lie, Luke xvi. 20. When Uriah the priest had once pleased king Ahaz, in making an altar like unto that at Damascus, he was afterwards led on to please him in a greater matter, even in forsaking the altar of the Lord, and in offering all the sacrifices upon the altar of Damascus, 2 Kings xvi. 10-16. All your winning or losing of a good conscience, is in your first buying; for such is ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... spectacle to behold the sea of human beings that surged to and fro on this immense space, and made the welkin ring with their "Vive l'empereur!"—to behold the proud, triumphant soldiers receiving from Napoleon the eagles consecrated by the priests at the altar that stood before the emperor. It was a wondrous spectacle to behold the hundreds of richly-attired ladies glittering with diamonds, who occupied the tiers of seats that stood immediately behind the emperor's chair, and ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... was that silent greeting of Maurice's, and his cold touch, that first brought a doubt to her mind; during the long drive he spoke little to her—only held her hand tightly; and when at last they stood together in the dark old church with its gloomy altar and white, gleaming monuments, the poor child gave a shiver that was almost fear, and suddenly burst into tears. It had come upon her all at once what she was doing, and why she was there; but already it was too late, for while she ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... confidential channels. Peter Uniacke had listened to informal confessions, too, as the night fell, confessions of sin that at first surprised him, that at last could no longer surprise him. And he had confessed himself, before the altar of the twilight, and had wondered why it is that sometimes Nature seems to have the power of absolution, ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens

... stand there still, no life in all that mass of muscle, no will-power in that capable brain, nought but impotent malignity in that murderous frown: for he is stricken,—his sin has found him out,—ay, at the very altar, Orestes hears the Furies shriek their hatred in his ears, exultingly proclaiming that for him at least there is no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... resisteth Him and Arthur;" and wherewithal they kneeled down all at once, and cried for Arthur's grace and pardon that they had so long delayed him from his crown. Then he full sweetly and majestically pardoned them; and taking in his hand the sword, he offered it upon the high altar of ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles

... to the memory of Robert Rampton, who died in 1585 and was yeoman of the chamber to Edward VI., and the Queens Mary and Elizabeth. It stands in the south aisle, with an inscription on a brass plate against the wall, underneath which is an altar tomb covered with a slab of black marble, on which are the effigies, in brass, of Robert Rampton, and his wife Margaret, who ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various

... much longer view "Your heart-delighting scenes, for happier plains "Must I exchange you—plains beyond the skies." Ah, father, best belov'd, must I so soon Lose thee! my nearest friend!—distressing thought! Close to thy tomb, with filial love, I'll raise A modest altar, and with ardour seek Each blest occasion to relieve the woes Of the oppressed and wretched; on each day, That gives the happy chance of doing good, I'll pour sweet milk upon a parent's grave, And strew with flowers the ever sacred spot— He paus'd but kept his eyes, suffus'd with tears, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... service they were at liberty to spend their time in whatever way they chose. They all ate at the same table. Dolores spent her time in working for the needy and for the institution. She made clothing for poor children; she embroidered altar cloths for the chapel; she visited the sick and destitute. Thus her life was peacefully devoted to prayer and good works. She frequently received tidings from the chateau, sometimes through letters ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... Before the altar knelt I low— Love and devotion only feeling, While Heaven's glory seem'd to glow, Depicted on the lofty ceiling. Yet when again I upward gazed, The mighty dome in twain was shaken, And Heaven's gate wide open blazed, And every ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... fewer disagreeable people in it. I am neither so patriotic nor so thorough-going as the American citizen, who, during the late Civil War, came to President Lincoln, and nobly offered to sacrifice on the altar of freedom 'all his able-bodied relations;' but I think that most of us would be benefited if they were weeded ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... woman rather sternly, "and I am greatly displeased at your stubbornness. Ordinarily I would not ask you to betray any of your schoolmates, but in this instance I am justified, and you are making a serious mistake in sacrificing your duty upon the altar of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower

... marriage by so many young men that her parents besought the high-priest to aid them in their choice of her husband. He accordingly demanded that her suitors should give their staves into his keeping, to be placed over night before the altar, with the understanding, in which Mary herself meekly acquiesced, that he whose staff budded should become her husband. On the morrow Joseph's staff was found to have put forth blossoms. This legend, as you see, our artist has followed in his painting, for ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... headed. Thus he shone forth as a useful, serviceable, and public-spirited citizen, against whom (such was the inference which the newspaper reader was expected to draw) only malignancy could allege anything injurious. In this instance his offering upon the altar of publicity, carefully typed and mimeographed, had just enough importance to entitle it to a paragraph of courtesy. After it was given out to those who called, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... ever I could love any man more than I love you, then that love would be overwhelming indeed. But although I can imagine myself forgetting the world in such a love, I cannot picture you on the sacrificial altar." ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... dinner: and good discourse of Spain, Mr. Godolphin being there; particularly of the removal of the bodies of all the dead Kings of Spain that could be got together, and brought to the Pantheon at the Escuriall, when it was finished, and there placed before the altar, there to lie for ever; and there was a sermon made to them upon this text, "Arida ossa, audite verbum Dei;" and a most eloquent sermon, as they say, who say they have read it. After dinner, away hence, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... churchyard covers the ground formerly occupied by the nave, a mutilated portion of which remains within the building, attached to the lower stage of the central tower. It seems clear that the choir once extended over the tower-space, and was separated from the nave by a screen, with a parish-altar on its western side for public worship, while the chancel was reserved for the monastic services, with a raised presbytery for the high altar at its eastern end—a threefold division providing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat, Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that. Not as a ladder from Earth to Heaven, not as an altar to any creed, But simple Service, simply given, to their own kind, in ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... black. The castle yard was empty, but the door of the church was open. Newman went into the little nave and of course found a deeper dusk than without. A couple of tapers, however, twinkled on the altar and just enabled him to perceive a figure seated by one of the pillars. Closer inspection helped him to recognize Mrs. Bread, in spite of the fact that she was dressed with unwonted splendor. She wore a large black silk bonnet, with imposing bows of crape, and an old black ...
— The American • Henry James

... season of the year. It is then that the wild, demi-savage colonist leads the blushing half-breed girl to the altar, and the country about his house rings with the music of the sleigh bells, as his friends assemble to congratulate the happy pair, and dance for three successive days. It is at this season the hardy voyageurs ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... morning rills Rise white as wings of prayer; The altar curtains of the hills Are ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... bath, but is filled again with the love of life, even while she is bleeding to death. She raised herself, tottered forward a few steps, and sank down again at the entrance to a little church. The gate stood open, lights were burning upon the altar, and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... little pretty trifle for my birthday, and always has done so since the day when I led her to the hymeneal altar. But it is not done at all as a matter of course. During the days before my birthday, when she is working at the present, she keeps a clean handkerchief by her side, and flings it over the work to hide it when I enter the room. This makes it more of ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain

... entreaties were in vain. The agonized father had now no power to save her, for the whole army demanded that the will of the goddess should be obeyed. Preparations for the awful sacrifice were therefore made, and when everything was ready, the beautiful young princess was led to the altar. Tennyson, in his "Dream of Fair Women," has these ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke

... herself thrown half upon the wall behind her, half upon the roof above, sat bending over the few loose bricks within which it was pent, on the damp hearth of the chimney—for there was no stove—she looked as if she were watching at some witch's altar for a favourable token; and but that the movement of her chattering jaws and trembling chin was too frequent and too fast for the slow flickering of the fire, it would have seemed an illusion wrought by the light, as it came and went, upon a face as motionless as the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... mine—there rose the rushy pool, there dozed the broken boat. Manuel Rodriguez spoke in his voice that was at once cool and fine and dry and warm. "It is best to dare thoroughly! Perhaps I may help you—as thus! Wishing to speak with Don Enrique of an altar painting for the Church of Saint Dominic, I asked him here and he came. We talked, and he will give the picture. Then, hearing the Queen's approach, he would instantly have been gone, but alack, the small door is barred!—As for ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... of Colonel John, that he would scarcely be home before the latter was due to arrive. Anyhow, Groby had got it over, and six or seven months might decently elapse before he need again sacrifice his comforts and inclinations on the altar of family sociability. He was inclined to be distinctly cheerful as he hopped about the room, picking up first one object, then another, and subjecting each ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... am going to bid the wedding guests." And soon they were all collected. Would you like to know who they were? Well, I can only tell you what was told to me; all the hares came, and the crow who was to be the parson to marry them, and the fox for the clerk, and the altar was under the rainbow. But the maiden was sad, ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... did not commit. Sarah Purfoy was his wife—his erring, lost and yet loved wife. She, an innocent and trusting girl, had determined—strong in the remembrance of that promise she had made at the altar—to follow her husband to his place of doom, and had hired herself as lady's-maid to Mrs. Vickers. Alas! fever prostrated that husband on a bed of sickness, and Maurice Frere, the profligate and the villain, had taken advantage of the wife's unprotected state to ruin her! Rex darkly ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... be mine In the same sweet way that thine is thine, My lady and I may never stand By the holy altar hand in hand, My lady and I may never rest Through the golden midnight breast to breast, Nor share long days of happy light Sweet moving in each other's sight: Yea, even must we ever miss The ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... Sabbath-breaking quail Pipes in the corn, and bids us to his Feast Of Wheat Sheaves! How the bearded, ripening ears Toss in the roofless temple of the air; As if the unseen hand of some High-Priest Waved them before Mount Tabor as an altar! It were no harm, if ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... fireplace in this room, and over it was an altar-piece; a sort of picture in stone, which Mary used in her oratory, according to the custom of the Catholics. It had been broken to pieces and put together again. It was said that John Knox broke it, to show his abhorrence of Popery, but that the pieces were ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott

... privileges. He, too, was for peace sake made happy; and it was there and then explained by the settlers, definitely and determinedly, that no more payment for the particular trees about to be sacrificed on the altar of civilisation would be made. In future the laws of the camps were to be restricted to the hundreds of other bean-trees in the jungle, each of which, if wanted, would be ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... decoration of the same kind at St. Georges. At Fecamp, the screen is carried up to the roof by three tiers, each consisting of three arches; and the recess thus made, is still used as a chapel, having an altar at the east end, and, in the centre, an ancient font. Such may have been originally the case at St. Georges; and thus we may account for the small semi-circular additions to the transepts, one of which is visible in the general view of the church. ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... she inquired, in her usual curt form of interrogation, as they were taking a hurried and unceremonious meal in the vestry by the light of an altar candle. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... Athenian might be startled at the sight of a musical comedy and its chorus, but he would be looking at his own child, a descendant, however distant, degenerate, and hard to recognize, of that chorus which with dance and song moved round the altar of Dionysus in the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... 'The Farmer's Ingle,' are just lively daguerreotypes of the life he saw around him—there is nothing ideal or lofty in any of them. His 'ingle-bleeze' burns low compared to that which in 'The Cottar's Saturday Night' springs up aloft to heaven, like the tongue of an altar-fire. He stuffs his poems, too, with Scotch to a degree which renders them too rich for even, a Scotch- man's taste, and as repulsive as a haggis to that of an Englishman. On the whole, Fergusson's best claim to fame arises from the influence he exerted ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... lights of the Keep began to gleam like stars in the darkness—stars indeed to the eager eyes of the young Knight, who gazed upon them long and affectionately, as he felt himself once more at home. "I wonder," said he, "to see the light strongest towards the east end of the Castle! I knew not that the altar lights in the chapel could be seen so far!" Then riding on more quickly, and approaching more nearly, he soon lost sight of them behind the walls, and descending the last little rising ground, the lofty mass of building rose huge ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and witnessed a very touching sight. To my surprise I noticed that Constable Heathcote's was the first grave decorated with bouquets and sweet-smelling flowers by kind and loving hands. It mattered not to them what altar he knelt at or what flag he had served under. They knew him in life as a policeman, proud of his uniform and his country. In death they honoured his memory." This is well put by Horrigan, and the whole incident indicated the deep-seated attachment existing between the two ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... majesty. At times the Igigi alone are mentioned, but generally the Igigi and Anunnaki appear in combination. To the latest period of Babylonian history these two groups continue to receive official recognition. Nebuchadnezzar II.[221] dedicates an altar, which he erects at the wall of the city of Babylon, to the Igigi and Anunnaki. The altar is called a structure of 'joy and rejoicing,' and on the festival of Marduk, who is the 'lord of the Anunnaki and Igigi,' sacrifices were offered at this ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... poor boy who does not know his own mind. Insie is his equal by birth and education, and perhaps his superior in that which comes foremost nowadays—the money. Dream not that he is a great catch, my dear; I know more of that matter than you do. It is possible that he may stand at the altar with little to settle upon his bride except ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... best light, was transfigured into an admirable operating-room. All its furnishings were sent away, every cloth and curtain, and the walls and floor were covered with white sterilized sheets. The high little mechanical table they erected before the window seemed to me like an altar on which I had to offer up my son. There were basins of disinfectants and towels conveniently about, the operator came, took out his array of scalpels and forceps and little sponges from the black bag he carried, put them ready for his hand, and then covered them from ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... from an altar, and from candles above it set around a figure of the Mother of God. In front knelt a priest, and behind him, straggling back in the pews, a score or so of women, some children, and a blue-coated French soldier or two. The priest's voice sounded thin and low: neither could hear what ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... in the sweat of my brow, as you do. I was a fool. But Abel was a discoverer, a man of ideas, of spirit: a true Progressive. He was the discoverer of blood. He was the inventor of killing. He found out that the fire of the sun could be brought down by a dewdrop. He invented the altar to keep the fire alive. He changed the beasts he killed into meat by the fire on the altar. He kept himself alive by eating meat. His meal cost him a day's glorious health-giving sport and an hour's amusing play with the fire. You learnt ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... said. "The princess dreams that she is to be wedded, and that even before the altar her bridal robes grow black and the flowers of her wreath fall withered, while the strown blooms under her feet turn to ashes ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler

... duke, who closed the door after them. The two found themselves in a small chapel covered with a tapestry of Persian silk worked with gold, and brilliantly lighted with a vast number of candles. Over a species of altar, and beneath a canopy of blue velvet, surmounted by white and red plumes, was a full-length portrait of Anne of Austria, so perfect in its resemblance that d'Artagnan uttered a cry of surprise on beholding it. One might believe the queen was about to speak. On the altar, and beneath the portrait, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere



Words linked to "Altar" :   construction, structure, altar boy, table



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