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Heathenism

noun
1.
Any of various religions other than Christianity or Judaism or Islamism.  Synonyms: pagan religion, paganism.






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"Heathenism" Quotes from Famous Books



... a race from original heathenism which has come through two hundred years of the darkness of slavery, set free in exceedingly unhelpful conditions, and shut in for the most part to association with illiteracy, bad manners, bad ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 44, No. 5, May 1890 • Various

... 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 bringing grace to his benighted countrymen. ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... crossed its open places, and presented himself at their apartments. And was it very strange that a youth so utterly ignorant of the world, and unsuspicious of evil, should not have heard the warning voice which called him to separate himself from heathenism, even in its most specious form? Was it very strange, under these circumstances, that a sanguine hope, the hope of the youthful, should have led Agellius to overlook obstacles, and beguile himself into the notion that Callista might ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... Church, Low Church, Broad Church, Free Church; ultramontanism^; papism, papistry; monkery^; papacy; Anglicanism, Catholicism, Romanism; popery, Scarlet Lady, Church of Rome, Greek Church. paganism, heathenism, ethicism^; mythology; polytheism, ditheism^, tritheism^; dualism; heathendom^. Judaism, Gentilism^, Islamism, Islam, Mohammedanism, Babism^, Sufiism, Neoplatonism, Turcism^, Brahminism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sabianism, Gnosticism, Hylotheism^, Mormonism; Christian Science. heretic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... dreariness of his life seemed almost to have passed away. The affection of Oriana had hitherto been his only solace and comfort, and now the hope of repaying that affection by becoming the humble means of leading her out of the darkness of heathenism, and pointing out to her the way of eternal salvation, raised his spirits, and almost reconciled him to his present banishment from home, and all its cherished ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... Threlkeld taking up their abode at Raiatea. Having collected the hitherto scattered inhabitants into villages, he built a substantial mission-house as a model, which was readily imitated. Places of worship and schoolhouses were also built; and though many years elapsed before the abominations of heathenism were eradicated, the great mass of the people became not only well educated and moral, but earnest and enlightened Christians. The satisfactory progress made by the inhabitants of the islands where Mr Williams ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

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

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

... cities and those of the poor negro districts, in some of which not merely have the old superstitions been retained but there has been a marked relapse into the Obeah rites and serpent worship of African heathenism. The rank superstitions, the beliefs in necromancy and witchcraft, the wild orgies of excitement, the utter divorce between the moral virtues and what is called religion, which obtain among the millions of the ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various

... By-the-way, from the manner in which you alluded to the world's census, it would appear that, according to your world-wide scheme, the pauper not less than the nabob is to contribute to the relief of pauperism, and the heathen not less than the Christian to the conversion of heathenism. How is that?" ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

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

... popular feeling, which was more constantly expressed in the popular comedy and the improvised popular play.[533] The persecution in Nerva's time was more popular than political.[534] In the following century the Christians denounced heathenism as a worship of demons. "It is not surprising that the populace should have been firmly convinced that every great catastrophe that occurred was due to the presence of the enemies of the gods."[535] "The history of the period of the Antonines continually ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... 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

... contact. In ancient, in mediaeval, 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 Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... 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 object ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... of most of their subjects to the authorities, also influenced very directly the advancement of Catholicism, and gave as a result that all those who took to the mountains, thus being separated from the immediate neighborhood of the eight churches then existing, returned to the habits of heathenism at the same time when they passed to the camp of freedom. Other things also were added to the causes which diminished the abundant fruits of the priestly ministry. That coldness of the people of Bohol toward the Spanish name, observed long before by Legaspi at the time of the discovery, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

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

... was a time in the history of the world when, so clearly and unmistakably, every thinking soul amongst cultivated nations was being brought up to this alternative—Christ, the Revealer of God, or no knowledge of God at all. The old dreams of heathenism are impossible for us; modern agnosticism will make very quick work of a deism which does not cling to the Christ as the Revealer of the Godhead. And I, for my part, believe that there is one thing, and one thing only, which will save modern Europe from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... infallibility than any other ancient literature; when it is proved that the Israelites and their Christian successors accepted a great many supernaturalistic theories and legends which have no better foundation than those of heathenism, nothing remains to be done but to throw the Bible aside as so ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

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

... baptism. 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

... to a custom of the pagan Arabs in the days of ignorant Heathenism The blood or brain, soul or personality of the murdered man formed a bird called Sady or Hamah (not the Huma or Humai, usually translated "phoenix") which sprang from the head, where four of the five senses have their seat, and haunted his tomb, crying continually, "Uskuni!"Give ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... to the Ultramontane cause. The work of the Recollets had, on the whole, been disappointing, for their numbers and their resources proved too small for effective progress. During ten years of devoted labor they had scarcely been able to make any impression upon the great wilderness of heathenism that lay on all sides. In view of the apparent futility of their efforts, the coming of the Jesuits—suggested, it may be, by Champlain—was probably not unwelcome to them. Richelieu, moreover, had now brought ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... the pagods was tolerated at Goa, and the sect of the Brachmans daily increased in power; because those Pagan priests had bribed the Portuguese officers. The people professed heathenism freely, provided they made exact payments of their tribute, as if they had been conquered only for the sake of gain. Public offices were sold to Saracens, and the Christian natives stood excluded, for want of money, which does all things with corrupt ministers. The ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... with reverential awe, so with fear and disgust, the tendency is to wrap their objects in the folds of metaphor. Men prefer not to name plainly their god or their dread, but find roundabout phrases for the one, and coaxing, flattering titles for the other. The furies and the fates of heathenism, the supernatural beings of modern superstition, must not be spoken of by their own appellations. The recoil of men's hearts from the thing is testified by the aversion of their languages to the bald name—death. And the employment of this special euphemism of sleep ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... 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 ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson

... rites became more strict as Christianity grew in power, the Church tried her strength against 'witches' in high places and was victorious, and in the fifteenth century open war was declared against the last remains of heathenism in the famous Bull of ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... And as he watched the worshipers coming and going, and heard the disdainful words from the priests cast at the hated foreigners, he realized that he was face to face with an awful opposing force. It was the great stone of heathenism he had come to break, and the question was, would he be as successful as he had been long ago in the ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith

... outward life? What pagan is there in all the generations that will 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 ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... 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

... 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 sowed in faith has grown up to bear ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... principle should be settled in accordance therewith." He admits that this logical result of his argument excludes the Bible from the public school, just as it excludes the Westminster Catechism, the Koran, or any of the sacred books of heathenism. But, as he justly says, this conclusion pronounces no judgment against the Bible and none for it; it simply omits to use it and declines to inculcate the religion which it teaches. It is difficult to see how any other view of the case can be taken consistently with the spirit ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

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

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

... Empire, Or Until The 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. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... Afterwards—society having become settled, religion being established, and the Church herself having acquired fatal wealth—these brotherhoods sank into torpor and corruption; but while the Church was still a missionary in a spiritual and material wilderness, waging a death struggle with heathenism and barbarism, they were the indispensable engines of the holy war. The re-foundation of monasteries, therefore, was one of Alfred's first cares; and he did not fail, in token of his pious gratitude, to build at Athelney a house of God which was far holier than the memorial abbey afterwards ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... darkness—is it easy to point out a remedy. After all, it is surely better for these poor Indians to adopt some form of Christianity, however corrupt, than to remain in the darkness and debasement of heathenism. And if our missionaries would act upon the noble maxim of the greatest of the Apostles—"never to enter upon the sphere of another man's labours,"—consequences so injurious would be avoided. If they have not so much Christianity and good sense as to do so of themselves, where there is ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... at first sight seem strange that the Christian religion should have permitted the existence of such gross and impious relics of heathenism, in a land where its doctrines had obtained universal credence. But this will not appear so wonderful when it is recollected that the original Christians under the heathen emperors were called to conversion by the voice of apostles and saints, invested for the purpose with ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... avoid mentioning in this place, viz, the conversion of Constantine from heathenism to the Christian faith. Great men, if turned about at all, must be turned about by great means! But whatever might have been thought of Constantine's conversion by the people of that day, the account ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... has been a help to me. Living away from the people and losing sight of the ignorance and filth and heathenism, we forget what our chief aim should be, not simply school-work for the children, but Christianization and civilization for the masses. This, in its greatest effectiveness, can be done at the out-stations and in the vernacular ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various

... about the steppes until late medieval times, were by fresh invading hordes forced into the Caucasus, where they remain as the Ossetes. At one time partially Christianized by Byzantine missionaries, they had almost relapsed into heathenism, but are now under Russian influence returning to Christianity. (E. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the system we have sketched, in which the prophetic teaching was hardened into a ritual and a law, there are various elements which do not belong to an advanced stage of religious progress. While the sacrificial ritual, not outwardly exalted above heathenism, is to some extent redeemed by the motives which enter into it, the great system of clean and unclean rests on no rational basis, and resembles the set of taboos, which no one can explain, of a savage tribe; and the reduction of daily life under a set of ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... the wild state of the country and the power vested in the priests that abuses were tolerated which, even in Rome, had not been dreamed of. The priests, as anxious for spiritual conquest as the rest were for physical, joined hands with the heathenism of the Indians, accepted their gods of wood and stone as saints, set up the crucifix side by side with the images of the sun and moon, formerly worshipped; and while in Europe the sun of the Reformation arose and dispelled the terrible night of religious error and superstition, South America sank ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... labour of all sorts, seems to have swept like a torrent over the island, arousing to its best and highest point that Celtic enthusiasm and which has never, unhappily, found such noble exercise since. Irish missionaries flung themselves upon the dogged might of heathenism, and grappled with it in a death struggle. Amongst the Picts of the Highlands, amongst the fierce Friscians of the Northern seas, beside the Lake of Constance, where the church of St. Gall still preserves the name of another Irish saint, in the Black Forest, at Schaffhausen, at Wuertzburg, throughout, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... 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 ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... we must seal our faith with our blood, brother," he answered. "Yet I think that there is more in this than heathenism, ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... of Shanghai, but not one of them put his hand in his pocket to rebuild the ruined synagogue; and without that for a rallying-place the colony must ere long fade away, and be absorbed in the surrounding heathenism, or be led ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

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

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

... the revulsion from all that had seemed like a system of bondage, had held lightly by their faith, and in the cares and troubles of their life had heeded little of their children's devotions, so that the practical heathenism of their home at Boola Boola had been unrelieved save by Eustace the elder, when his piety was reckoned as part of his weak, gentlemanly refinement. The dull hopeless wretchedness was no longer in Harold's face, but there was a wistful, gentle ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 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 ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... my research requires the acquisition of the whole treasures of language, in order to complete my favorite linguistic theories, and to inquire into the poetry and religious conceptions of German-Scandinavian heathenism, and their ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... and Benjamin Rush,[2] those who had theretofore justified slavery on the ground that it gave the bondmen a chance to be enlightened, fell back on the theory of African racial inferiority. This they said was so well exhibited by the Negroes' lack of wisdom and of goodness that continued heathenism of the race was justifiable.[3] Answering these inconsistent persons, John Wesley inquired: "Allowing them to be as stupid as you say, to whom is that stupidity owing? Without doubt it lies altogether at the door of the inhuman masters who give them no opportunity for ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson

... which is obvious and inexorable, it is the law of purity. But go where you will in the Christian countries, and you will learn that by large sections of their manhood this law is treated as if it did not exist. The truth is that, in spite of the nations being baptized in the name of Christ, heathenism has still the control of much of their life; and it would hardly be too much to say that the mission of Christianity is ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

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

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

... during a visit to the Atlantic coast, some three or four years ago, he came under the influence of a missionary, embraced Christianity, and abandoned the heathen conjuring swindle by which he was, up to that time, making a good living. Now he lives a life about as clean and free from the heathenism and superstitions of his race as any Eskimo can who adopts a new religion. The missionary whom I have mentioned led Potokomik's mother to accept Christ and renounce Torngak when she was on her deathbed, and before she died she confessed to many sins, amongst them that of ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

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

... 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, needs to cultivate ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble

... heaven. And, however humiliating or disappointing the disclosure may prove, it will be established that some of the foremost Christian peoples of the world maintain luniolatry to this day, notwithstanding that they have the reproving light of the latest civilization. We are so prone to talk of heathenism as abroad, that we forget or neglect the gross heathenism which abounds at home; and while we complacently speak of the march of the world's progress with which we identify ourselves, we are oblivious of the fact that much ancient ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... 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 age ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington

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

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

... given a British origin to the name of our Christian holy day? Southey acknowledges that the "heathenism which the {116} Saxons introduced, bears no [very little?] affinity either to that of the Britons or the Romans;" yet it is certain that the Britons worshipped Baal and Ashtaroth, a relic of whose ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various

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

... to describe the emotions of my heart when I entered the little bamboo cottage we now occupy. Were I skilled in perspective drawing, I would send you a picture of the charming landscape seen from our verandah. In a little hut near us reside two Christian converts from heathenism. Oh, how your bosom would glow with grateful rapture to hear their songs of praise, and listen to their fervent prayers. We prefer living in this retired spot with dear Mr. and Mrs. Wade and Mrs. Colman, to a situation ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... For eighteen hundred years the spirit of these writers has been engaged in weaponless contest with the Sermon on the Mount, and those two sublime commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets. The strife is still pending. Heathenism, which has possessed itself of such siren forms, is not yet exorcised. It still tempts the young, controls the affairs of active life, and haunts ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

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

... blue eyes, and there they sat — Oboe and Viola and Double-bass — and ogled each other, and raised their brows, and snickered behind the columns, without a suspicion of interest either in the music or the service. Dash these fellows, they are utterly given over to heathenism, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... persevering in it. One Saturday forenoon, at the close of the usual prayer-meeting, which met in Dr. Chalmers' vestry, we went up together to a district in the Castle Hill. It was Robert's first near view of the heathenism of his native city, and the effect ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar

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

... 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. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... 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

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

... view with great pleasure the formation of churches among the converts from heathenism, organized according to the established usages of our branch ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage

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

... 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, and her discipline, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... little, 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

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

... ambition, have by their evil counsels persuaded our most gracious sovereign the king to introduce into these countries the abominable tribunal of the Inquisition, a tribunal diametrically opposed to all laws, human and divine, and in cruelty far surpassing the barbarous institutions of heathenism; which raises the inquisitors above every other power, and debases man to a perpetual bondage, and by its snares exposes the honest citizen to a constant fear of death, inasmuch as any one (priest, it may be, or a faithless friend, a Spaniard or a reprobate), has ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

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

... hearts. Nor did they weep alone. And who would not weep at such a scene? Here were those, whom we had hoped to train up for immortal blessedness, about to be sent back to a darkness almost like that of heathenism. The stoutest Nestorians who were standing by were melted. After these tender lambs had been commended to the gracious Shepherd of Israel, they began to make their preparations for leaving us. The most trying thing was the parting, of the pupils from each other, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

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

... vacuity, a tawdry dreaminess. And this poor minister, who flattered himself that he had outgrown every graceful and touching form with which human affection or human infirmity had clothed the Christian idea, stumbled amid the rubbish of an effete heathenism, with its Sibylline contortions and tripod-responses, which the best minds of Pagan civilization found no difficulty in pronouncing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... of the Niger. Captain William Alien ("Niger Expedition," i. 227) thus records the effect when, at the request of the commissioners, Herr Schon, the missionary, began stating to King Obi the difference between the Christian religion and heathenism: ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

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

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

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

... abjectness of those who have been oppressed by slavery and infected with its sly and cringing vices. Although the faults of the negro, except this servile abjectness, may not have been created by slavery, yet slavery and heathenism are so identical in character and tendency that there is scarcely a heathen vice, and, as we have found of late to our sorrow, scarcely a heathen cruelty, which slavery would not create if it did not exist, and of course scarcely one already ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... 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, an absorbing ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... and he was bishop there to the end of his life. Oswald also this year succeeded to the government of the Northumbrians, and reigned nine winters. The ninth year was assigned to him on account of the heathenism in which those lived who reigned that one year betwixt him ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... hundred years the Greeks were the principal representatives, protectors, elaborators and explorers of Christianity. When the Greeks visited the Slav country with their divine message, the Slavs were heathens. Their heathenism was like a confusing dream. Nature stood before them with its contradictory forces. The primitive Slavs regarded all the forces of Nature encircling a human creature as being alive and stronger than this creature. ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... thus associating together than to assist, as humble instruments under Christ, in causing His doctrine to be propagated and known in all the regions of the vast world, the greatest part of which is still involved in heathenism and ignorance; and looking upon their earthly goods as of little or no value in comparison with such a glorious end, they expend them in printing editions of their Master's Word in all languages, and in transporting them to the remotest ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

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

... 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 a resolution which his Maty [James II.] made, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various

... vain, or 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 ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... avarice and ambition, have by their evil counsels persuaded our most gracious sovereign the King to introduce into these countries the abominable tribunal of the Inquisition—a tribunal diametrically opposed to all laws human and divine, and in cruelty far surpassing the barbarous institutions of heathenism—which raises the inquisitors above every other power, and debases man to a perpetual bondage, and by its snares exposes the honest citizen to a constant fear of death, inasmuch as anyone—priest, it may be, or a faithless friend, a Spaniard or a reprobate—has ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... Sunday he went to church—and there worshipped—whom? Cupid. He smarted for his heathenism; for the young ladies went with higher motives, and took no notice of him. They lowered their long silken lashes over one breviary, and scarcely observed the handsome citizen. Meantime he, contemplating ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... added, that both their narrations and songs are known the best by the very oldest of the people, and those who never learned to read; whose education and training were under the ancient system of heathenism." ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... 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, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

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

... the remotest period, perhaps even so far back as the fourth century, St. John's Day was solemnized with all sorts of strange and rude customs, of which the originally mystical meaning was variously disfigured among different nations by super-added relics of heathenism. Thus the Germans transferred to the festival of St. John's Day an ancient heathen usage, the kindling of the Nodfyr, which was forbidden them by St. Boniface, and the belief subsists even to the present day that people and animals that have leaped through these ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... twentieth books of the Paradise, gives his final 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 ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... 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

... appear to 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

... 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? I will ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre

... 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 trade I live by is that of royalist ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... have been something more than a brilliant heathenism. No wonder that Amos of the text, having heard these two anthems of the stars, put down the stout rough staff of the herdsman and took into his brown hand and cut and knotted fingers the pen of a prophet, and advised ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... the fields, and two in the prairies, to break an additional hundred acres for wheat. A little opposition is shown to dividing the land, but only a few Indians oppose. It is a great step, and one that many are prepared for; but it must be executed by a wise and good man. It is the death-blow to heathenism, barbarism, and idleness, and therefore a medicine absolutely necessary to restore health and quicken life; but yet it must be administered by a brave and judicious physician. It is a revolution of habit and of manner of life to the Indian. And in Minnesota, the delay in perfecting ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle

... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... sacrifices used in the Pagan worship were always attended with feasting, and consequently were highly grateful to the multitude, the pope ordered, that oxen should as usual be slaughtered near the church, and the people indulged in their ancient festivity. (Id. c. eod.) Whatever popular customs of heathenism were found to be absolutely not incompatible with Christianity were retained; and some of them were continued to a very late period. Deer were at a certain season brought into St. Paul's Church in ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... times, the administration of medicines was always attended with religious ceremonial, such as the repetition of a psalm. These observances however were often tinctured with a good deal of heathenism, the traditional folk-lore of the country, in the form of charms, magic and starcraft. It is evident, wrote the author of "Social England,"[214:1] from the cases preserved by monkish chronicles, that the element of hysteria was prominent in the maladies of the Middle Ages, and ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... the hillside, pleased, I must own, by the warm blight sunlight, the colour of the sea, and the smell of the aromatic herbs,—pleased, and half forgetful of the horrid heathenism that surrounded me, I heard a low wail as of an infant. I searched about, in surprise, and came on a beautiful baby, in rich swaddling bands, with a gold signet ring tied round its neck. Such an occurrence was not very ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... religion is a 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 ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... versatile than youth and optimism imagine. The belief in a satanic power of evil expresses the conviction of the permanent power of evil. In early Christianity the belief in the devil was closely connected with the Christian opposition to the idolatrous and wicked social order of heathenism. In the Apocalypse the dragon who stands for Satan, and the beasts who stand for the despotic Roman ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... constitutional convention; that petitions from other hundreds of women have been forwarded to congress, praying for a sixteenth amendment; that, by letters and personal statements, we know the most intelligent and thoughtful women everywhere rebel against the State laws whose heathenism, despotism and absurdity were so well shown by Mrs. Nichols in 1845—all these facts are proofs that the sentiment of Vermont women is not represented by the constitutional convention now in session at ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

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

... towards the rebuilding of Shepperton Church—a practical precept which was not likely to smooth the way to her acceptance of his theological doctrine. Mr. Hackit, who had more doctrinal enlightenment than Mrs. Patten, had been a little shocked by the heathenism of her speech, and was glad of the new turn given to the subject by this question, addressed to him as church-warden and an authority in ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... father had laboured on in faith, as a missionary in all regions must be prepared to do, for as yet only the comparatively small body of Christians as I have mentioned, who had settled round us, had been brought out of heathenism, while the larger number of the population appeared even more hostile to the new faith than at first. Still my father would often say, when he felt himself inclined to despond, "Let us recollect the value of one immortal soul, and all our toils and troubles will appear as nothing." ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston

... fan. Another church (St. Alessandro, I think) was 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 ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

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

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

... account of the mythology of the Norsemen, and of the way in which it fell. They came from the East, and brought that common stock of tradition with them. Settled in the Scandinavian peninsula, they developed themselves through Heathenism, Romanism, and Lutheranism, in a locality little exposed to foreign influence, so that even now the Daleman in Norway or Sweden may be reckoned among the most primitive examples left of peasant life. We should expect, then, that these Popular Tales, which, for ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... no doubt that, in the later stages of ancient religions, mythology acquired an increased importance. In the struggle of heathenism with scepticism on the one hand and Christianity on the other, the supporters of the old traditional religions were driven to search for ideas of a modern cast, which they could represent as the true inner meaning of the traditional rites. To this end they ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... subdue the world, I own that it is with 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 been made in strength. But what of our own Europe—the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... population who would attend, and fully answer the purpose of a church for the present, till a brighter prospect arose in the colony, and its inhabitants were more congregated. I became anxious to see such a building arise as a Protestant land-mark of Christianity in a vast field of heathenism and general depravity of manners, and cheerfully gave my hand and my heart to perfect the work. I expected a willing co-operation from the Scotch settlers; but was disappointed in my sanguine hopes of their cheerful and persevering assistance, through their prejudices against the ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... St. Barnabas 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 the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

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

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

... adult population had come under the influence of Christianity. On the site of a once desolate forest consecrated to demon worship was erected the commodious chapel which stood as a monument of the overthrow of heathenism and as a tribute ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... trustfulness and amiability better fitted to repress hostility than the presence of an armed, suspicious, and brawling soldiery. So the good Father Jose said matins and prime, mass and vespers, in the heart of Sin and Heathenism, taking no heed to himself, but looking only to the welfare of the Holy Church. Conversions soon followed, and, on the 7th of July, 1760, the first Indian baby was baptized,—an event which, as Father Jose piously ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte

... Protestant {397} example, it was also the outcome of the rising tide of Catholic pietism in the fifteenth century. Still more was it the answer to a demand on the part of the church for an instrument with which to combat the dangers of heresy and to conquer spiritually the new worlds of heathenism. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

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

... Esteybar with a squadron of armed vessels, destroys several Mindanao villages. Finally (in 1662) the Manila authorities decide to abandon their forts in Mindanao and Jolo; this causes the loss of Spanish dominion there, and the christianized Moros soon relapse into their former heathenism. Some of the Joloan chiefs make unauthorized raids on the northern islands, but their king punishes them and restores the captives. Corralat meanwhile, in his old age, maintains peace, and charges his heir to do the same—an example which is followed by the king of Jolo. The ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... as were adapted to their situation. But these wanderers of the desert adhered not to the law delivered to them. We find even during the life of Moses much obstinacy, and an unbridled inclination to Heathenism was manifested, by their making objects of idolatrous worship. After the death of Moses, the seventy-two interpreters collected his doctrines; but they added to them some, withdrew others, and confused several, by which the pure Mosaic opinions must have been obscured. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various

... the Israelites, whilst outwardly conforming to the worship of Jehovah, were in their secret desires hankering after Sabaeism—the worship of the heavenly host. And it may well be that he chooses Moloch and Saturn as representing the cruellest and most debased forms of heathenism. ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... world of fashion, without any of the hypocritical congratulations of "society" friends,—without the sickening, foolish waste, expense and artificiality, which nowadays makes a marriage a mere millinery parade. She had spoken her vows before thousands whom her husband had helped and rescued from heathenism and misery, and all their good wishes and prayers for her happiness were wedding gifts such as no money could purchase. With a heart full of emotion and gratitude she watched the crowd break up and disappear, till when the last few were ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

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

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

... mediaeval civilization, from fighters with blow-guns and bows and arrows to fighters with Mauser rifles and modern artillery. Laws and institutions suited to the needs of one tribe are unsuited to those of another. Side by side are Catholicism, Mohammedanism and heathenism. Their amusements vary from cannibalism to cock-fighting. Their social status ranges from barbarous promiscuity to Moslem polygamy and thence to Hindoo monogamy. But everywhere exist masculine domination and feminine subjection, under varied forms of political despotism, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... conditions, and for the same 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

... future and eternal life, 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

... Antioch, joined in the service at Easter, and presented himself to receive the Holy Communion; but Bishop Babylas refused him, until he should have done open penance for the crimes by which he had come to the purple, and renounced all remains of heathenism. He turned away rebuked, but put off his repentance; and the next year celebrated the games called the Seculae, because they took place every Seculum or hundredth year, with all their heathen ceremonies, ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

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

... but instead of reproving the lad for his sin and folly, only considered how he might turn the cheat to his own advantage, and render it conducive to his own preferment. The abandoned miscreant actually went through the blasphemous mockery of baptizing the youth as a convert from heathenism; named him after the brigadier, who stood godfather: claimed credit from the Bishop of London for his zeal; and was by the kind prelate invited to bring his convert to London. The chaplain lost no time in accepting, was graciously received by the bishop and the archbishop, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various

... close. Let 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 we will have peace, progress, and ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

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

... divine worship are not all fully occupied, is not this a proof of the desolate state of the Lord's vineyard in that country? Is not this a sufficient reason for earnestly endeavouring to increase the number of the labourers in the vineyard? The heathenism of a considerable portion of a population nominally christian, manifestly tends to thin the congregations even of existing churches. But the want of church extension, and the dearth of ministers, tends to produce and increase this heathenism, and therefore it indirectly tends to diminish ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

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

... institution of the Middle Ages. This period also embraces the time when the tribes were about to take on the influence of the Christian religion, and when there was a constant mingling of the Christian spirit with the spirit of heathenism. In fact, the subject should cover all that is known of the Germanic tribes prior to the Roman contact and after it, down to the full entrance of the Middle Ages and the rise of new nationalities. In this ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... This dignity all Emperors had hitherto accepted: but Gratian rejected it, threw down the idols, interdicted the sacrifices, and took away their revenues with the salaries and authority of the Priests. Theodosius the great followed his example; and heathenism afterwards recovered itself no more, but decreased so fast, that Prudentius, about ten years after the death of Theodosius, called the heathens, vix pauca ingenia & pars hominum rarissima. Whence the affairs of the sixth ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton

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

... interesting task to travel through a continent filled with such people, whose minds are just beginning, here and there, to emerge from the vilest heathenism, and to glimmer with a faith that bears wrapped in its unfolded leaves, the seeds of ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... parliament. In the early part of the century, as we have seen, personal and practical religion was mainly represented by the evangelical or low Church party, which did admirable service in the cause of philanthropy, as well as in reclaiming the masses from heathenism. The high Church party was comparatively inactive, but co-operated with its rival in opposition to catholic emancipation. The clergy, as a body, were hostile to reform, and the bishops incurred the fiercest obloquy by voting against the first reform bill, which had unfortunately been rejected ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick



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



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