Church steeple

“ The Church has a very high Steeple, its Seen above a Great hill that is by it of a great Length and its a long tyme wn you see a great part of the Steeple before you come to see the Church or town it Lies so in a bottom. ”

“ Well, sisters, Christmas Day came, and we were up by daylight, for Cousin Emily Elizabeth is, as I have told you, a High Church woman and an Episcopalian. We haven't got any meeting-house of that denomination in our neighborhood, and I don't exactly know what high and low church means, without it is that one set hold to meeting-houses with a belfry, and the others stand up for a high steeple—a thing that I told Cousin E. E. we common people didn't aspire to ”

“ The choir, to which they glide in order to their places below the clergy, seems conspicuously cold and sad. But the empty chapels lying beyond it all about into the distance are a trap on sunny mornings for the clouds of yellow effulgence. The Angel Steeple is a lantern within, and sheds down a flood of the like just beyond the gates. You can peep up into it where you sit, if you dare to gaze about you. If at home there had been nothing great, here, to boyish sense, one seems diminished to nothing at all, amid the grand waves, wave upon wave, of patiently-wrought stone ”

“ Therefore the power of remitting sins was given to the Apostles and the Churches which they, being sent by Christ, set up, and to the Bishops who have succeeded them by ordination in their stead.... And here I am justly indignant at this so open and manifest folly of Stephen, because, glorying as he does in the rank of his Episcopate, and maintaining that he holds the succession of Peter, upon whom the foundations of the Church were laid, he introduces many other rocks, and sets up new buildings of many Churches, while he affirms, on his own authority, that Baptism is in them.... ”

“ The Anglican clergy were not like the Irish priesthood, in close sympathy with the peasantry, or like the Scottish ministers, the organs of strong convictions spreading through the great mass of the middle and lower classes. A man of energy, who took his faith seriously, was, like the Evangelical clergy, out of the road to preferment, or, like Wesley, might find no room within the church at all. ”

“ There is a place allowed them, with necessary accommodations for the exercise of religion. Dr. Stewart did often preach to them; and for their form of worship, it is the same that was formerly in England, with the Book of Common Prayer, and the rites therein used; and also they continue the innovations that were practised by many of our clergy—as bowing at the name of Jesus towards the altar, &c.—which I know giveth offence to the good French Protestants, who, to me, did often condemn those innovations for Roman superstitions. ”

“ Stephen's Church lifts its tall spire, and points to God all day long and all the night, a still and silent emblem of a power higher than any mandate of the Kings of earth; ay, to the Infinite God. Men look up to its cross overtowering the frivolous city, and take a lesson! ”

“ No one who seeks with intelligence, single-mindedness and a pure heart, will fail to find these attributes and marks of the true Church of Christ. Whether, after finding them, one will make an act of faith, is another question. But that he can give his assent with the full approval of his reason is absolutely certain. Once he does so, he has no further use for his reason. He enters the Church, an edifice illumined by the superior light of revelation and faith. He can leave reason, like a lantern, at the door. ”

“ I ran down into the woods, to the footpath, and there I saw two men carrying the cross on their shoulders.
Then it occurred to me that it was to go to the new church Am Steg; the foresters wished to place it on the altar. They honour it, as I do; they also wish to learn of resignation and sacrifice; they are also beings who, like myself, are striving and struggling for the right. Then a joy was awakened within me and my heart was full almost to bursting. I longed to embrace you,—you and the whole parish. For, indeed, I belonged to you—a child of the parish. ”

“ Stepton had a temper. This touch of superiority, not vulgar, but very definite, fell on it like a lash.
"Now I'll go for the reverend gentleman of St. Joseph's!" he thought.
And for a moment he forgot his aim in remembering himself. Afterward, in thinking matters over, he offered a pinch of incense at the altar of his egoism.
"So, the modern clergyman still believes in slip-slop, does he?" he exclaimed in his most aggressive manner. "Even now hasn't he learnt the value of the matter-of-fact? The clergyman is the doctor of the soul, isn't he? And the doctor, isn't he the clergyman of the body? ”

“ In front of the altar, in a rich shrine, is an image of the Saviour on the cross, "our Lord of Esquipulas," to whom the church is consecrated, famed for its power of working miracles. Every year thousands of devotees ascend the steps of his temple on their knees, or laden with a heavy cross, who are not permitted to touch the sacred image, but go away contented in obtaining a piece of riband stamped with the words "Dulce nombre de Jesus."
We returned to the convent, and while I was sitting with Colonel San Martin the cura entered, and, closing the door, asked me if my servant was faithful. ”

“ And the apostles departed from the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for the Name; and they ceased not to preach Jesus Christ. (Acts 3-5.)
101. Stephen When the congregation increased the apostles said: Choose seven men as overseers for the poor, for it is not fit that we should forsake the Word of God and serve tables. And the congregation chose Stephen and six others; and the apostles prayed and laid their hands on them.—Stephen was full of faith and power and wrought great wonders among the people. And certain scribes arose and disputed with Stephen. ”

“ And this departure Stephen has now dared to make; breaking the peace against you, which his predecessors have always kept with you in mutual love and honor, even herein defaming Peter and Paul, the blessed Apostles, as if the very men delivered this who in their epistles execrated heretics and warned us to avoid them. Whence it appears that this tradition is human which maintains heretics, and asserts that they have baptism, which belongs to the Church alone. ”

“ Skegness was then a straggling village which had long been without parochial care, but Steere made his reputation among the fishermen as a ‘downright shirt-sleeve man and a real Bible parson;’ while the Wesleyans ‘came to church in the morning to please him.’ In the autumn of 1859 he became rector of Little Steeping, at the foot of the Wolds. Towards the close of 1862 he obtained leave of absence in order to accompany his friend Tozer, the new missionary bishop of the universities mission to Central Africa, to the Shiré. ”

“ The apology of Stephen struck the keynote of Christian freedom, traced out the fair proportions of the Catholic Church, while the actual martyrdom of Stephen taught men that Christianity was not only the force which was to triumph, but the power in which they were to suffer, and bear, and die. ”

“ Of all the congregations of Christian believers that the lad had now visited, the Catholic impressed him as being the most solemn, reverent, and best mannered. In his own church the place did not seem to become the house of God till services began; and one morning in particular, two old farmers in the pew behind him talked in smothered tones of stock and crops, till it fairly made him homesick. The sermon of the priest, too, filled him with amazement. It weighed the claims of various Protestant sects to be reckoned as parts of the one true historic church of God. ”

“ Even religion appeared in an unwelcome form, and seemed chiefly calculated for procuring establishments for the younger sons of insolent and useless nobility. For numbers of men of letters were excluded, by their birth, from all hopes of advancement to the higher stations in the church. These men frequently vented their discontents by secretly joining the laics in their bitter satires on such in the higher orders of the clergy, as had scandalously departed from the purity and simplicity of manners which Christianity enjoins. ”

“ Accordingly no day is appointed by our Church for the celebration of any other than the principal saints mentioned in the New Testament, it being hard to stop, if more were added. And amongst these, St. Stephen is the only one who stands solely on the foot of being a martyr; as indeed it was fit that the foremost, the leader, of that “noble army” should be distinguished, and chosen, as it were, to represent the rest.—Abp. Secker.
When a Sunday and a saint’s day coincide, on the question what service shall be used, see the extracts from Shepherd and Bishop Cosin in the article Lessons. ”

“ Fitzjames Stephen had argued that if the men most interested in the church, namely, its clergy, are the only men who may be punished for serious discussion of the facts and truths of religion, then respect on the part of the world for the Church is at an end. By this discussion the English clergy, even if Anglo-Catholic, are in a very different position from the Roman priests, {227} over whom encyclicals, even if not executed, are always suspended. ”

“ When the priest and every member of the congregation in his own heart worships the beloved Christ, then the Church will be found to have gained just that which is now lacking, and which we attribute to some priestly failure and not our own also.
Of Church ceremonials it is hard to speak, for the lover of God can have no eyes for them: he is all heart, but sees it this way—that set rules, regulations, and ceremonials in prayers and worship are most right and proper for the creature publicly worshipping its Creator. ”

“ Not with words can I express the suggestive hideousness of this thought. To understand it in all its cruel significance, the reader should be acquainted with that peculiar sect—known as the “Church of Latter-Day Saints”—should have read its history and its chronicles. Without this knowledge, he will be ill able to comprehend the peculiar bitterness, that in that hour, wrapped and wrung my soul. Accident had made me acquainted with the Mormon religion ”

“ For, owing to a tendency which had developed during the course of the elections, the greater part of the deputies of the clergy were poor country curés, who sympathised with the Tiers État, from which they sprung, and not with the prelates and dignitaries of the Church, who belonged to the nobility. This tendency of the true majority of the clergy was well known to the leaders of the Tiers État and encouraged them in their passive attitude. ”

“ Townshend. "As Buff used to say, 'We pay as we go in.' Thomas, put that book in the cupboard till we come out of church. Good boy: now we'd better go in. You've got your intimations, Father?"
"Seton's kirk," as it was called in the district, was a dignified building, finely proportioned, and plain to austerity. Once it had been the fashionable church in a good district. Old members still liked to tell of its glorious days, when "braw folk" came in their carriages and rustled into their cushioned pews, and the congregation was so large that people sat on the pulpit steps. ”

“ It is not a particular sect or opinion that we contend for, but the very being of a Church and of religion. Whether there shall be any faith that shall oblige to our own hindrance? Whether religion, which ought to add to its sacredness, shall be made a pretence for violating it? Whether our Holy Mother, the Church of England, which hath been famous for her loyalty, shall now be as infamous for her apostacy? Whether there be any understanding men who, in this incredulous age, can find in their hearts to venture the greatest worldly interest for their religion ”

“ The bishops retired, grief-stricken, to mourn over the wrongs of their Church and Patriarch; but not before one of them, Paul, bishop of Crateia, had lifted up his voice in bold and solemn warning:—“Take heed, Eudoxia; fear God; have pity on your children. Do not outrage by bloodshed the sacred and solemn festival of Jesus Christ.”592
The church of St. Sophia became the scene, on the night of that Easter Eve, of shocking tumult. A vast congregation from the city and surrounding towns, including many of the catechumens, was keeping vigil to greet the dawn of the Resurrection morning. ”

“ She had not had the sacrament since August! She felt the loss, and had through much affliction gone to church that she might once more meet the assembly of the saints, at the table of the Lord, and then had been disappointed! She put her own feelings on paper, when, as against the clamor and complaints against the minister, she wrote "he gives us good preaching." Little did she then know that that minister, who gave the people, as she said, "good preaching," should one day be called upon to pronounce the last sad tribute to her worth over her open coffin. ”

“ In the beginning of the sixteenth century the sale of indulgences was pushed vigorously and became most offensive. The reason for resorting to this mode of raising revenue was justified by the pope on the plea of completing the church of St. Peter, at Rome, which had been commenced by Julius II.
14. John Tetzel.—The hawker of indulgences who traveled through Germany, where Luther was living, was John Tetzel, a Dominical monk, at once one of the boldest, most eloquent and the most profligate of men. ”

“ THE CLERGY AND MONKS. The almost total absence of documentary evidence leaves us in great doubt as to the condition of the church in England previous to the organization brought about by Theodore. It is nevertheless probable that it followed in all essential points the course which characterized other missionary establishments. The earliest missionaries were for the most part monks; but Augustine was accompanied by clerics also [902] , and in every case the conversion of a district was rapidly followed by the establishment of a cathedral or a corresponding ecclesiastical foundation. ”