Joust

“ And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I ate.
14 And the LORD God said to the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: 15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
16 To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children ”

“ Having done this, it is proper that the congregation should be given a little breathing-time, and so the preacher takes the sentence, Dust thou art, and plays with it, by giving a description of dust agitated by the wind. Oh, into what fantastic shapes does the wind whirl the dust! how the dust-cloud runs along, rushes forward madly, stops and spins awhile, and tosses itself up, up, till it seems verily to fly; it ascends higher and higher, it is carried above the tree-tops, it will reach the clouds of Heaven. ”

“ Such, in general terms, is the analysis of those who sleep and dwell in dust. In sheol all these elements are there ready for a synthetic operation to be elaborated by him, who, while tabernacling in the flesh among the Jews, said, "I am the resurrection and the life." He alone can perform the wonderful and mighty synthesis—the reunion of these gaseous elements with the dust, and their development into forms, the living images and likenesses of those to whom the dust formerly belonged. ”

“ The phrase, Dust shalt thou eat, implies a state of absolute subjection, for so it signifies in scripture—his enemies shall lick the dust; they shall lick dust like a Serpent—they shall bow down to the earthy and lick up the dust of thy feet. These enemies shall be totally vanquished and subdued, and lie at the feet of the conqueror.
By the dust that the Serpent is to eat is meant sinners against the most high, living and dying enemies to God, Father, Son, and Spirit—enemies to truth and the seed of God. ”

“ Towards dusk it swells in a wave heavier than any that has yet come. All through the second night the inferno lasts. In the grey dawn of the second day it increases in a manner almost unbelievable—the dust of it covers everything ”

“ But if I shall at any time send tempests of rain, in an extraordinary manner, be not affrighted at the largeness of the showers; for the water shall no more overspread the earth. However, I require you to abstain from shedding the blood of men, and to keep yourselves pure from murder ”

“ The winds are dropt—the air is stagnant—a muttering rumble growls underneath their feet, and some of the miserable crowd begin to fly down the hill. The horses sniff the coming terror, and become unmanageable through fear. The moment rapidly approaches, when, nearly torn asunder by His own weight, fainting with loss of blood, which now runs in narrower rivulets from His slit veins, His temples and breast drowned in sweat, and His black [119] tongue parched with the fiery death-fever, Jesus cried, ‘I thirst.’ The deadly vinegar is elevated to Him. ”

“ Amen, have taken their place among them; the heavenly gale will reach some of the old backsliders, and they are brought, with weeping, to seek their forfeited privilege; by this time the sound of Almighty God will be heard in the outer court, beginning to move the hearers like a mighty wind shaking the forest; and as the gale blows upon the outer court, upon the hearers, and the young people, and afterwards making its way through the outer court, to rouse the inner court, until a great concern is awakened for the state of the soul. ”

“ Their feet as they go strike the dust from the sunbaked path into a cloud behind them. The herd-girl herself looms large across the pasture—all things grow quickly dim, as if the air were filled with rising dust. ”

“ The dust poured forth into the upper air, being finely divided and in enormous quantity, floated in the air for months, giving a dusky hue to the skies of Europe, which led the common people and many of the learned to fear that the wrath of God was upon them, and that the day of judgment was at hand. ”

“ And frozen the blood in my frightened heart,
Then softly and sweetly the angel song
Comes floating across to my listening ear:
“Though the river is dark and swift and strong,
There is one who will help you, so be of good cheer.” ”

“ A gust of wind brought to our nostrils warmish air laden with all kinds of smells: smells of smouldering dung, of garbage, and of humanity in general. Soon lights began to twinkle from huddled shanties and from broad-faced houses, as if welcoming our arrival. ”

“ Into the void I peered, but could make out nothing, though I could hear my own laboured breathing, and the melancholy drip, drip of water as it oozed from above me and fell in sullen drops on the slime below. ”

“ There is no doubt but every inch of air contains the germs of some of the Infusoria in a dry state or their ova, and make up a portion of that fine halo of dust which always appears in the air when a gleam of sunshine is let into a dark place. ”

“ Wreaths of dusky vapor overshadowed the fire, and from them proceeded a melancholy voice:——
“O mortal, sin has entered thine heart; blood is on thy hand, and the polluted can have no fellowship with the pure. Thine eyes may behold us no more forever!”
A fearful shudder passed through the student’s frame. ”

“ Sweep away with broom of birch-twigs,
All thy rooms must first be sprinkled,
at the dust may not be scattered,
May not fill the halls and chambers.
Sweep the dust from every crevice,
Leave thou not a single atom ”

“ In the book of Genesis, you will notice that the account of the real comes first; then follows the account of its opposite, the unreal man of dust.”
“Surely, Padre!” she exclaimed. “The plus sign is followed by a minus sign, isn’t it? And the man made of dust is the real man with a minus sign before him.”
“The man of dust is the human mind’s interpretation of the spiritual man, dear child,” returned Josè. “All human beings are interpretations by the mortal, or human, mind of infinite Mind, God, and His spiritual Creation. The interpretation is made in the human mind, and remains there. ”

“ Entering in they are met with the sound of sighs, moans, and lamentations, mingled with curses hoarse and deep, and the beating of hands, all making a hideous din in the starless air, in which a long train of spirits is whirled about hither and thither stung by wasps and hornets. ”

“ My cry for help had needlessly, as he thought, broken in upon this holy and seemly performance. 'You, the child of a naturalist,' he remarked in awesome tones, 'you to pretend to feel terror at the advance of an insect?' It could but be a pretext, he declared, for avoiding the testimony of faith in prayer. 'If your heart were fixed, if it panted after the Lord, it would take more than the movements of a beetle to make you disturb oral supplication at His footstool. ”

“ The witch drew in her head, but inside she could be heard screaming. As the flames licked the white bark she cried, “Oh, my skin! You are burning my skin. My beautiful white skin will be covered with nothing but blisters. ”

“ The shadows grew darker as the dusk deepened, till after a while the gas in the hall was lighted, when they fled to the remoter corners, and consoled themselves by casting an added blackness wherever they were permitted to fall,—the only consolation possible to shadows. ”

“ I don't think any of them dreamt of the man inside. I was just a wonderful leathery great joss that had come up with luck out of the water. But the fatigue! the heat! the beastly closeness! the mackintosheriness and the rum! and the fuss! They lit a stinking fire on a kind of lava slab there was before me, and brought in a lot of gory muck—the worst parts of what they were feasting on outside, the Beasts—and burnt it all in my honour. I was getting a bit hungry, but I understand now how gods manage to do without eating, what with the smell of burnt offerings about them. ”

“ Which soon the wasting scythe shall sweep away;
As smiles the flow'ret in the verdant field,
Which soon before the passing blast shall yield;
So flourish we upon our beds of clay,
So grow a while, so droop, and so decay.
Dust turns to dust, with ashes, ashes blend,
But upward, upward let the soul ascend ”

“ The water, which the priest had prepared for the woman to drink, was taken from the sanctuary, and the dust to be put into it from the floor of the dwelling, to impregnate this drink with the power of the Holy Spirit that dwelt in the sanctuary. The dust was strewed upon the water, not to indicate that man was formed from dust and must return to dust again, but as an allusion to the fact, that dust was eaten by the serpent (Gen 3:14) as the curse of sin, and therefore as the symbol of a state deserving a curse, a state of the deepest humiliation and disgrace (Mic 7:17; Isa 49:23; Psa 72:9) . ”

“ But I said, My leanness, my leanness, woe to me! the treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously; yea, the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously. [239] [240] 17 Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth. 18 And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake. ”

“ When you get near it, fire and flame will come out of its nostrils, as out of a tar barrel; but look out, and take the bit which hangs behind the door yonder, and throw it right into his jaws, and he will grow so tame that you may do what you like with him. ”

“ Perhaps it was only the shrill sound of the wind through the leafless bushes; for the wind has at times the knack of whistling like a human being.
She again advanced a step or two towards the hearth; and as she did so, she stumbled on something. She uttered a low, muffled cry as she almost fell. On what had her foot caught? She bent down, and felt with her hand. It seemed like the corpse of a man stretched out at full length—a human creature wallowing in his own blood. A sickening sense of fear, a feeling of faintness, came over her. She hardly dared to move. ”

“ Only in the night time they would take up a little dust, and throw it upon their bodies; and even some that were the most ready to expose themselves to danger would do it in the day time: and there were twelve thousand of the better sort who perished in this manner. ”

“ Every figure was sprinkled and encircled by dust—dust on their gray temples, and on their wet, streaming faces, dust coming up in puffs from their shuffling feet, too tired to lift clear of the heavy roadbed. ”

“ The order to Judah and Simeon and Levi rolled through the ages like never-cooling lava, withering and whelming vineyards of thought. Thou shalt not suffer doubt to live. He that differeth, he shall die!—And a thousand thousand pale shapes might rise to the inner eye and speak to the inner ear. ”

“ Ah, man may breathe a sorrow. Doth then the dumbness of 249his brother bar his sighing? Nay—and hark! The sea doth sigh, and yonder starry jasmine stirreth with a tremorous sigh; and morning’s birth is greeted with the sighing of the world. For what? Ah, for that coming that shall fulfill the promise, and change the sighing to a singing, and loose the tongue of him whom God doth know and, fearful lest he tell His hidden mysteries, hath locked his lips.”
And again she asks: “Needest thou see what God himself sealeth thine eyes to make thee know?” ”

“ No; the small mammal and the plant alike have jizz. We do not stop to look for detail, to ask ourselves what we saw; We know. Jizz may deceive us; that is our fault, for each and every thing has its distinctive jizz; if inexperienced we may fail to discern it. ”

“ I saw the past generations enveloped in a cloud of dust, in which they could not recognize one another, and that was why they fought against one another, slaying one another by the millions. Dust was being continually strewed over them. ”

“ More I tell thee. Thy very babe wert not flesh; yea, it were as dead afore the coming. Yet, at the mother’s bearing, it setteth within the flesh. And thou knowest it and speak, yea, 191this is a man. And yet I tell thee thou knowest not e’en the him o’ him! Then doth it die, ’tis nay man, thou sayest. Yet, at the dying and afore the bearing, ’twer what? The him o’ him wert then, and now, and ever.
“Yea, I speak unto thee not through flesh, and thou sayest: This is no man, yea, for thine eyes see not flesh, yet thou knowest the me o’ me, and I speak unto thee with the me o’ me. ”

“ And when they enquired and asked, they said, Gideon the son of Joash hath done this thing. 30 Then the men of the city said to Joash, Bring out thy son, that he may die: because he hath cast down the altar of Baal, and because he hath cut down the grove that was by it. 31 And Joash said to all that stood against him, Will ye plead for Baal? will ye save him? he that will plead for him, let him be put to death by morning: if he is a god, let him plead for himself, because one hath cast down his altar. ”

“ The first three vials are poured into the objects named, while the last four are poured upon them, as indicated by the prepositions είς and ἐπὶ; but, so far as can be seen, no special purpose is served by this use.
1 The Pouring Out of the First Vial, Ch. 16:2 The first angel poured out his vial into the earth; and it became a noisome and grievous sore upon the men that had the mark of the Beast: the symbol of wrath poured out on the earth, and thus upon the men who are of it and belong to it, producing suffering that is bitter and intense. ”

“ We strain our eyes into the night, and even as we do so, something supernaturally tall—black, gaunt, with a white plume waving from its haughty head—advances slowly towards us, from out the gloom. I feel paralyzed with fright, although instinct tells me it is not the thing. ”