Reverence

“ XLIII.
“O Haydn,” begg’d I, “say not this. Here speaks
The same rebellion that was once my own.
We must not judge for self, but reverence
The words of men ordain’d to teach the world;
The words of men so learnèd in the truth;
The words of councils fill’d with just such men.—
No reverence have you for authority?” ”

“ Outward reverence at all times, Lord, is easy; but inward reverence, inward attentiveness and solemnity of spirit it is hard always to keep. I may not wound my flock by outward carelessness, indifference, haste, negligence, or any other visible fault; but how much may I lose them, if I do not inwardly worship Thee and heartily pray for them, if my spirit is backward and remiss, or hurrying to many unprofitable thoughts, or thinking of the opinions of men! ”

“ We venerate thee, O glorious favorite of God, and bow our guilty heads before thee in humble reverence, while we raise our sad hearts full of hope toward the throne of divine mercy, and to thee, our intercessor. He who placed Himself in thy arms will now fill thy hands with all we ask of thee. ”

“ The first and simplest is that of reverence for what is above us. It is the soul of all the Pagan religions; there is nothing better in man than that. Then there is reverence for what is around us or about us—reverence for our equals, and to which he attributes an immense power in the culture of man. The third is reverence for what is beneath us—to learn to recognise in pain, sorrow, and contradiction, even in those things, odious as they are to flesh and blood—to learn that there lies in these a priceless blessing. ”

“ I will yield to none in reverence for reverence. I will all but agree with the wise man who said that reverence is the root of all virtues. But which child reverences his father most? He who comes joyfully and trustfully to meet him, that he may learn his father’s mind, and do his will: or he who at his father’s coming runs away and hides, lest he should be beaten for he knows not what? There is a scientific reverence, a reverence of courage, which is surely one of the highest forms of reverence. ”

“ We owe adoring reverence to Him everywhere, and we recollect it. Let us reiterate the fact; ours is a hallowed life, for it belongs to a divine Master; it is a reverent life, for that Master in His greatness is to us an abiding Presence. ”

“ If we reverence men for their power alone, why do we not reverence the Devil, who has so much more power than men? But if reverence be due only to virtuous qualities and useful actions, it is as ridiculous and superstitious to adore great mischievous men, or unholy men with holy names, as it is to worship a false god, or Satan in the stead of God. ”

“ When respect towards others and the giving of reverence where reverence is due are abandoned, Virtue is abandoned. When modesty, gravity, and dignity are eliminated from speech and behavior, Truth is lost, yea, even its entrance gate is hidden away and forgotten. ”

“ Your humble servant in your commands with all reverence!
Most reverend fathers in Christ, who bear the likeness of the apostles: whereas you have been placed as chief luminaries to enlighten each quarter of the world, and whereas you have been placed in authority to take away the world’s crimes, to deliver souls from Satan’s jaws, and in Christ’s name to help the oppressed, I humbly flee to your protection, most reverend fathers, and fall at your feet. ”

“ And this was one of the best lessons taught in the Puritan school,—the lesson of reverence, the certainty that life meant looking up to something, to Some One greater than ourselves, to a Life far above us, which yet enfolded ours. ”

“ The sentiment of reverence, awe of the Divine,—a conviction of the reality of God and an invisible world,—and the beginning of that great experiment by which man learns practically that God is his father. ”

“ In such a mood the past, out of which the oracles of faith seem to sound by some miracle of memory, acquires a tender sanctity, and the institutions of tradition are often invested with a reverence and awe which easily flow into vested rights. ”

“ In one way it may be taken in a wide sense as denoting reverence paid to anyone on account of any kind of excellence, and thus it comprises piety and observance, and any similar virtue whereby reverence is shown towards a man. ”

“ Are we to be told, that though we [are] to worship no god but the good and true God, yet we are to pay reverence, which is human worship, to wicked men, provided they be great men, and to honour the false servants of the true God, whom they dishonour? Or, that any sort of men can be his servants or deputies in any sense, but a good and sanctified sense? ”

“ The man of character is also reverential. The possession of this quality marks the noblest, and highest type of manhood and womanhood: reverence for things consecrated by the homage of generations—for high objects, pure thoughts, and noble aims—for the great men of former times, and the highminded workers amongst our contemporaries. Reverence is alike indispensable to the happiness of individuals, of families, and of nations. ”

“ Reverence and adore thee; for the word fear, in the Scriptures, is commonly used in this sense when applied to God. The sense here is, that the judgments about to be inflicted on the beast and his image should and would teach men to reverence and adore God. There is, perhaps, included here also the idea of awe, inasmuch as this would be the effect of punishment. ¶ And glorify thy name. Honour thee—the name being put for the person who bare it. The sense is, that, as a consequence of these judgments, men would be brought to honour God, and to acknowledge him as the Ruler of the earth. ”

“ The reverence to be shown in prayer.—When we have any request to make of powerful persons, we proffer it humbly and reverently; with how much greater humility and devotion, then, should we offer our supplications unto God, the Lord of all. We should realize, too, that we are not heard for our much speaking, but for the purity and the contrition of our hearts. ”

“ Now if we find reverence, loyalty and all kinds of sacrifices devoted either to a human being or to an image, we are inclined to think of worship. And worship it is. If a Western man should hear me tell you this, he would want the statement qualified, unless he happened to be a philosopher. ”

“ Let parents, then, bequeath to their children not a heap of riches, but the spirit of reverence. We, indeed, fancy that they will inherit reverence from us, if we rebuke them when they show a want of reverence. ”

“ In countless forms that strange, drawing power lays hold of you, and you must follow or reject. It may be a call to you to yield your reverence, your support, your participation to some benevolent or religious movement. ”

“ Note, What is holy is reverend; the angels have an eye to God's holiness when they cover their faces before him, and nothing is more man's honour than his sanctification. It is in his holy places that God appears most terrible, Ps. lxviii. 35; Lev. x. 3. 2. Because the dictates of religion tend so much to man's happiness. We have reason to praise God that the matter is so well contrived that our reverence of him and obedience to him are as much our interest as they are our duty. (1.) Our reverence of him is so: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. ”

“ and they say, That the reverence of a man's self, is, next to religion, the chiefest bridle of all vices." ”

“ The reason for reverence is the authority vested in these persons, that is, the excellence of their state, which gives them a higher dignity than others, and their office of ruling, which empowers them to direct a subject to his proper end. Here we see that reverence is a distinct virtue, for, while piety and reverence are both forms of veneration, the motive of each is different. Thus, a child owes to his father piety, because from the father was received the beginning of his life, and reverence, because from the father is received direction to his end. ”

“ Without it there can be no trust, no faith, no confidence, either in man or God—neither social peace nor social progress. For reverence is but another word for religion, which binds men to each other, and all to God. ”

“ To-day, when all reverence has vanished, even before kings and gods, when to respect oneself overmuch is regarded with undisguised resentment, what can we hope from a quarter in which self-reverence and reverence in general are the first needs of all? ”

“ I am sure, as I do not doubt some of you know from experience, that such individual demonstrations of reverence cause difficulties in the way of temptation to self-consciousness to those who practise them; while in the common worship of a society they minister to division and distraction, and so tend to mar the unity which is the first condition of reverence. ”

“ But in these sentences there is proof of his reverence for something more profound, more important to mankind, than churches, than submissions to authority, a thing that men are not accustomed openly, if at all, to reverence, that quest of the Holy Grail on which all men set out, though most turn back, and very few pursue it till they die. ”

“ The definite bestowal of the fateful gift of moral freedom, with the practical certainty of sin—the creation of beings who could choose against him—shows how deeply planted in the very being of God is this principle of reverence for the person. ”

“ Let us not handle them with superstitious reverence as relics, but make use of them to raise our minds from the absorbing cares and pleasures of the present, to holy musings on the past. May the Spirit of Wisdom and Truth assist us in our meditations, and increase our deep reverence for those sacred Scriptures in which these objects of interest are preserved. ”

“ Reverence for things sacred always helps to brighten the way. The reverence with which a little child kneels at his mother’s side is a beautiful sight. Respect for the mother’s teachings and reverence in the worship of God through her implicit faith in a higher power. ”

“ Surely a reverence that is both sincere and profound seeks rather to express itself by inward and spiritual adoration than by any muscular movements, or ceremonies that are visible to others and which may become as like as not either Pharisaical or merely automaton-like. ”

“ Want of reverence for parents is, in the Decalogue, made almost one with want of reverence toward God, and, in the case of this human duty alone, there is a promise annexed to its observance. The duty runs so deep into the very core of human life, that its fulfilment brings wholesomeness to the moral nature ”

“ But so it will ever be, as long as men, in possession of reverence, find their ends and gratifications in fetching knotty distinctions out of the plain word of God and making them of equal importance with it. ”

“ We ought to give reverence to the fathers of our flesh, who begot us, and were the instruments of our being; much more ought we to obey and be in subjection to the Father of our spirits, who made us and is the author of our being. ”

“ So manifest are the facts that one hears from competent and thoughtful observers of the tendencies of our times no lamentation more frequently than just this, for the concurrent decay of reverence for the aged and reverence for God. ”

“ And even in the handling of sacred things generally, in the way of theological discussion, a want of reverence has very often been shown. It becomes us all most carefully to beware of abusing the gracious condescension which God has shown in His revelation, and in the use which He designs us to make of it. ”

“ Shall we discard it as an irrelevant factor in the purposes of common life? Why, reverence is the very clue to fruitful, practical living. Reverence is creative of hope; nay, a more definite emphasis can be given to the assertion; reverence is a constituent of hope. ”

“ And therefore, in all ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and sacrifice made by men to each other, not only without complaint, but rejoicingly; and famine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been borne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts of the heart ennobled the men who gave not less than the men who received them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. ”

“ Where man experiences such awe, he will become reverential, and, if articulate, will express his reverence in prayer, again not the prayer of practical requests for favors from God, but a hushed meditation upon the assured eternity in which the precarious and finite lives of men are set. ”

“ To speak plainly, we despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us. ”

“ To venerate is to hold in exalted honor without fear, and is applied to objects less removed from ourselves than those we revere, being said especially of aged persons, of places or objects having sacred associations, and of abstractions; we venerate an aged pastor, the dust of heroes or martyrs, lofty virtue or self-sacrifice, or some great cause, as that of civil or religious liberty; we do not venerate God, but revere or reverence him. We adore with a humble yet free outflowing of soul. ”

“ The instinct of worship is still so strong upon us that, having nearly worn out our capacity for treating kings and such kind of persons as sacred, we are ready to invest a majority of our own selves with the same kind of reverence. ”

“ But He has also increased the feeling of reverence; for sons should have more veneration than slaves, and greater love for their father. And therefore the Lord says, "As to every idle word that men have spoken, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment." ”