Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Propitiation   Listen
Propitiation

noun
1.
The act of placating and overcoming distrust and animosity.  Synonyms: conciliation, placation.
2.
The act of atoning for sin or wrongdoing (especially appeasing a deity).  Synonyms: atonement, expiation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Propitiation" Quotes from Famous Books



... mortal sin. We consider every sin to be in its nature mortal or deadly, and deserving of God's wrath and condemnation (James ii. 10, 11), and only hope to be saved through the intercession of our "Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who is the propitiation for our sins." ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous

... spirits are not to be warred upon,—a teaching essentially repellent to Roman Catholic feeling. But between the evil spirits of Christian and of Shinto belief there is a vast difference. The evil Kami is only the ghost of a dead man, and is not believed to be altogether evil,—since propitiation is possible. The conception of absolute, unmixed evil is not of the Far East. Absolute evil is certainly foreign to human nature, and therefore impossible in human ghosts. The evil Kami are not devils. They are simply ghosts, who influence the ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... Then, pensive just long enough to say, "I was nineteen once," she shot me a sidelong glance so roguish that I was dumb with indignation and tried to find my mustache, forgetting I had shaved it off to stimulate it. She smiled in sweet propitiation and then came gravely to business. "Have you come from beyond ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... things that I think are best left alone—what is called spiritualism, for instance, and that horrible form of modern superstition which we hear whispers of at times from the Continent—the alleged devil-propitiation or worship. It was not that he did anything I thought morally wrong, you understand—except that he dabbled. And he was always running after some new thing—animal magnetism, or telepathy, or crystal-gazing, or theosophy, ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... Shastras prescribe certain Grahasanti (propitiation of planets) processes, which will enable you to counteract ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... is all this from the language of those who would deny or question the Virgin-Birth! With them the Resurrection is denied as a literal fact; the whole meaning of the Atonement as being a real sacrifice for sin, a real propitiation, is eviscerated of its meaning, and is reduced to a moral appeal to man; and finally, we find that whereas Christians have been thinking and speaking of Christ as truly God, who in becoming man "did not abhor ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph

... attached to its decaying envelope, could still receive upon earth the homage and the offerings of men. Before the advent of Buddhism, there was no idea of a heaven or a hell. The ghosts of the departed were thought of as constant presences, needing propitiation, and able in some way to share the pleasures and the pains of the living. They required food and drink and light; and in return for these; they could confer benefits. Their bodies had melted into earth; ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... remorseful consciousness of having inflicted a deep, irreparable wrong, that Isabel rode so constantly by Bruce's side, striving, by all means of timid propitiation, to chase the cloud lowering on his sullen face as we ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... against them, they say that there is a period of a thousand years and no more. Now this sacred gold is guarded by the kings with the utmost care, and they visit it every year with solemn sacrifices of propitiation: moreover if any one goes to sleep while watching in the open air over this gold during the festival, the Scythians say that he does not live out the year; and there is given him for this so much land as he shall ride round himself on his horse in one day. Now as ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... He sees, at one view, all who had put their trust in God from the foundation of the world; all who had put faith in a sacrifice for sin, knowing it was God's appointment, and that He would vindicate His own wisdom and truth by finding a real propitiation; all who, through dark and troublous times, had strained to see the consolation of Israel; all who, in the misery of their own thought, had still believed that there was a true glory for men somewhere to be attained; all who through the darkness and storm and fear of earth had trusted ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods

... present dismember her, if she saw the supreme importance of Christ as a Teacher? Might she not come to behold a glory in that Teaching greater even than that which she has so heroically but so unavailingly endeavoured to make the world behold in the crucified Sacrifice and Propitiation ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." . . . . For, "if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He is the propitiation for our sins." He will take care of our sinful, tried and tempted selves, if we ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody

... did not imitate the form of any goddess who had ever before attracted followers. Mr. Adams was a complete and thorough Puritan, wonderfully little modified by times and circumstances. The ordinary arts of propitiation would have appeared to him only a feeble and diluted form of dishonesty; while suavity and graciousness of (p. 203) demeanor would have seemed as unbecoming to this rigid official as love-making or wine-bibbing seem to a strait-laced parson. It was inevitable, ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... faith in Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all that believe; (for there is no difference; (23)for all sinned, and come short of the glory of God;) (24)being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; (25)whom God set forth as a propitiation through faith by his blood, for the exhibition of his righteousness, because of the passing over of the sins before committed in the forbearance of God; (26)for the exhibition of his righteousness in this present time, ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various

... whose hands their destinies rested; and him they worshipped with much the same adoration which Christians give to God. The fundamental difference was that the sentiment animating them was not love, but fear: propitiation ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... the darkness of her room, in the silence of the night-time, when her heart seemed to be literally breaking with its conflict of anxious love and returning despair, some wild notion of propitiation—doubtless derived from ancient legends—would flash across her mind; and she would cry in her agony, "If one must be taken, let it be me! The world cares for him. What am I?" If she could only go out into the open place of the city, and bare her bosom to the knife of the priest, and ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... Christ's example enjoins this principle; he has forgiven us. And what is the extent of his forgiveness? He pardons past sins, but that is not all; as John says (1 Jn 2, 1-2), "If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteousness and he is the propitiation for our sins." ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... pass unnoticed and unappreciated. Thus we have the recognition of old well-worship rites in the little singing game "Draw a Bucket of Water"; of ancient house ritual in some of the dramatic games; in others the propitiation of deities that preside over the fertility of the fields; survivals of border warfare; of old courtship and marriage observances, and many other rites and customs. Sometimes this recognition is merely one of analogy or association, leading ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... to have a glass of champagne myself. I want it after all this worry. But if you prefer beer (considerately), say so. (The Guest, in a spirit of propitiation, prefers beer.) Well, we could have managed a bottle of Pommery between us, and it's never so good to my mind in the pints—but please yourself, of course. [The Guest feels that his moderation has missed fire, but dares not retract; they sit in silence for some time, without anything of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various

... the aggrieved party; he feels no bruise himself, and is strongly conscious of his own amiable behaviour since he inflicted the blow. But Tito was not naturally disposed to feel himself aggrieved; the constant bent of his mind was towards propitiation, and he would have submitted to much for the sake of feeling Romola's hand resting on his head again, as it did that morning when he first ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... horn spectacles usually helped his vision,—sometimes marred it, however, when the knowing gallants slipped a crown into his hand to put in the place of his magnifiers! Bonhomme Michel placed all his propitiation money—he liked a pious word—in his old leathern sack, which contained the redemption of many a gadding promenade through the streets of Quebec. Whether he reported what he saw this time is not recorded in the Vieux Recit, the old annals of the Convent. But as Louise Roy called him her dear ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... gathering crowd, and craned himself to see the thing, also. He saw a gaunt dog, searching yet from face to face for some lost idol, and beating the flinty world with a last thump of propitiation. ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... who love their king, and delight in promptly carrying out his orders. Young virgins, the daughters of Wakungu, stark naked, and smeared with grease, but holding, for decency's sake, a small square of mbugu at the upper corners in both hands before them, are presented by their fathers in propitiation for some offence, and to fill the harem. Seizing-officers receive orders to hunt down Wakungu who have committed some indiscretions, and to confiscate their lands, wives, children, and property. An officer observed to salute informally is ordered for execution, when ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... lift up), literally an offering, a thing set aside. The classical Greek form anathema (Lat. anathema) was the technical term for a gift (cf. donarium, oblatio) made to a god either in gratitude or with a view to propitiation. Thus at Athens the Thesmothetae (perhaps all the archons) made a vow that, should they break any law, they would dedicate a life-size gilt statue in the temple at Delphi. Similarly, of spoils taken in war, a part, generally a tenth, was dedicated to the god of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... gravely discuss events. As we left each village to plunge boldly onward through the bush we would pass the village fetish ground, well defined by the decaying bodies of lizards and birds, a grinning human skull or two, broken pots and pieces of rag fluttering in the wind, all offered as propitiation to the presiding demon of the place, while away in the bush, behind the houses, we saw the giant leaves of the plantain groves that yielded the staple ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... most chiefly pertinent Unto mine office to instruct and teach each Christian wight True godliness, and show to them the path that leadeth right Unto God's kingdom, where we shall inherit our salvation, Given unto us from God by Christ our true propitiation. But that a better-ordered course herein we may observe, And may directly to the first apply that which ensue, To speak that hath been said before, I will a time reserve, And so proceed from whence we left by ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... conclude that God receives sinners into favour without a propitiation, and those who endeavour to escape from that conclusion by affirming that the father in the parable represents Christ, err ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... of time was come, God the Eternal Father said: "In burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin, I have no pleasure." Then said the Son, "Lo, I come." He came that He might take away the valueless sacrifice, and establish the one full and perfect propitiation for the sins of the world. And indeed it was time. All creation was groaning and travailing in pain, and waiting for redemption, then said He—"Lo, I come." The souls of the faithful were in Hades, prophets, patriarchs, and kings, desirous to see His Day, ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... am a merchant in tea, yellow fat, and mixed spices, in a small but hitherto satisfactory way." Thus revealing himself, he continued to set forth how at an earlier hour he had started on a journey to deposit his wealth (doubtless as a propitiation of outraged deities) upon a certain bank, and how, upon reaching the specified point, he discovered that what he carried had eluded his vigilance. "All gone: notes, gold, and pocket-book—the savings of a lifetime," concluded the ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... peoples—Akasava, Ochori, Isisi, N'gombi, and Bush folk. By the Bolengi, the Bomongo, and even the distant Upper Congo people feared him. Also all the chiefs for generations upon generations had sent tribute of corn and salt to the edge of the forest for his propitiation, and it is a legend that when the Isisi fought the Akasava in the great war, the envoy of the Isisi was admitted without molestation to the enemy's lines in order to lay an offering at Bim-bi's feet. Only one man in the world, so far as the People of the River know, has ever spoken slightingly of ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son into the world to be the propitiation for our sins." "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another" (iv:9-11). "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein

... with Hooker that Transubstantiation itself is not a point for Churches to part communion upon; or with Hammond that a General Council, truly such, never did, never shall err in a matter of faith; or with Bull that man lost inward grace by the Fall; or with Thorndike that penance is a propitiation for post-baptismal sin; or with Pearson that the all-powerful name of Jesus is no otherwise given than in the Catholic Church. "Two can play at that game" was often in my mouth, when men of Protestant sentiments appealed to the Articles, Homilies, and Reformers, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... a god noted for his usefulness in getting rid of mice, and any worship given to mice (feeding them, placing their images on altars, their stamp on coins, naming places after them, and so on) would be mere acts of propitiation. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... held in December at the full of the moon. The object of this feast is the propitiation of the inua of the animals slain during the season past. These are believed to reside in the bladders, which the Eskimo carefully preserve. The ceremony consists in the purification of the bladders by the flame of ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes

... their meanings are widened so as to comprehend those earliest vague notions out of which the definite ideas of gods and worship are evolved, I think it is not true. The rudimentary form of all religion is the propitiation of dead ancestors, who are supposed to be still existing, and to be capable of working good or evil to their descendants. As a preparation for dealing hereafter with the principles of sociology, I have, for some years past, directed ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... shaggy round shoulders were bent over the task, the chips flew in quick particles, and the wood echoed musically as the artificer watched the thing under his hands take form and fashion. Presently I spoke, and the worker looked up, not too pleased at being thus interrupted. But he was easy of propitiation, and over a ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... miraculous effects. By that sacred name and strange arrangements, their prophets, they thought, performed miracles. The devil was supposed to have the power of accusing mortal man at the great day of propitiation, so the Jews endeavoured to appease him with presents. They believed that on that day only he had the power to bring a charge against them, and therefore, to deceive him, they had recourse to a singular stratagem. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... first great irrevocable evil he had ever committed. He was only twenty-one, and three months ago—nay, much later—he had thought proudly that no man should ever be able to reproach him justly. His first impulse, if there had been time for it, would perhaps have been to utter words of propitiation; but Adam had no sooner thrown off his coat and cap than he became aware that Arthur was standing pale and motionless, with his hands still thrust in ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... Her relations with Amelie were slightly strained just now, for she had not taken her advice as to their return journey from Venice. Amelie had insisted on Mont Cenis, and Althea had chosen the St. Gothard; so that it was as a measure of propitiation that she selected three of the roses for Amelie as she went into the bedroom. Amelie, who was kneeling before one of the larger boxes and carefully lifting skirts from its trays, paused to sniff at the flowers, ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... proceeded, not caring that the brown eyes were slowly adding to their astonishment an expression that augured ill for any plans she might be hoping to carry out toward propitiation. "It is necessary to be careful not to be overheard, for what I am going to say to you must ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney

... Honore, by a touch here to-day and a word there to-morrow, was ever lifting the name, and all who bore it, a little and a little higher; when suddenly, as in his father's day—that dear Numa who knew how to sacrifice his very soul, as a sort of Iphigenia for the propitiation of the family gods—as in Numa's day came the cession to Spain, so now fell this other cession, like an unexpected tornado, threatening the wreck of her children's slave-schooners and the prostration alike ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... half laughing, and signing to those around that he only complied with the old woman to soothe her humour. In the meantime, she traced around him, with wavering steps, the propitiation, which some have thought has been derived from the Druidical mythology. It consists, as is well known, in the person who makes the deasil, walking three times round the person who is the object of the ceremony, taking care to move according to the course of the sun. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various

... declarations and facts of Scripture with dialectical formularies, which are deductions made by reason and logic from accepted truths, yet not so binding as the plain truths themselves,—Christ's death would be insufficient for an infinite redemption. No propitiation of a created being could atone for the sins of all other creatures. Thus by the Arian theory the Christ of the orthodox church was blotted out, and a man was substituted, who was divine only in the matchless purity of his life and the transcendent wisdom of his utterances; so that Christ, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... North; because I believe that even when they were fighting against the flag, of their country, the great mass of those people were moved by high and conscientious convictions of duty. And in the spirit of Christianity, in the spirit which Jesus Christ exercised when he gave up his own life as a propitiation for a fallen world, I would say to those Southern men, Come here in the Halls of Congress, and participate with us in passing laws which, if constitutionally carried into effect, will control the interests and destinies of four ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... consciousness of utter helplessness in the individual. Man is encompassed on all sides by inexorable laws, produced and perpetuated by a power beyond and outside the comprehension. The expression of the religious sentiment is his effort at propitiation, and is his one resource. This is the point of view on which Beethoven projected the grand mass. It ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... in which, sitting or walking alone, he passionately desired it all to be true; other moods in which he was acquiescent; but in both there was a faint discomfort in the thought of meeting Maggie, and a certain instinct of propitiation towards her. Maggie had begun to stand for him as a kind of embodiment of a view of life which was sane, wholesome, and curiously attractive; there was a largeness about her, a strength, a sense of fresh air ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... their ill-will or to secure their favour. Affection and fear—fear that the ghost, if his wants are neglected, will wreak vengeance through the agency of disease, famine, or accident—leads insensibly to the ghosts of one's relations becoming objects of veneration, propitiation, and petition. All ghosts receive some attention for a certain time after death, but naturally special and sustained honours are reserved for the heads of families,[2] and for such as have been distinguished ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... offered, which perfects for ever them that are sanctified; that He has not communicated His priestly office to His ministers either by succession or delegation, nor authorised them to repeat or continue that sacrifice which is the propitiation for sin; and that He has neither Himself imposed, nor warranted others to impose, a load of 'fondly' ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... are conscious of going wrong and of doing wrong, instead of trying to reform ourselves alone by our own strength, go first to God, and be forgiven through faith in the great sacrifice of Christ: "When God hath set forth to be a propitiation (or mercy seat), through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God, that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... is figured on the coins of the Kushans and must at one time have been known on the north-western borders of India. At the present day Sitala and in south India Mariamman are goddesses of smallpox who require propitiation, and one of the earliest deities known to have been worshipped by the Tamils is the goddess Kottavai.[685] Somewhat obscure but widely worshipped are the powers known as the Mothers, a title which also occurs in Keltic mythology. ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... necessary for the highest and purest nature, even for DIVINITY itself, to pacify the demands of vengeance, by a painful death; of which the natural effect will be, that when justice is appeased, there is a proper place for the exercise of mercy; and that such propitiation shall supply, in some degree, the imperfections of our obedience, and the inefficacy of our repentance: for, obedience and repentance, such as we can perform, are still necessary. Our SAVIOUR has told us, that he did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... if he saw the house he had built with so much calculation beginning to tumble down—laid low by some dread power to which he was holding up his hands. He was holding up his hands not merely in petition, but in propitiation. She was not blind to the fact that there was a measure of propitiation in his boarding and lodging her husband and herself. He clung to them because his desolation needed something that stood for old friendship to cling to; but in addition to that he ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... unbridled passion, but that in the minds of those who practised them they had a definite significance and served a definite purpose. The one thing that seems fairly clear about them is that in some way they were associated with the worship or propitiation of the dead. At all events we are told on good authority that the Nanga, or sacred enclosure of stones, in which the severed foreskins were offered, was "the Sacred Place where the ancestral spirits are to be found by their worshippers, and thither offerings are ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... perishing life and a spiritual or eternal life. The term world (kosmos) is used by John apparently in two different senses. First, it seems to signify all mankind, divided sometimes into the unbelievers and the Christians. "Christ is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." "God sent not his Son to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved." It is undeniable that "world" here means not the earth, but the men on the earth. Secondly, "world" ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... Northumbria, plays a conspicuous part. Soon after her marriage, Oswin, her husband's brother, consequently her cousin and brother-in-law, was slain. The queen caused a monastery to be erected on the spot where he fell as a reparation for her husband's fratricide, and as a propitiation for the soul of the departed. This circumstance is alluded to by more than one English poet, as also the monastery which Enfleda, for the same purpose, caused to be ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... Dwight. "Why not all walk down? Why not all have ice cream...." He was all gentleness and propitiation, the ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale

... the death of Christ in far different fashion. It was a revelation of the love of God which wins men to love in turn. This notion of Abelard was far too subtle. The crass objective dogma of Anselm prevailed. The death of Christ was a sacrifice. The purpose was the propitiation of an angry God. The effect was that, on the side of God, a hindrance to man's salvation was removed. The doctrine accurately reflects the feudal ideas of the time which produced it. In Grotius was done away the notion of private right, which lies at the basis of ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... apostle say to him? He does not say: Then you are damned! or: It will require so many fasts, masses, and candles to restore you! but this is what he says: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2, 1. 2.) John, then, must be included in the Catholic indictment of Luther. Luther would not have been a preacher of the genuine and full Gospel if he had not declared the impossibility of any ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... until this propitiation was ended; and then fell to work to skin the bear, while Meshu-kwa went off with her daughters to the lodges, to prepare the cooking pots. In passing John she gave him a glance of ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the weaker ingredients of which were procured by Sally's glad connivance, with a lingering idea of propitiation, and a gentle hint that Missus mustn't know — the two Scotchmen, seated at opposite corners of the fire, had a long chat. They began about the old country, and the places and people they both knew, and both didn't know. If they had met on the shores of the central lake ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... sacrifices, as blood is specially pleasing to them. The need of sacrifice to deliver from the consequences of sin is dimly discerned by the people, but they have such distorted views on the subject that it is difficult to convey to them the Christian idea of propitiation. ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... inexplicable effects were referred to personal agency. In the fall of a cataract the savage saw the leap of a spirit, and the echoed thunder-peal was to him the hammer-clang of an exasperated god. Propitiation of these terrible powers was the consequence, and sacrifice was offered to the demons ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... he'll be more circumspect about that," her husband returned, with ironical propitiation. "But I don't think it's Fulkerson's fault altogether. Perhaps it's the house-agents'. They're a very illusory generation. There seems to be something in the human habitation that corrupts the natures of those who deal in it, to buy or sell it, to hire or let it. You go to an agent and tell ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... make pretensions of a higher cast. These pretensions I will explain hereafter. All the rest I resign to the reader's unbiased judgment, adding here, with respect to four of them, a few prefatory words—not of propitiation or deprecation, but simply in explanation as to points that would otherwise ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... the school, directed with patient futility to the propitiation of the teachers of his older sons, always ended in a cheering little talk with the young ruler of Room 18. To her he confided his history, his difficulties, and his hopes. In return she gave him advice, encouragement, and, in moments ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... arose with the sun, and his night's rest appeared to have had its frequent effect, in cooling the passions and correcting the understanding. Little Menie was the first person to whom he made the amende honorable; and a much smaller propitiation than the new doll with which he presented her would have been accepted as an atonement for a much greater offence. Menie was one of those pure spirits, to whom a state of unkindness, if the estranged ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... further propitiated, resentment at having to do so growing with the propitiation, "that is very narrow of us. I am sure your club will be quite different. We may come to ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... things I write to you that you may not sin. But if any one has sinned, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, [2:2]and he is a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for all the world. [2:3]And by this we know that we have known him, if we keep his commandments. [2:4]He that says, I have known him, and keeps not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is ...
— The New Testament • Various

... shrines. They have private ceremonies, separate from those of any professed faith, which are connected with the aboriginal belief that still lingers among the descendants of the most ancient tribes of India, and is chiefly a propitiation of malignant demons and malicious sprites. They marry exclusively among themselves, and polygamy is common. In appearance, both men and women are repulsively mean and wretched; the features of the women in particular being very ugly, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... prospect that flattered him for his son and heir. Hence when Mr. Brooke noddingly appealed to that motive, Sir James felt a sudden embarrassment; there was a stoppage in his throat; he even blushed. He had found more words than usual in the first jet of his anger, but Mr. Brooke's propitiation was more clogging to his tongue than Mr. Cadwallader's ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... must know," resumed the old woman, without any further attempts at propitiation, "that this girl is ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Idaios: "Idaios, thyself thou hearest the saying of the Achaians, how they answer thee; and the like seemeth good to me. But as concerning the dead, I grudge you not to burn them; for dead corpses is there no stinting; when they once are dead, of the swift propitiation of fire. And for the oaths let Zeus be witness, the loud-thundering ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... little for the displeasure to clear away from my face, Tedham smiled as if in humorous appreciation, and I perceived, as nothing else could have shown me so well, that he was still the old Tedham. There was an offer of propitiation in this smile, too, and I did not like that, either; but I was touched when I saw a certain hope die out of his eye at the failure ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... the Poles. Moro, Baccara, Tchuka—these are games at which continental peasants will wager and lose their little fields, their standing crops, their harvest in embryo, their very wives even. The Americans surpass us in the ardour of their propitiation of the gambling goddess, and on board the Mississippi steamboats, an enchanting game, called Poker, is played with a delirium of excitement, whose intensity can only be imagined by realizing that famous bout at "catch him who can," which took place at the horticultural fete immortalized ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... spirits very vaguely conceived as always at hand, some malevolent, some good; such also are the spirits which somehow are attached to the heads hung up in the houses. The dominant emotion in the presence of these is fear; and the attitude is that of avoidance and propitiation. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... the occasion, when my host of the Golden Candlestick, having, as he thought, opened his guest's heart by this hospitable propitiation, resumed his scrutiny. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... other his colour had decidedly heightened during the last few moments, and he looked at Esmeralda with a quick, embarrassed glance, as if afraid to meet her eyes. She was flushed like himself, a beautiful young fury, with eyes ablaze, and lips set in a hard, straight line. Propitiation was plainly hopeless at the moment, and he was not so foolish as to attempt the impossible. This was evidently "Beauty O'Shaughnessy," of whom he had heard so much, and, to judge by his own experience, ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... as Thou hast manifested Thyself to the world by Jesus Christ; as Thou hast given Him to be a Propitiation for the sins of it, and the Mediator between God and Man; we lay hold with all humility and thankfulness on so inestimable a Benefit, and come unto Thee according to Thine appointment in His Name, and in the form and manner which ...
— Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D. • Joseph Butler

... reminder of the incapacity of the Law to save, by pointing to the ceaseless repetition of the sacrificial acts. Year by year, on one Atonement Day after another, the blood-shedding, the blood-sprinkling, the propitiation, had to be done again. Year by year accordingly the worshippers were treated as "not perfect" (ver. 1); that is to say, in the clear light of the context, they were not perfect as to reconciliation, they were loaded still with the burthen of guilt. The "conscience of sins" ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule

... offer her—the last months had brought humility. Beside him young Spencer lolled, enjoying, with a free heart, his day off in the gentle, spring-like air. Perhaps he divined that his lady would not need so much propitiation. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... Dei, lib. vii. c. xxi.) inveighs against the impurity of the ceremonies in Italy of the sacred rites of Bacchus. But even he does not deny that the motive with which they were performed was of a religious, or at least superstitious nature—"Sic videlicet Liber deus placandus fuerat." The propitiation of a deity ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... him, and went back to the compound, and the drums took up the rhythm of propitiation to the gods for what they had done. For they had, they knew, cut very close to the corner of a tabu—but the provocation had been great and they hoped they would not ...
— Happy Ending • Fredric Brown

... Old Law there were different kinds of sacrifices offered up for different purposes. There were sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving to God for His benefits, sacrifices of propitiation to implore His forgiveness for the sins of the people, and sacrifices of supplication to ask His blessing and protection. The Sacrifice of the Mass fulfils all these ends. It is a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, a sacrifice of propitiation and of supplication; hence that valued book, the ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... mirror—strong sensations, she knew, were a charge on the appearance—but she was unable to find any difference in her regular pallor. Then, mechanically conducting her careful preparations for the night, her propitiation of the only omnipotence she knew, she put out the ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... doubt.' And it is very plainly intimated, that those who affect to call this notion in question, and yet pretend to be friends of a divine revelation, are hypocrites. It is added: 'The sacrifices were ordained to pre-figure Christ,—and were professions of faith in His propitiation.' ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... youth would teach them to despise as the heritage of narrow minds, and to cast away as incompatible with the highest intellectual cultivation. Such doctrines are those of the fall and ruin of man by nature, the necessity for Divine agency in his recovery, his need of propitiation by the sacrifice of the God-Man—l'Homme-Dieu. These truths are explicitly stated by the Author in his former course of lectures—La Vie Eternelle,[1] in which, while discoursing eloquently on that eternal life which is the portion ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... cakes that they were well-browned and full of butter. From the "Cape of Good Cheer," where many bottles glistened in rows inside, came a braying upon the conch, and a flame of burnt brandy danced along the bar to the honour and propitiation of Lakshmi, that the able-bodied seaman might be thirsty when he came, for the "Cape of Good Cheer" did not owe its prosperity, as its name might suggest, to any Providence of Christian theology. But most of the ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... presented, was a long lean figure, wearing such a faded air that she seemed not to have been made in what linen-drapers call 'fast colours' originally, and to have, by little and little, washed out. But for this she might have been described as the very pink of general propitiation and politeness. From a long habit of listening admiringly to everything that was said in her presence, and looking at the speakers as if she were mentally engaged in taking off impressions of their images upon her soul, never to part with the same but with life, her head ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... days of blinding labor, Aggie applied herself to the propitiation of Mammon, the sending forth of her sacrificial lamb properly decked for the sacrifice. There never had been such a hauling and overhauling of clothes, such folding and unfolding, such stitching and darning and cleansing ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair

... is not an uncommon thing for tribes in Africa to sell their own children for this purpose. One of the greatest sacrificial rites of the ancient Mexicans, was to offer up the most handsome youth each year, as a propitiation to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... to produce the most exquisite crystals, the highest forms of vegetation, of animals, of men. Then came the slow processes of civilising and educating men; the dim instincts of fear and propitiation, merging, by slow degrees, in the first conceptions of Love, as something apart ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... cross, and all that it means? Have you forgotten that he died to bear the penalty of sin, and that for his sake the worst sinners can be forgiven? We are none of us worthy to come to him, or, which is the same thing, to have him come to us; but he is the 'propitiation, sacrifice, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world'; it is not what you can do or be, but what he has done and is. Believe that he loves you, and died for you, and is your Saviour, and you cannot help loving and trusting him and letting ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... hair was for once in disarray, but her eyes shone with a faith restored. Warring in her always were two beliefs, one bright with the beauty and serenity which were her idea of good, the other dark with the necessity of sacrifice and propitiation. She had not the freedom of her youth, and she saw each good day as a thing to be accepted humbly and ultimately to be paid for, yet she would show no sign of fear. She had to go on steadily under the banner of a tranquil face, ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... for the society of Grace. But to lay offerings on her slighted altar was his first aim, and until her propitiation was complete he would constrain her in no way to return to him. The least reparation that he could make, in a case where he would gladly have made much, would be to let her feel herself absolutely free to choose between living with him ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... done in one of two ways, at the cost of His very self. Either He should forgive sin without propitiation—which were to cost His righteousness and truth and honour. Could that be? In no wise. Then it must be at the cost of His own bearing the penalty due unto the sinner. Thy sins, Amphillis, thine every failure ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... the mountain; and the theme about which they spake with Him there is the theme of which the former revelation had spoken in type and shadow, in stammering words, 'at sundry times and in divers manners,' to the former generations—viz. the coming of the great Sacrifice and the offering of the great Propitiation. All the past of Israel pointed onwards to the Cross, and in that Cross its highest word was transcended, its faintest emblems were explained and expressed, its unsolved problems which it had raised in order that they might be felt to be unsolved, were all answered, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... bound society together, who has learned exactly to distinguish between a 'fief' and a 'benefice.' He will have obtained a firm grasp on some central facts of theology who can exactly draw out the distinction between 'reconciliation,' 'propitiation,' 'atonement,' as used in the New Testament; of Church history, who can trace the difference between a 'schism' and a 'heresy.' One who has learned to discriminate between 'detraction' and 'slander,' as Barrow has done before him, [Footnote: 'Slander involveth an ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench



Words linked to "Propitiation" :   salvation, amends, calming, redemption, propitiate, atonement, appeasement, reparation



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com