Having in mind the excusable superstition of the men, Captain Parkinson was unwilling to compel any of them to the duty.

Even Handy Solomon, practical as he was, had a scruple or two of superstition in his make-up, on which one might work.

When now he drops the old superstitions about himself as a spirit, an emulsion of a spirit of good and spirit of evil, and sees himself more and more clearly as the most complex of chemical reactions, regulated and determined as are the simple and complex chemical reactions around him, he will begin to rule and modify himself as he rules and modifies them.

They had a dislike of dirt, which had become quite a superstition to them.

And then, with a superstition for which I never could give any reason even to myself, having removed the packings, we closed and locked the door, leaving the candles about the room, in their soft, strange illumination, lighting the first night of her return to her old place.

It is necessary to premise this, because many are of opinion that superstition is a corruption of religion; and though they would agree that as such, "corruptio optimi pessima," yet they would look on religion as the state of spiritual health, and superstition as one of spiritual disease.

But Ridley, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, preached against all forms of papal superstition with so much ability and zeal that the churches were soon cleared of these "helps to devotion.

As Athanasius rendered a great service to the Church by establishing the doctrine of the Trinity, and Augustine a still greater service by the overthrow of Pelagianism, so Luther undermined the papal pile of superstition by showing eloquently,what indeed had been shown before,the true ground of justification.

And Sir Walter Scott, in his notes to 'The Lady of the Lake,' tells us something about a similar superstition among the Scotch.

The Egyptians, who derived their astrological superstitions from the Chaldeans, becoming ignorant of the astronomical hieroglyphics, by degrees looked upon the names of the signs as expressing certain powers with which they were invested, and as indications of their several offices.

Cases are tried by trained judges; the old democratic usage of employing untrained juries having been long ago discarded, as a worse superstition than simple decision by lot.

The Welshmen, partly moved by superstition at this extraordinary event, partly distressed by famine in their camp, fell off from him; and Buckingham, finding himself deserted by his followers, put on a disguise and took shelter in the house of Banister, an old servant of his family.

It was a good thing on the dissolution of the Roman Empire, when society was resolved into its original elements,when barbarism on the one hand, and superstition on the other, made the Middle Ages funereal, dismal, violent, despairing.

The Druids had another superstition amongst them, in regard to their serpents' eggs, which they supposed were formed of the saliva of many of those creatures, at a certain time of the moon: these they looked upon as a sure prognostic of getting the better of their enemies.

He canwhat the lower animals, happily for them, cannotorganise his folly; erect his superstitions into a science; and create a whole mythology out of his blind fear of the unknown.

The Greek sailors have a superstition against sailing at any time but in the night; but after being deceived by one captain, we prevailed, on another to set sail

Conrad, the pilgrim, threw aside the mask entirely, if, indeed, so thin a veil as that he ordinarily wore when not in the presence of his employers deserved such a name, and appeared the miscreant he truly was,a strange admixture of cowardly superstition, (for few meddle with superstition without getting more or less entangled in its meshes,) of low cunning, and of the most abject and gross sensuality and vice.

He landed at Southampton; and knowing the influence of superstition over the minds of the people, he hastened to Canterbury, in order to make atonement to the ashes of Thomas à Becket, and tender his submissions to a dead enemy.

As I trudged, half frightened, into the road, and the fog closed about me, it seemed to my childish superstition like a horde of long-imprisoned ghosts let loose, and angry.

On the one hand, he finds in monotheism the original true religion, which has degenerated into superstition through priestly cunning and fantastical philosophy; in primitive Christianity, the system of natural religion, which has been transformed into a complicated and contentious science by its weak, foolish, or deceitful adherents; in theology, the corruption of religion; in Bacon, Descartes, and Locke, types of untrammeled investigation.

You need to sweat the superstition out of you!

Du Chaillu says of the equatorial Africans (103) that "their whole lives are saddened by the fears of evil spirits, witchcraft, and other kindred superstitions under which they labor."

Nothing positively controversial is taught; that is to say, no contemptuous expressions about the religion of any of the children are allowed, and the plainest truths of the Gospel specially set forward; but occasionally something comes into the lesson which shows to an intelligent learner the vanity of the superstitions around them."

Other superstitions beside those connected with religion.