A pulpit: occasionally, “the sacred desk.”
1770. With what Frequency and Chearfulness did he ascend the Desk.—Notice of Whitefield’s decease: Mass. Gazette, Oct. 1.
1772. [That they] should select a Runagate to be their Monitor from the sacred desk.—Boston Gazette, Sept. 28.
1788. The man who thinks that every clergyman is a hypocrite would, were he admitted to the sacred desk, be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.—Mass. Spy, Sept. 25.
1795. In obedience to your polite request, I appear in the desk.—Gazette of the U.S., Feb. 10 (Phila.).
1800. Why talk nonsense and political falsehood from the sacred desk?—The Aurora, Phila., Sept. 10.
1800. The President has as good a right to preach religion from the Speaker’s chair, as you have to preach politics from the sacred desk.—Id., Oct. 9.
1809. The pulpit, or, as it is here [in Connecticut] called, the desk, was filled by three, if not four clergymen; a number which, by its form and dimensions, it was able to accommodate.—E. A. Kendall’s ‘Travels,’ i. 4. (N.E.D.) (Italics in the original.)
1811. The decalogue is hurried over in the desk with as little ceremony, as the detail of a fox-chase.—Letter quoted by Dr. Dwight, ‘Travels,’ iv. 440 (1821).
1821. Dr. Backus came to Somers soon after Ely left the desk.—Id., ii. 276.
1821. We found in the desk, a respectable clergyman from Scotland, who gave us two edifying sermons, delivered, however, in the peculiar manner of the Seceders.—Id., iii. 235.
1822. In Rhode Island, no sectarian preacher will permit an Unitarian to pollute his desk.—Tho. Jefferson to Dr. Cooper, Nov. 2.
1827. He seemed to have great ambition to get into the pulpit, and on one occasion informed me that the Rev. Mr. Wayland had requested him to officiate in his desk.—Mass. Spy, July 18.
1835. [An] impressive style of oratory, which I should like to see more adopted in the sacred desk.—Ingraham, ‘The South-West,’ ii. 65.
1838. As he sat down in the desk, he smoothed his bands, and then ran his eye over his sermon, apparently anxious lest some of his finest periods should be marred in the delivery.—‘Harvardiana,’ iv. 350.
1841. Not only has the ermine been sullied, and the judgment seat been contaminated, but the sacred desk and the pulpit have been polluted.—Mr. Duncan of Ohio, House of Representatives, Jan. 26: Cong. Globe, p. 271, App.
1841. They saw the light burning brightly, and the honest clergyman sitting in his desk, the only man in the house, convulsed with laughter, at the fright of his late audience.—F. Jackson, ‘A Week in Wall Street,’ p. 135 (N.Y.).
1843. A small-built gentleman, in a black suit and snowy neckerchief, was sitting in the desk of Chatham chapel, with his head resting upon his folded hands.—Cornelius Mathews, ‘Writings,’ p. 80.
1846. I will ask the gentleman whether he thought that he who ministered at the sacred altar—who filled the sacred desk,—should indulge in [such] remarks.—Mr. Seaborn Jones of Georgia in the House of Repr., Dec. 21: Cong. Globe, p. 92, App.
1854. Those who convert the pulpit into the hustings, and profane the holy Sabbath by stump speeches from the sacred desk, seem to have forgotten, if they ever knew, the spirit and even the form of words appropriate to the place and the day.—Mr. Stephen A. Douglas of Ill., U.S. Senate, May 25: id., p. 787, App.
1854. A thousand ideas float in the minds of the people in relation to preaching; each have their standard, and their notions of what they call the sacred desk. All “Mormon” desks are sacred.—J. M. Grant at the Tabernacle, Sept. 24: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ iii. 65.
1863. A preacher “with a liberal mouth of gold” discourses from the desk.—Yale Lit. Mag., xxviii. 317 (Aug.).
