To be just with sternness was in his eyes a duty.
There is also an unrelieved sternness, which pains us by its contrast with Isa.
During his stay in New Orleans he proclaimed martial law, and carried out his measures with unrelenting sternness, banishing from the town a judge who attempted resistance.
His father was reserved, undemonstrative even to the pitch of chilling sternness, and among young Mill's comrades contempt of feeling was almost a watchword.
The preaching of John the Baptist was thus in sympathy with the ideals of his generation, though the sternness of the repentance which he set forth as the necessary preparation for entrance into the new kingdom of heaven, which was to be made visible on earth, was not less repugnant to the men of his day than of later times.