altar-stairs

"In Memoriam," read aright, leads one upward "upon the great world's altar-stairs that slope through darkness up to God".

Morality as a Religion An exposition of some first principles W. R. Washington Sullivan

He lived and moved and had his being in the sanctuary of the hills, the high altar-stairs of the mountains, the sublime silences of the stately pines — where birds sung their matins and the “stars became tapers tall”; where the zitkada_n_to — the blue bird — uttered its ravishing notes.

The Vanishing Race Joseph Kossuth Dixon 1891

He made for the Canaanitish city of Luz, the Beth-el of later days, where he had seen the great altar-stairs sloping upward to heaven.

Patriarchal Palestine 1889