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Secular   /sˈɛkjələr/   Listen
Secular

noun
1.
Someone who is not a clergyman or a professional person.  Synonyms: layman, layperson.



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"Secular" Quotes from Famous Books



... indeed, was generally conferred upon the members of the second class of nobility, and very often upon those of the first. He was a judge, with royal and pontifical privileges, exempt from the authority of the bishop in ecclesiastical, and from the royal tribunals in secular, matters. His morals were sifted with the strictest scrutiny; and yet this dignified ecclesiastic is the person whom Le Sage represents as lying in the streets stupefied with intoxication, and this not from accident, but from habitual indulgence in a vice which, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... interest, the storm-center, as we call it in these days, turned every eye in her direction with speculative interest. Would she retire to the convent, or find her vocation in the world? She had more than fulfilled her father's wish that she remain in secular life for a year. Almost two years had passed. He could not ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... as a visible incarnation of Santa Claus. They were the cheapest and most effective Christmas presents it was ever my pleasure to bestow. I hope to be forgiven for putting the church furniture to such a secular use. ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... Govind.—The first three successors of Nanak led the quiet lives of great eastern saints. They managed to keep on good terms with the Emperor and generally also with his local representatives. The fifth Guru, Arjan (1581-1606), began the welding of the Sikhs into a body fit to play a part in secular politics. He compiled their sacred book, known as the Granth Sahib, and made Amritsar the permanent centre of their faith. The tenets of these early Gurus chimed in with the liberal sentiments of Akbar, and he treated them kindly. Arjan was accused of helping Khusru, ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... on the contrary, it will seem that there is as much divinity in the best of the love-poems as in the best of the religious ones. Donne's last word as a secular poet may well be regarded as having been uttered in that great poem in celebration of lasting love, The Anniversary, which closes ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... a kind of eloquence, and can roll out and illustrate, with a great deal of vigour and fancy, second-hand sermons; but Namu's sermons are his own, and I cannot deny that I have found them means of grace. Moreover, he has a keen curiosity in secular things, does not fear work, is clever at carpentering, and has made himself so much respected among the neighbouring pastors that we call him, in a jest which is half serious, the Bishop of the East. In short, I was proud of the man; all the more puzzled by his letter, and took ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Lives of the Abbots of Bec, written in latin verse, in the twelfth century, by Peter, a monk of the convent of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, particular honor is given to Lanfranc on the subject of his school at Caen, which had produced many men eminent for their proficiency in sacred and secular literature, and was at that time flourishing. The Abbe De la Rue gives a long list of them. Essais Historiques, II. ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... thine house endure, Well longer than thee list, paraventure.* *perhaps Marriage is a full great sacrament; He which that hath no wife, I hold him shent;* *ruined He liveth helpless, and all desolate (I speak of folk *in secular estate*): *who are not And hearken why, I say not this for nought, — of the clergy* That woman is for manne's help y-wrought. The highe God, when he had Adam maked, And saw him all alone belly naked, God of his greate goodness saide then, Let ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... procure a number of effects which pass for supernatural. Now it is the folly, the vain credulity, the prepossession of such people that the law of God interdicts, that Moses condemns to death, and that the Christian Church punishes by its censures, and which the secular judges repress with the greatest rigor. If in all these things there was nothing but a diseased imagination, weakness of the brain, or popular prejudices, would they be treated with so much severity? ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... the undoubted conviction of the reasoners. Appeals to trust in the people, to confidence in human nature, to the strength of love as contrasted with the weakness of law, to shame for our past misgovernment of the Irish, to sanguine expectations of terminating a secular feud which has caused wretchedness to Ireland and has lessened the power of England, would appear in the judgment of orators addressing English electors likely to have much more weight with their audience than any attempt to prove that the establishment of a Parliament ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... permit." He said, "If you can't swear, I will sign for you." So I sent in my application to the clergy bureau, and a few days later I received the permit, but there was a little slip with it which said, "Are you wholly engaged in gospel work, or do you do some secular work?" I studied and prayed about it and wrote the clergy bureau and sent the permit back and said, "When I travel, I do nothing but gospel work, but when I am home, I preach twice on Sunday and once a week, and through the ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag

... again a silence: and they all came back to the original state of mind from which they started, and remembered that quiet and subdued tones and an incapacity for the consideration of secular subjects were the proper mental attitude for all that remained of ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... towards the end. Very wretched was the lot of the Macedonian Slavs—occasionally the Exarchists and occasionally the Patriarchists were in the ascendant, but while in religious matters the Greeks clung by all possible means to their ancient, privileged position, so the Turks maintained in secular affairs the sorry plight of their Slav raia. The Macedonian Slavs, when the rest of Europe began to listen to their cries, were not the most sympathetic of mortals—the more enterprising of them had abandoned the country, while the moral sense of those who stayed was grievously affected by ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... vain you approach us, With books to your taste in your hands; For, alas! though you offer to coach us, Yet the soul of no man understands Why the grubby is always the moral, Why the nasty's preferred to the nice, While you keep up a secular quarrel With ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang

... thirteen colonies into a national Church, and secure for themselves and children Catholic faith and worship in the Book of Common Prayer. They builded wiser than they knew. They secured for the Church self-government, free from all secular control. They preserved the traditions of the past, and yet every feature of executive, legislative, and judicial administration was in harmony with the Constitution of the Republic. They gave the laity a voice in the council of the Church; they provided that bishops and clergy should be tried by ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple

... of 1603 and its results, of which much apprehension still exists; but the threatened danger passes away, and the ordinances excluding the Sangleys from the islands are so relaxed that soon the Parian is as large as in 1603. The usual difficulties between the ecclesiastical and the secular authorities continue; and to the religious orders represented in the islands is added a new one, that of the discalced Augustinians, or Recollects. Acuna conducts an expedition to drive out the Dutch from the Moluccas, and soon afterward dies. Various commercial ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various

... return his hearty thanks to the editors of the Catholic periodicals, as well as of the secular press, for their favorable notices, which have no doubt contributed much to the ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... the views of the Senate, I do by this my proclamation designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. And I do hereby request all the people to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite at their several places of public worship and their respective homes in keeping the day holy to the Lord and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... attracting or repelling mankind. I do not now speak of any power contained in the truths it inculcated to convert to Islam by the rousing and quickening of spiritual impulses; for that lies beyond my present purpose, which is to inquire whether there is not in material causes and secular motives enough in themselves to account for success. I speak rather of the effect of the indulgences granted by Islam, on the one hand, as calculated to attract; and of the restraints imposed and sacrifices required, on the other, as calculated to repel. How far, ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... that each authority is independent of the other. The Church has no power over civil legislation in matters purely secular, nor has the state a right to interfere in ecclesiastical legislation, in matters purely spiritual, nor over spiritual persons considered strictly as such. In every Catholic country the King, as ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... or a blockhead; the gentle but a sneaking dog; the sober a mere hunks, and so on. Send her, therefore," he continued, "thither, in her full array, I will warrant that she will deceive every body, and that she will blind the counsellors and the warriors, and all the officers, secular and ecclesiastical, and will draw them hither in multitudes presently, by means of her mask of changeable hue." And thereupon he ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... sacred Story is every where full of Miracles not inferior to this, and tho in the midst of those Acts of Divinity he never gave the least Hint of a Design to become a Secular Prince, yet had not hitherto the Apostles themselves any other than Hopes of worldly Power, Preferment, Riches and Pomp; for Peter, upon an Accident of Ambition among the Apostles, hearing his Master explain that his Kingdom was not of this World, was so scandaliz'd ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... surprising first round success of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in the December 1991 balloting spurred the Algerian army to intervene and postpone the second round of elections to prevent what the secular elite feared would be an extremist-led government from assuming power. The army began a crack down on the FIS that spurred FIS supporters to begin attacking government targets. The government later allowed elections featuring pro-government and moderate religious-based parties, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... none of the gifts of nature, but only those of grace." Now, as we know that good angels can thus transport men in the twinkling of an eye, it follows that evil ones may do the same. He fortifies his position by a recent example from secular history. "No one doubts about John Faust, who dwelt at Wittenberg, in the time of the sainted Luther, and who, seating himself on his cloak with his companions, was conveyed away and borne by the Devil through the air to distant kingdoms."[109] ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... children of men.' Wildernesses of fruit, and worlds of flowers, are annually gathered in solitary South America to ancestral graves: yet still the Pomona of Earth, yet still the Flora of Earth, does not become superannuated, but blossoms in everlasting youth. Not otherwise by secular periods, known to us geologically as facts, though obscure as durations, Tellus herself, the planet, as a whole, is for ever working by golden balances of change and compensation, of ruin and restoration. She recasts her glorious habitations in decomposing ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... deposited with great reverence in the wall on the right side of the grand altar. "All these honors and ceremonies," says the document, from whence this notice is digested, [239] "were attended by the ecclesiastical and secular dignitaries, the public bodies and all the nobility and gentry of Havana, in proof of the high estimation and respectful remembrance in which they held the hero who had discovered the New World, and had been the first to plant the standard of ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... same conclusive authority as I thought her when I left her. The spirit of self-assertion and self-justification was strong within me, and though I hope I did not reply with ingratitude or disrespect, I would make no absolute promise till I had heard what my brother Walwyn said of my position in its secular aspect, and the Abbe Bonchamps in its religious point of view. So I bade my mother good-night, and went to see how Cecile fared in her new quarters, which, to her grief, were in a wing separated from mine by a ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... chosen for certain posts, whether secular or ecclesiastical, by those who exercise no action in their regard. Therefore choice is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... or alderman (that is to say, the Prepositus (presiding officer) of the court, which is tantamount to the judge on the bench) is to take upon him to judge the delinquent in any sense whatever, the sole purport of his office is to teach the secular or worldly law." Ditto, ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... powers of all but the "gallery" and a very few indeed of the guests; but most of them put in a final "Glory, Hallelujah," at the end of each stanza. Mr. Wright's tunes are bright and cheerful in the extreme, without being vulgar or offensively secular. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... issue instructions to the vessels that they "must not delay in trading and bartering, but return immediately to Nueva Espana, for the principal reason of this expedition is to ascertain the return voyage." The letter enclosed to Urdaneta states that the king "has been informed that when you were a secular, you were in Loaysa's fleet, and journeyed to the Strait of Magallanes and the spice regions, where you remained eight years in our service." In the projected expedition of the viceroy, Urdaneta's experience will be very valuable "because ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair

... the halls connected with the trade guilds. The rulers of the city and of the guilds were often the same men, in any case usually men of the same set. These secular buildings were really distinguished in appearance, but not monumental. They reflected something of the wealth that accrued from trade. They were of good size and proportions, built to be worthy of the practical use for which they were intended. The lower stages were ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... printed, several weeks ago, a long list of secular papers that were "going dry," as so many of our Southern states. The fact that our best periodicals no longer accept liquor advertisements is another one of the encouraging signs of the ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt

... we have seen, was unwilling, in her period of undisputed power, to call in the secular arm to punish men for witchcraft—a crime which fell especially under ecclesiastical cognizance, and could, according to her belief, be subdued by the spiritual arm alone. The learned men at the head of the establishment might safely despise the attempt at those ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... has proved to be one. And if his learning itself be loveless, it may claim our respect when a tricksy demon has let it loose on the Epistles of St. Paul, as it claims our gratitude when expended on secular things. It is at least better than the ignorance which hates the word of God, if it cannot wholly accept it; while these, his disciples, who renounce the earth, and chain up the natural man on a warrant no more divine than this, are by so much better than he who at this moment judges them. Let ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... 'Times' reported us.[13] Eighteen papers were read, two of them by members of Parliament, and most of the rest by well-known people. William Morris and Dr. Aveling read papers as delegates from the Socialist League; the National Secular Society sent Mr. Foote and Mr. [John M.] Robertson,[14] the latter contributing a 'Scheme of Taxation' in which he anticipated much of what was subsequently adopted as the Fabian program; Wordsworth Donisthorpe took the field for Anarchism of the type advocated ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... power over its owner; a great myth turns on Isis obtaining the name of Ra by stratagem, and thus getting the two eyes of Ra—the sun and moon—for her son Horus. Both in ancient and modern races the knowledge of the real name of a man is carefully guarded, and often secondary names are used for secular purposes. It was usual for Egyptians to have a 'great name' and a 'little name'; the great name is often compounded with that of a god or a king, and was very probably reserved for religious purposes, as it is only found on ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... 18 mortuary discourses, solemnized 21 hymeneal ceremonies, delivered 17 lectures, of which 16 were on secular and all the rest on religious subjects; made 39 addresses, of which all but 27 were on matters most nearly touching the vital religious concerns of the church, read aloud in church 156 chapters of the Bible, 149 of which were very long ones; made pastoral ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... the monks are to be believed) the sea inflicted upon them repeated inundations. They forced their priests to marry, saying that the man who had no wife necessarily sought for the wife of another. They acknowledged no ecclesiastical decree, if secular judges, double the number of the priests, did not bear a part in it. Thus the spirit of liberty burst forth in all their proceedings, and they were justified ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... Secular affairs gave less trouble. The apparent success of the French constitution furnished a strong motive for adopting one of a similar character for the Italian State; and as the proposed institutions had been approved at Milan, their acceptance ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... And, to compare secular with religious matters, what would become of the organization of society, what would become of man as a social being, in connection with the social system, if we applied this mode of reasoning to him in his social relations? We have a constitutional ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... Farebrother, I am glad of both, I fear," said Mary, cleverly getting rid of one rebellious tear. "I have a dreadfully secular mind. I never liked any clergyman except the Vicar of Wakefield and ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... probably as little interest. La Peyrere was only imprisoned at Brussels for his book on the Pre-adamites, which was burnt at Paris (1655). And Pascal saw his famous Lettres a un Provincial, which made too free with the dignity of all authorities, secular and religious, twice burnt, once in French (1657), and once in Latin (1660), without himself incurring a similar penalty. So did Derodon, professor of philosophy at Nismes, outlive the Disputatio (1645), in which he made light of Cyril of Alexandria, ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... Protestantism was undoubtedly to extinguish as completely as possible the remaining sparks of truly liberal thought promulgated in Europe by the Catholic doctors of the middle ages. Wherever the new doctrines spread, secular rulers were not only freed from pontifical control, but were themselves invested with supreme ecclesiastical power. The effective check which the paternal and bold voice issuing from the Vatican had exercised on kings and princes was ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... some secret," said the judge to himself, "and that secret must be very important. My amphibious friend—since he is neither priest, nor secular, nor convict, nor Spaniard, though he wants to hinder his protege from letting out something dreadful—argues thus: 'The poet is weak and effeminate; he is not like me, a Hercules in diplomacy, and you will easily wring our secret from him.'—Well, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... pressure groups: several political groups act as de facto parties: Bedouins, merchants, Sunni and Shi'a activists, and secular leftists ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... a better teacher than his father; and, no doubt, was indebted to his father for the progress. Had he gone to college instead of the candle-shop, the world might not have received his legacy of proverbial wisdom. For these were the outcome of secular discipline, when he was brought into direct contact with the realities of business and hardship. Colleges do not teach proverbs; they do not make practical men, but learned men. Practical men are made by ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... most of the voyagers found refuge; Master Foxe and his family being entertained by Master Gresham. After some time, the preacher, finding that he had many enemies in Antwerp who might deliver him up to the secular power as a heretic, proceeded with his family to Frankfort. Thence he continued on up the Rhine till he reached Basle in Switzerland, where were found great numbers of Englishmen who had been driven ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... was to reform higher education and introduce into the universities a wide, liberal, and scientific programme of secular studies. His chief work, the "Opus Majus," was written for this purpose, to which his exposition of his own discoveries was subordinate. It was addressed and sent to Pope Clement IV., who had asked Bacon to give him an account of his researches, and was designed to persuade the Pontiff ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... the Great Wall. It had been built in 1780 after the model of the palace of the Panshen Erdeni at Tashilumbo, in Tibet, when that functionary, the spiritual ruler of Tibet, as opposed to the Dalai Lama, who is the secular ruler, proceeded to Peking to be present on the seventieth anniversary of Ch'ien Lung's birthday. Two years later, the aged Emperor, who had, like his grandfather, completed his cycle of sixty years ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... teaching was a purely individualistic teaching, based upon conduct and emotion, and half the difficulties of the position lie in His sanction and guidance having been claimed for what is only a human attempt to organise a society with a due deference for the secular spirit, its aims and ambitions. The sincere Christian should, I believe, gratefully receive the simple and sweet symbols of unity and forgiveness; but he should make his own a far higher and wider range of symbols, the symbols ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... parchments, stained purple or violet, and inscribed with characters of gold; are too often beyond the reach of the amateur for whom we write. The MSS. which he can hope to acquire are neither very early nor very sumptuous, and, as a rule, MSS. of secular books are apt to be ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... Midsummer midnight influences and airs, The shining, sensitive silver of the sea Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn; And all so solemnly still I seem to hear The breathing of Life and Death, The secular Accomplices, Renewing the visible ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... smile. Clem was a spy whom they had sent out into the world of men. He had come back with the good news that there was nobody to compare with the Four Black Brothers, no position that they would not adorn, no official that it would not be well they should replace, no interest of mankind, secular or spiritual, which would not immediately bloom under their supervision. The excuse of their folly is in two words: scarce the breadth of a hair divided them from the peasantry. The measure of their sense is this: that these symposia ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... also a bookshop of small pretension in a town in Wales. For purely secular delight, maybe, it was too largely composed of Methodist sermons. Hell fire burned upon its shelves with a warmth to singe so poor a worm as I. Yet its signboard popped its welcome when I had walked ten miles of sunny ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... public) and to the distribution of New Testaments, but no actual teaching is mentioned. Nor does Newman write his own views on the subject. The diary-letters are chiefly filled with descriptions of the "perils of the way"—it is more or less secular. To me this has always seemed strange, for there was no doubt that he was, with the others, filled with a very real religious Christian zeal then, although later his views unhappily underwent great change and alteration, until a few years before his death, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... chapter I said something of the secular magnificence which surrounded great prelates in the good old days, when the Archbishop of Canterbury could only be approached on gilt-edged paper, and even the Bishop of impecunious Oxford never appeared in his Cathedral city without ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... privilege of the child of GOD to see the hand of GOD in all his circumstances and surroundings, and to serve GOD in all his avocations and duties. Whether he eat or drink, work or rest, speak or be silent; in all his occupations, spiritual, domestic, or secular, he is alike the servant of GOD. Nothing lawful to him is too small to afford an opportunity of glorifying GOD; duties in themselves trivial or wearisome become exalted and glorified when the believer recognises his power through ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor

... as to the relative advantages of secular and religious education. The Mayor of the 23rd arrondissement publishes to-day an order to the teachers within his domains, forbidding them to take the children under their charge to hear mass on Sundays. The municipality has also published a decree doubling the amount contributed by the city ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... been passed through with the others, the three martyrs were delivered to the secular executioner, and, amid the scoffs and jeers of the brutal crowd, turned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... it was called, was content with the free exercise of religion, as it had been asserted in defiance of the Syrian rulers; its practical aim was a community of Jews, composed of the orthodox in the lands of all rulers, essentially irrespective of the secular government— a community which found its visible points of union in the tribute for the temple at Jerusalem, which was obligatory on every conscientious Jew, and in the schools of religion and spiritual courts. Overagainst this orthodoxy, which turned away from political life and became ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... together an album of minuets, gavottes, and fugues. This led to our writing Narcissus, which is an Oratorio Buffo in the Handelian manner—that is as nearly so as we could make it. It is a mistake to suppose that all Handel's oratorios are upon sacred subjects; some of them are secular. And not only so, but, whatever the subject, Handel was never at a loss in treating anything that came into his words by way of allusion or illustration. As Butler puts it in ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones

... sketches of churches, castles, knightly tombs, and heraldic blazonry. When only eleven years old, he began the fabrication of documents in prose and verse, which he ascribed to a fictitious Thomas Rowley, a secular priest at Bristol in the 15th century. Chatterton pretended to have found these among the contents of an old chest in the muniment room of St. Mary Redcliff's. The Rowley poems included two tragedies, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... that enable it to flow a torrent, as in France, every ten to twelve years, it falls into the Mnat el-'Aynt, a little port for native craft, which will presently be visited. We left this Wady at a bend, some two hundred metres wide, called the "Broad of the Jujube," from one of the splendid secular trees that characterize North Midian. Near the camping-ground we shall find another veteran Zizyphus, whose three huge stems, springing from a single base, argue a green old age. Here both banks of the Fiumara are lined with courses of rough ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... entering Al-Medinah. According to Al-Bayzawi, it was called Assembly day because Ka'ab ibn Lowa, one of the Prophet's ancestors, used to gather the people before him on Fridays. Moslems are not forbidden to do secular work after the congregational prayers at the hour when they must "hasten to the commemoration of Allah and leave ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... remains true that secular liberalism alone could never have produced the peculiarly acrimonious hostility to Great Britain wherein Massachusetts stood preeminent, whose causes, if traced, will be found imbedded at the very foundation of her social organization, and ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... May, 1845, Mr Rutherford, Member for Leith, obtained leave to bring in a bill to regulate admission to the Secular Chairs in the Universities of Scotland. On the morning of the sixth of May the bill was read a first time, and remained two months on the table of the House. At length the second reading was fixed for the ninth of July. Mr Rutherfurd ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... plain that compulsory study must be a good and idleness an intolerable mischief,—but if I must determine which of the two courses was the more successful in training, moulding, and enlarging the mind, which sent out men the more fitted for their secular duties, which produced better public men, men of the world, men whose names would descend to posterity, I have no hesitation in giving the preference to that university which did nothing, over that which exacted an acquaintance with every science under ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... progress which has been made in the civilization of the Indian I think will disclose the fact that the beginning has been religious teaching, followed by or accompanying secular education. While the self-sacrificing and pious men and women who have aided in this good work by their independent endeavor have for their reward the beneficent results of their labor and the consciousness of Christian duty well performed, their valuable services ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... preserved much of its antiquity and fascination. The presence of the natural wells, which still are to be found in the gardens of the Bishop's Palace, probably induced King Ina in 704 to found a college of secular canons. Here a monastery grew, and subsequently became a bishop's see. John de Villula transferred his seat to Bath in (circa) 1092, and in 1139 the title was altered to Bishop of Bath and Wells. Wells is one of the smallest of the English ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home

... triumph of the peasants in the fields of Thuringia might have been an irreparable misfortune to Germany and to Christianity, we cannot deny that Luther's appeal to the secular arm, to suppress the rebellion, may have thoroughly altered the character of the first Reformation. Till then it had been established by preaching; but from the moment of that bloody episode it required the civil authority ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... of introducing scripture phrases into secular discourse. This seemed to me a question of some difficulty. A scripture expression may be used, like a highly classical phrase, to produce an instantaneous strong impression; and it may be done without being at all improper. Yet I own there is danger, that applying the language of our ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... researches of antiquaries, and the Shakspeare Society, for ascertaining the steps of the English drama, from the Mysteries celebrated in churches and by churchmen, and the final detachment from the church, and the completion of secular plays, from Ferrex and Porrex, and Gammer Gurton's Needle, down to the possession of the stage by the very pieces which Shakspeare altered, remodelled, and finally made his own. Elated with success and piqued ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... the silken robes and the jewelled treasures in the public-squares of Venice. One contemplates the thing in its most unlovely aspects—in the form of Simeon Stylites upon his pillar, devoured by worms, or of Bernard Gui, with his racks and his thumb-screws and his "secular arm"—and it seems the very culmination of all human madness and horror. And yet, it does not cease to come; and he upon whom it seizes may not free himself by any power of his will, by any cunning of his wit; and no agony of yearning and grief may be sufficient ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... The inner man may feast and banquet and drink of spiritual stores and streams and the soul will grow and develop accordingly. There is but little danger of lingering too long at the feast. There is much danger of famine while the Christian as a citizen of this world has certain secular duties to perform, yet amid these he communes and walks with God. While he may be intellectually engaged in the problems of life, the higher affections of his soul live upon heavenly things. He thus drinks of the refreshing dews of glory ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... in his private business, but a pioneer in every project which would benefit the community around him. He assumed responsibilities, invested money, and hired labor in building the turnpike and other public improvements. He was a leader in matters of religion and education as well as of secular interest. When the Congregational Church and Society of Hampton wished to build a meeting-house, the committee wrote him a letter stating the reasons why a certain valuable and centrally situated piece of land owned by him would be the most advantageous site for the proposed building. ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various

... that in delineating the early career of Badman, 'Bunyan drew the picture of his own boyhood.'[15] But the difference is broadly given. Badman is the child of pious parents, who gave him a 'good education' in every sense, both moral and secular;[16] the very reverse of Bunyan's training. His associates would enable him to draw the awful character and conduct of Badman, as a terrible example to deter others from the downward road to misery ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... in Turkey, Persia, or China. The attempt to convert an ancient Eastern despotism, firmly established on a theocratic basis, a country in which the Koran and the Multeka are the law of the land, into a Western democracy based on the secular speculations of Rousseau, Montesquieu, Bentham, Mill, and Spencer was ridiculous. The revolution effected only an outward change. It introduced some Western innovations, but altered neither the character of the Government nor that of the people. Turkish Parliamentarism became a sham ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... inscriptions designate the airs to which the psalms were set, part of which seem to be sacred, and part secular. Such is "Shushan Eduth," over Psalm lx., meaning "Fair as lilies is thy law," apparently the name of a popular religious air. Another, probably secular, is over Psalm xxii., "Aijeleth Shahar," "The stag at ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... give you the details of a murder committed a short time ago within the limits of our city. The very fact that the murderer has the chance of another trial after his conviction demonstrates that something must be done, and quickly. If the secular law is not able to wipe out such a blot then the church must help. It is my idea, brethren, that the weeds of the earth must be cut down, and by weeds I mean bad men. If a petition is handed you to sign asking time for Orn Skinner, ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... and in their churchmanship, as well as in their family and personal religion. And they held the same protest as the English Puritans held against the way in which the scandalous corruptions of the secular court, and the equally scandalous corruptions of the sacred bench, were together fast poisoning the public enjoyments of England and of Scotland. You will hear cheap, shallow, vinous speeches at public dinners and suchlike ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... mathematics, astronomy, arithmetic, music, rhetoric, dialectics, and geography, were to be taught—and this in two ways. There were to be two sorts of schools—interior or claustral, intended for monastics only, and exterior or canonical, intended for secular students. These schools were under separate scholastics or masters, and lay students were received in the exterior schools as freely and fully as in the public schools of the present time. Mabillon[18] gives a list of some twenty-seven monastic and cathedral ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... those Writings, how good soever, which are abandon'd to their own Fortune, and unprotected by Party or Cabal. At length, indeed, they struggled into Light; but so disguised and travested, that no classic Author, after having run ten secular Stages thro' the blind Cloisters of Monks and Canons, ever came out in half so maimed and mangled a Condition. But for a full Account of his Disorders, I refer the Reader to the excellent Discourse which follows, and turn myself to consider the ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... remarked, parenthetically, that secular holidays are of the same origin, by slightly remoter derivation. They shade off by degrees from the genuinely sacred days, through an intermediate class of semi-sacred birthdays of kings and great men who have been in some measure canonized, to the deliberately invented holiday set ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... be something that extends over all life and draws its power from all the energies and capacities of the psychic life. The religion of our new era, we may be sure, if it be in any real sense a religion of the world, will not be something apart from and above other experiences. It will be a secular religion and a democratic religion, a quality and spirit of life as a whole. Experience referred to what we believe is real and universal, and subjected sincerely to all the capacities and criteria of appreciation that we possess is religious experience. Religion, educationally ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... address and subtlety which always distinguished that order of priests peculiarly fitted them for the difficult task of christianizing the idolatrous savages. Their power was slowly progressive; but, in time, they acquired an ascendancy, which was extended to the minutest of the secular, as well as spiritual concerns of ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... the "knowledge'' of the physicist, by arguments from faith and religion, as it is for the physicist to deny the "knowledge'' of the theologian from the point of view of one who ignores the possibility of spiritual apprehension altogether. On the ground of secular history and secular evidence both might reasonably meet, as regards the facts, though not perhaps as to their interpretation; but the reason why they ultimately differ is to be found simply in the difference of their mental attitude towards the nature of "knowledge,'-itself ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... contrary, has no other object but to gain Heaven himself, and to drag up a hundred and thirty millions of men after him. Thus it is that his subjects can with an ill grace ask of him those temporal advantages which secular princes feel bound ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... sacrificed a white kid to the propitious divinities, and a black kid to the unpropiticus.' Do not we likewise? The church or one of its pensioners needs money; so instead of denying ourselves some secular amusement, cutting short our chablis, terrapin, pate de foie gras, gateau, Grec, Amontillado; wearing less sealskin and sables, buying fewer pigeon-blood rubies, absolutely mortifying the flesh in order to offer a contribution out of our pockets to God, how ingeniously we devise ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... for the present there is a lull in the conflict of races at the South, it is a lull which comes only from the breathing-spells of a great secular contention, and not from any permanent pacification founded on a resolution of the race problem presented by the Negro question in its present aspects. So long as the existing mass of our crude and unassimilated ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... project, Digby, Winter, and the Abbe Montague were suffered to come to England under the pretence of compounding for their estates; and the celebrated Thomas White, a secular clergyman, published a work entitled "The Grounds of Obedience and Government," to show that the people may be released from their obedience to the civil magistrate by his misconduct; and that, when he is once deposed (whether justly or unjustly makes no difference), it may be for the ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... writing, in action, Bernard stood high above his rivals and contemporaries; his compositions are not devoid of wit and eloquence; and he seems to have preserved as much reason and humanity as may be reconciled with the character of a saint. In a secular life, he would have shared the seventh part of a private inheritance; by a vow of poverty and penance, by closing his eyes against the visible world, [30] by the refusal of all ecclesiastical dignities, the abbot of Clairvaux ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... and confession, and he received a rebuff which was almost au seigneur; for in Jean Jacques' eyes he was now the figure in St. Saviour's; and this was an occasion when he could assert his position as premier of the secular world outside the walls of the parish church. He did it in good style for a man who had had no particular training ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... kingdom of Christ on earth.... A bishop in Connecticut must, in some degree, be of the primitive style. With patience, and a share of primitive zeal, he must rest for support on the Church which he serves, unornamented with temporal dignity, and without the props of secular power." Whether the English prelacy did or did not grasp, and acquiesce in, this ideal of a bishop and his office, I cannot find that ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... universe, to stir it all up a few times with a spoon. It is notorious, of course, that poets and preachers alike pride themselves upon this method of astonishing; that the former call it, "seeing the infinite in the finite;" the latter—"pressing secular matters into the service of the sanctuary," and other pretty phrases which, for reverence' sake, shall be omitted. No doubt they have their reasons and their reward. The style takes; the style pays; and what more would you have? Let them go on rejoicing, in spite of the cynical pedants in the Saturday ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... accepted the Mahdi's doctrines. Only a few Catholic missionaries and nuns did not assent to it, but that is a different matter. The Koran prohibits the slaughter of priests, so though their fate is horrible, they are not at least threatened with death. For the secular people, however, there was no other salvation. I repeat, they all accepted Mohammedism; the Germans, Italians, Englishmen, Copts, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... other sentiments than those of exultation and rapture. They saw nothing in what has been done in France but a firm and temperate exertion of freedom,—so consistent, on the whole, with morals and with piety as to make it deserving not only of the secular applause of dashing Machiavelian politicians, but to render it a fit theme for all the devout effusions ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... is full of sin and iniquity on every hand. We may hear profanity as we pass along the street, or we may see iniquity before our eyes daily as we come in contact with the world, we may pick up a secular paper and read of murder and theft, and thus these evil thoughts may enter into our minds, but they do not conceive or take root in our hearts. They are brought into captivity and banished from us. If when ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers

... off the Papal yoke, music was little known beyond the services of the church. Though the secular music of this period was barbarous in the extreme, yet masses were universally sung, and music had long formed a necessary element in the due performance of the services of the Romish church. During the reign of Henry VIII. few alterations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... to make it clear to him that it need not be, after all, so very expensive to take a wife. In the course of a few days one of the costumes was completed, and when he came she had it on, appearing before him for the first time in secular dress. The stays insisted a little cruelly on the lines of her figure, and the tight bodice betrayed her narrow-chested. Above its frills her throat protruded unusually, with a curve outward like that of some wading birds, and her arms, in their unaccustomed sleeves, hung straight ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... adopt his view. But this remark of Luther is evidently misapplied if it is made to mean that Luther sought ease, comfort, leniency in the cloister as a relief from the hard life which he had been leading. Luther had grasped the fundamental idea in monkery quite well: flight from the secular life as a means to become exceptionally holy. He sought quiet for meditation and devotion, but no physical ease and earthly comforts. He knew of the rigors of cloister-life. He willingly bowed to "the gentle yoke of Christ"—thus ran the monkish ritual—which ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... priests, with one lay brother, are the founders of that work; Suarez dies from overwork, Sanchez goes back to Europe, and Sedeno conducts the affairs of the mission—laboring for the good of the colony in all matters, both spiritual and secular. The Jesuits exert considerable influence over the Chinese and Japanese who come to Manila. In chapter vi are enumerated the names of the larger islands in the Filipinas, and their extent is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... of canons. The dispossessed canons met them with insults and violence, drowned their voices by howling and other indignities, and only ceased on being threatened with the loss of their eyes and other secular penalties. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... sovereign intellectual ability working out her own salvation in circumstances so different from our own that we have the greatest difficulty in believing that it was really salvation at all she was so working out. Till, as we read in humility and in love, we learn to separate-off all that is local, and secular, and ecclesiastical, and circumstantial, and then we immensely enjoy and take lasting profit out of all that which is so truly Catholic and so truly spiritual. Teresa was an extraordinary woman in every way: and that comes out on every ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte

... perhaps developed out of mummies of the dead, and a sacred or even secular drama developed out of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... of faith or of doubt. But when the Duke of Devonshire in a letter calls himself yours obediently, you know that he means the opposite of what he says. Religious forms are, at the worst, fables; they might be true. Secular forms are falsehoods; they are not true. Take a more topical case. The German Emperor has more uniforms than the Pope. But, moreover, the Pope's vestments all imply a claim to be something purely mystical ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... belonged to a pagan family of distinction; and, when a youth, was intended for the profession of the law; but, becoming acquainted with Origen at Caesarea in Palestine, he was induced to embrace the Christian faith, and relinquish flattering prospects of secular promotion. He became subsequently the bishop of Neo-Caesarea in Pontus. When he entered on his charge he is said to have had a congregation of only seventeen individuals; but his ministry must have been singularly successful; for, according to tradition, all ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... fifteenth and sixteenth century embroideries are better adapted for secular purposes; though their extreme beauty as architectural ornament in Italy, reconciles one to their want of religious character, on the principle that it was allowable to dedicate to the Church all that in its day was brightest and ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... pursu'd, While Darwen stream with blood of Scotts imbru'd, And Dunbarr field resounds thy praises loud, And Worsters laureat wreath; yet much remaines To conquer still; peace hath her victories 10 No less renownd then warr, new foes aries Threatning to bind our soules with secular chaines: Helpe us to save free Conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... the concessions made regarding the customs duties and the royal fifths be continued, on account of the poverty of the colony. He renews his request for more religious teachers, and asks not only for secular priests, but more friars—especially those who cannot own property, as the Indians will have more regard for such. He explains in detail his difficulties regarding the proper disposal of the crown funds by the royal ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson

... official churches have had no other merit but that they have preserved Christ as the treasury of the world, yet they are justified thereby. Even if they have solely repeated through all the past centuries "Lord! Lord!" still they stand above the secular world. For they know at least who the Lord is, whereas ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... distinctly asserted that the spread of communistic doctrines was due to the friars. Moreover, the same popular opinion is reflected in the fabricated confession of Jack Straw, for he is made to declare that had the rebels been successful, all the monastic orders, as well as the secular clergy, would have been put to death, and only the friars would have been allowed to continue. Their numbers would have sufficed for the spiritual needs of the whole kingdom (Chronicon Angliae, p. 309). Moreover, it has been noticed that not a few of ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... they are now actually in possession of the Paraguay in America, pretending, but paying no obedience to the Crown of Spain. As a collective body they are detested, even by all the Catholics, not excepting the clergy, both secular and regular, and yet, as individuals, they are loved, respected, and they govern wherever ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... full licence to proceed to the penance of the girl, to which act and ecclesiastical ceremony the people came from twelve leagues around. So that on the day when, after divine satisfaction, the Succubus was to be delivered up to secular justice, in order to be publicly burnt at a stake, not for a gold pound would a lord or even an abbott have been found lodging in the town of Tours. The night before many camped outside the town in tents, or slept upon straw. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... Bartleby was an eminently decorous person. He would be the last man to sit down to his desk in any state approaching to nudity. Besides, it was Sunday; and there was something about Bartleby that forbade the supposition that he would by any secular occupation violate the proprieties of ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville

... 39: The Irish Tithe Bill, a measure to facilitate the collection of tithes, was abandoned because the Tories would not consent to any secular appropriation of Church revenues, and the Whigs would not consent to the withdrawal of their amendments. A remarkable feature in the Bill was a proposal that a portion of every clergyman's income should be applied to education, as was already ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... Henry VII. resumed the Lancastrian Collar of Esses, he added to it the portcullis of Beaufort. In the former Lancastrian regions it had no pendant, except a plain or jewelled ring, usually of the trefoil form. All the pendant badges which I have enumerated belong to secular heraldry, as do the roses and suns which form the Yorkist collar. The letter S is an emblem of a somewhat different kind; and, as it proves, more difficult to bring to a satisfactory solution than the symbols of heraldic blazon. As an initial it will bear ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various

... thought of it professionally. If one honest man had met me with the question, 'Can you lead that part of our worship to God in spirit and in truth?' I should have known that I could not, and said so. Then I should have turned my attention to secular paths where secular men belong. But there's the rub! Not one of them thought of it, I suppose. What a farce it is! The minister yesterday talked of incense rising to God. It doesn't get beyond their nostrils, I think. You know that man—what's his name?—he's ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... to illustrate the successive phases in the American character; and in France authors like M. Paul Bourget and M. Rene Bazin emphasise respectively the change from aristocracy to democracy, and from the reverence of orthodoxy to the revolutionary secular spirit. ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... of beauty freely spread out before us,—then again, if we look back thousands of years and consider the great civilisations of the past that have withered into dust and are now forgotten, we cannot help wondering why there should be such a waste of life for apparently no purpose. I speak in a secular sense,—of course my Church has but one reply to doubt, or what we call 'despair of God's mercy'—that it is sin. We are not permitted to criticise or to question ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... terms in the secular papers which, unless understood, obscure the sense of the reading. There is a dictionary of medical terms as a separate department which adds much to the usefulness of the work; the spelling, pronunciation and definition being concisely given ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... has no longer a school for the peasant children, by the way. The necessity for that is past. But he must have been an original professor. A friend of mine in St. Petersburg, who was interested, during the sixties, in the secular Sunday-schools for workingmen who could not attend on week days, repeated to me the count's method as imparted to her by himself while visiting the capital. He objected to the rules which compelled the men to be regular in attendance, on the ground that learning must not be acquired ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... involuntarily, "The evening will be a wet one." The storm is always brooding through the massy splendour of the trees, above those sun-dried glades or lawns, where delicate children may be trusted thinly clad; and the secular trees themselves will hardly outlast ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... while ecclesiastical abuses are thus augmenting, ecclesiastical power is diminishing in the Netherlands. The Church is no longer able to protect itself against the secular aim. The halcyon days of ban, book and candle, are gone. In 1459, Duke Philip of Burgundy prohibits the churches from affording protection to fugitives. Charles the Bold, in whose eyes nothing is sacred save war and the means of making it, lays a heavy impost upon all clerical property. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the breakdown of the central government, most regions have reverted to local forms of conflict resolution, either secular, traditional Somali customary law, or Shari'a (Islamic) law with a provision for ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... kept him supplied with sound rappee. Jests and music he was abundantly competent to supply himself. He played the piano and the organ, and he sang—in a clear, sweet, slightly faded tenor. Of secular composers his favourites were "the lucid Scarlatti, the luminous Bach." But the music that roused him to enthusiasm was Gregorian. He would have none other at St. Mary of the Lilies. He had trained his priests and his people there to sing it ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... greatly to the intellectual and spiritual improvement of our seamen, if a Chaplain-general were appointed to take the oversight of the religious instruction, and an Examiner to direct the secular instruction, of the Navy. The former should exercise authority similar to that of an archdeacon, and the functions of the latter should resemble those of her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. The impulse given to parochial education by the latter is beyond all calculation; ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... living in mud huts round a small stone chapel. Out of this insignificant beginning grew a mighty monastery, the West Minster, dowered with royal gifts and ruled over by mitred Abbots, who owned no ecclesiastical authority save that of the Pope, bowed to no secular arm save that of the Sovereign himself. The full title of the Abbey, which is seldom used nowadays, is the Collegiate ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... put down the cuckstool, and the whipping-post was becoming in a complete state of desuetude. A pump in the men's yard was used as a place of occasional punishment for the stubborn and refractory. The prisoners were without any instruction, secular or religious. No chaplain attended. The allowance to each prisoner was a two-penny loaf, two pounds of potatoes, and salt daily. I believe, from all I could learn, that the Liverpool prisons, bad as they undoubtedly were at the close of the last and the beginning of the present century, were ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... real meaning of the word "Tribuna" is the semicircular cavity at the extremity of a Roman basilica, where the judges sat. In the early ages of the church some of these buildings were given to the Christians for public worship, who still retained their secular name, and worshipped in ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... monument shall not onely increase in wealth in this world, but in the life to come be safe through Combendaxis helpe. Such as giue themselues to worship him, liue in those Monasteries or Abbyes with shauen heads, as though they had forsaken all secular matters, whereas in deede they wallow in all sortes of wickednesse and lust. In these houses, the which are many (as I sayd) in number, doe remaine 6000 Bonzii, or thereabout besides the multitude of lay men, women be restrained from thence vpon paine of death. Another company of Bonzii ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... touch sacred things with lips and hands polluted, or any to give the laws and praisings of cleanness, or to present himself in the Lord's temple, when he is defiled with the spots of lechery, not only the divine and canonical laws, but also the monitions of secular princes, hath evidently seen by the judgment of holy consideration, commanding and enjoining both discreetly and also wholesomely, shamefacedness unto all Christ's faithful, and ministers of the holy church." Fol. 131, rect. Constitutions Provincialles, and of Otho aud [Transcriber's Note: and] ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... out in fullest leaf above our heads. There are so many leaves, and they are so close together, that they hide the great brown rooks' nests. They do not hide the rooks themselves. It would take a good deal to do that. Dear pleasant-spoken rooks, talking so loudly and irreverently about their own secular themes—out-cawing the church-bells, as we pace by, devout and smart, to our prayers. Last time I walked up this path, it was hidden with red cloth, and flowers were tumbling under my feet. Ah! red cloth comes but once in a lifetime. It is only the queen who lives in an atmosphere ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... as on the western shores of the Baltic, where, in consequence of the secular elevation of the coast, the sea appears to be retiring; others, where, from the slow sinking of the land, it seems to be advancing. These movements depend upon geological causes wholly out of our reach, and man can ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... drifted away into more secular channels, and Ashe in time forgot for the moment that he was already almost a priest. Youth was strong in his blood, and even when a man has vowed to serve heaven by celibacy the must of desire may ferment still in his veins. A youthful ascetic has ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... unaffected pages we can trace the first beginnings of that strange movement which was to convert the old Europe of the Middle Ages, with its universal Empire and its universal Church, into the new Europe of independent secular ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... remark the immense power that this doctrine gave the clergy in a believing age. They were made the arbiters of each man's eternal destiny, and their moral character had no more to do with their binding and loosing sentence than does the moral {28} character of a secular officer affect his official acts. Add to this that the priests were unbound by ties of family, that by confession they entered into everyone's private life, that they were not amenable to civil justice—and their position as a privileged order ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... of the Agenais and the Toulousain to combat the heretical propaganda. But, protected by William IX., duke of Aquitaine, and soon by a great part of the southern nobility, the heretics gained ground in the south, and in 1119 the council of Toulouse in vain ordered the secular powers to assist the ecclesiastical authority in quelling the heresy. The people were attached to the bons hommes, whose asceticism imposed upon the masses, and the anti-sacerdotal preaching of Peter of Bruys and Henry of Lausanne in Perigord. Languedoc and Provence, only ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... represents a sentiment, all the power belonging to his eldest first cousin of the masculine gender, and any intercourse with him is entirely of a disinterested or of a sentimental character. He is the head of the church—after a very secular fashion, however;—all the bishops and clergy therefore got down on their knees and said their prayers; though the captain suggested that it might be their catechisms; I never knew which. I observed, also, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... before Purcell's time were Tallis, Byrde, Whyte, Orlando Gibbons, and they composed not for the English, but for the Roman Church. When I say that Pelham Humphries and Purcell were not religious at all, but purely secular composers, thoroughly pagan in spirit, I imply—or, if you like, exply—that the Church of England has had no religious musicians worth mentioning. Far be it from me to doubt the honest piety of the ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman

... I. was a martyr, and the Revolution of 1688 an inglorious blunder. To the day of his death—in spite of the harsh discipline which he received at his hands in boyhood, in spite of wide divergence of opinion in later years in all matters secular and religious—Froude never ceased to worship at his brother's shrine. Out of regard for his memory, more than from any passionate personal conviction, he associated himself while at Oxford with ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... advantage of the Jesuit's authority to excuse his murder. It was certain that the Jesuits were the best friends of the late king. Nevertheless, they had to suffer the hostility of a certain part of the secular clergy. Father Coton, a Jesuit, published at once a pamphlet under the title, "Is it lawful to kill the tyrants?" in which he taught that it is not lawful to kill a king, except he abuses his authority. An answer to the pamphlet, published ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... weddings, and had actually forbidden them. In the face of the primate's edict the ill-assorted couple were united in wedlock, without license or publication of banns, by a country parson, who braved the displeasure of Whitgift, in order that he might secure the favor of a secular patron. The wedding-day was November 24, 1598, the bridegroom's first wife having been buried on the 24th of the previous July.[5] On learning the violation of his orders, the archbishop was so incensed that he ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... leather. Read it for pleasure as one would read a literary masterpiece—not because opinion might frown on you if you had not read the classic. Does someone object that that would be to degrade the Bible to the level of secular writings? You cannot degrade a literature; it makes its own level and our labels do not affect it. Certain it is that a pious tone of voice will not protect the Bible from the secular level. But to use it unnaturally will degrade it in the opinion ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... metropolitan Nikon (q.v.), who in consequence became in 1651 the tsar's chief minister. In 1653 the weakness and disorder of Poland, which had just emerged, bleeding at every pore, from the savage Cossack war, encouraged Alexius to attempt to recover from her secular rival the old Russian lands. On the 1st of October 1653 a national assembly met at Moscow to sanction the war and find the means of carrying it on, and in April 1654 the army was blessed by Nikon (now patriarch). The campaign of 1654 was an uninterrupted ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Turkey, we succeeded in putting an end to the secular Turco-Persian quarrel by means of the delimitation of the Persian Gulf and Mount Ararat region, thanks to which we preserved for Persia a disputed territory with an area of almost 20,000 square versts, part of which the Turks had invaded. Since the war the Persian ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... not attempt to repeat what has been so fully said by the religious and secular journals of the country in reference to the life and work of this great and good man, but I desire to say a few words in regard to his connection with the anti-slavery movement, and his interest in the work ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various

... here looking out for some secular employ, but he is continually haunting me. He tells me that he is preparing an accounts of all his dealings with G [Graydon] and R [Rule], in which he details the promises made him to induce him to sign a document purporting to be a separation from the Roman Church. ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... note: the nascent civil court system, administered by region, has judges who practice secular and ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... Mongol dominion, had never paid tribute to Khans, had in consequence grown to be enormously wealthy. It is said the clergy owned a million serfs. Catherine placed the property of the Church under the administration of a secular commission, and the heads of the monasteries and the clergy were converted from independent sovereigns into mere pensioners of the Crown. Then she assailed the receiving of bribes, and other corrupt practices in the administration of justice. ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... of lyrics as varied in content as the possible subjects in life. One might consider them as sacred and secular and under the former recognize the psalms, which our poets have many times rendered into metrical form, not infrequently detracting from the sublimity of the originals. "The Lord is my Shepherd" needs no change, no remodeling from the biblical version to make it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... producing the best tea in the world. The southern Zen spread with marvelous rapidity, and with it the tea-ritual and the tea-ideal of the Sung. By the fifteenth century, under the patronage of the Shogun, Ashikaga-Voshinasa, the tea ceremony is fully constituted and made into an independent and secular performance. Since then Teaism is fully established in Japan. The use of the steeped tea of the later China is comparatively recent among us, being only known since the middle of the seventeenth century. It has replaced the powdered tea in ordinary consumption, though the latter still continues ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura



Words linked to "Secular" :   layman, materialistic, commoner, impious, earthly, sacred, profane, temporalty, unworldly, common person, worldly-minded, profanatory, material, mercenary, religious, economic, clergyman, secular humanism, lay reader, lay, terrestrial, mundane, common man, sophisticated, laity, temporal



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