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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



... Bishop in thus founding an institution on these lines for the study of Theology, is remarkable as illustrating the spirit of revolt from the absorption by monks and friars of all existing educational affairs. The College was strictly limited to secular clerks, who were "sent down" if they chose to join any of the regular Orders. The subsequent religious history of the College has had curious vicissitudes. Wycliff was a Fellow, and Merton stood by him in the face of the rest of Oxford. Then ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How

... snow falls in each year than is melted on the spot. A portion of this is carried away by the wind before it is consolidated; a larger portion accumulates in hollows and depressions of the surface, and is gradually converted into glacier-ice, which descends by a slow secular motion into the deeper valleys, where it goes to swell perennial streams. As on a mountain the snow does not lie in beds of uniform thickness, and some parts are more exposed to the sun and warm winds than others, we commonly find beds of snow alternating with exposed slopes covered with ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the keepers of the sacred books, or Vedas, the philosophy, science, and laws of the ancient Hindus (for that is how the power of the caste developed), but they were also the creators and custodians of its secular literature and art. Two and a half thousand years later Prince Gautama or Buddha died, after a life of self-sacrifice and sanctity. On his death five hundred of his disciples met in a cave near Rajagriha to gather together his sayings, and chanted the lessons of their great ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... convinced of the immorality of that person. He had a bluff jolly way of speaking, and was popular in his parish—a good cricketer, a still better fisherman, a fair shot, though, as he said, he could not really afford time for shooting. While disclaiming interference in secular matters, he watched the tendencies of his flock from a sound point of view, and especially encouraged them to support the existing order of things—the British Empire and the English Church. His cure was hereditary, and he fortunately possessed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Godhead, and despised the imitation of the incarnate Christ, were already throwing discredit on the movement. Mechthild's independence, and her unsparing denunciations of corruption in high places, brought her into conflict with the secular clergy. They tried to burn her books—those religious love songs which had already endeared her to German popular sentiment. It was then that she seemed to hear a voice ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... were one and the same thing. As was the case in Christianity, and for the same reasons, religion filled the whole of life and engrossed all branches of knowledge. There was no such thing as secular science; religion placed its stamp on everything, and turned the currents of thought into its own channels. One must not hope therefore to find, among the Jews of Northern France, those literary species which blossomed and flourished in Spain; philosophy did not exist ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... fact that he has never been taught how to cultivate the spiritual sense. This is an art. In it St. Francis de Sales was very proficient. It gave George Herbert and a group of his imitators great contentment in the state to which they were called. As a book of secular meditation the "Religio Medici" is full of good points. For instance, Sir Thomas starts one on the road to meditation on the difference between democracy and freedom, humanity and ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... over in ten minutes, and which still retained remnants of its past grandeur. But this morning she brought there something like a nervous disquietude. She walked for a few moments along the terrace, at the two extremities of which stood two secular cypresses like two enormous funeral tapers, which could be seen three leagues off. The slope then descended to the railroad, walls of uncemented stones supporting the red earth, in which the last vines were dead; and on these giant steps grew only ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... first mentioned above is a letter from a Manila Jesuit, relating events in that city during the year 1690-91. As in the lifetime of Pardo, there are dissensions between the ecclesiastical and the secular powers, the former represented by Bishop Barrientos, acting ruler of the archdiocese; the latter by the Audiencia until July, 1690, and after that by the new governor, Zabalburu. The bishop attempts to remove by force some of his prebends from the Augustinian convent, but is foiled ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... secular courts we meet with both, mercy and justice. Justice is certain by the laws and the verdict rendered, mercy is uncertain. In this matter that relates to God the case is different; for grace and mercy have been promised us by a certain word, and the Gospel is the word ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... West," for the city lies upon the Pacific watershed, although the Western Sierra Madre intervenes between her and the great ocean. The population of Guadalajara numbers rather more than 101,000, and the city is famed for its public monuments and institutions, religious and secular. The elevation above sea-level of 5,175 feet insures an equable climate, tending to a spring-like warmth, yet of an exhilarating character, due to the breezes which sweep over the broad valley in which it is situated. The region around the city is one of varied topographical interest. To the ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... known as "riding the one legged horse." Ludwig Salzmann informs us that in Thibet impalement is considered the most appropriate punishment for crimes against religion; and although in China it is sometimes awarded for secular offences, it is most frequently adjudged in cases of sacrilege. To the person in actual experience of impalement it must be a matter of minor importance by what kind of civil or religious dissent he was made acquainted with its discomforts; but doubtless ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... beggar burglar solar cedar jugular scholar calendar secular dollar grammar tabular poplar pillar sugar jocular globular mortar lunar vulgar popular insular Templar ocular muscular nectar similar tubular altar ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... instincts and most of his labors antagonistic to those of the aristocracy. It is a phase of the same fact to say that he also represented the active force of religious feeling in politics, as opposed to pure secular statesmanship. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... Court note: the nascent civil court system, administered by region, has judges who practice secular and ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... buildings having been swept away by the Danes, whether AElfred restored it or not is uncertain, but it is certain that a house of secular canons was established at Wimborne by a king of the name of Eadward; but again there is some uncertainty as to whether this king was the one who is sometimes called the Eadward the Elder, sometimes Eadward the Unconquered, son and successor of AElfred, or Eadward the Confessor. Anyhow, it became ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins

... days. While all other buildings sacred and secular sank in the flames, only the temple of Mefitis outside the walls was left standing, saved either by its position or the power of the ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... (1195-1214). This Abbot derived his name from the Cell of Wallingford, of which he had been Prior. He was learned, pious, and a good disciplinarian. He left the secular affairs of the Abbey to be managed by the Prior and Cellarer, and devoted himself to his religious duties, and to the fabric. He pulled down the Norman west front with the intention of rebuilding it; he dug foundations, but after he had spent Warren's ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... permission from the higher powers, before looking at the 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 ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... organization; I perceive its disadvantages clearly enough. But I do not hold that a system under which all important public trusts, political and professional, civil and military, ecclesiastical and secular, are held by educated men—that is, men of trained faculties and disciplined judgment—is ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... reverence exacted by sacerdotal caste, were more than repaid by the consideration willingly paid to superior culture. What changes, many of them for the better, some of them surely for the worse, and all of them inevitable, did not Josiah Quincy see in that wellnigh secular life which linked the war of independence to the war of nationality! We seemed to see a type of them the other day in a colored man standing with an air of comfortable self-possession while his boots were brushed by a youth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... of mass 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 in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... baked bricks used by the Chaldaeans for recording the eclipses of 1062 B.C. and 762 B.C.; and has thereby been enabled, in the last few years, to correct the lunar tables of Hansen, and to find a more accurate value for the secular acceleration of the moon's longitude and the node of her orbit than any that could be obtained from modern observations made with ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... secular buildings, the town hall replaced in 1869 the old exchange, which had been burnt down in 1862. The Grosvenor Museum and School of Art, the foundation of which was suggested by Charles Kingsley the novelist, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... 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 ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... crammed with books. None of the many pictures could cope in dash and color with his own collection and, what seemed to him singular in a Protestant home, they were chiefly of the Madonna; all in all, a tame assortment beside his copy of the secular masterpiece in the great metropolitan hotel. Over one of the crowded bookcases was the cast of a winged woman. It was armless and headless, and Shelby wondered by what accident it had become so damaged, and why it was ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... Jawf, Al Madinah, Al Qasim, Al Qurayyat, Ar Riyad, Ash Sharqiyah, 'Asir, Ha'il, Jizan, Makkah, Najran, Tabuk Independence: 23 September 1932 (unification) Constitution: none; governed according to Shari'a (Islamic law) Legal system: based on Islamic law, several secular codes have been introduced; commercial disputes handled by special committees; has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction National holiday: Unification of the Kingdom, 23 September (1932) Executive branch: monarch ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... mysteries, are helpless before the logical mind until they abandon defence and boldly attack their opponents' capital incapacity, saying, "Precisely because you insist upon daylight, you miss discovering the stars." The battle is a secular one, and that sentence contains the reason, too, why it will never be ended in this world. But the theologians may strengthen their conviction, if not their argument, by noting how often the more delicate shades ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... trying hour when the tempest of "the Reformation" involved both in a common danger, and demonstrated their equal heroism. As elsewhere in Christendom, the sudden aggrandizement of these mendicant institutes excited jealousy and hostility among certain of the secular clergy and Bishops. This feeling was even stronger in England during the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., when, according to the popular superstition, the Devil appeared at various places "in the form of a grey friar." The great champion of the secular clergy, in the controversy ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... of Italy had a wider range in art than in other lands; for being less devoted to the service of the church, they were employed for more secular works. It is true that the separate statues of the Madonna were very numerous, and that tomb-sculpture was important; but added to these there were civil monuments to show forth the glory of the cities and their great men, and there were public fountains and other sculptures which told of the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... Christopher has just gone to Lewes," he said. "So I heard more of the favourable side, but I heard a good deal against them, too. There was a secular priest talking against them one day, with our chaplain, who is a defender ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... looked attractive, despite his well-worn suit. Chester Rand was the son of a widow, who lived in a tiny cottage about fifty rods west of the Presbyterian church, of which, by the way, Silas Tripp was senior deacon, for he was a leader in religious as well as secular affairs. ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr

... already been remarked that Shintoism has nothing corresponding to our public worship; but every morning and evening the priests—whose office seems held in no particular sanctity, and who are at liberty, at any time, to adopt a more secular calling—perform a service before the altar, vested in white dresses, somewhat resembling albs and confined at the waist by a girdle. The service consists of the presentation of offerings and of the recital of various invocations, ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.

... its name and modify its creed, its ritual, its discipline, or the details of its organisation; or else, that the only body which had in theory a right to interfere was doomed, by sufficient considerations, to absolute inaction. The church, from a secular point of view, was not so much a department of the state as an aggregate of offices, the functions of which were prescribed by unalterable tradition. It consisted of a number of bishops, deans and chapters, rectors, vicars, curates, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... fortunate in an impoverished death bed before actual bankruptcy or destitution supervenes. Their chances of ascendant means are less in their shops than in any lottery that was ever planned. The secular development of transit and communications has made the organisation of distributing businesses upon large and economical lines, inevitable; except in the chaotic confusions of newly opened countries, the day when a man might ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... holy sister!" said Custance sarcastically. "The angels come down from Heaven, to set thee every morrow in a bath of rose-water, trow? While I, poor sinner that I am, having been twice wed, may journey to Heaven as best I can in the mire. 'Tis well, methinks, there be some secular in the world, for these monks and nuns be so holy that elsewise there were no use for ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... laid his hand upon his breast, at this solemn declaration, the hauberk, concealed by his rocket, was heard to clatter: "Ah! my lord!" retorted Douglas, "your conscience sounds hollow." He then expostulated with the secular leaders, and Sir Patrick Hamilton, brother to Arran, was convinced by his remonstrances; but Sir James, the natural son of the earl, upbraided his uncle with reluctance to fight. "False bastard!" answered Sir Patrick, "I will fight to day where thou darest not be ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... imagine but that the foundations of all knowledge—secular or sacred—were laid when intelligence dawned, though the superstructure remained for long ages so slight and feeble as to be compatible with the existence of almost any general view respecting the mode of governance of the universe. No doubt, from the first, there were certain phenomena ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... it should be strong of its kind. That was the case, I think I couldn't but feel, at every moment of the couple of hours I spent in the vast, cold, empty shell, out of which the Benedictine brotherhood sheltered there for ages had lately been turned by the strong arm of a secular State. There was but one good brother left, a very lean and tough survivor, a dusky, elderly, friendly Abbate, of an indescribable type and a perfect manner, of whom I think I felt immediately thereafter that I should have liked to say much, but ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... or roofed, which were used, partly as commercial exchanges, partly as halls of justice. It is still often said that the Christian basilicas were merely adaptations of such buildings to sacred purposes. Some of the features of the Christian plan are akin to those of the secular basilica. The apse with its semi-circular range of seats and its altar reproduces the judicial tribune, with its seats for the praetor and his assistant judges, and its altar on which oaths were taken. The open galleries, which in some of the earliest ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson

... from other lands. In the opinion of these radicals the Church ought to be deprived both of its property and of its monopoly of education. The one should be turned over to the nation, to which it properly belonged, and should be converted into public utilities; the other should be made absolutely secular, in order to destroy clerical influence over the youthful mind. In this program radicals and liberals concurred with varying degrees of intensity, while the moderates strove to hold the balance ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd

... why should I, as a clergyman, interest myself specially in the spread of Natural Science? Am I not going out of my proper sphere to meddle with secular matters? Am I not, indeed, going into a sphere out of which I had better keep myself, and all over whom I may have influence? For is not science antagonistic to religion? and, if so, what has a clergyman to do, save to warn the young ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley

... themselves acquainted with the ancient language of the culture of the latter. First the Digambara and later the ['S]vetambara began to use Sanskrit. They did not rest content with explaining their own teaching in Sanskrit works: they turned also to the secular sciences of the Brahma[n.]s. They have accomplished so much of importance, in grammar, in astronomy, as well as in some branches of letters, that they have won respect even from their enemies, and some of their works are still ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler

... did not conform was deprived of more civil privileges than a nonconformist is deprived of by the Test Act in England. Both the one and the other must have occasioned much formality and hypocrisy. The mysteries of our holy religion have been prostituted to mere secular views ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... is a common name for the Brahmanic Indra, adopted by Buddhism into the circle of its own great adherents;—it has been said, "because of his popularity." He is now the representative of the secular power, the valiant protector of the Buddhist body, but is looked upon as inferior to Sakyamuni, and every ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... development of this subject. I go forward to treat of the Papacy, deprived of all temporal support from the fall of the western empire, taking up the secular capital into a new spiritual Rome, and creating a Christendom out of the northern tribes who ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... double significance as I look back from them to the little scene we saw at Barcy under the snow—a halt of some French infantry, in front of the ruined church. The "salut an drapeau" was going on, that simple, daily rite which, like a secular mass, is the outward and visible sign to the French soldier of his country and what he owes her. This passion of French patriotism—what a marvellous force, what a regenerating force it has shown itself ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... necessary to make this remark, since the process of astrologizing history, whether derived from the Bible or from secular writers, has been carried very far. Thus Dr. H. Winckler writes down the account of the first three Persian kings, given us by Herodotus, as myths of Aries, Taurus, and Gemini; David and Goliath, too, are but Marduk and Tiamat, or Orion and Cetus, but David has become the Giant, and Goliath ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... have never considered. There are many opportunities in classes and lectures for men to gain information, but they will be of little real use unless men will think for themselves, and work out the subjects instead of taking their opinions ready made. Study, not simply listen. Study both secular and religious subjects. You may be sure that there can be no advance in real self-improvement unless it is well balanced. Religious knowledge should go hand in hand with secular knowledge. Christ should be our great example in ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous

... in a manner ordained by election and birthright to rule over Kensington. His father had been one of those strong-willed, clear-visioned, intelligent young Eastern divinity students who brought to a place of more voluptuous and easy burgher society the secular vigor of New England pastors. Being always superior and always sincere, his rule had been ungrumblingly accepted. Another generation, at middle age, found him over them as he had been over their parents—a righteous, intrepid Protestant priest, good at denunciation, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... lawyer; and a secular priest; A doctor that hath forfeited his wits By jealousy; an astrologian That in his works said such a day o' the month Should be the day of doom, and, failing of 't, Ran mad; an English tailor craz'd i' ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... without a fireside or an affection they may call their own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchangeable spirit—it is those who understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular right to our fidelity, to our obedience. Yes! few of us understand, but we all feel it though, and I say all without exception, because those who do not feel do not count. Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... the pleasure, some day, of discovering your uncommon signature in the secular corner ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... to do," said the curate, "is to hand them over to the secular arm of the housekeeper, and ask me not why, or ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... to 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 large ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... persecution from the emperors of China, in which their sacred books were destroyed; and in India the Brahmans at last regained their power, and expelled Buddhism from the country. In the year 845 A.D. two hundred and sixty thousand monks and nuns were made to return to secular life in China, being regarded as mere drones,—lazy and useless members of the community. But the policy of persecution was reversed by succeeding emperors. In the thirteenth century there were in China nearly fifty thousand Buddhist temples and two hundred and thirteen thousand monks; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... four beaterios, or houses of retreat for females who did not take the vows. Each of these establishments possessed a chapel, so that there were at Lima more than a hundred edifices for worship, where eight hundred secular or regular priests, three hundred religieuses, lay-brothers and sisters, performed the duties ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne

... proportion of the schools in any mission receive a Government grant, we have at least some guidance as to the extent to which the mission accepts the aim of general enlightenment. We have also some assurance that the schools reach the Government standard of efficiency in the teaching of secular subjects. ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen

... have ended in the whole matter being scornfully dismissed. So they stood on their dignity and tried to bluster. 'We have condemned Him; that is enough. We look to you to carry out the sentence at our bidding.' So the 'ecclesiastical authority' has often said to the 'secular arm' since then, and unfortunately the civil authority has not always been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... with the nuns of Fontevrault. The parents of these young ladies respectful as they are to these monks, would have looked askance at the innovation. The Fathers never go in there. They are to be seen at the abbey church, where they sing and say their offices. Only the three secular chaplains of the abbess penetrate into the house of the nuns; the youngest of the three ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... 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 religious ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... was daily producing disasters and crimes. The leaders of the Club were not to be so drawn away from their object. It was moved and resolved that the consideration of ecclesiastical affairs should be postponed till secular affairs had been settled. The unjust and absurd Act of Incapacitation was carried by seventy-four voices to twenty-four. Another vote still more obviously aimed at the House of Stair speedily followed. The Parliament ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... poles they are very numerous. A French commission observed 150 auroras in 200 days. Their height is variously estimated at from 90 to 460 miles; they are most frequent at the equinoxes and least so at the solstices. There is a secular variation also, they attain a maximum of occurrence every 11 years together with sun spots, with a minimum 5 or 6 years after the maximum. There is also a period of 60 years, coincident with disturbances in the earth's ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... 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 ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... and held by an army of Taeping banditti against the Imperial forces. To the right and left, mile after mile, rose the line of lofty wall and grey turret, while above all appeared not only the graceful pagodas, which have been for ages the boast of Soochow and the dense foliage of secular trees—the invariable glory of Chinese cities—but also the shimmering roofs of newly decorated palaces confidently occupied by the vainglorious leaders of the rebellion. The proximity of the rebel line became apparent ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... not conscious of it. He was as secular, as cocksure, as irritating as ever, when Ancrum probed him on the subject of the Hall of Science or the various Secularist publications ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Lutherans, and Moravians, all of whom believed in individual freedom, the divine right of secular power, and personal responsibility.[5] The strongest stock among these immigrants, however, were the Scotch-Irish, "a God-fearing, Sabbath-keeping, covenant-adhering, liberty-loving, and tyrant-hating race," which had formed ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... still capable of being ministered to by us. The woman who did so on earth had no monopoly of this sacred office, but it continues still. And every housewife, as she goes about her duties, and every domestic servant, as she moves round her mistress's dinner-table, and all of us, in our secular avocations, as people call them, may indeed serve Christ, if only we have regard to Him in the doing of them. There is also a yet higher sense in which that ministration, incumbent upon all the healed, and spontaneous on their ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... talk," returned Diana. "It is all very well for priests and nuns, but secular people have nothing to ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... have ventured upon such a tone in reference to any secular matter; the subject being religion, she was of course justified in ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... lady, you would not have wondered at his madness; and should any author desire to utilize this incident, let him comprehend that the order of Sisters of Charity admits of its members leaving the ranks by marriage, theirs being a secular order; so that here are the chances for a story of the freshest kind. As for the lady doctor in fiction, her advantages would be awful to contemplate in sickness, when we are weak and fevered, and absurdly grateful for a newly-beaten pillow ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... Clerk had to furnish witnesses from his own staff while he administered the secular rites and exacted the solemn promises which so few have kept, and invoked the help of God which is so rarely manifest or so subtly hidden, in the human-animal-angel ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... it has burdened so long. For sixty times sixty slow, throbbing seconds, the silent hand creeps unnoticed round the dial and then, with whirr and clang, the bell rings out, and another hour of the world's secular day is gone. The billows of the thunder-cloud slowly gather into vague form, and slowly deepen in lurid tints, and slowly roll across the fainting blue; they touch—and then the fierce flash, like the swift hand on the palace-wall ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... of Arches and the privy council quashed this judgment on a technical plea. The result was to make Denison a keen champion of the ritualistic school. He edited The Church and State Review (1862-1865). Secular state education and the "conscience clause" were anathema to him. Until the end of his life he remained a protagonist in theological controversy and a keen fighter against latitudinarianism and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... "Es wollt' uns Gott genaedig sein," supposed to be derived from an old secular melody. Harmony by ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... disgust at the primate's action was the more complete since Bishop Bek now arrayed himself on the side of the opposition. Edward showed his ill-will by consigning Henry of Keighley to prison. But the coalition was too formidable to be withstood. The king agreed to all the secular demands of the estates, accepted the hated disafforestments and directed the re-issue of a further confirmation of the charters, but refused his assent to the demand of the prelates. A grant of a fifteenth was then made, and Edward dismissed ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... foreigners, but because they introduced innovations of all kinds, and sought to reduce the Church of England to subjection to Rome, whereas previously it had been wholly independent of Papal authority. In secular matters, too, there were dangers that threatened the tranquillity of the country. Chief among these were the turbulence and ambition of Tostig, and the menace to the kingdom by his extensive earldom of Northumbria with its alien Danish population, which was rendered more serious by his ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... there was a new sound in the house. An indecent, secular sound. A door near the top of the house was burst violently open, and there was a scuffle. A loud voice shouted twice unmistakeably and distinctly, "So—o, good bitch!" And then the astounded Tom heard the worrying of a terrier, and the squeak of a dying rat. There was no mistake about ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... nonplussed, bewildered, frantic. Where on earth was I to get the article? I had asked, and asked, and asked again, and was tired of asking. I had travelled fifty thousand miles by forty different modes of conveyance; consulted in their own capitals with thirty secular monarchs, governing three-fourths of the world; and I had with earnest, respectful enquiry approached the sacerdotal thrones of the spiritual monarchs of the eleven principal religions of mankind, and yet I could get no tidings of it. What was I ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... was 63 pounds per annum. She had resolutely 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 ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... this word literally mean to summon or call together in public convocation. It was, therefore, used to designate any popular assembly which met for the transaction of public business. As an example of the secular use of the term, see Acts 19: 32, 39. This particular application of the word, however, does ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... 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 ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... no crime by which they could gain wealth or position. The palaces of popes and prelates were scenes of the vilest debauchery. Some of the reigning pontiffs were guilty of crimes so revolting that secular rulers endeavored to depose these dignitaries of the church as monsters too vile to be tolerated. For centuries Europe had made no progress in learning, arts, or civilization. A moral and intellectual ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... 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 ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... secular variations Faraday points out (2880) that the temperature of the air at the equatorial parts of the earth is greater than in latitudes north and south, and as an elevation of temperature diminishes ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... home his youthful eyes had looked upon the war in his own country with distrust. It must be some sort of a play affair. He had long despaired of witnessing a Greeklike struggle. Such would be no more, he had said. Men were better, or more timid. Secular and religious education had effaced the throat-grappling instinct, or else firm finance held ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... thus: "Nor can we hope happier results either for religion or the government, from the wishes of those who are eagerly desirous that the Church should be separated from the State, and the mutual good understanding of the sovereign secular power and the sacerdotal authority be broken up. It is evident that these lovers of most shameless liberty dread that concord which has always been fortunate and wholesome, both for sacred and civil interests." To the like effect Pius IX., as opportunity offered, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... made good the claim of English needlework to its first place in the world, since nothing more wonderful had or has been produced in the whole long history of needlework art. It was undoubtedly from this school, filtered through generations of secular practice, that the Moravian picture embroidery came to ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler

... nominated to this high dignity Whitgift bishop of Worcester, known to polemics as the zealous antagonist of Cartwright the puritan, and further recommended to her majesty by his single life, his talents for business, whether secular or ecclesiastical, his liberal and hospitable style of living, and the numerous train of attendants which swelled the pomp of his appearance on occasions of state and ceremony, when he even claimed to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... 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. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... nothing unsuitable in the ceremonies of graduate Oxford and the ribaldries of undergraduate Oxford taking place in the consecrated building of St. Mary's; but the more sober genius of Anglicanism was shocked at these secular intrusions, and Sheldon provided his University with a worthy home, where its great functions have been performed ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells

... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... received with great joy, he was brought to New Sarum with many tears and lamentations, and honourably buried in the new church of the Blessed Virgin. Matthew Paris gravely records that at his funeral, despite gusts of wind and rain, the candles furnished a continual light the whole of the way. Of all secular figures connected with this cathedral his is perhaps the most prominent, nor is his fame merely local. He was active in public affairs during the reign of King John, and one of the noticeable heroes in an expedition to ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... because, it may be, they have more narrowly and diligently searched into their duty of these things than others have? What then? must all men that have not so large acquaintance of their duty herein be excommunicated? Indeed, it were to be wished that more moderation in apparel and secular concernments were found among churches; but God forbid, that if they should come short herein, that we should say, as one lately said, that he could not communicate with such a people, because they were proud and superfluous in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... final consideration, which comprises, as it were, all the others. The more the conditions of men are equalized and assimilated to each other, the more important is it for religions, whilst they carefully abstain from the daily turmoil of secular affairs, not needlessly to run counter to the ideas which generally prevail, and the permanent interests which exist in the mass of the people. For as public opinion grows to be more and more evidently the first and most irresistible of existing powers, the religious principle ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... his lyre, having been tuned in harmony with his sacred calling, he soon began to distinguish himself as a writer of hymns. Some of the finest hymns of which the Swedish language can boast, are from the pen of Johan Olof Wallin. Nor were secular themes wholly neglected. On January 20, 1808, on the occasion of the unveiling of the statue of King Gustavus Third, he produced the famous Dithyramb, a song which has taken a permanent and honored place in Swedish literature. The same year ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin

... mother church, he maintained his fidelity, nor would swerve in the least from the articles he had signed with his own hand. Having therefore declared him an obstinate heretic, they delivered him up to the secular power, and he was burned in Smithfield, March 16th, 1555, triumphant in the midst of the flames, and adding to the noble company of martyrs, who had preceded him through the path of the fiery trial to the realms ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... should be pleased to aid this [our] cause against those rebels to His church and sacrament, and to your Majesty, and disturbers of the common peace. These joyous causes furnished ecclesiastical and secular motive to request me, with loud and frequent acclamations of joy, to hasten as quickly as possible the preparation of this fleet. Notwithstanding that it was detained, they said that it could go out; for they were assured that, since we had ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... government being at that time not merely second cousins, but Siamese twins, Jean Paul had expressed himself on things churchly as well as secular. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Jeroboam forgot this rule and put the improvement and fortifying of his kingdom first—his secular affairs—and as a ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... fail, if He should call us to do something different. But when we are consecrated to Him, we shall be ready for anything He may require of us, and be as well qualified to serve Him by the sick bed of a brother, or even in the secular duties of home, as in standing in the pulpit or leading a ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... Represented in Parliament; The Fixing of Prices; Sumptuary Laws; The Benefit of Clergy; Partial Codification; The Statute of Westminster I; Law Extended to All People; Labor Makes Men Free; The Freedom of Elections; "Cruel and Unusual Punishment"; Sexual Offences Made Secular Crimes; Earliest Duties on Imports; Early Duties on Wool; The Law ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... to them many of the privileges enjoyed by the clergy. Indeed the monks were reckoned as clergymen and were called the "regular" clergy because they lived according to a regula, or rule, to distinguish them from the "secular" clergy, who continued to live in the world (saeculum) and took no ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... hold pure, out of the lay life around us. Under this process, even if imperfectly performed, it will soon become clear that religion in greater or less proportions is lurking everywhere. We shall see it yielded up even by things in which we should least look for it—by wit, by humour, by secular ambition, by most forms of vice, and by our daily light amusements. Much more shall we see it yielded up by heroism, by purity, by affection, and by love of truth—by all those things that the ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... oost. And this yere ij men were hangid in Thamys, at the last hille beyond seint Katerynes; for thei had robbid and murdred vitailers in the water. And in this yere Sir Richard Wiche sometyme vicarie of Depford, and another secular man were dampned for heretiks, and brent at Tour hille, in a mornyng at vij of ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous

... coming over the country in regard to popular feeling towards priestly interference in personal and secular affairs. The claim to have control of the concerns of all men may now be said to be but the first flush of the fiery zeal of divinity students, fresh from the red-hot teachings of bigoted Moulla masters, who regret the loss of their old supremacy, and view with alarm the spread ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon

... doubt, in old times, had many dances, sacred and secular. Some of these were very different from what they now are, and in consequence it is not easy to recognize their meaning. Indians declare that in their youth dances were much more common. Possibly some of these will never be danced again. That the Micmacs, ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes

... of the Guanches, is a neat town, with a population of 8000 souls. I was not struck with the vast number of monks and secular ecclesiastics, which travellers have thought themselves bound to find in every country under the Spanish government; nor shall I stop to enter into the description of the churches; the library of the Dominicans, which contains scarcely a few hundred ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... colors,—appearing like poppies once more, and looking very much the better for the change, too; and she felt that it was truly sad for young women to—well, to show their hands, so to speak. They might have waited for some weeks before returning to the colors of the secular. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... the sixth century. To these two men, Cassiodorus, the ex-chancellor of the Gothic king Theodoric, and Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine order, is due the gratitude of the modern world. It was through their foresight in setting the monks at work copying the scriptures and the secular literature of antiquity that we owe the preservation of most of the books that have survived the ruins of the ancient world. At the monastery of Monte Cassino, founded by Saint Benedict in the year 529, and at that of Viviers, ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater

... made little change, 575 The bishop the parish minister, ib. Every one who could might preach if the bishops permitted, 576 Bishops thickly planted—all of equal rank—the greatest had very limited jurisdiction, 577 Ecclesiastics often engaged in secular pursuits, 578 The Alexandrian presbyters made their bishops, 580 When this practice ceased, 581 Alexandrian bishops not originally ordained by imposition of hands, 582 Roman presbyters and others made their bishops, 583 The bishop the presiding elder—early ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... And his Parliament In sacred and secular things may consent; So righteously firm, And religiously free, That Papists and Atheists suppressed may be. And as there's one Deity does over-reign us, One faith and one form and one Church may contain us. Then peace, truth, and plenty our kingdom will ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... the broad principle of license is the one that can serve the cosmogony best. In the next he rather surprises the reader by exhibiting himself as the eulogist and expounder of Jesus Christ,—but not after the manner of Saint Paul. No doubt, the secular and semi-pagan tone of this dissertation will jar against the orthodoxy of a great many readers,—to whom, however, it will be interesting as a literary curiosity. But it is meant to show the character of Shelley in a more amiable light than that ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... "you're thinking of those poor bishops; but you haven't done anything to the Portuguese patriarch yet. Besides, only half of Belem is a church. The other half is a school, quite secular." ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham

... had barely struggled to the shore, and found his dear ones safe, and his enemies shattered and helpless on the strand. They hurried on so as to be in time. The priest, a brave and cautious man, who had often before carried the rites of the Church to dying men in the midst of the enemy, was in a secular dress, and when Berenger had given the password, and obtained admittance they separated, and only met again to cross the bridge. They found Osbert and Humfrey on guard, saying that the sufferer still lingered, occasionally in a terrible paroxysm of bodily anguish, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge



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



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