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Secular   /sˈɛkjələr/   Listen
Secular

adjective
1.
Of or relating to the doctrine that rejects religion and religious considerations.
2.
Characteristic of or devoted to the temporal world as opposed to the spiritual world.  Synonyms: temporal, worldly.  "Temporal possessions of the church"
3.
Not concerned with or devoted to religion.  Synonym: profane.  "Secular drama" , "Secular architecture" , "Children being brought up in an entirely profane environment"
4.
Of or relating to clergy not bound by monastic vows.
5.
Characteristic of those who are not members of the clergy.  Synonyms: laic, lay.  "The lay ministry"



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"Secular" Quotes from Famous Books



... cities, they are no longer satisfied with the occasional preaching of an uneducated man, however religious and earnest he may be. The Sunday school has become an established part of the work of the church and as people have appreciated the value of education in secular affairs, they have come to place more hope in the religious training of their children than in merely saving them by sudden conversion. The church is becoming more and more an institution for the training and expression of religious ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... religious verse is there any need to quote more than a stanza from the Nut Brown Maid just to remind us what the secular ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... still more to his delight, that I told the poor fellow I could help to refresh his memory, knowing, as I did, every word of the litanies by heart; and, accordingly, it was agreed on that I should impart religious instruction, in exchange for the secular knowledge ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... than Avernus" and O'Grady evokes for us and his hero the legendary past, and the great hill seems to be like Mount Sinai, thronged with immortals, and it lives and speaks to the fugitive boy, "the last great secular champion of the Gael," and inspires him for the fulfilment of his destiny. We might say of Red Hugh and indeed of all O'Grady's heroes that they are the spiritual progeny of Cuculain. From Red Hugh down to the boys ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... under the savage Mary, amounts, in her short reign, to 277. The last person who suffered at the stake in England was Bartholomew Logatt, who was burnt here in 1611, as a blasphemous heretic, according to the sentence pronounced by John King, bishop of London. The bishop consigned him to the secular of our monarch James, who took care to give the sentence full effect. This place, as well as Tybourn, was called The Elms, and used for the execution of malefactors even before the year 1219. In the year 1530, there was a most severe and singular ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various

... was for the moment lifted above the ordinary rank of humanity. Some feeling of the same kind must have originally suggested similar means for the protection of children under the age of puberty. They also wore the toga praetexta, which, though associated by us with secular magistrates, had undoubtedly a religious origin. There are distinct signs that children were in some sense sacred, and at the same time that they needed special protection against the all-abounding evil influences to be met with in daily life.[123] Thus this particular form of amulet became a recognised ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... said that the spectator quite lost sense of what day it was. Nothing could be more secular than all the sights and sounds. It was the Fourth of July, less the fire-crackers and the drunkenness, and it was the high day of the week. But if it was very wicked, and I must recognize that the scene would be shocking to most of my readers, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... would have given up the ghost without more ado, had she known what secular and unministerial passions were converging about Parson Thayer's peaceful library. As it was, she had a distinct feeling that life wasn't as simple as it had been heretofore, and that there were puzzling problems to solve. She was almost certain that she had caught ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... last and is highest in music—of harmonic progressions—could best be taught by a similar familiarity with the German four-part chorals. They are the very embodiment of vigorous, soul-stirring harmony, the basis of sacred, as the Volkslied is of secular, music. "Each of our churches," says Thibaut, the author of the celebrated little book on Purity in Musical Art, "had a period of the highest enthusiasm, which will never return, and each of them has at this very period of the most ardent religious zeal done its utmost ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... masters. For this reason William imposed the famous Salisbury oath. In France the sub-tenant was bound to follow and obey his immediate lord rather than the king. William was determined that every man's duty to the king should come first. Similarly, he separated church courts from the secular courts, in order that the former might be saved from the feudal influence of the latter; and he enforced the ecclesiastical reforms of Hildebrand, especially the prohibition of the marriage of the clergy, lest they should convert their benefices ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... other was the "moral perversion" of the King. In March matters came to a crisis. A number of University professors, headed by the rigid Lasaulx, held an indignation meeting in support of the Ultramontane Cabinet and "their efforts to espouse the cause of good morals." This activity on the part of a secular body was resented by the clergy, who considered that they, and not the University, were the official custodians of the public's "morals." But if it upset the clergy, it upset Ludwig still more; and, to mark his displeasure, he summarily dismissed four of the lecturers he himself had appointed. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... work was the reconstruction of the Lady Chapel, which was not completed till 1896, after the tedious business of releasing it from its secular holders, and the recovery of the original design amidst the mutilation in which they left it. The whole has been admirably carried through by Sir Aston Webb, R.A., who has restored the precious fabric as nearly as possible to its original state, by replacing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... Christianity, prosperity, and progress. The task of comparing will be highly instructive to the youthful mind, and at the same time agreeable and interesting. As an example, here is the way a beginning is recommended, for a comparison in secular affairs. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... divide up on this thing. I will undertake to look after the boy's physical and—well—secular interests, if you like. I will teach him to ride, shoot, box, and handle the work on the ranch, in short, educate him in things practical, while you take ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... forth, The abused old man, the proud, insulted youth, O'er the late path of his triumphal march, Befouled with mud, with raiment torn, wild hair And ragged beard, to Vladislaw. He sat Expectant in his cabinet. On one side His secular adviser, Narzerad, Quick-eyed, sharp-nosed, red-whiskered as a fox; On the other hand his spiritual guide, Bishop of Olmutz, unctuous, large, and bland. "So these twain are chief culprits!" sneered the Duke, Measuring with the noble's ignorant scorn His masters of a lesser caste. "Stand forth! ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... trenchant and undiscriminating logic of the French infidels; but appreciating its beauty with the freshness of a poetical genius, and regarding it as one phase of the religious consciousness, endeavoured, by means of the methods employed in secular learning, to collect the precious ideas of eternal truth to which Christianity seemed to it to give expression, and by means of speculative criticism to exhibit the literary and psychological causes which it supposed ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... denomination. I confess it is not a little puzzling to find a narrative poem of some five hundred lines or more included under the heading of hymns; it would seem that nearly all lyric poetry of an essentially Christian character was so designated, to separate it from secular or pagan poetry. In Prudentius' first published work, 'Liber Cathemerinon,' we find hymns composed absolutely after the manner of St Ambrose, in the same or in similar metres, but with this difference, the hymns of Prudentius are three, four, and sometimes seven times longer than those of St Ambrose. ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... complicated character. We shall find them not only encouraging the good by exhortation, but terrifying the wicked by reproof and denunciation. In the earliest ages of the Church, while religion was yet pure from secular advantages, the punishment of sinners was publick censure, and open penance; penalties inflicted merely by ecclesiastical authority, at a time while the church had yet no help from the civil power; while the hand of the magistrate lifted only the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... touch on more than a few characteristic examples of Purcell's achievement. There are many charming detached songs; the Harpsichord Lessons contain exquisite things. There is also a quantity of unpublished sacred and secular music of ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman

... alien and inhuman world, can so powerless a creature as Man preserve his aspirations untarnished? A strange mystery it is that Nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolutions of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth at last a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking Mother. In spite of Death, the mark and seal of the parental control, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... never have done—he spoke to Jean Jacques concerning Carmen's neglect 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... with other groups of edifices erected by the same parties. (“Archæolog. Journ.,” No. 12, 1846, pp. 291–2.) It was established as a collegiate institution, with provision for a provost, six priests, six secular clerks, and six choristers. Dedicated to the Trinity, it is a noble stone structure, in shape cruciform, with nave, aisles, and north and south transepts, chancel, north and south porches, and tower at the west end. There were formerly cloisters on the south side, but they were demolished. ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... avarice, and profligacy prevailed. Men shrank from 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 paralysis had fallen ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... reversed characteristics of the old Conquistador. But, unlike that of the pious Juan, the mind of the little Jose was not so simple as to permit it to accept without remonstrance the tenets of his family's faith. Blind acceptance of any teaching, religious or secular, early became quite impossible to him. This entailed many an hour of suffering to the lad, and brought down upon his little head severe punishments from his preceptors and parents. But in vain they admonished and threatened. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... 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 ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... invisible angel-chorus are those of the blessed maid trusting in God her savior, on a theme for which we are prepared by preluding choirs of harps, wood and strings. It is sung on an ancient Church tone that in its height approaches the mode of secular song. With all the power of broad rhythm, and fulness of harmony and volume, the feeling is of conventional worship. With all the purity of shimmering harmonies the form is ecclesiastical in its main lines and depends upon liturgic symbols for its effect and upon ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... is in many respects a close reproduction of the mediaeval system, with its regime dispersif of feudalism in secular politics, and its concentration of Papal authority in the Church. For him, the growth of national States to their present dimensions, and, on the other hand, the increasing division of labour in the realm of thought, are equally steps in the wrong direction. Still more strongly, if possible, does ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... true the reverend gentleman was in evening clothes, while his hat and coat had a singularly secular, not to say fashionable, appearance; but, as he mentioned casually in the course of some extremely affable remarks, he had been dining in a country house, and had not thought it worth while changing before he left. After breakfasting he ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston

... it from the Life of Saint Remi, written, shortly before that period, by the saint's celebrated successor at Rheims, Archbishop Hincmar. "The bishop," says he, "went in search of the King at early morn in his bed-chamber, in order that, taking him at the moment of freedom from secular cares, he might more freely communicate to him the mysteries of the holy word. The King's chamber-people receive him with great respect, and the King himself runs forward to meet him. Thereupon they pass together into an oratory dedicated to St. Peter, chief of the apostles, and adjoining ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... drawers, as well as curls in various degrees of fuzzy laxness; but to look out on the week-day world from under a crisp and glossy front would be to introduce a most dreamlike and unpleasant confusion between the sacred and the secular. Occasionally, indeed, Mrs. Glegg wore one of her third-best fronts on a week-day visit, but not at a sister's house; especially not at Mrs. Tulliver's, who, since her marriage, had hurt her sister's feelings ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... arrived—the long expected day has come—and is gone. His triumph has been celebrated, and with a magnificence and a pomp greater than the traditionary glories of those of Pompey, Trajan, Titus, or even the secular games of Philip. ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... to him, not to be sweetened by all the charms of black eyes and a tune on the fiddle. He therefore told his new friends that he could not stop with them; at which they were not very sorry, seeing in him but a poor hand for making fancy baskets and stealing young geese. Thus King Boswell and his secular friend parted to their mutual satisfaction, John Clare returning once more to his accustomed field and gardening operations. However, the poet, all his life long, did not forget the gypsies; nor did they forget him. Whenever ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... being even desirable qualities in a history. Others wished to tell the facts, but lacked all power of discrimination. Certain of their books had a very wide circulation. In some out-of-the-way places they formed, with the almanac, the staple of secular literature. But they did not come under the consideration of trained scholars, so their errors remained uncorrected; and at this day it is a difficult, and often an impossible task, to tell which of the statements to accept and which ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... of charity which he vouchsafes to his opponents is to pray for their reformation; and this he does in terms not unlike those in which we can imagine a Portuguese priest interceding with Heaven for a Jew, delivered over to the secular ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... was too much immersed in parish matters to read anything secular, and neither he nor Gerard Godfrey seemed ever to talk of anything but parish matters. There was not the slightest interest in anything beyond. Foreign politics, European celebrities,—things in which Nuttie had learnt to take warm interest when with the ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... make 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 ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler

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

... selected from them are proposed as fit subjects for discussion to candidates aspiring to the doctor's degree. For in the above mentioned works and essays, such errors are taught under the semblance of asserting the rights of the priesthood and of the secular power, that instead of sound doctrines, thoroughly poisoned cups are offered to youth. For the said author hath not blushed to reproduce under a new form, in his impious propositions and comments, all those doctrines which have been condemned ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... number of saints' (p. 417) days; it was characteristic of the age that various saints' days were abolished, not so much for the purpose of checking superstition, as because they interfered with the harvest and other secular business.[1145] Other proclamations came forth in the same year for the destruction of shrines and the removal of relics. In 1543 a general revision of service-books was ordered, with a view to eradicating "false legends" and references to saints not mentioned in the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... abolition is that Catholics and non-Catholics who believe in the importance of religious instruction, and who see the pagan effect of purely secular instruction, do not send their children ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... tendering the chalice; while a bearded old man, with a scroll, is directing attention to what is going on in the outer circle. Passing under this portico we see, immediately behind it, six ladies, three religious and three secular; while to the right of the three secular ladies is a naked, winged female figure, with her foot on a sphere, a large goblet in her right hand, and some objects that look like fetters in her left hand. To the right of this figure ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... Brieuc, and of Saint Lo, then in addition he surrounds himself with a troop of jurists who work in relays in the interminable sessions of the trial. Some of the more important are Guillaume de Montigne, advocate of the secular court; Jean Blanchet, bachelor of laws; Guillaume Groyguet and Robert de la Riviere, licentiates in utroque jure, and Herve Levi, senescal of Quimper. Pierre de l'Hospital, chancellor of Brittany, who is to preside over the civil hearings ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... evolution the primer, from having been in mediaeval times a book wholly religious and devotional, has come to be in our day a book wholly secular and educational. We associate it with Noah Webster and the Harper Brothers. The New England Primer of the Puritans, with its odd jumble of piety and the three R's, marks a point of transition from the ancient to ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... essay on "The Problem of Philosophy at the Present Time," Professor Edward Caird says that "philosophy is not a first venture into a new field of thought, but the rethinking of a secular and religious consciousness which has been developed, in the main, independently of philosophy."[vii:A] If there be any inspiration and originality in this book, they are due to my great desire that philosophy should appear in its vital relations ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... round the altar, hearing our discussion in Latin, were not a little surprised, and everyone expressed his pleasure in praise of me. Before I had moustaches, my boy, I could read Latin, Greek, and French; I knew philosophy, mathematics, secular history, and all the sciences. The Lord gave me a marvellous memory. Sometimes, if I read a thing once or twice, I knew it by heart. My preceptors and patrons were amazed, and so they expected I should make a learned man, a luminary of the ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... usual, and I sought Aunt Mercy, who was preparing the Sunday's dinner. Twilight drew near, and the Sunday's clouds began to fall on my spirits. Between sundown and nine o'clock was a tedious interval. I was not allowed to go to bed, nor to read a secular book, or to amuse myself with anything. A dim oil-lamp burned on the high shelf of the middle room, our ordinary gathering-place. Aunt Mercy sat there, rocking in a low chair; the doors were open, and I wandered softly about. The smell ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... will not venture to assert positively that they belong to exactly the same period, the St. Dominic of the Borghese Gallery and the Knight of Malta of the Prado Gallery. In all three—in the two secular portraits as in the sacred piece which is also a portrait—the expression given, and doubtless intended, is that of a man who has withdrawn himself in his time of fullest physical vigour from the pomps and vanities of the world, and sadly concentrates his ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... nature. Monasticism is applied monism. If the world's existence be a sham, if its value compared with God be negligible, it becomes a religious duty to avoid all influences that heighten the illusion of the world's real existence and intrinsic value. The monist, like the monk, must renounce all secular interests and "go out of the world." The path of renunciation had an additional claim on the Christological monist. In his universal ideal, as manifested in time, the human elements were sublimated into the divine. Consequently his ideal of conduct imposed a negative attitude towards the world and ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce

... as the philosophers were never tired of complaining, a state within a state. No accurate statistics concerning it can be obtained. The whole number of persons vowed to religion in the country, both regular and secular, would seem to have been between one hundred and one hundred and thirty thousand. They owned probably from one fifth to one quarter of the soil. The proportion was excessive, but it does not appear that the lay inhabitants of the country ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... 22nd, the excommunication by Pope Alessandro VI. (Borgia) fell like a thunderclap, and the Medicean youths marched in triumphant procession with torches and secular music to burlesque the Laudi; no doubt Albertinelli was one of these, while Baccio grieved among the awestruck ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... 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 ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... better food, served in a more dainty way—these are all tasks worthy of the highest intelligence and devotion that can be brought to bear upon them, and every Christian preacher in the world today so recognizes, believes and preaches. We have ceased to separate the secular from the sacred. That is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... The teaching was secular, but certain virtues were inculcated either directly or indirectly. Truth and patriotism were recommended by the example of George Washington, who never told a lie, and who won with his sword the freedom of his country. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... the same time gratifying progress has been made in improving the condition and treatment of the prisoners. The hateful and degrading uniform of past years is disappearing; increased means of education, secular and religious, are afforded, and the officers of the institution exhibit an earnest desire to employ every instrumentality authorized by existing laws to restore its inmates to society improved in habits, ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... 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 ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... the grave. The difficulty of holding a doctrine in this form, in spite of what has been advanced to the contrary, in spite of the hopes and wishes of mankind, in spite of all the scientific and philosophical attempts to make it tenable, is still profound. No secular theory of personal continuance, as even Butler acknowledged, does not equally demand the eternity of the brute. No secular theory defines the point in the chain of Evolution at which organisms became endowed with Immortality. ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... Rowley fiction—which might be metaphorically described as a motley edifice, half castle and half cathedral, to which Chatterton all his life was continually adding columns and buttresses, domes and spires, pediments and minarets, in the shape of more poems by Thomas Rowley (a secular priest of St. John's, Bristol); or by his patron the munificent William Canynge (many times Mayor of the same city); or by Sir Thibbot Gorges, a knight of ancient family with literary tastes; or by good Bishop ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton

... She has the fullest, whitest eyelids, and the loveliest lashes. When she looks down I wish she might never look up, and when she looks up I am never ready for her to look down. If it had been a secular occasion, and she had dropped her handkerchief, seven-eighths of the students would have started to pick it up—but I should have got there first! Well, all this is but a useless prelude, for there are facts to ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... should also be held in mind by all good musicians who would help the church's object, and not employ the sacred building merely as a place where all kind of sounds that tickle the ear can be heard. All kinds of music are suitable for sacred use that do not raise secular associations. A Largo, an Adagio, a Grave, an Andante, an Allegro, a fugal or a non-fugal composition can all be performed in the Church but should one and all be of a staid and dignified character throughout, elevated and sober, and of such a nature that ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... clergy coming in to pay their respects, mention their grievances, and hold counsel with him. His dues were in the meantime collected, and his residence lasted as long as business, ecclesiastical or secular, required his presence, or till he and his train had eaten up the dues in kind that ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... of Alva boasted that he had put to death 36,000 in the Netherlands by the hands of the common executioner. The Inquisition destroyed 150,000 within thirty years. If it be asserted that this was accomplished by the secular arm, I reply that sentence of death was pronounced upon so-called heretics by the church and that the secular power was simply a tool for carrying the barbarous sentence into execution. We can not forget that the pope applauded Charles IX of France and his infamous mother, Catherine de Medici, ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... 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 ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... to this (the vegetarian) regimen have found its results to be restored or improved health, marked addition of strength, and the acquisition by the mind of a clearness, brightness, well-being, such as might follow the release from some secular, loathsome detestable dungeon.... All our justice, morality, and all our thoughts and feelings, derive from three or four primordial necessities, whereof the principal one is food. The least modification of one of these necessities ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill

... only a number of the many fine singers then in San Francisco. I doubt if you could be so successful today, for these were genuine tried singers, ready to go at any time and fill the place, either with sacred, secular or operatic music. There were also the members of the Loring Club, all good singers, picked and tried, who sang in choirs, concerts and also in prominent musical undertakings of the period. I have tried to leave no name out of the list of singers. ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... stage constructed for the purpose. These pageants were popular all over Europe and developed during the Renaissance into the dramatic form known as the Masque. Though the drama was of religious origin, we must not overlook these secular pageants as an important factor in the development of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... Dion, l. lxxvi. p. 1272. Hist. August. p. 67. Severus celebrated the secular games with extraordinary magnificence, and he left in the public granaries a provision of corn for seven years, at the rate of 75,000 modii, or about 2500 quarters per day. I am persuaded that the granaries of Severus were supplied for a long ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... strange a tale to tell to the Canterbury pilgrims concerning his master's absorbing devotion to the problem of the multiplication of gold. To what a point the popular discontent with the vices of the higher secular clergy had advanced in the last decennium of the century, may be seen from the poem called the "Complaint of the Ploughman"—a production pretending to be by the same hand which in the "Vision" had dwelt on the sufferings of the people and on the sinfulness ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... not going to be inferior to the rest of the apostles. Some secular writers put Paul's boasting down as carnal pride. But Paul had no personal interest in his boasting. It was with him a matter of faith and doctrine. The controversy was not about the glory of Paul, but the glory of God, the Word ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... of grace (I am speaking here in a secular sense), is not discreet. His pride is of another kind; he jumps gladly off the track—the touch of grace is mostly sudden—and facing about in a new direction may even attain the illusion of having turned ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... fact, since our return. There is no other magistrate—not even a gentleman in the place, as you know, except the curate; and they will not listen to him, even if he would interfere in their quarrels. But he says he will not meddle with secular matters; and, poor man, I cannot blame him, for it is very easy and sad and wearing to be mixed up in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... special people of Jehovah; how the invisible Jehovah is at first their only ruler; how gradually the spirit of assimilation to surrounding nations leads to a demand for visible kings. Just as this tendency to secular kingship becomes strong, there comes into prominence an order of 'prophets': the word signifies 'interpreters,' and the prophets are accepted as the interpreters of Jehovah's will to Israel. Under such rule as that of David, the man after God's own heart, the work of the prophets ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... 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

... could only care A little less for the mere Church and Steeple, Parochial pomp and power in lion's share, And have one aim—to purify the People, They need not shrink from Disestablishment, Or any other secular enormity; Unselfish love of Man destroys Dissent, True Charity provokes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various

... power as the good, since by the Fall they lost 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] Glanvin inclines rather to ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... 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 some private means, for he had a large family. His ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... la Place has discovered, that the secular acceleration and retardation of the moon's motion, is occasioned by the action of the sun, in proportion as his excentricity changes, or, in other words, as the orbit of the earth increases or diminishes. So that this irregularity is now ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... again, whatever might be his eccentricities, 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 ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville

... had left me with a community of lay sisters, in a little town of Languedoc, where I was the only pupil, and where I was to remain as I was born, a simple heretic. Those sisters were very good to me, and taught me as much as I could take of secular accomplishment. And it was a bitter day for me when I ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... indecisively because a sixth figure had suddenly presented itself just inside the doorway—a figure so incongruous in the scene as to be almost comic. It was a very short man in the black uniform of the Roman secular clergy, and looking (especially in such a presence as Bruno's and Aurora's) rather like the wooden Noah out of an ark. He did not, however, seem conscious of any contrast, but said with dull civility: "I believe ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... as 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 ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... 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 reproach her from ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... 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

... from Yokohama for Tokio, the great city of the Empire, which contains 1,030,000 inhabitants, according to a census taken last year. Until within a few years past Japan had two rulers—the Mikado, or spiritual, and the Tycoon, or secular ruler, although, strictly speaking, the former was theoretically the supreme ruler, the latter obtaining his power through marriage with the family of the former. The seat of the Mikado was at Kioto, a fine city ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... required some pressing on the part of his uncle, Calixtus III., recently made Pope, to induce him to leave his native land and his secular existence, for Italy and a Cardinalate. But no sooner did he occupy his new position, than a set of base qualities, which had hitherto lain dormant, suddenly developed themselves, and from this moment he became one of the cleverest and most successful hypocrites ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... this terrible state of things. She was at once listened to. The building was altered, by orders from England; the convicts were divided into classes; employment and discipline were provided; daily instruction, both secular and religious, was imparted; so that, by degrees, the establishment became what it should have been from the first—a house of detention, discipline, and refuge. In addition, a large vessel called the ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... aunt? Papa and mamma dine out, but you know I am always your faithful Chesterfield Street." And so on. He has all the domestic accomplishments; he plays on the violoncello: he sings a delicious second, not only in sacred but in secular music. He has a thousand anecdotes, laughable riddles, droll stories (of the utmost correctness, you understand) with which he entertains females of all ages; suiting his conversation to stately matrons, deaf old dowagers (who can hear his clear voice better than the loudest roar of their ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and ignorance of feudal society. Had the religious communities not met a want, they would not have taken root. Civilisation, literature, agriculture, and above all the poor, neglected and oppressed by the secular power, owed them an immense debt. But coming down to the present day, Cavour argued that the original part played by monks and friars was now filled, and of necessity more efficaciously filled, by laymen. Their presence in superabundant numbers in the modern State was ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... been invested with equal political rights, that I am desirous to aid in providing them with the means of such education as shall tend to make them good men and good citizens—education in which the instruction of the mind in the common branches of secular learning shall be associated with training in just notions of duty toward God and man, in the light of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... at this second reproach that Mrs. Gaunt's heart began to yearn. However, he said humbly that Francis was a secular priest, whereas he was convent-bred. He added, that by his years and experience Francis was better fitted to advise persons of her age and sex, in matters secular, than he was. He concluded timidly that he was ready, nevertheless, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... 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

... me, warmin' my hands rill secular by the church stove. An' I felt like I'd been spoke up for when somebody says from ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... have ears they must occasionally have been ravished by my rendering of Sankey and Moody's hymns. If they have a memory they must have learnt several of them by heart; in fact, have been so familiar with them as to desire a change for something secular. They never applauded me, but when the Heavens spoke with thunder they clapped their granite hands ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... 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 ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura

... Sunday evening as it was, there was a quiet meeting of some few friends at The Poplars. It was such a great occasion that the Sabbatical rules, never strict about Sunday evening,—which was, strictly speaking, secular time,—were relaxed. Father Pemberton was there, and Master Byles Gridley, of course, and the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth, with his son and his daughter-in-law, Bathsheba, and her mother, now in comfortable health, aunt Silence and ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... period.... The Reformation is one, the claims of the House of Austria is the other." Austria did not benefit from the reign of Charles V. The emperor was too much absorbed in the affairs of the rest of his vast dominions, notably those of the Empire, rent in two by religious differences and the secular ambitions for which those were the excuse, to give any effective attention to its needs. The peace of Augsburg, 1555, which recognized a dualism within the Empire in religion as in politics, marked ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... immediate in its influence on art and literature and thought, was the rediscovery of the ancient literatures. In the Middle Ages knowledge of Greek and Latin literatures had withdrawn itself into monasteries, and there narrowed till of secular Latin writing scarcely any knowledge remained save of Vergil (because of his supposed Messianic prophecy) and Statius, and of Greek, except Aristotle, none at all. What had been lost in the Western Empire, however, subsisted in the East, ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... 1862 Sir William Thomson (now Lord Kelvin) first endeavored to show that great limitation had to be put upon the enormous demand for time made by Lyell, Darwin and other biologists. From a consideration [711] of the secular cooling of the earth, as deduced from the increasing temperature in deep mines, he concluded that the entire age of the earth must have been more than twenty and less than forty millions of years, and probably much ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... popular principle of the power of the congregation in the management of [xl] their own affairs, was extruded from the Church of England, and men like Travers can no longer appear in her pulpits. Perhaps if a government like that of Elizabeth, with secular statesmen like the Cecils, and ecclesiastical statesmen like Whitgift, could have been prolonged, Presbyterianism might, by a wise mixture of concession and firmness, have been absorbed in the Establishment. Lord Bolingbroke, on a matter of this kind a very ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... such as the enormous old Abbey of St. Vaast—with its huge expansive roof, which somehow seems to dominate the place, and thrusts forward some fragment or other—where a regiment might lodge. Its spacious gardens are converted to secular uses. Then I find myself at the old-new cathedral, begun about a century ago, and finished about fifty years since—a 'poorish' heartless edifice in the bald Italian manner, and quite unsuited to these old Flemish cities. I come out on a terrace with a huge ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... solemnly with the spiritual administration of the province of Caraga in Mindanao. That province, although subdued by Don Juan de Silva, and given as an encomienda, had not yet had any ministers—or, at most, a secular chaplain for ministration to the garrison of its fort. It was a difficult undertaking because of the warlike spirit and the ferocity of the Caragas, whose chief tenet of religion was the deification or apotheosis ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various

... not judge a man by what he writes in his paper. Even in an ordinary secular paper a man must observe some care about it; he must be better than the principles which he puts in print. And that is the case with Mr. Mabie. Why, to see what he writes about me and the missionaries you would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... placed us at the great Wady, whose general direction is here west with a little southing, and which still merits its fame as an Arabian Arcadia. The banks were thickly bordered with secular tamarisks (T. orientalis), those hardy warriors with the Hebrew-Arabic name Asl (Athl), that battle against wind and weather, as successfully at Dovercourt (Essex) ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... valuable quality in these portraitures: their variety is striking: selected, in great part, from memorials hitherto unknown or imperfectly engraved, each number of M. Boutell's collection might form the text of a monograph on mediaeval costume in its three great divisions.—Military, Ecclesiastical, and Secular."—Archaeological Journal, vol. ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various

... that made the taking of food appear, for once, as a really beautiful, august, and almost sacramental ceremony. The great hall, too, with its pointed roof, its tiled floor, its white-wood scrubbed tables, and its tall emblazoned windows, seemed exactly the proper background—a kind of secular sanctuary. The food was plain and plentiful: soup, meat, cheese and fruit; and each of the two guests had a small decanter of red wine, a tiny loaf of bread, and a napkin. The ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... the 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

... clear, therefore, that the point at issue was not whether secular offices should be thrown open to all sects indifferently. While James was King it was inevitable that there should be exclusion; and the only question was who should be excluded, Papists or Protestants, the few or the many, a hundred ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 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

... depend on the capacities and humours of the audience, and, consequently, on the national character in general, and the particular degree of mental culture. Of all kinds of poetry the dramatic is, in a certain sense, the most secular; for, issuing from the stillness of an inspired mind, it yet fears not to exhibit itself in the midst of the noise and tumult of social life. The dramatic poet is, more than any other, obliged to court ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... Secular Brahmans now, however, greatly abridge the length of their prayers, and an hour or an hour and a half in the morning suffices for the daily bath and purification, the worship of the household deities ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... further 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 had subverted the ...
— 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

... very plain lesson, and not at all too secular for a sermon. Take another. This three-parts innocent prejudice of Nathanael brings into clear relief for us what a very real obstacle to the recognition of our Lord's Messianic authority His apparent lowly origin was. We have got over it, and it is no difficulty to us; but it was so then. When ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... unicameral National Assembly (Tshogdu): members serve for three years; seats - (150 total, 105 elected from village constituencies, 12 represent religious bodies, and 33 designated by the king to represent government and other secular interests) ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... been under official management. When, therefore, the Church surrendered control it was only natural that secular officialdom should extend its protection and guidance. Local corporations, recognizing the commercial advantages of an attraction which could annually draw crowds of country customers into the towns, made themselves responsible for the production of the plays. While ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... the people. That is why I have written this chapter, to show how Buddhism holds itself towards the government. With us, we are accustomed to ecclesiastics trying to manage affairs of state, or attempting to grasp the secular power. It is in accordance with our ideals that they should do so. Our religious phraseology is full of such terms as lord and king and ruler and servant. Buddhism knows nothing of any of them. In our religion we are subject to the authority of deacons and priests and bishops and archbishops, ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... galleries are some further wall-paintings, said to be contemporaneous with the building of the cathedral; the date, however, is wholly uncertain. These anomalous compositions represent a boar-hunt and other sports, with groups of musicians, dancers, and jugglers, intervening. In accord with the secular character of the subjects is the rude naturalism of the style. Positive knowledge as to date being wanting, it is impossible to speak of these works otherwise than to say that they cannot be of Byzantine origin. If of real antiquity they will have to join company with other semi-barbaric products ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... knowledge. That architectural paradox made me a man of chimeras, a disciple of St. Tudwal, St. Iltud, and St. Cadoc, in an age when their teaching is no longer of any practical use. When I went to the more secular town of Guingamp, where I had some relatives of the middle class, I felt very ill at ease, and the only pleasant companion I had there was an aged servant to whom I used to read fairy tales. I longed to be back in the sombre old place, overshadowed by its cathedral, but a living ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... the question of an ecclesiastical establishment in this Province, and our constitutional and religious rights and privileges, and our determination to maintain them, we disclaim any intention to interfere with the merely secular, party-politics ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... me, they looked at me with feelings of reverence, 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

... teaching men trades when they had none. They learnt all this from him. The greatest miracle in history seems to me the transformation that Jesus effected in those men. Everything else in Christian or secular history, compared to it, seems easy and explicable; and it was achieved by ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... the other passengers could not sleep. Such conduct at this time was felt to be significant, and the more so as the officers of the boat refrained from interfering. Without intimation there was a leap from my neighboring bunk, a hurried scramble up the stairway, followed by a volley of—secular language, with a demand for instantaneous choice between "dead silence and dead niggers." Thenceforward stillness prevailed, broken at intervals when the plaintive windings of the packet horn, rising and falling with the motion ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... position of great esteem as early as Luzzatto's day. He lost little time in initiating his pupil into the mysteries of the Kabbalah, and so the early childhood years of our poet were a sad time spent in the stifling atmosphere of the ghetto. Happily for him, it was an Italian ghetto, whence secular learning ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... celebrated, upon his arrival in Rome, the secular games, in the year 247 of the Christian era—that being the completion of a thousand years from the foundation of Rome. But Nemesis was already on his steps. An insurrection had broken out amongst the legions stationed in Moesia; and they had raised to the purple ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... for identifying our Saxo with the scribe of that name—a comparative menial—who is named in the will of Bishop Absalon; and hardly more warranted is the theory that he was a member, perhaps a subdeacon, of the monastery of St. Laurence, whose secular canons formed part of the Chapter of Lund. It is true that Sweyn Aageson, Saxo's senior by about twenty years, speaks (writing about 1185) of Saxo as his "contubernalis". Sweyn Aageson is known to have had strong family connections with the monastery of St. Laurence; but there is only a tolerably ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... view. This society is not an educational society. Education is not the panacea for the ills of man. Ignorance is a great evil, but it is not the worst one; sinfulness is worse and more difficult to cure. The one who is educated may make trouble and not heal it; secular education can not meet the problem; State education can not protect against the peril, but sanctified education can, for it has in it the power of God. This society is a missionary society which, like the American Board, teaches ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... like the record of a scholar. Yet he was not a scholar but a man with a most active and creative interest in his own world and his own time. Politics was his master-passion in things secular, and he followed every turn of the political wheel, not merely with the interest of a spectator, but with that of a man whose heart and mind were both deeply concerned. He was a Party Liberal, and also a liberal in the very best sense, and full ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... strikingly illustrates these observations. During the last seven centuries the public mind of Europe has made constant progress in every department of secular knowledge. But in religion we can trace no constant progress. The ecclesiastical history of that long period is a history of movement to and fro. Four times, since the authority of the Church of Rome was established in Western Christendom, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... chief 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, when canon of Chester cathedral, contains many ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... the secular teaching of their children do thoughtful country parents, in common with careful fathers and mothers living elsewhere, try to obtain the best means and to use them to the best ends; in the religious instruction of their children they make a similar attempt. They are not content to let their children ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken

... trusty servant, and by force of money and promises prevailed with him to go to Stirling ... to give ane account to the General and other officers there what was done and acted at Blackfoord." Such is the last eventful incident in the secular history of ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... wrong. Then she remembered Edythe, dry-eyed and pale, and her fears vanished. Pearl had recited once at a Band of Hope meeting a poem of her own choosing—this was before the regulations excluding secular subjects became so rigid. Pearl's recitation dealt with a captive knight who languished in a mouldy prison. He begged a temporary respite—his prayer was heard—a year was given him. He went back to his wife and child and lived the year in peace and happiness. The hour came to part, ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... aristocratic in organization. As in any other system which has so vast a hierarchy with so many grades of honor and authority, its theory of democracy is now a memory. First preached in a land accursed by caste and under spiritual and secular oppressions, it acknowledged no caste, but declared all men equally sinful and miserable, and all equally capable of being freed from sin and misery through Buddhahood, that ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... situation, his dismay was only equalled by his promptitude. He easily obtained the loan of one of the splendid suits of scarlet and crimson, guarded with black velvet a hand broad, which were worn by the Cardinal's secular attendants—for he was well known by this time in the household to be very far from an absolute fool, and indeed had done many a good turn to his comrades. Several of the gentlemen, indignant at the threatened outrage ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... there was no mingling with the guests of royalty, who were only seen in excited peeps from the window, or when solemnly introduced to the presence chamber to pay their respects to the Prince. As to books, the only secular one that Anne saw while at Whitehall was an odd volume of Parthenissa. The late King's summary of the Roman controversy was to be had in plenty, and nothing was more evident than that the only road to favour or promotion ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and, in the middle of the fourteenth century, was organized into regular corporations. Goldsmiths and decorators devoted their talent to the embellishment of churches and ecclesiastical treasures, as well as to decoration of secular buildings such as Cloth Halls or Town Halls and to the designing of banners for the guilds. We still possess a great number of engraved tombstones which reveal an extraordinary development of technique. Soon the ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... 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 cannot ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the Crown alone, and that obedience to the Crown was the first element of national order and national greatness. In their religious reforms the Tudor sovereigns had aimed at giving a religious sanction to the power which sprang from this general conviction, and at hallowing their secular supremacy by blending with it their supremacy over the Church. Against such a theory, either of Church or State, Calvinism was an emphatic protest, and in aiding Calvinism to establish itself in Scotland the Queen felt that she was dealing a heavy ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... upon the whole body: at the same time, enjoining celibacy, by which all chance of alienation, even of personal property, was done away. As to the means of acquiring property, and of augmenting it; they were many, and, in every contest with the secular authority, they had a great advantage, by speaking, as it were, through ten thousand mouths at once, and giving the alarm to the consciences of the weak. In countries where the protestant religion has been established, the case ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... to see his true children lay aside the seriousness of prayer and Bible study, and go forth in joyful rest to the seashore, or to the quiet glen in the fastnesses of the woods. If you follow these directions, you will get the cream of pleasure and profit, and return to your secular or ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... languages I had likewise continued to practise in my correspondence with George Schlosser, who was still at Treptow; and I had remained in constant communication with him, by which I was instructed in many secular affairs (for things did not always turn out with him quite as he had hoped), and acquired an ever increasing confidence in his earnest, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... do not find this concentrated intellectual and emotional ferocity of attack on the body; it only developed at the moment when, with Pope Gregory VII, mediaeval Christianity reached the climax of its conquest over the souls of European men, in the establishment of the celibacy of the secular clergy, and the growth of the great cloistered communities of monks in severely regulated and secluded orders.[51] Before that the teachers of asceticism were more concerned to exhort to chastity and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... of the town, still young, in the prime of his manhood. He was acquainted with life,—with the needs of his hearers acquainted; Deeply imbued he was with the Holy Scriptures' importance, As they reveal man's destiny to us, and man's disposition; Thoroughly versed, besides, in best of secular writings. "I should be loath," he replied, "to censure an innocent instinct, Which to mankind by good mother Nature has always been given. What understanding and reason may sometimes fail to accomplish, Oft will such fortunate impulse, that bears us resistlessly with it. Did curiosity ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... a sudden warmth, as they turned to go below, "all I can say is, that the institution, sacred or secular, that tries to lure such a girl into a convent ought to ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell

... were made to all manner of violent agencies to account for the changes which the earth's surface has undergone since our planet began its independent career; now it is seen that the same slow working of rain and tide, of wind and wave and frost, of secular contraction and of earthquake pulse, which is visible to-day, will account for the whole. It is not long since it was supposed that a species of animals or plants could be swept away only by some unusual catastrophe, while for the origination of new species ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... twenty-three schools in England were supported or aided by the funds of the Institution. In all of these the teachers are persons of piety, and instruction is given not only in secular knowledge, but in the way of salvation. Without reckoning the orphans, 13,124 souls have been brought under habitual instruction in the things of God in these various schools; besides the many thousands in the schools in the various parts of England, ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller

... be free, and they were to be essentially and fundamentally Christian; but there was no intention of making them exclusively religious and banishing secular studies. On the other hand, the greater part of the time given to the children was devoted, as in reason it must be, to secular teaching; and only a small portion retained for teaching of a more solemn kind. No doubt De la Salle ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... the exception of the last, contain specimens of the "Babylonish dialect" of the age. But this, in the estimation of Abraham Wright, was not their least recommendation. "You are also taught from these leaves," says he,(67) "that secular learning is not so heathenish, but it may be made Christian. Plato, and Socrates, and Seneca, were not of such a reprobate sense, as to stand wholly excommunicate. The same man may be both a poet and a prophet, a philosopher and an apostle. Virgil's fancie was as high as the Magi's star, and might ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... represents as a happy encouragement to the Church after the blow it had received; but I don't think D'Aubigne a thorough peace advocate. He makes so much distinction between the Churchman and Statesman, that I fear he would allow of mere rulers and magistrates taking up arms on merely secular affairs, though he does not wish the Church to be defended by such. I should like to know thy impression of the early Christians' opinion on war. Neander allows that a party objected to it, as in the case of Maximilian, A.D. 229; but says that ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... they are perforated to allow of soaking into the surrounding earth, and are, when excavated whole, generally found capped by, a beehive-shaped perforated cover. Sometimes these drains were made of old pots with their lower parts broken off, and fitted into one another. Secular buildings were of burnt brick; sacred buildings usually of crude brick, from religious conservatism. Crude bricks nearly always oblong; burnt bricks square (14 ins.) or oblong (9x6x3 ins.). The burnt brick of Nebuchadnezzar's time is extraordinarily fine and hard, and the ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various

... military critic, was also on the spot, noting down every day what he saw and felt. This was John Graham, minister of Suffield, in Connecticut, and now chaplain of Lyman's regiment. His spirit, by nature far from buoyant, was depressed by bodily ailments, and still more by the extremely secular character of his present surroundings. It appears by his Diary that he left home "under great exercise of mind," and was detained at Albany for a time, being, as he says, taken with an ague-fit and a quinsy; but at length he ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... of the school was explained to them, they consented to receive secular instructions but objected to any religious teaching. They asked to have schools opened in the pueblos on the plan of our public schools where the children could attend during the day and return home at night, and ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... gradually realised.[31] Needless to say, the pledge was never fulfilled. In dealing, however, with the question, the Convention of Paris had one merit. It lent no support to the subsequent theory of the Rumanians, that the Jews were foreigners in a secular sense in their own country, but, on the contrary, assumed that their status was as much that of Moldavians and Wallachians as was the status of ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf



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



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