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adjective
Secular  adj.  
1.
Coming or observed once in an age or a century. "The secular year was kept but once a century."
2.
Pertaining to an age, or the progress of ages, or to a long period of time; accomplished in a long progress of time; as, secular inequality; the secular refrigeration of the globe.
3.
Of or pertaining to this present world, or to things not spiritual or holy; relating to temporal as distinguished from eternal interests; not immediately or primarily respecting the soul, but the body; worldly. "New foes arise, Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains."
4.
(Eccl.) Not regular; not bound by monastic vows or rules; not confined to a monastery, or subject to the rules of a religious community; as, a secular priest. "He tried to enforce a stricter discipline and greater regard for morals, both in the religious orders and the secular clergy."
5.
Belonging to the laity; lay; not clerical. "I speak of folk in secular estate."
Secular equation (Astron.), the algebraic or numerical expression of the magnitude of the inequalities in a planet's motion that remain after the inequalities of a short period have been allowed for.
Secular games (Rom. Antiq.), games celebrated, at long but irregular intervals, for three days and nights, with sacrifices, theatrical shows, combats, sports, and the like.
Secular music, any music or songs not adapted to sacred uses.
Secular hymn or Secular poem, a hymn or poem composed for the secular games, or sung or rehearsed at those games.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Secular" Quotes from Famous Books



... this cathedral is on another foundation, and the canons here be regular and not secular, ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... among those who ought to be one, even as Christ and the Father are One. There, as it has been well observed, "the Church stands upon her own merits, her own divine right; there all the attested grievances of the Dissenters, secular and political, are removed; no tithes, no church-rates, no exclusive state support." And yet there, it may be added, the fierce contentious spirit which rages in England is unchanged in character, and the way of the Church is just as evil spoken of in New South Wales ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... party in the December 1991 balloting caused the army to intervene, crack down on the FIS, and postpone the subsequent elections. The FIS response has resulted in a continuous low-grade civil conflict with the secular state apparatus, which nonetheless has allowed elections featuring pro-government and moderate religious-based parties. FIS's armed wing, the Islamic Salvation Army, disbanded itself in January 2000 and many armed militants surrendered ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... Assembly or Tshogdu (150 seats; 105 elected from village constituencies, 10 represent religious bodies, and 35 are designated by the monarch to represent government and other secular interests; members serve three-year terms) elections: last held NA (next to be held ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... communication with Aremberg. Meanwhile an extreme and apparently weak party among the Catholics entered into an obscure and violent undertaking popularly known as the 'surprising' or 'Bye' plot as contrasted with Raleigh's, known as the 'Main.' Watson, a secular priest, whose main motive, in Professor Gardiner's view, was a hatred of the Jesuits, had taken a leading part in reconciling the English Catholics to James's accession. Irritated by the exaction of fines for recusancy instituted at the beginning of the new reign, ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... selected the most melancholy tunes, playing, with a more profound solemnity, the gloomiest psalms and lamentations. When he ventured upon secular music, he never performed anything more lively than "The Mistletoe Bough," or "Barbara Allen," and into each he threw a spirit so much more dismal than the original, as almost to induce his hearers to imitate the example of the disconsolate "Barbara," and "turn their faces to the wall" in ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... "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

... as a consequence, though the physical sciences still numbered successful cultivators, originality of mind was all but extinct. Things, nevertheless, wore a gayer aspect than of late. The very completeness of the triumph of secular and spiritual despotism had made them less suspicious, surly, and austere. Spanish power was visibly decaying. The long line of zelanti Popes had come to an end; and it was thought that if the bosom of the actual incumbent could be scrutinized, no little complacency in Swedish ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... gait, seemed to intimate that his form and limbs felt already some touch of infirmity. The colour of his hair could not be discovered, as, according to the fashion, he wore a periwig. He was handsomely, though gravely dressed in a secular habit, and had a cockade in his hat; circumstances which did not surprise Fairford, who knew that a military disguise was very often assumed by the seminary priests, whose visits to England, or residence there, subjected them ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... loving fatherhood of God, and its bearing on the brotherhood of man, precedes a homely address or sermon, closely packed with allusions to social and political questions. Or the address is entirely secular; a downright unbeliever has been invited to give the audience the benefit of his knowledge or experience, in connection with some great movement for the betterment of the world. There is a disinclination to criticize anybody's religious views, provided he shows by his acts and life that he ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... many religious communities of priests, who, besides living according to the general laws of the Church, as all priests do, follow certain rules laid down for their community. Such priests are called the regular clergy, because living by rules to distinguish them from the secular clergy who live in their parishes under no special rule. The chief work of the regular clergy is to teach in colleges and ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous

... the greatest clemency and forbearance to the Gitanos. Indeed, we cannot find one instance of its having interfered with them. The charge of restraining the excesses of the Gitanos was abandoned entirely to the secular authorities, and more particularly to the Santa Hermandad, a kind of police instituted for the purpose of clearing the roads of robbers. Whilst I resided at Cordova, I was acquainted with an aged ecclesiastic, who was priest of a village called ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... I spent this morning in answering questions which my father put to me about secular things in England. This I did for the following reasons:—1. I had scarcely ever spoken about these things in my letters, indeed so little, that my father told me, he had often intended to ask me whether it was forbidden in England to send letters abroad about such matters, ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller

... Them in the religions of the past. If you go back very, very far, you will always find that the Master wears a double character: ruler, law-giver, on the one side; teacher upon the other. In all the old civilisations this is characteristic; for in those days the idea had not arisen of sacred and secular, or sacred and profane, as we say in the modern world. To the old civilisations there was no such thing as sacred history and profane history; no division was made between sacred science and secular science; all history was sacred, all science was divine. ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... earth—in which the known physical forces may have acted with an intensity much greater than direct observation would lead us to imagine. And this may be believed, altogether irrespective of those great secular changes by which hot or cold epochs are produced, and which can hardly be called "catastrophistic," as they are produced gradually, and are liable ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... he reverence that of classical antiquity; and in declining age, when the appetite for magazines and reviews, and the ten-times repeated trash of the day, has failed, he will retire, as it were, within a circle of school-fellow friends, and end his secular studies as he began them, with his Homer, his Horace, ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... obvious, to the baptismal name of John Calvin and John Knox, if not also to the popular byword of Jack Presbyter;) "and if I cannot," (here the sense of insecurity and dependence on foreign help or secular power becomes transparent) "I'll find those that shall." She disclaims communion with the Protestant Churches of the continent, with Amsterdam or Geneva: "I am none of his flirt-gills; I am none of his skains-mates." Peter, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

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

... harmony with his doctrine. Rousseau had taught him that the people ought to be sovereign, and now the people were being recognised as sovereign de facto no less than de jure. Any limitations on the new divine right united the horror of blasphemy to the secular wickedness of political treason. After the Assembly had come to Paris, a famishing mob in a moment of mad fury murdered an unfortunate baker, who was suspected of keeping back bread. These paroxysms led to the enactment ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... in the way his works are usually bound up, and came out in this box the other day. It is very interesting, especially to me now, and it is curious to observe how much the great men insisted upon the necessity of attending to the more secular part of missionary work,—agriculture, fishing, and other means of humanizing the social condition of the heathen among whom they lived. Columbanus and Boniface, and his pupil Gregory, and others (all the German Missionaries, almost) ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

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

... 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 local antiquities, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... important among the works which Luther was now led to undertake by his opposition to the Romish Church and her teaching, and by her hostile proceedings against himself, was a treatise on the secular power, which he began in December, as soon as he had finished the translation of the five Books of Moses. It appeared under the title of 'On the Secular Power, and how far ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... 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 ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... ordinance of long custom that anyone who has a suit of any kind against a servant of the sacrosanct Roman Church should first address himself to the chief Priest of that City, lest haply your clergy, being profaned by the litigation of the Forum, should be occupied in secular rather than religious matters. And you add that one of your Deacons has, to the disgrace of religion, been so sharply handled by legal process that the Sajo[548] has dared actually to take him into ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

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

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

... 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

... schemes, proved to be of lasting importance. Shorn of the millenarian vision that gave them their point in Dury's own day, his ideas have become the accepted standards of modern librarianship. Dury himself would not have been heartened by his secular acceptance: "... For except Sciences bee reformed in order to this Scope [of the Christian and millenarian vision], the increas of knowledg will increas nothing but strife, pride and confusion, from whence our sorrows will ...
— The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) • John Dury

... gleamings Seemings show Of things not seemings; And I gaze, Knowing that, beyond my ways, Verily All these ARE, for these are she. Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek On the burning brow of the sick earth, Sick with death, and sick with birth, Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled, Than thy shadow soothes this weak And distempered being of mine. In all I work, my hand includeth thine; Thou rushest down in every stream Whose passion frets my spirit's deepening ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson

... which on the one side gave the greatest part of the secular interest, on the other almost the whole of the mystical attraction, to the complete story, had, however, it seems probable, been actually added before Layamon wrote. For the date of the earlier version of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... of the see to John de Waleran. The election was confirmed by the pope in 1257 and Hugh set to work to repair the harm done to the diocese by the intruder. In 1280 the bishop obtained a charter allowing him to replace the secular brethren residing in his hospital of St John at Cambridge by "studious scholars"; a second charter four years later entirely differentiated these scholars from the brethren of the hospital, and for them Hugh de Balsham founded and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... 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 religious ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

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

... fierceness and wild licentiousness of Walter would have made the arrangement abhorrent to Lilias, even had not love passages already passed between her and her cousin, Patrick Drummond, and Sir David had hitherto protected her by keeping Malcolm in the secular life; but Walter, it seemed, had grown impatient, and had made this treacherous attack, evidently hoping to rid himself of the brother, and secure the sister. No sooner had the Tutor of Glenuskie perceived that his own party were overmatched, than he had ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 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 ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... were allowed still to be regarded as a missionary. No objection was made, and thus by his talent and usefulness had Carey forced from the Government which had forbidden him to set foot on their territories his recognition in the character he had always claimed. Even his private secular earnings he never regarded as his own: this income, and that arising from Marshman's school, these good men viewed as rendering their mission from henceforth independent, and setting free the Society at home to support fresh ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... welcome, or the first sight of the snowdrop, signify compared with the last Sunday's sermon and the new interpretation of the old riddle of evil in the world? And apart from the fact that everything of a personal nature must have appeared so trivial, all the sources of secular lyric poetry were offensive and impious to Puritan theology.... One thing is an established fact: up to the close of the eighteenth century America had ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... against heresy, there are Baptist and Episcopal churches—and a dancing-master. Young Benjamin Franklin, born in 1706, professes a high respect for the Mathers, but he does not go to church, "Sunday being my studying day," and neither the clerical nor the secular arm of Boston is long enough and strong enough to compel that ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... it gets fairly cold. Is a new theory advanced-ten to one while you are trying to get it through your head he will stand on his own and make mouths at it. A great invention provokes him into a whirlwind of flip-flaps absolutely bewildering to the secular eye; while at any exceptional phenomenon of nature, such as an earthquake, he will project himself frog-like into an infinity of ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... that, in the wicked world of this age now so near its end, the high priests who are born in the palankin, and the monks who bear it now in Nara and Mount Hiyei, desire high secular rank ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin

... generation to generation, 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 is widely different. Gothic darkness was nearly ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... were not to be reached by the secular arm, and yet were often found fomenting troubles in the colonies, Gasca was permitted to banish from Peru such as he thought fit. He might even send home the viceroy, if the good of the country required it. Agreeably to his own suggestion, he was to ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... will 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 charge ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... which is so much needed and for which no opportunity is found under the present arrangement. Besides, much talent not available upon Sunday, at the time of the session of the Bible-school, might be utilized. This is an age of clubs organized for the study of ancient and modern secular literature, where careful and scholarly papers are read upon subjects given out long in advance. This study-club idea ought to be utilized by the church for the investigation of the best literature which the world knows, namely, ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... 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

... inflamed with rage against his virgin sister, having joined with him Farinata, an infamous assassin, and twelve other abandoned ruffians, entered the monastery by a ladder, and carried away his sister forcibly to his own house; and then, tearing off her religious habit, compelled her to go in a secular garment to her nuptials. Before the spouse of Christ came together with her new husband, she knelt down before a crucifix, and recommended her virginity to Christ. Soon after, her whole body was ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... velvet foundation; very little embroidery entering into the main composition. Another hanging, also of black velvet, has an even more ambitious design. It is described by M. Jourdain in "The History of English Secular Embroidery" as follows: "The ornamentation on the black velvet is with applique in coloured silks consisting of figures under arches. In the centre is 'Lucrecia,' on the left 'Chastite,' and on the ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... than lower, that which precedes more beautiful than that which follows. Thinkers in whom this aesthetic reverence is weaker than the analytic impulse—especially Democritus—seem half modern rather than Greek. By the side of the Greek philosophy, in its sacred festal garb, stands the modern in secular workday dress, in the laborer's blouse, with the merciless chisel of analysis in its hand. This does not seek beauty, but only the naked truth, no matter what it be. It holds it impossible to satisfy ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... secular subjects were less often woven than those of religion and morals, but also the former have less lustily outlived the centuries, owing to the habit of tearing them from the suspending hooks and packing them about from chateau to chateau, to soften surroundings for ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... matter of religious teaching and observance in general a very dull business—as dull as most secular teaching. If salvation is anything like what are commonly considered its means, it is to me a consummation devoutly to be deprecated. But no one ever found Wingfold dull. For one thing he scarcely thought about the church, and never mistook it for the kingdom of God. Its worldly affairs ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... of dissent; a guide and ruler of men, a shepherd of the people. The only trouble in Norway, as elsewhere, is that the people will no longer consent to be shepherded. They refuse to be guided and ruled. They rebel against spiritual and secular authority, and follow no longer the bell-wether with the timid gregariousness of servility and irresolution. To bring the new age into the parsonage of the reverend obscurantist in the shape of a young ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... some equally immoderate criticism of our own character and morals. To Russia also we can bear no grudge, for we know that there is no real public opinion in that country, and that their press has no means for forming first-hand conclusions. Besides, in this case also there is a certain secular enmity which may account for a ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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 relation ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... talk of the news, or what is passing in the world, nor of any thing which does not relate to the salvation of souls. It is also my desire that none of the brethren shall come here except the minister-general and his companions, and that no secular shall be admitted, in order that those belonging to the place may the better preserve themselves in purity and holiness, and that the place itself may remain pure and holy, being solely devoted to singing the praises of the ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

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

... Empire claimed supremacy over all Christian rulers and peoples of central and western Europe, and after the extinction of the eastern empire in 1453 it could insist that it was the sole secular heir to the ancient Roman tradition. But the greatness of the theoretical claim of the Holy Roman Empire was matched only by the insignificance of its practical acceptance. The feudal nobles of western Europe had never recognized it, and ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... old family place, up the long avenue under its ancestral trees, the ferny brook crossed by the stone bridge with its carved balustrade, the deer feeding on the green slope of the open park or lying under some secular oak, the heavy white clouds casting their slow shadows on the broad lawn, the dark spreading cedars of Lebanon standing on the edge of the bright flower-garden,—the old house itself, with its quaint gables and oriels, the broad flight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... on Islamic law, several secular codes have been introduced; commercial disputes handled by special committees; has not accepted compulsory ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... cooking and other preparations are as much as possible performed before hand, that the servants may enjoy the day of rest, and partake of the moral and Spiritual benefit of a weekly pause from the whirl and turmoil of secular engagements. ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... 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; ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... with Great Britain, Elias Hicks called the attention of "Friends" to a faithful support of their testimony against war and injustice, desiring them to maintain their Christian liberties against encroachment of the secular powers, laws having been enacted levying taxes for the support of the war. At one meeting there was considerable altercation; as some Friends who refused payment had been distrained some three or four fold more than the tax demanded, while others complied, paid ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... 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

... antagonisms of the respective Chapters produced a plentiful crop of serious quarrels, its relations with the townsfolk were free from such violent episodes as occurred at Bury St. Edmunds or St. Albans. The Chapter of Lichfield consisted of secular priests (Lymesey and his next successor were married men), while the Monastery, though freed by pope and king from any episcopal or justiciary power and with the right of electing its own abbot, was, like all monastic bodies, always ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse

... 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, ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson

... In secular as well as religious affairs, Perquimans precinct in those early days took an active part. Men of political and social prominence resided within her borders, and at their homes, for lack of other shelter for public gatherings, much of the business of the ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson

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

... of Mr. R. Mallet, briefly stated, are somewhat as follows:—Owing to the secular cooling of the earth, and the consequent lateral crushing of the surface, this crushing from time to time overcomes the resistance; in which case shocks are experienced along the lines of fracture and faulting by which the crust is intersected. These ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull

... "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; ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... seminary, as poor in money as they are rich in mental and spiritual resources. They promise to be as fine a band as those we have just sent off. We have two from Iowa and Wisconsin who were actually crowded from secular pursuits into the ministry by the wants of the people about them. Revivals began, and the people came to them saying, 'We have no minister, and you must preach to us, for you ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... was much struck with the undemonstrativeness of their meeting, for there was high esteem for austerity in the Puritan world, in contrast to the utter want of self-restraint shown by the more secular characters. ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of a treat, Permit the clergy again to eat, The Church will of course no longer need Imitation-parsons that never feed; And these wood creatures of ours will sell For secular purposes just as well— Our Beresfords, turned to bludgeons stout, May, 'stead of beating their own about, Be knocking the brains of Papists out; While our smooth O'Sullivans, by all means, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... pursue it earnestly, nor does he specially admire rank in the common sense. But for ancient race he has respect in his bones, though it may happen that in public he denies it, and the laird has for him a secular association with good family.... Sir Archie might do. He was young, good-looking, obviously gallant... But no! He was not quite right either. Just a trifle too light in weight, too boyish and callow. The Princess must have ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... which the superstitious Bengalees ascribe far more importance than to the correct discharge of the social duties. They felt, therefore, as a devout Catholic in the dark ages would have felt, at seeing a prelate of the highest dignity sent to the gallows by a secular tribunal. According to their old national laws, a Brahmin could not be put to death for any crime whatever. And the crime for which Nuncomar was about to die was regarded by them in much the same light in which the selling of an ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the heat that has penetrated into the equatorial regions moves in the interior of the globe toward the poles, where it escapes into the atmosphere and the remoter regions of space. The third mode of transmission is the slowest of all, and is derived from the secular cooling of the globe, and from the small portion of the primitive heat which is still being disengaged from the surface. p 175 This loss experienced by the central heat must have been very considerable in the earliest epochs of the Earth's revolutions, but within historical ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... ancient usage of the Church that the martyr, the bishop, the saint, and even the priest, should occupy in their sepulture a position the reverse of the secular dead, and lie down with their feet westward and their heads to the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various

... was formed, 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 figure of the deceased was raised in high relief, and even, as in the tomb ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... communicated to Louis XV. his protest against the article of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle which drove him out of every secular state in Europe. Louis broke a solemn treaty by assenting to this article. Charles published his protest and sent it to Montesquieu. He complained that Montesquieu had not given him the new edition of his ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... and saw upon their right the gilded gates of the hippodrome through which a vast crowd of people was pressing, for though the morning had been devoted to the religious ceremony, the afternoon was given over to secular festivities. So great was the rush of the populace that the two strangers had some difficulty in disengaging themselves from the stream and reaching the huge arch of black marble which formed the outer gate of the palace. Within they were fiercely ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... was anciently a chapel, founded by King Stephen about the year 1141, and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin; however, it obtained the name of St. Stephen's Chapel. It was rebuilt by King Edward III., anno 1347, who placed in it a dean, twelve secular canons, thirteen vicars, four clerks, five choristers, a verger, and a keeper of the chapel, and built them a convent, which extended along the Thames, endowing it with large revenues, which at ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales

... in their secular role ruled portions of the Italian peninsula for more than a thousand years until the mid 19th century, when many of the Papal States were seized by the newly united Kingdom of Italy. In 1870, the pope's holdings were further circumscribed ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... splendours,—deeds of sacrifice and suffering for which earth has no adequate recompense, but whose reward is great in heaven. Here is the patience of the saints, the glorious courage of patriots, martyrs, and confessors, something more bright and shining than secular morality can bring forth,—a flashing of the inward light which fails not, but grows clearer as death draws near. What noble evidences of this come to us out ...
— What Peace Means • Henry van Dyke

... prudence; but it suggests no additional reasons either for seeking happiness or for altering our estimate of happiness. As 'Philip Beauchamp' argues, we cannot from the purely empirical ground get any motive for taking into account anything beyond our 'temporal' or secular interests. This, again, was in fact admitted by Paley. His mode of escape from the dilemma is familiar. The existence of a supreme artificer is inferred from the interventions in the general order of nature. The existence of a moral ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... emperor, 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 Msia; and they had raised ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... a vapid French novel. He said he would willingly read something better if he had it. At the next French town I searched for some better book, and this caused me to find the agent of the Bible Society, and so a parcel of books, religious and secular, were sent off to the telegraph station; but my attention once drawn to the French soldiers and their reading, it was impossible not to follow a subject so interesting and important. The regiment quartered in the town had but a few Testaments. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... it could not have told you precisely what notions to entertain concerning those deities whom it did officially recognise; it dictated no theological doctrines; neither did it dictate any moral doctrines beyond those which you would find in the secular law. It reserved the right to prevent the introduction of foreign or new divinities if it found sufficient cause; but so long as the temples, the rites and ceremonies, the cardinal moral axioms of the Roman "religion," and the basic principles of Roman society were respected, the state practised ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... 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 the ...
— 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

... explore the old caravan route, to demonstrate that a connection has existed from the most ancient times between the Mediterranean world, and the country of the Blacks, that seems nothing in your eyes? The hope of settling once for all the secular disputes which have divided so many keen minds; d'Anville, Heeren, Berlioux, Quatremere on the one hand,—on the other Gosselin, Walckenaer, Tissit, Vivien, de saint-Martin; you think that that is devoid of interest? A plague upon you ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... kindergartens are now a part of the public school system, the first free kindergartens were supported by the churches, and large charities, now secularized, were supported by {176} churches until they had passed the stage of experiment. Secular agencies are still dependent upon the churches for workers that can bring the right spirit ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... but without feasting or music. Widows are permitted to marry again. Married women do not wear bangles nor toe-rings nor the customary necklace of beads; they put on no jewellery, and have no choli or bodice. The Bhope or Bhoall, the third division of the caste, are wholly secular and wear no distinctive dress, except sometimes a black head-cloth. They may engage in any occupation that pleases them, and sometimes act as servants in the temples of the caste. In Berar they are divided into thirteen bas or orders, named after the disciples of Arjun ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... pomp in the vaults of Westminster, Halley and other mathematicians shall construct lunar tables, by which longitude shall be accurately measured on the pathless ocean. Lagrange and Laplace shall apply the Newtonian theory to determine the secular inequalities of celestial motion; they shall weigh absolutely the amount of matter in the planets; they shall show how far their orbits deviate from circles; and they shall enumerate the cycles of changes detected in the circuit of the moon. Clairaut shall remove the perplexity occasioned ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... 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 ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley

... logic of the speaker. They believed neither in building churches, nor in saying masses, nor in the adoration of pictures, nor in the singing of hymns at public worship. For all practical intents and purposes they rejected entirely the orthodox Catholic distinction between things secular and things sacred, and held that a man could worship God just as well in a field as in a church, and that it did not matter in the least whether a man's body was buried in consecrated or unconsecrated ground. What use, they asked, were holy water, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... Priestley, and other books on devout subjects, sank into his mind. From reading he speedily rose to writing; from being a reader he became an author. His first writings were entirely serious. These were verses, or letters, wherein religious thoughts and secular criticisms took their places in turn; or they were grave dramas, which exhibit and lead to the contemplation of character, and which nourish those moods out of which humor ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... religious house. In 1542 the community was suppressed and its property appropriated by the great-grandfather of the Lord-General—one Sir Thomas Fairfax. The religious buildings were pulled down and a new secular house rose in their place. In these bare and sordid facts there is not much room for poetry, but there is a story thrown in. Shortly before 1518 a Yorkshire heiress, bearing the unromantic name of Isabella Thwaites, was living in the Cistercian ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... the resolution of the Town Council will meet with the fullest assent and most gratifying recognition among all circles of society—the resolution is as follows: "That all undertakings in connection with the Mozart Secular Festival shall be conducted and carried out in the name of the city of Vienna,"—and in agreement with the honorable motives of the Town Council "to lend to the festivities the worthy and higher expression of universal ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... science furnishes such a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the foundation of our intellectual system; the great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages on ages required for several of the secular equations of the solar system; of distances from which the light of a fixed star would not reach us in twenty millions of years, of magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a foot-ball; of starry hosts—suns like our own—numberless ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... penetrated from the convents to the court; where they were performed before Tzar Fedor, the predecessor of Peter.[12] His minister, Matveyef, the Slavic Mecaenas of his time, and himself a writer, invited the first stage-players to Russia; and at his instigation, the first secular drama, a translation of Moliere's "Medecin malgre lui," was played before the gratified princesses and their enraptured maids of honour. The sister of the two Tzars, the Tzarevna Sophia, was a great patroness of the dramatic ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... carnal advancement was not gained without some sacrifice of his spiritual character, and the "secular" Brahmin had to bow, quoad sacra, to the penniless Bhut, or "regular" Brahmin, who, refusing to contaminate his sanctity by doing any kind of work, ate of the temple, or lived by royal bounty or private charity, and by the free breakfasts without which a ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... university, that uncatholic theses 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 by John II., Benedict XIV., Pius VI., and Gregory ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... as a somewhat crucial example. It is a seeing- machine, or thing to see with. So is a telescope; the telescope in its highest development is a secular accumulation of cunning, sometimes small, sometimes great; sometimes applied to this detail of the instrument, and sometimes to that. It is an admirable example of design; nevertheless, as I said in "Evolution Old and New," he who made the first rude telescope had ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... The Bill to increase the grant to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth was carried by Peel in the teeth of opposition from half his party: another measure was passed to establish colleges for purely secular teaching ("godless colleges" they were nicknamed) in Cork, Belfast, and Galway, and affiliate them to a new ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... 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 of catholic neutral tint, but whom nature ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... the authors of them to condign punishment. These addresses were not voted without opposition. In the house of lords, the dukes of Buckingham and Shrewsbury, the earl of Anglesea, the archbishop of York, and other peers both secular and ecclesiastical, observed, that their address was injurious to the late queen's memory, and would serve only to increase those unhappy divisions that distracted the kingdom. In the lower house, sir ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... reader of revolutionary history knows, was busily engaged in pulling the strings behind the scenes during the whole of this chaotic period. It was the man whose iron nerve and subtle brain enabled him, in spite of a secular course of betrayals, to keep his head on his shoulders, and finally to escape the clutches of Napoleon, who, as Lord Rosebery tells us,[89] always deeply regretted that he had not had him "hanged ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... had formed part of the Turkish dominions, though, thanks to the inaccessible nature of its mountain fastnesses, Turkish authority was never very forcibly asserted. It was ruled by a prince-bishop, and its religious independence thus connoted a certain secular freedom of thought if not of action. In the seventeenth century warlike encounters between the Turks and the Montenegrins increased in frequency, and the latter tried to enlist the help of Venice on their side but with indifferent success. The fighting in Montenegro ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... of great devotion to secular affairs,—of men who are great in the conduct of such affairs,—in every department in life. To counterbalance this, our ministry must be filled with an equally earnest devotion to God and salvation. In ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... in the interests of peace that we turn our swords into—corkscrews, and our bayonets into—button-hooks. That extremely secular reading of a sacred passage, appears to be the accepted one, however, in Ordnance Departments, and other places where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various

... contrasted summers and winters, could not be true of Europe or the western portions of it, owing to the presence of the Atlantic Ocean, and the influence which it inevitably exerts on the climate. We see, then, that the presence of these different animals can be explained only by supposing great secular changes in climate. Let us see if we can strengthen this view by an appeal to the vegetation of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... is known of these state physicians has been collected by Pohl,(8) who has traced their evolution into Roman times. That they were secular, independent of the AEsculapian temples, that they were well paid, that there was keen competition to get the most distinguished men, that they were paid by a special tax and that they were much esteemed—are facts to be gleaned from Herodotus and from the inscriptions. The lapidary records, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... stations in the only footway leading up to the church, some singly, some in parties, every four or five yards, and all besetting you in full chorus. The same cause has drawn to the terrace in front of the church a seller of Catholic legends, who to suit all tastes, mingles the spiritual, the secular, and the loyal, in his profession. The legend of St. Genevieve, Le Testament de Louis XVI., L'Enfant Prodigue, Damon and Henriette, Judith and Holofernes, and Le Portrait du Juif ambulant, might ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes



Words linked to "Secular" :   terrestrial, laity, secular games, sacred, temporalty, earthly, lay, temporal, worldly-minded, laic, secular humanism, secularism, impious, commoner, clergyman, unworldly, sophisticated, religious



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