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Secular   Listen
noun
Secular  n.  
1.
(Eccl.) A secular ecclesiastic, or one not bound by monastic rules.
2.
(Eccl.) A church official whose functions are confined to the vocal department of the choir.
3.
A layman, as distinguished from a clergyman.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Secular" Quotes from Famous Books



... contributions levied upon them. Large were the sums he gathered from them, for he omitted not a single source of revenue, no, not even the first that might offer itself, though its character were reprehensible, but he sought money from everybody alike, of secular or religious profession. As for taxes, he renewed many that had been abolished and increased those that were usual [and introduced still other new ones]. And he adopted this same course later in the rest of the subject territory, [in Italy] and in Rome itself. Hence ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... embraces the whole of life. We belong to God as truly on Monday as on the Lord's Day. We must keep ourselves laid on God's altar as really while we are at our week-day work as when we are in a prayer-meeting. We are always on duty as Christians, whether we are engaged in our secular pursuits or in exercises of devotion. All our work should therefore be done ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... attempt to repeat what has been so fully said by the religious and secular journals of the country in reference to the life and work of this great and good man, but I desire to say a few words in regard to his connection with the anti-slavery movement, and his interest in the work of the American Missionary Association. He ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various

... 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 ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... occasion for blasphemy. We have in this history an example of divine terrors and judgment, that we may take warning from the danger of Ham, and not venture to be rash in judging, though we should see that a secular or ecclesiastical authority, or even our ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... would show him a seat. For which he expressed his thanks and immediately remarked, that he had travelled recently nearly over all our country, and nowhere had he witnessed such entire abandonment of all secular avocations on the Sabbath. It seemed like a different country, and made him feel the significance of the name of that ancient town—Salem, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... hostile to Christ; intolerant 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 girl—the fiancee of the pastor's son—was an interesting experiment which gives ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... that the substance of braid and wyn war changed be vertew of any wourdis; or that confessioun should be maid to preastis; or yitt prayeris to sanctes departed. Whill that God geve unto him grace to resist thame, and not to consent to thair impietie, he was committed to the secular judge, (for our bischoppis follow Pilat, who boith did condempne, and also wesche[27] his handis,) who condempned him to the fyre; in the quhilk he was consumed in the said citie of Sanctandrose, about the time afoir writtin. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... Infanta, of Portugal landed in May (1662) at Portsmouth. The king went thither, and was married privately by Lord Aubigny, a secular priest, and almoner to the queen, according to the rites of Rome, in the queen's chamber; none present but the Portuguese ambassador, three more Portuguese of quality, and two or three Portuguese women. What made this necessary ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... copy of the New Testament—not also of the Old; you may remember that the latter records certain regrettable incidents of a sinister and immoral sort, calculated, I presume, to shock the tender budding impulses toward regeneration of prison readers. One may get other books of a secular kind from the library, upon written application; and prisoners of the first grade may subscribe for newspapers that contain no objectionable matter. But only a small proportion of the inmates is addicted to reading, and the opportunities ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... Overbeck felt that art was a religious question, and he determined that all his work should be a protest against the indifferentism and latitudinarianism which account all religions equal. He conceded that secular writings and mundane arts were not without their value and charm; in the arts may be permitted divers manifestations, such as landscape, animal, and flower painting. The Church is tolerant of all that is good, but on the ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson

... during the term of Don Goncalo Ronquillo. [191] It contains about eighty Spanish inhabitants, and is located close to the sea. It has a wooden fort, which mounts some artillery, and a monastery of the Order of St. Augustine; also a parish church, with its own vicar and secular priest. This church belongs to the diocese of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... pious forefathers seemed to mean nothing to the reckless roisterers of that shameless age. The Puritans during the late civil war had set the example of desecrating churches, by using them as stables and hospitals, and for other secular purposes. It was a natural outcome of such practices that the succeeding generation should go a step further and do infinitely worse. If God-fearing men did not scruple to desecrate consecrated churches, was it likely ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... to the time taken from secular pursuits, for the support of education and religion, an equally liberal amount was demanded. In the first place, one seventh part of their time was taken for the weekly sabbath, when no kind of work was to be done. Then the whole nation were required to meet at ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... philosophers. And we certainly are not a nation of philosophers. We must not then be too hasty in calling all contempt for intellect vulgar. We have sinned by undervaluing the life of reason; but we are not really a vulgar people. Our secular faith, the real religion of the average Englishman, has its centre in the idea of a gentleman, which has of course no essential connection with heraldry or property in land. The upper classes, who live by it, ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... Frances Wright had made on the minds of unprejudiced hearers. Third, and above all other causes of the Woman-Suffrage movement, was the Anti-slavery struggle in this country." By referring to the columns of the secular and religious press of that period, we find that most of the respectable and representative opinion of the country was "prejudiced." Halls and assembly rooms in all the cities were closed against Fanny Wright, not only because ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... duodenary[obs3], duodenal; twelfth; in one's 'teens, thirteenth. vicesimal[obs3], vigesimal; twentieth; twenty-fourth &c. n.; vicenary[obs3], vicennial[obs3]. centuple[obs3], centuplicate[obs3], centennial, centenary, centurial[obs3]; secular, hundredth; thousandth, &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... throw several diplomatists into a state of great excitement, and massacre a good many thousands of Africans and Asiatics?—For the present, it appears, the English Education Question is settled. I wish the Government had said that, in their inspection and superintendence, they would look only to secular matters, and leave religious ones to the persons who set up the schools, whoever these might be. It seems to me monstrous that the State should be prevented taking any efficient measures for teaching ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... the Anglo-Saxons the church seems to have established a firm hold on the people, who held tenaciously to their possessions, both secular and religious, which were only wrested from them after a severe struggle. Their enthusiastic love of Christianity led them to make a heroic defence of the churches, rather than see them fall into the hands of the heathen Anglo-Saxons. The historian ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... and did what might be done to win them to heaven by helping them to have a good time here. The church embraced and included the world. It no longer frowned even upon social dancing,—a transgression once so heinous in its eyes; it opened its doors to popular lectures, and encouraged secular music in its basements, where, during the winter, oyster suppers were given in aid of good objects. The Sunday school was made particularly attractive, both to the children and the young men and girls who taught them. Not ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... has made spiritualism respected by the secular press as it never has been before, and compelled an honorable recognition.—Hudson Tuttle, Author ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various

... was also another class of strangers, including all the nations that were not of Hebrew blood, by which they were surrounded. These traded with them and often sojourned for a more or less extended period among them for merely secular purposes, but never accepted their faith. For this reason they were often called sojourners. With us, in law, the former strangers would be known as "naturalized citizens," these as "denizens," residents ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... impossible to imagine but that the foundations of all knowledge—secular or sacred—were laid when intelligence dawned, though the superstructure remained for long ages so slight and feeble as to be compatible with the existence of almost any general view respecting the mode of governance of the universe. ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... 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

... 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, I feel bound ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... heavy. And then he was buried; and as soon as he was buried Sir Percivale yielded him to an hermitage out of the city, and took a religious clothing. And Bors was alway with him, but never changed he his secular clothing, for that he purposed him to go again into the realm of Logris. Thus a year and two months lived Sir Percivale in the hermitage a full holy life, and then passed out of this world; and Bors let bury him by his sister and by Galahad in the spiritualities. When Bors saw that ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... is known, encourage particular diseases. There is a painter's colic: the Sheffield grinder falls a victim to the inhalation of steel dust: clergymen so often have a certain kind of sore throat that this otherwise secular ailment gets named after them. And perhaps, if we were to inquire, we should find a similar relation between certain moral ailments and these various occupations, though here in the case of clergymen there would be specific differences: the poor curate, equally with the rector, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... is an age 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 real ability our ministers ought to be not a whit behind. But ability is not necessarily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... be feared. But it is important for us to avoid confusing this kind of jurisdiction with that which he enjoyed in the century after he had attained the power and the office of count, and had combined the religious functions of head of the diocese with the secular ones of political ruler of the city. Any judicial authority possessed by the bishop at this earlier period was not in virtue of any political position he himself held, but came to him entirely in what might be called an extraordinary ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams

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

... 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 ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... to the open space in the centre of the city, which even Phorenice had not dared to encroach upon with her ambitious building schemes, and stood on the secular ground which surrounds the most ancient, the most grand, and the breast of all ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

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

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

... to the secular government there is always a cult government. In every tribe there are Shamans, designated variously by white men as "medicine men," "priests," "priest doctors," "theurgists," etc. In many tribes, perhaps in all, the people ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... Siberia. With a woman's instinctive and unyielding faith, the beautiful girl waited and watched for his return, waited the long and dreary years till the roses of youth faded from her cheeks. True heart, no other voice could reach her ear! Dead to all allurement, she first joined a secular order, "dedicating her life to the instructions of the young and the consolation of the sick," and finally entered the Dominican sisterhood, where she gave the remainder of her life to the heroic and self-effacing service of her order. Not until late in life did she have the consolation of learning—and ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis

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

... Bible?'" And the learned professor proceeds to show that there is no evidence that Christianity has borrowed from Buddhism. In this country these same ideas are perhaps more widely circulated than in England. They are subsidizing the powerful agency of the secular press, particularly the Sunday newspapers, and thousands of the people are confronting these puzzling questions. There is occasion, therefore, for a careful and candid review of Buddhism by all leaders of thought and defenders ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... old and the new religions, and the political conditions gave the victory to the new, which was triumphant accordingly. 'We have caught her now', said the Bishop of Beauvais, and she was burned without even the formality of handing her over to the secular authorities. After the execution, the judges and counsellors who had sat in judgement on Joan received letters of indemnity from the Great Council; the Chancellor of England sent letters to the Emperor, to the kings and princes of Christendom, to all the nobles and towns of France, explaining ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... the entrance of the royal party, had lacked its crowning touch, was now brilliant beyond description. To the right of the throne were ranged the princes of the Church, hardly less resplendent in their robes than the secular nobles facing them, while between, forming a perfect foil for this glowing mass of color and jewels, a sombre spot in the brilliant assemblage, the tiers sat facing their sovereign. It was ominous—or so it seemed to Mr. Calvert—that the tiers should thus divide the two orders ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... had been attained. An effective system of municipal government and a good beginning in popular education followed. The last link between Church and State was severed in 1854 when the Clergy Reserves were turned over to the municipalities for secular purposes, with life annuities for clergymen who had been receiving stipends from the Reserves. In Lower Canada the remnants of the old feudal system, the rights of the seigneurs, were abolished in the same year with ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... new projects, new theories of government, new theologies, and I am amazed to see how so many Christians want only novelty in order to recommend a thing to their confidence; and so they vacillate and swing to and fro, and they are useless, and they are unhappy. New plans—secular, ethical, philosophical, religious, cisatlantic, transatlantic—long enough to make a line reaching from the German universities to Great Salt Lake City. Ah, my brother, do not take hold of a thing merely because it is new. Try it by the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... and vigour in the community. A state of spiritual chill or lukewarmness may even favour a certain exterior tranquillity; for where the energies of conviction are absent there will be little energy for discussion and resistance in matters not merely secular. But where Christian life and thought, and the expression of it, are in power, there, unless the Church is particularly watchful, the enemy has his occasion to put in the seeds of the tares amidst the golden grain. The Gospel itself has animated the disciples' affections, and also their intellects; ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule

... resisted the artificial prejudices of theology. The humanity of Ambrose and Martin was confirmed by the scandalous irregularity of the proceedings against Priscillian and his adherents. The civil and ecclesiastical ministers had transgressed the limits of their respective provinces. The secular judge had presumed to receive an appeal, and to pronounce a definitive sentence, in a matter of faith, and episcopal jurisdiction. The bishops had disgraced themselves, by exercising the functions of accusers in a criminal prosecution. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... every applicant would tend to abuse and lazy beggary; but a scheme of sympathetic and well directed aid thoughtfully administered would not. Abusus non tollit usum. The scandals of the monasteries did not justify the robbery of the destitute for the benefit of the secular supplanters of the monks. The Kirk-sessions of the Reformed Kirk did their best to take the place of the former guardians and kindly benefactors of the poor, but their funds were scanty; the old wealth had fallen into tenacious hands; and ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various

... be ad majorem Dei gloriam, were really for the greater glory of Goya. They are something more than secular, often little short of blasphemous. That they were tolerated proves the cynical temper of his times. When the fat old scoundrel of a Bourbon king ran away with all his court and the pusillanimous Joseph Bonaparte came upon the scene, Goya swerved and went through ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... weeping. But by no weeping is he stirred, inflexible to all the words he hears. Fate withstands, and lays divine bars on unmoved mortal ears. Even as when the eddying blasts of northern Alpine winds are emulous to uproot the secular strength of a mighty oak, it wails on, and the trunk quivers and the high foliage strews the ground; the tree clings fast on the rocks, and high as her top soars into heaven, so deep strike her roots to hell; even thus is the hero ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

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

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

... is tired of his past but he does not deny his faith in humanity; his doctrine only postpones to a time secularly remote the redemption of humanity from its secular suffering. He begins at once to do good; he rescues his kind elder brother from the repudiation of the daughter whom he has cast off because her seduction has condemned her to a life of shame; he wins ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... priesthood. Whilst quietly at work yesterday morning my attention was suddenly called off, first by a hurried exclamation, and then the inharmonious—ah, how utterly discordant!—ding-donging of church-bells. "Listen!" fell upon my ear: "one of the secular priests belonging to St. Gregory's church died two days ago, and is to be buried this morning. They are still saying masses over his body, the church is packed, and it is a sight such as you may possibly not have an opportunity of again witnessing." In half an hour we were within ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... 7-993), whose sister Adelaide married Otto the Great, was hardly more than a vassal of the German kings. The last king of Burgundy, Rudolph III. (993-1032), being deprived of all but a shadow of power by the development of the secular and ecclesiastical aristocracy—especially by that of the powerful feudal houses of the counts of Burgundy (see FRANCHE-COMTE), Savoy and Provence—died without issue, bequeathing his lands to the emperor Conrad II. Such was the origin of the imperial rights over ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... which even after the events of the last week, he was still able to make upon the people, by his mere manner, was striking testimony to their inveterate habit of awe toward him, as the embodiment of secular authority in their midst. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

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

... came before a wicket. A dark man with the blood of a Spanish inquisitor asked my business. I told him I was a poor student, without taint or heresy, who sought knowledge. He stroked his chin as though it were a monstrous improbability. He looked me up and down, but this might have been merely a secular inquiry on the chance that I carried explosives. He then dipped his pen in an ancient well (it was from such a dusty fount that the warrant for Saint Bartholomew went forth), then bidding me be careful in my answers, he cocked his head and shut his less suspicious eye lest ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... in this respect proceeded from an intellectual apathy toward religious questions, produced partly by the stigma attaching to unorthodoxy, partly by the absorbing interests of secular culture, partly by the worldliness of the Renaissance, partly by the infamy of the ecclesiastics, and partly by the enervating influence of tyrannies. However bold a man might be, he dread of heretic; the term paterino, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... Suffrage. Woman's Rights. Higher Education for Women. Socialism and State Socialism. Widened Scope of Governmental Action. Restriction of Immigration. Catholics. Their Attitude to Public Schools. Peril to Family. Mormonism. Divorce. Danger from a Secular Spirit. New Sense of Nationality. Benign Results. Greely Expedition to Polar Regions. Lesson of our National Success to Other Nations. Our ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

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

... found her guilty, and she was excommunicated and cut off from the joys of heaven and doomed to the fires of hell; then she was clothed in a coarse robe and delivered to the secular arm, and conducted to the market-place, the bell solemnly tolling the while. We saw her chained to the stake, and saw the first film of blue smoke rise on the still air. Then her hard face softened, and she looked upon the packed crowd in front of ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... world had held possession of his heart, and, balancing the advantages of a religious and a secular life, he chose, as most young people would choose, the attractions of court, to which his parents' rank entitled him, and leaving Glastonbury he repaired ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... went on to relate, was made. For the good of his soul, he renounced the church, but for his own advantage, he kept his abbacy. This was not difficult in days when secular abbes were common; nothing would induce him to change his resolution of being a soldier. Meantime he was perfecting his accomplishments as a fine gentleman, one of the requisites for which was a knowledge ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

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

... sacred Story is every where full of Miracles not inferior to this, and tho in the midst of those Acts of Divinity he never gave the least Hint of a Design to become a Secular Prince, yet had not hitherto the Apostles themselves any other than Hopes of worldly Power, Preferment, Riches and Pomp; for Peter, upon an Accident of Ambition among the Apostles, hearing his Master explain that his Kingdom was not of this World, was so scandaliz'd [6] ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... blue; And Autumn's own flower, the saffron, peer'd through The red-berried brambles and thick sassafras; And fragrant with thyme was the delicate grass; And high up, and higher, and highest of all, The secular phantom of snow! O'er the wall Of a gray sunless glen gaping drowsy below, That aerial spectre, reveal'd in the glow Of the great golden dawn, hovers faint on the eye And appears to grow in, and grow ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... good news that there was nobody to compare with the Four Black Brothers, no position that they would not adorn, no official that it would not be well they should replace, no interest of mankind, secular or spiritual, which would not immediately bloom under their supervision. The excuse of their folly is in two words: scarce the breadth of a hair divided them from the peasantry. The measure of their sense is this: that these symposia of rustic vanity were kept ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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

... expedition, Corcuera makes a triumphant entry into Manila (May 24, 1637), which is described by the Jesuit Juan Lopez. The festivities, secular and religious, last during several weeks, and include processions, masquerades, illuminations, masses, music, and dancing—and, finally, a dramatic representation of the conquest of Mindanao. The Manila Jesuits ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... 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 into ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... at this meeting, which some writers have supposed to be a sitting of an academy of arts and sciences founded by Lodovico, with Leonardo for its president, and left Milan the next day, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Mount of the Madonna at Varese. Among the many illustrious personages, religious and secular, who were present on this occasion, Fra Luca mentions "Messer Galeazzo Sforza di San Severino, my own special patron," to whom he presented the beautiful illuminated copy of his treatise, now in the Ambrosiana, the Prior of the convent of ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... appearance with that severity and liberal mind which could not be seen without being praised by the Greeks and feared and adored by the barbarians. And therefore if a poor man of this earth so commanded by edict concerning his image, how much more reason have the ecclesiastical or secular princes to take care to order that no one shall paint the benignity and meekness of our Redeemer or the purity of Our Lady and the Saints but the most illustrious painters to be found in their domains and provinces? And this would be a very famous and much praised work ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... 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 gorge; Unhood'st mine eyas-heart, ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson

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

... interpreted, good and evil being finally known. At the close of the first Christian millenary, all moral and intellectual values were grouped round and dominated by one supreme ideal; the loftiest value in this world and the next, side by side with the greatest secular power, were in the hands of the Church; together with the imperium she had succeeded to the spiritual and ethical inheritance of the dead civilisations. Without her uncouth barbarism reigned, and it was her task, while elaborating the system of the universe ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... Israel had its Ahone in a Being perhaps not yet named Jehovah. Israel entertained, however, perhaps by reason of 'nomadic habits,' only the scantiest concern about ancestral ghosts. We then find an historical tradition of secular contact between Israel and Egypt, from which Israel emerges with Jehovah for God, and a system of sacrifices. Regarding Jehovah as a revived memory of the moral Supreme Being whom Israel must have ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... was nothing loth. She always enjoyed the freedom of a secular household, and she was glad to remain within hearing of the last news in this great ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Churches of Westminster and St. Alban's, with the Chapel of King's College, Cambridge, are especially rich in heraldic treasures: and Westminster Hall and the northern Castles of Alnwick and Warkworth may be specified as noble examples of secular Architecture, which ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell

... were not satisfied, however, and moved to counter the FLN's centrality in Algerian politics. The surprising first round success of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in the December 1991 balloting spurred the Algerian army to intervene and postpone the second round of elections to prevent what the secular elite feared would be an extremist-led government from assuming power. The army began a crack down on the FIS that spurred FIS supporters to begin attacking government targets. The government later allowed elections featuring pro-government ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... singular, the author is afraid he has not granted enough to the Civil Magistrate, and been too favourable to the claims of the Clergy. He knew, however, that it would not please the King of Great Britain; and the Bishops of that kingdom were of opinion he had given too much authority to the Secular Power in things sacred: It is probable the Letter sent by the States of Holland and West-Friesland, in 1618, to King James I. was written by Grotius: it is his style and sentiments. The States, who foresaw that the troubles would ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... 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 ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf

... would now be in the neighbourhood of certain famous woods where in his boyhood he had often wandered, and he remembered that she was to have the Monday quite free. That Monday they should spend together in those enchanted woods. His secular business often took him to towns thirty or forty miles away, and it was not startling for him not to return till late at night. Thus Isabel and he should steal their one day out of all ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne

... in proportion as he showed himself dexterous and ingenious in the use of his hands, so was he dull and incapable of making any progress in the learning of letters, so that he would never apply his intelligence to them or regard them as anything save his enemies. This boy, who was called by his secular name of Filippo, was kept with others in the noviciate under the discipline of the schoolmaster, in order to see what he could do; but in place of studying he would never do anything save deface his own books and those ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... believe everything the priests choose to tell me. I am ready to admit that they have more spiritual gifts and graces than anybody else, but I will not believe that they know more about politics, and I will not submit to their dictation. They control the course of affairs both sacred and secular. At the present moment they are running the British Empire. You cannot get away from the fact that they return the Irish majority, and you will admit that the Irish majority is now the ruling power. Let me illustrate ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... son of a woman named Mary and who lived and taught around Jerusalem, uttering some, but not all, of the words attributed to him, then Jesus may be said to have lived. There can be no serious objection to the acceptance of that Jesus as an actual personage even though he was ignored by secular historians and though the time and place of his birth ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd

... 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 ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... that the Thirty Years' War terminated. It was owing to Richelieu that the peace of Westphalia was made in 1643, although I believe he had been dead a year before that time; but it was owing to him, and it was the first peace ever made between nations on a secular basis, with everything religious left out, and it was ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbour. Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... off quite passably. I had drawn up an explanatory programme for my Lohengrin Overture, but the words 'Holy Grail' and 'God' were struck out with great solemnity, as that sort of thing was not allowed at secular concerts. I had to content myself with the chorus from the Italian Opera for the symphony, besides putting up with a baritone whose English phlegm and Italian training drove me to despair at the rehearsal. All I understood of the English version of the text was, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... recognition in our public system of instruction? The moral element is largely present among educators as an instinct, but it ought to be evolved into a clear purpose with definite means of accomplishment. It is an open secret in fact, that while our public instruction is ostensibly secular, having nothing to do directly with religion or morals, there is nothing about which good teachers are more thoughtful and anxious than about the means of moral influence. Occasionally some one from the outside attacks our public schools ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... Maoris, the Zunis, and other peoples in the lower or middle stage of barbarism, by the exertions and teaching of schools. But religious hymns and mythical hymns—the care of a priesthood—are one thing; a great secular epic is another. Priests will not devote themselves from age to age to its conservation. It cannot be conserved, with its unity of tone and character, and, on the whole, even of language, by generations of paid strollers, who recite new lays of their own, as well as any old lays ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

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

... restraint. Fraud, 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 ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... bartering, but return immediately to Nueva Espana, for the principal reason of this expedition is to ascertain the return voyage." The letter enclosed to Urdaneta states that the king "has been informed that when you were a secular, you were in Loaysa's fleet, and journeyed to the Strait of Magallanes and the spice regions, where you remained eight years in our service." In the projected expedition of the viceroy, Urdaneta's experience will be very valuable "because ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair

... storm through the world; at worst as a spectra-fighting Man, nay who will one day be a Spectre-queller. If pilgriming restlessly to so many "Saints' Wells," and ever without quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little secular wells, whereby from time to time some alleviation is ministered. In a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermitting to "eat his own heart;" and clutches round him outwardly on the NOT-ME for wholesomer food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit him ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... our early literature; we are going to think about the beginning of Christian work of this kind in the form of poetry and prose in England. When I say Christian poetry and prose, I am using the word Christian as opposed to pagan, and inclusive of secular as well as religious verse, though the amount of secular verse is, in the earliest time, comparatively very small. Some of the pagan work was retouched by Christians who cared for the truth and strength and beauty of it. The ideal of the English heathen poet was, in many ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey

... compound word meant a good deal more than they do now. The Archdeacon was a devoted Whig, a Hanoverian to the backbone; and he held it his duty to support the Protestant succession, not only by the spiritual but by the secular arm. He was a great electioneerer, as befitted times when the claims of two rival dynasties virtually met upon the hustings, and he took a prominent part in the great Yorkshire contest of the year 1734. His most vigorous display of energy, however, was made, as was natural, in "the ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

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

... 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 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... three took long naps every day, and sat hours together minutely discussing what they saw out of the window. In her self-guided search for self-improvement, the elder sister went to many church lectures on a vast variety of secular subjects, and usually came home with a comic account of them, and that made more matter of talk for the whole family. She could make fun of nearly everything; Irene complained that she scared away the young men whom they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... does to all human beings, high and low, rich and poor, men and women, boys and girls, who desire to live with Him in heaven for ever and ever. You may be very industrious, and energetic, and honest, and moral, and well conducted in your secular calling, but that will not stand you instead of what Christ requires. The old man must be put off, the new nature be received. I repeat, ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston

... quod rex Edilbertus a fundamentis in eadem Rhofi civitate construxit." Ethelbert endowed it with Priestfield (a large tract of land lying towards Borstal) which still belongs to it, and with other property; and Justus, though himself a monk, placed it in the hands of secular priests. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer

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

... that Mary Agatha brought a note; she told Rosalie and Emmy Lou about it; it asked that Mary Agatha be allowed a seat to herself. This, Mary Agatha explained, was because, preparatory to Confirmation, she was trying to keep her mind from secular things, and a seat to herself would help ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin

... and of Mount-Carmel, two orders of knighthood, of which Monsieur was president. April 1. Troubles in Provence and Dauphiny. On the motion of Torne, constitutional bishop of Bourges, all peculiar religious dresses are abolished, and all secular congregations. 6. Pethion writes to the 48 sections, inviting them to give a fete to the liberated soldiers of Chateau-vieux. 15. A civic fete is given to the above soldiers, who had been imprisoned for crimes. 16. Riots at the Hotel de Ville in Paris, on account ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz

... of the Jesuit Order, gives an excellent answer to this question. He says: "If a person thinks of embracing a secular life, he should ask and desire more evident signs that God calls him to a secular life than if there were question of embracing the evangelical counsels; for Our Lord Himself has evidently exhorted us to embrace ...
— Vocations Explained - Matrimony, Virginity, The Religious State and The Priesthood • Anonymous

... been sound practical musicians. This time they are speaking, not of descant, but of Prick-song. The chiefest virtue in the performance of Prick-song, by which Falstaff and Nym probably understood both sacred and secular part-music, is that a man should 'keep time,' religiously counting his rests, 'one, two, three, and the third in your bosom,' and when he begins to sing, that he should 'keep time, distance, and proportion,' as Mercutio says Tybalt did ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor

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

... Christianity to the infidels of the New World. The Brothers took the question of the renunciation of poverty into their own hands, by declining to give up the money which Brother Marie-Joseph had originally brought into the society; so M. Stremler, being now moneyless, commenced the secular manufacture of the seductive Trappistine, in opposition to the regular manufacture within the walls of the Abbey, abstaining, however, from the use of the religious label which is the Brothers' trade-mark. The unfortunate inventor was fined and condemned ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... whom he had made to disbelieve his own senses, and with Cullen, who was ready enough to take his superior's views in any secular affair, had been complete; and he did not think that either would now be likely to repeat the story in a manner that would do any injury. We shall, in a short time, see what steps he took in the matter with Thady himself. In the meanwhile, we will follow him into Mrs. McKeon's house, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... seem to some a rather incongruous way of presenting religious and secular things. It may be so, but we are not careful to preserve congruity, or to dilute our dish to please the palate of the fastidious. This world is full of incongruities, and we are endeavouring to present that portion of it now ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne

... find in an old established English hotel. It looks across the cobbled space to the curious block of buildings that seems to have been intended for a church but has relapsed into shops. The shouldering of secular buildings against the walls of churches is a sight so familiar in parts of France that this market place has an almost Continental flavour, in keeping with the fact that Richmond grew up under the protection of the formidable castle built by that Alan Rufus of Brittany who ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... last shout 'Let all be well' dies away, the performer gives place to another, and again confession is made, and all the people shout 'It is a sin.' A third time it is done. Then, still in solemn silence, the calf is let loose. Like the Jewish scapegoat, it may never be used for secular work." At a Badaga funeral witnessed by the Rev. A. C. Clayton the buffalo calf was led thrice round the bier, and the dead man's hand was laid on its head. "By this act, the calf was supposed to receive all the sins of the deceased. It was then driven away to ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer



Words linked to "Secular" :   religious, layperson, common person, common man, profane, material, secular games, unworldly, impious, secular humanism, sacred, economic, mercenary, clergyman, temporalty, temporal, sophisticated, commoner, lay reader, earthly, layman, laity, lay, terrestrial, secularism



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