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Secular   /sˈɛkjələr/   Listen
Secular

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



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"Secular" Quotes from Famous Books



... namely, Rigou,—Rigou, the miser-egoist; full of tenderness for his own gratifications, cold and hard to others; the ecclesiastical miser; the monk still a monk so far as he can squeeze the juice of the fruit called good-living, and becoming secular only to put a paw upon the public money. In the first place, let us explain the continual pleasure that he took in sleeping ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... have the sum of sciences,—seven, according to the Florentine mind—necessary to the secular education of man and woman. Of these the modern average respectable English gentleman and gentlewoman know usually only a little of the last, and entirely hate the prudent applications of that: being ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... years of her life Theodora made the monastery or convent of S. Andrew in Krisei her home.[165] To retire thus from the troubled sea of secular life to the haven of a monastery, and there prepare for the voyage beyond earthly scenes, was a common practice in the fashionable world of the men and women of Byzantine days. And it was natural for a wealthy traveller to ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... bring the splendid Milanese Court so vividly before us as these portraits of the Bentivogli: they are, moreover, very precious for the light they throw on what Luini could achieve in the secular style so rarely touched by him. Great, however, as are these frescoes, they are far surpassed both in value and interest by his paintings in the side chapel of S. Catherine. Here more than anywhere else, more even than ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... one composing an idyll, the other framing a melodrama, one imagining peasants as sentimental swains, the other convinced that the nobles are horrible tyrants.—Through this mutual misconception and this secular isolation, the French lose the habit, the art and the faculty for acting in an entire body. They are no longer capable of spontaneous agreement and collective action. No one, in the moment of danger, dares ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... had the little Geneva Bible carried by every Puritan, and read it with a concentrated eagerness born of the sense that they had just escaped its entire loss, and there were perpetual religious exercises of all varieties, with other more secular ones recorded in the Journal. In the beginning there had been some expectation that several other ships would form part of the expedition, but they were still not in sailing order and thus the first entry records "It was agreed, (it ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... drainage, all, with the last trifling exception, perfect, yet without any signs of action. Every one must have remarked how mud-banks, left by the retiring tide, imitate in miniature a country with hill and dale; and here we have the original model in rock, formed as the continent rose during the secular retirement of the ocean, instead of during the ebbing and flowing of the tides. If a shower of rain falls on the mud-bank, when left dry, it deepens the already-formed shallow lines of excavation; and so it is with the rain of successive centuries on the bank ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... admiration of learned men, statesmen, scholars, and divines, he was a reader of biographies. While emulating the excellence which he admired, these stores of information were employed to enliven conversation and to furnish material for public discourses. In the gathering of the people, whether for secular or religious purposes, he was often called upon to speak. His remarks were received with attention, and had weight with his audience, because they embodied the fruits ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various

... verses, written about 1150 in a mixture of Middle Frankish and Bavarian. It belongs to the order of Spielmannspoesie, or secular minstrelsy; but the author makes frequent reference to what 'the books' say, and evidently meant his work to be read. (The earlier gleemen, so far as known, could not read or write, got their material from oral tradition and composed their poems to be sung or recited to musical accompaniment.) Rother ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... of the school was explained to them, they consented to receive secular instructions but objected to any religious teaching. They asked to have schools opened in the pueblos on the plan of our public schools where the children could attend during the day and return home at night, and their home life be not broken up, ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... Men have misread the words, and said, See, the religion of Jesus is quite unworldly, has nothing to do with the institutions and arrangements of human life. It deals with the spiritual, and not with the secular. It treats of our spirits, not our hands or pockets. So long as we recognize Christ's authority in the Church, we may do as we like in the home, the counting-house, the factory, ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... 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

... Holy Alliance which it is his great glory as a statesman to have defeated. The Holy Alliance endeavored to impose upon other nations principles and a law of life not their own. As Canning objected to the Holy Alliance, so he would have objected to its present secular substitute, the Concert of Europe, which simply means the agreement of the great powers to inflict their will upon the small ones, not allowing them to develop according to their native forces and genius, but constraining them to such forms ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... Erastianism, or subjection of the church of God to the regulations of an earthly government, and therefore but one degree better than prelacy or popery.—Again, the more moderate party were content to allow the king's title to the throne, and in secular affairs to acknowledge his authority, so long as it was exercised with due regard to the liberties of the subject, and in conformity to the laws of the realm. But the tenets of the wilder sect, called, from their leader Richard Cameron, by the name of Cameronians, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... contain an eternal truth: but in their literal sense they expressed a mistaken judgment. The world—that is, secular society— did not pass away. It is with us still. For a period of some three hundred years it persecuted the Church. At the end of that period it accepted baptism, but not its implications. The Church has been engaged ever ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... window opposite to the door, and a shelf, holding a Bible, Prayer and hymn book, and two others, one religious, and one secular, from the library. A rust-coloured jacket, with a black patch marked with white numbers, and a tarpaulin hat, crossed with two lines of red paint on the crown, hung on the wall. The Doctor asked for Leonard's cell, but it was in a distant gallery, and he was told that when ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 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

... firm support of the ecclesiastical order, whose liberty was connected with that of their chief. But the second attempt, though it was crowned with some partial and apparent success, has been vigorously resisted by the secular power, and finally extinguished by ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... McGovery, 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 ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... One unbroken stretch of snow covered the plateau, and at the centre of the wintry winding-sheet a cluster of weather-beaten huts appealed pitiably to the eye. They were the buildings of the Riuzanjita hot-springs; in summer a sort of secular monastery for pilgrims to the Dragon peak. They were tenanted now, we had been told, by a couple of watchmen. We struck out with freer strides, while the moon, which had by this time risen high enough to overtop the wall of peaks, watched us with an ashen face, as in single file we moved across the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... such a solemn business with us, and we bring such long faces to it, that we cannot admit or conceive to be at all naturally admissible such a light companion as the imagination. The distinction between secular and religious has been extended even to the faculties; and we cannot tolerate in others the fulness and freedom which we have lost or rejected for ourselves. Yet it has been a fatal mistake with the critics. They found themselves ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

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

... crest, honeycombed with dim cave temples, now deserted and forgotten, but formerly sanctifying those watch-towers of Nature which guard the hoary shrine of Boro-Boedoer. At Matoelan we hear that the swift river separating the great Temple from the secular world is in flood, the bridge broken down, and the supplementary raft impossible through the swirling current. This untoward event involves a further expedition to Magelang, a sordid town of continuous markets, the Javanese ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... of the pass. Horse-railroads not being as new to me as to the Japanese, I piously chose the narrow way leading to the temple, to the lingering regret of the baggage trundlers, who turned sorry eyes down upon the easier secular road at every ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... Christianity, had riveted itself irrevocably to the manhood of all men. Where its faith was fixed by creeds and councils it could not save itself even by surrender. It could not gradually dilute democracy, as could a merely sceptical or secular democrat. There stood, in fact or in possibility, the solid and smiling figure of a black bishop. And he was either a man claiming the most towering spiritual privileges of a man, or he was the mere buffoonery and blasphemy of a monkey in a mitre. That ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... to let the dogs bark. But that was not the principle of the time: and as Mr. Arber most frankly admits, it was certainly not the principle of the dogs themselves. The Puritans claimed for themselves a not less absolute right to call in the secular arm if they could, and a much more absolute certainty and righteousness for their tenets than the very ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

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

... regiment of Ernest. Alienation of the domains of St. Lazare, 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 of the statues ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz

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

... hand there are very few which are of an intrinsically barbaric character, and where this character does appear, it is chiefly in short passages, intermingled with others of a different character.... It is very likely that if we had found it possible to get at more of their secular music, we should have come to another conclusion as to the proportion of the barbaric element.... Mr. E. S. Philbrick was struck with the resemblance of some of the rowing tunes at Port Royal to the boatmen's songs he ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

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

... after 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 her to ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin

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

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

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

... recitations, apparatus, and other purposes. In arranging and fitting up this room, reference must be had to the requirements of the district; for this one room is to be occupied by children of all ages, for summer and winter schools, and for the secular, but more especially for the religious meetings of the neighborhood. But in its construction primary reference should be had to the convenience of the scholars in school, for it will be used by them more, ten to one, than for all ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

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

... the recipient. The young man, full-blooded, with all the vices and natural instincts of a captain of condottieri, had very great trouble in assuming even the appearance of a Churchman's virtue; but as he knew from his own father's mouth that the highest secular dignities were reserved far his elder brother, he decided to take what he could get, for fear of getting nothing; but his hatred for Francesco grew stronger, for from henceforth he was doubly his rival, both ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

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

... where the secular clothes were spread out, the disciple, having removed his habit, began to put them on in silence, and his master, who was standing at the window, could not repress a sob. Presently ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

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

... 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 and moderate religious-based ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... Corporations..... Irish Tithe Bill..... Commutation of Tithes in England..... Bill for Registration of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, &c...... Bill to alter the Revenues and Territory of the different Sees..... Bill to abolish the secular Jurisdiction of Bishops, &c...... Bill to amend the English Municipal Corporation Act..... Bill to Allow Felons Counsel to Address the Jury, &c...... Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt, &c...... Election Committees..... New Houses of Parliament..... Motion for the Reduction of Taxation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... interest an educated man more. Its foundation dates from years before the Christian era—how long before no man knows. It is rich in history, secular as well as ecclesiastical. The Black Prince, beloved and admired as few princes ever were, had a strong attachment for it, and here lies buried. Opposite his tomb sleeps Henry IV, the king who dethroned Richard II, son of this same Black Prince. Thomas a Becket, and those marvelous pilgrimages ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... altars august the elders are shining supreme; And brittle and barren as dust is the spiritless secular dream. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... it. But when he exaggerated this line of thought into a practical system, in which philosophers were to be organized into a kind of corporate hierarchy, invested with almost the same spiritual supremacy (though without any secular power) once possessed by the Catholic Church; when I found him relying on this spiritual authority as the only security for good government, the sole bulwark against practical oppression, and expecting that by it a system of despotism ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... father’s fortune which had fallen to her, and seems not to have doubted her brother’s and sister’s concurrence in this act of liberality. But they, on the contrary, were both for a time deeply offended that she should apparently prefer strangers to her own kindred. They took the matter “in an entirely secular manner.” This greatly grieved her in turn; and, balked at once in her wishes and her sisterly trust, she pictures in the most lively colours the distress she endured. La Mère Agnès consoled her in her disappointment, and sought to carry ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... 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 was, that the Earl of Sandwich did not marry her by proxy, as usual, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... amongst all the torrents of eulogy passed upon The General and his Army since his death, than the almost invariable silence amongst Christian as well as secular papers about these Holiness Meetings, and that teaching of Holiness which were the root and secret of all ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

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

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

... ladies respectful as they are to these monks, would have looked askance at the innovation. The Fathers never go in there. They are to be seen at the abbey church, where they sing and say their offices. Only the three secular chaplains of the abbess penetrate into the house of the nuns; the youngest of the three cannot ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... epoch. After another natural convulsion, in which the order of the world and of human life is once more reversed, God withdraws his guiding hand, and man is left to the government of himself. The world begins again, and arts and laws are slowly and painfully invented. A secular age succeeds to a theocratical. In this fanciful tale Plato has dropped, or almost dropped, the garb of mythology. He suggests several curious and important thoughts, such as the possibility of a state ...
— Gorgias • Plato

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

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

... 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 his Brut is put by the best authorities at not ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... The long, ivory-black cassock, so unmistakable in the atmospheric perspective, became an ordinary frock-coat; the white band of a collar developed into the regulation secular pattern, and the silk hat, although of last year's shape, conformed less closely in its lines to one belonging exclusively to the clergy. The face, though, as I could see in my hurried glance, and even at that distance, was the ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... political economy and morality almost in the same line. It should rather then be compared to codes of law than to religious scriptures, though often there the comparison would be incomplete, since the religious atmosphere pervaded even the most secular circumstance of the life of the Jew. There was no secular. The meanest function in life must be brought in relation to the great Divine. This must be understood in studying the Talmud, this must be understood in studying ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

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

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

... just now to the Irish Hierarchy the establishment of a Catholic University? Has the Supreme Pontiff recommended it for the sake of the Sciences, which are to be the matter, and not rather of the Students, who are to be the subjects, of its teaching? Has he any obligation or duty at all towards secular knowledge as such? Would it become his Apostolical Ministry, and his descent from the Fisherman, to have a zeal for the Baconian or other philosophy of man for its own sake? Is the Vicar of Christ bound by office or by vow to be the preacher of the theory ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

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

... 'peace! and why should I not play The Spartan Mother with emotion, be The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind? Him you call great: he for the common weal, The fading politics of mortal Rome, As I might slay this child, if good need were, Slew both his sons: and I, shall I, on whom The secular emancipation turns Of half this world, be swerved from right to save A prince, a brother? a little will I yield. Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you. O hard, when love and duty clash! I fear My conscience will not count me fleckless; yet— Hear my conditions: promise ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... together. Rose had gone on improving herself; her companions in the art embroidery line were girls of a good class, with a few ladies among them, and their tone was good and refined. It was the fashion among them to attend the classes, Bible and secular, put in their way, and their employers conscientiously attended to their welfare, so that Rose was by no means an unfitting companion for the High School maiden, and they most happily compared notes over their very ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the universities of Italy, pre-eminent since their foundation for secular studies, had been gaining reputation by their offer of a wider education than the threadbare discussions of the schoolmen. The discovery and revival in the fifteenth century of Greek literature, which had stirred Italian ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... were early disillusioned. Spinoza soon found the learning of the Synagogue insufficient and unsatisfactory. He sought the wisdom of secular philosophy and science. But in order to satisfy his intellectual desires it was necessary to study Latin. And Latin was not taught in ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... Pope Gregory I., in the second book of his Dialogues, ascribes to him miraculous prophecies and healings, and even a raising of the dead.[8] With reference to his want of secular culture and his spiritual knowledge, he calls him a learned ignorant and an unlettered sage.[9] At all events he possessed the genius of a lawgiver, and holds the first place among the founders of monastic orders, though his person and life are much less interesting ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... given out, there flitted before my frightened mind volumes of reports, Battersea schools, Bell, Wilderspin, normal farms, National Society, British Schools, interminable questions about how religion might be separated altogether from secular education, or so much religion taught as all religious sects could agree in. These are all very good things and people to discuss, I daresay; but, to tell the truth, the whole subject sits heavy on my soul. I ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... of the character and performance of the first Italian secular drama, the "Orfeo" of Poliziano, unquestionably a lyric work, is the result of some years of labor. The author believes that what he has to offer on this topic will be found to possess historical value. ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson

... Republic of the United States of America, is the most important secular event in the history of the human race. It did not disentangle the confused theory of the origin of Government, but cut through the bonds of power existing by prescription, at a blow; and thus directly and immediately affected ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

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

... and power as "The Pharaoh and the Priest" has been written about ancient Egypt thus far. In this book the Egyptian state stands before us as a mighty living organism. The author depicts vividly the desperate conflict between the secular and the ecclesiastical powers during the career of Ramses XIII, in the eleventh ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... the city were right 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

... century, this exclusive character gradually weakened. There arose the idea that besides Jain scriptures, secular poetry might also be illustrated and along with the growing devotion to Krishna as God came the demand for illustrated versions of Krishna texts. The three texts we have just mentioned are due to this tendency. All three are ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... 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 they play ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various

... is, in the course of the debate as well as at all other times in the lodge, to be addressed by the title of "Brother," and no secular or worldly titles ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... 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 are organized into Shamanistic societies; but that ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... sound learning. In 1250, Robert de Sorbonne, the private confessor of Louis the Ninth, emulating the munificence of previous patrons of letters, founded a college intended to facilitate the education of secular students of theology. The college took the name of its author, and, becoming famous for the ability of its instructors, the Sorbonne soon engrossed within its walls almost the entire course of theological teaching given in the University of Paris. Although the students in the colleges of Navarre ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... marabouts—that is to say, the religious or secular nobles—have the privilege of hunting with the falcon. The patrician bird, taken by the agha from the shoulder of his hawk-bearer, is about as large as a pigeon, the head small, beak short and strong, the claws yellow and armed with sharp talons. The bird rides ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... 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, ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson

... grounds for thinking that flowers and insects have mutually reacted upon one another in their evolution. Guppy suggests that something of the same kind may be true of birds. I must content myself with the quotation of a single sentence. "With the secular drying of the globe and the consequent differentiation of climate is to be connected the suspension to a great extent of the agency of birds as plant dispersers in later ages, not only in the Pacific Islands ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... in this ungrateful land, and many sick who rather than men seemed to be marble statues, who had no recourse but to stand in line, without one word of consolation; therein figured some who wore religious garb, others in secular dress limited to a pair of rumpled trousers and a cast-off coat, the lack of this luxurious garment being replaced in some instances by a ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... not to say solemnity, pervaded the entire surroundings. The building no longer appeared secular, unecclesiastical. Not in the midst of all the pomp and ceremonial of the Easter service had the chancel and high altar disengaged a more compelling influence. All other intrusive noises died away; the organ was hushed; the fussy janitor was nowhere in sight; ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

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

... alive a false idea is a greater crime than to kill a man. I suppose you will not deny that? I hated him! Visionaries work everlasting evil on earth. Their Utopias inspire in the mass of mediocre minds a disgust of reality and a contempt for the secular ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

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

... Lancaster, and added: 'In this way I naturally became initiated into a desire for promoting schools for the working classes, and I must say, from that time to this I never changed my mind upon the subject. I think it is absolutely necessary our schools should not merely be secular, but that they should be provided with religious teaching, and that religious teaching ought not to be sectarian. There will be plenty of time, when these children go to church or chapel, that they should learn ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

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

... first day,"—the Saturday evening was observed with primitive strictness in the family, while on Sunday evening, after sunset, the excellent matron assumed her knitting-work, or attended to whatever secular occupation she chose. I have often thought, and it seems likely, that the name of Swett—that of one of the most eminent and excellent physicians of his day, in our community, and who in fact fell a sacrifice to the faithful discharge of his professional duty—was the same as Schwedt, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

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

... a church member she began to remonstrate with Thea about practicing—playing "secular music"—on Sunday. One Sunday the dispute in the parlor grew warm and was carried to Mrs. Kronborg in the kitchen. She listened judicially and told Anna to read the chapter about how Naaman the leper was permitted to bow down in the house of Rimmon. Thea went back to the piano, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... Sturdy bearded fellows who salute you as men about to die. They are perfectly cheery, as brave as the unthinking at their side, but they tramp firmly to a certain end. War lets loose the rich life of subconsciousness which most mortals keep bottled up in the sleepy secular days of humdrum. Peril and sudden death uncork those heady vapors, and sharpen the super-senses. This race of men with their presciences have no quarrel with death. They have made their peace with it. It is merely that they carry a foreknowledge of it—they ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason

... 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? ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

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

... law, several secular codes have been introduced; commercial disputes handled by special committees; has not accepted ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... 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 that their godless successors ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... man's soul to his best of to-day For the future of growth, in an absolute way, Were folly as futile as binding an oak To the seedling's first prop, or the sapling's first yoke; For provisional law, not for secular life, Such phrases are fit. Yet to heal age-long strife By the very best "betterment" now in our ken, Till—a better shines forth's the first duty of men. Do right to the height of our sight's actuality!— Yes, that is our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various

... 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, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... had up to Wharton's time ever been made. The first volume contained the chief monastic annals which illustrated the history of the sees whose cathedrals were possessed by monks; those served by canons regular or secular were reserved for a third volume, while a fourth was to have contained the episcopal annals of the Church from ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... importance. The educating of the females in this way must give them great powers, and open to them a field of great usefulness in becoming teachers themselves hereafter. The education given is altogether secular, and they profess to try and govern "by appeals to the nobler principles of their nature," as we gather from a report which was put into ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... Indra, adopted by Buddhism into the circle of its own great adherents;—it has been said, "because of his popularity." He is generally styled, as here, T'een Ti, "God or Ruler of Devas." 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 Buddhist saint. He appears several times in Fa-hien's narrative. E. H., ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... the pictures of Radha and K.rish.na, and repeat the eight- syllabled prayer to K.rish.na (that is—the formula meaning 'K.rish.na is my refuge') as many times as possible. After that they may apply themselves to their secular affairs. ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)

... states to aim at nothing but keeping the peace; or did they consider themselves bound to take care, not of the future, but the present, interest of man; not of their souls and of their faith, but of their person and property; not of any ecclesiastical, but secular, matters only?" ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

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

... between the 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 ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... any of these suggestions. They involve hand-to-hand fighting over this baby's body. No one of us is entitled to take charge of him. Else why did we all unite to rescue him from the nunnery? He will be torn to pieces among contending divines! I think a purely secular education is all that as a committee we should aim at. We have, but just withdrawn the child from the shadow of a single ecclesiastical influence—would you transfer it to another? Every Protestant denomination ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... 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 cruelty ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... ipso facto excommunication, the absolution from which is reserved to the Pope alone, except at the point of death." And by it all bishops, ordinaries, and inquisitors were empowered to punish Freemasons, "as vehemently suspected of heresy," and to call in, if necessary, the help of the secular arm; that is, to cause the civil authority to put ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... its separatists, recriminating memorials, and the warfare of one Church with another. The utility of an Establishment depends entirely on the piety, assiduity, and devoted zeal of its ministers, and on their abstaining from a secular interference which may involve ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... When he went into the battle-line he took with him only two books—his Shakespeare and his Milton. With Milton's character he had some marked affinities—the virginal purity of Milton's youth, his love of learning, his hatred of all tyrannies, secular and spiritual, making a strong appeal to the sympathies of my son. "Milton," he wrote, "is perhaps the very grandest figure in English history." "In Milton the spirit of Puritanism is combined with a purely Hellenic love of beauty." "'Paradise ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

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

... really seen her,—who does not thus remember the drive from the little country town to the 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 of steps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... humanity as we find in the realm of folk-song.[21] During the early period of Church music, while theorists and scholars were struggling with the intricate problems of polyphonic style, the people in their daily secular life were finding an outlet for their emotions, for their joys and sorrows, in song and in dance. This instinct for musical expression is universal, and just because the products of such activity were ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... Aquinas, whom Romanists call the "angelic Doctor," says, "Heretics are to be compelled by corporeal punishments, that they may adhere to the faith." Again, "Heretics may not only be excommunicated, but justly killed." He says that "the church consigns such to the secular judges to be exterminated ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... all the power in his own hands. Lynn was always a very religious place, and most of the orders—Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelite and Augustinian Friars, and the Sack Friars—were represented at Lynn, and there were numerous hospitals, a lazar-house, a college of secular canons, and other religious institutions, until they were all swept away by the greed of a rapacious king. There is not much left to-day of all these religious foundations. The latest authority on the history of Lynn, Mr. H.J. Hillen, well says: "Time's unpitying plough-share ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... you'll excuse my saying so, seems to me to be carrying your habit of scepticism to the verge of actual mania. I don't think you ought to adopt that kind of attitude, Major. If you had been trained in theology, or even secular metaphysics, it might be excusable; though then, of course, you wouldn't do it. But in a simple and almost entirely uneducated country gentleman like you, it's ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

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

... observed Mr. Mivers, calmly, "is towards that omission. Secular education is the necessary reaction from the special theological training which arose in the dislike of one set of Christians to the teaching of another set; and as these antagonists will not agree how religion is to be taught, either there must be no teaching at all, or religion ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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

... Aemilia was condemned, but Licinia and Marcia were acquitted. There was an immediate outcry; the pontiff's leniency was severely censured; and the anger and fear of the people emboldened a tribune, Sextus Peducaeus, to propose for the first time that the secular arm should wrest from the pontifical college the spiritual jurisdiction that it had abused. He carried a resolution that a special commission should be established by the people to continue the investigation.[836] The judges were probably Roman knights after the model of the Gracchan ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... girls of more advanced age severe, sombre gymnasiums and grammar-schools did indeed open their doors. These were under a sort of supervision and in case of necessity were recruited by the secular arm, if new comers did not enlist of their own accord. But in these institutions too, only the merest manual training was given, in spite of the pompous sounding names which they flaunted, and which to this hour have remained a mystery to me. A brother of my mother's, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... about south-southeast; its amount is somewhat less than six seconds of arc in a century. The double star 61 Cygni, in fact, is displaced very nearly as much in one year as Alcyone with its train in one hundred. Nor is there much probability that this slow secular shifting is other than apparent; since it pretty accurately reverses the course of the sun's translation through space, it may be presumed that the backward current of movement in which the Pleiades seem to float is purely an effect of our own ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... been good men they might have fallen into despair. As soon as Sir Galahad was buried Sir Perceval retired to a hermitage out of the city, and took a religious clothing; and Sir Bohort was always with him, but did not change his secular clothing, because he purposed to return to the realm of Loegria. Thus a year and two months lived Sir Perceval in the hermitage a full holy life, and then passed out of this world, and Sir Bohort buried him by his sister and ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... the belief that the ultimate prosperity of their community, even in material things, depended mainly on the growing intelligence and morality of the people; so it happened that much earlier than is usual in new settlements, measures were taken to secure the means of secular and religious instruction for the people. But it was not merely in material wealth and prosperity that was evident the progress of which the inhabitants of Gershom were becoming ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson

... simple, manner with that subtle question, the Trinity of the Godhead, and gives the reader many new thoughts in connection with it. The characters portrayed awaken an unusual degree of interest, being as they are, persons eminent in history, both secular and religious. As one follows the story to its close he can not but agree with the author, that Arius, the hero and arch-heretic of the Nicene age, was "one of the grandest, purest, least understood, and most systematically misrepresented characters ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

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

... into Homerton Academy, a Dissenting institution, he was refused, because he seemed to the authorities to show signs of Sandemanianism. But he had no difficulty in entering Hoxton College; and here, in his twenty-third year, he finished his religious and secular education. During these years his leading inspiration had been a thirst after ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... a great work dear brother White is doing, but some criticise the idea of his opening the house of God every evening for amusements as well as prayer. Some don't believe in mingling secular things ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... Supreme Court note: the nascent civil court system, administered by region, has judges who practice secular ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... fault that his people confused scholarship with religious ardor. Having a good mind, he was glad to exercise it; and being given only one subject to study he was bound to make rapid progress in that. If he had ever been offered a choice between a religious and a secular education, his friends would have found out early that he was not born to be a rav. But as he had no mental opening except through the hedder, he went on from year to year winning new distinction in Hebrew scholarship; with the result that witnesses with preconceived ideas began ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... before me. What a cutting off! The question would be, "Is this cutting off a part of the proposed correction of prison abuses?" No secular school, no religious instruction of note to the female prisoners, and the screws put upon our prayer meeting so tightly as to render them of but little ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby

... judge, a revolt against the Church itself, nor even against the parochial clergy. It would seem rather that there is a fixed determination that the priests shall keep to their business, that of the service of religion, and shall not be allowed to interfere in secular education, or, by use of the confessional, to dominate the family; and, above all, that the convents shall not be filled by force, undue persuasion, or cajolery. The state of the Roman Catholic religion and its priesthood in England is constantly being held up ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... or otherwise, in the business of this life; out of which would flow nepotism, Simony, and Erastian submission to those sovereigns who ought to be the servants, not the lords of the Church. For this end no means were too costly. St. Dunstan, in order to expel the married secular priests, and replace them by Benedictine monks of the Italian order of Monte Casino, convulsed England, drove her into civil war, paralysed her monarchs one after the other, and finally left her exhausted and imbecile, a prey ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... totally unprotected. Buckle, in his "History of Civilization," like other extreme radicals, has failed to understand that established religions have paradoxically been most valuable because of their vast secular powers, exercised under the mask of spiritual authority. Without this ghostly restraint rulers would have been so oppressive as to have destroyed their peoples. The two greatest monuments to Chinese civilization, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... immediate predecessor of Chaucer—Robert Langlande. He was a secular priest, born at Mortimer's Cleobury, in Shropshire, and educated at Oriel College, Oxford. He wrote, towards the end of the fourteenth century, a very remarkable work, entitled, 'Visions of William concerning Piers Plowman.' The general object ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... achievement of Greek architecture was the temple. In imperial Rome, or in any typical city of the Roman Empire, the most extensive and imposing buildings were secular—basilicas, baths, amphitheaters, porticoes, aqueducts. In Athens, on the other hand, or in any typical Greek city, there was little or nothing to vie with the temples and the sacred edifices associated with them. Public secular ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... discourages such vain and too curious inquiries as helped to rend the Church, and divided Christendom into hostile camps. The Quest of the actual Grail was a knightly form of theological research into the unsearchable; undertaken, often in a secular spirit of adventure, by sinful men. The poet's heart ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... Prince of Eboli, the Princess would become a nun in her monastery of Pastrana. The first day she had a fit of violent fervour; on the next she relaxed the rule; on the third she broke it, and conversed with secular people within the cloisters. She was also so humble that she required the nuns to speak to her on their knees, and insisted upon their receiving into the house as religious whomsoever she pleased. Hereupon complaints were made to St. Teresa, who remonstrated with the ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... been engaged, have left behind them. But this could not have been otherwise, unless the gains through those controversies made, were presently to be lost again; for as has lately been well said: 'The success and enduring influence of any systematic construction of truth, be it secular or sacred, depends as much upon an exact terminology, as upon close and deep thinking itself. Indeed, unless the results to which the human mind arrives are plainly stated, and firmly fixed in an exact ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... brought hopes, half secular, like seers by Endor's witch: Beyond our barren Maryland God's folks were wise and rich; Where climbing spires and easy pews showed how the preacher thrived, And all old brethren paid their rents, and ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... precincts of which Lampron wrote did not seem to have been pruned. The park was cool and green. At the end of the avenue of plane-trees, alternating with secular hawthorns cut into pyramids, we could see the square mass of the villa just peeping over the immense clumps of trees. Beyond it the tops and naked trunks of a group of umbrella pines ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the Introduction to a Devout Life, was originally letters to a lady in the world, which, at the pressing instances of many friends, he formed into a book and finished, to show that devotion suited Christians in a secular life, no less than in cloisters. Villars, the archbishop of Vienna, wrote to him upon it: "Your book charms, inflames, and puts me in raptures, as often as I open any part of it." The author received {298} the like applause and commendations ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... which covers the period 1683-90, is mainly devoted to an account of the controversy between Archbishop Pardo and the religious orders on one side, and the secular government on the other—a conflict of which such events as the disputes between Salazar and Dasmarinas (1591) and Guerrero and Corcuera (1635-36) were but preliminary skirmishes. In this case the archbishop gains the ascendency, being reenforced ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... the village of Gantick stand two small semi-detached cottages, coloured with the same pale yellow wash, their front gardens descending to the high-road in parallel lines, their back gardens (which are somewhat longer) climbing to a little wood of secular elms, traditionally asserted to be the remnant of a mighty forest. The party hedge is heightened by a thick screen of white-thorn on which the buds were just showing pink when I took up my lodging in the left-hand cottage (the 10th of May by my diary); and at the end of it are two small arbours, ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... reading the works of others as a poet would scarce dare to read his own; gloating on the rhythm, dwelling with delight on assonances and alliterations. I know very well my mother must have been all the while trying to educate my taste upon more secular authors; but the vigour and the continual opportunities of my nurse triumphed, and after a long search, I can find in these earliest volumes of my autobiography no mention of anything but nursery rhymes, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... knowledge and understanding whatsoever. He is the author of the knowledge that is obtained by human learning: He is the author of all moral prudence, and of the knowledge and skill that men have in their secular business. Thus it is said of all in Israel that were wise-hearted, and skilful in embroidering, that God had filled them with the spirit of ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

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

... broad free stretches of the flagellant head-master of Eton and the bibulous Bishop of Bath and Wells; and must admit that hands used to wield the crosier or the birch proved themselves more skilful at the lighter labours of the stage, more successful even in the secular and bloodless business of a field neither clerical nor scholastic, than any tragic rival of the opposite party to that so jovially headed by Orbilius Udall and Silenus Still. These twin pillars of church and school and stage ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... least the string on which the pearls might be strung. The first veritable composers—in setting, for instance, the words of the Mass—took for a beginning a fragment of Church melody, or, to the great scandal of the ecclesiastics, secular melody. Call this bit A, and say it was sung by Voice I.; Voice II. took it up in a different key, Voice I. continuing with something fresh; then Voice III. took it in turn, Voices I. and II. continuing either with entirely ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman

... downward we shall find his Empire has declin'd gradually; and tho' by his wonderful Address, his prodigious Application, and the Vigilance and Fidelity of his Instruments, as well human as infernal and diabolical, and of the Human as well the Ecclesiastick as the Secular; he has many Times retriev'd what he has lost, and sometimes bid fair for recovering the universal Empire he once possess'd over Mankind; yet he has been still defeated again, repulst and beaten back, ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... lair, and observing his home as well as his company manners. In everything that related to the distinctively religious side of the proceedings we sought advice from Mrs. M'Collop, while we went to Lady Baird for definite information on secular matters. We also found an unexpected ally in the person of our own ex-Moderator's niece, Miss Jean Dalziel (Deeyell). She has been educated in Paris, but she must always have been a delightfully breezy person, quite too irrepressible to be affected by Scottish haar or ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

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

... Constitutional Act, for its ill effects were both direct and incidental. It not only tended to stop the march of progress, but it created a degree of sectarian animosity and hatred little calculated to inspire respect for Christianity in the breasts of the secular portion of the community, and it disturbed the public tranquillity for nearly ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... secular view of the matter, and this view, though based on low considerations, in some respects is sound enough. And yet I reiterate the opinion that to live as if this hour were our last—in other words, to ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... An' ez to secular lessons, he ain't got no espec' for 'em whatsoever. F' instance, when the teacher learned him thet the world was round, why he up an' told him 't warn't so, less'n we was on the inside an' it was ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... 358. 391.).—Bishop Ergham founded St. Anne's College in Wells, for the maintenance of Societas (xiv.) Presbyterorum annuellarum Novae Aulae Wellensis. The annuellar was a secular conduct, receiving a yearly stipend. These priests, probably, served ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various

... letters, but to deliver them cheerfully with my own hands into those of the common hangman, to be burnt with no better company than the coiner's effigies, if any part of it hath escaped out of the secular hands ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... the 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 ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... 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

... "defilement," so as to stain ultimately large circles ([Greek: hoi polloi]) with the deep pollution of a practical apostasy from holiness? Is there here and there a personal example of spiritual infidelity ([Greek: pornos]) to the Lord, of that radically "secular" ([Greek: bebelos]) spirit (ver. 16) of which Esau is the type, to which some "mess of meat," some material advantage, proves overwhelmingly more momentous than the unworldly "birthright" given ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule

... itself is not the easiest of subjects to deal with. It is indeed not so huge as the Grand Cyrus, but it is much more difficult to get at—a very rare flower except in the "grey old gardens" of secular libraries. It and its author have indeed for a few years past had the benefit (as a result partly of another doubtful thing, an x-centenary) of one[140] of the rather-to-seek good specimens among the endless number of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... in the same words, "that the Holy Inquisition found it impossible on account of the hardness of their hearts and the magnitude of their crimes, to pardon them. With great concern it handed them over to Secular Justice to undergo the penalty of the laws; exhorting the authorities at the same time to show clemency and mercy towards the unhappy wretches, and if they must suffer death, that at all events it might be without the spilling of blood." What mockery was this apparent ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat



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