"Nonconformist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must, I am sure, be statements of the League of Nations idea forthcoming from various religious standpoints, but I do not know any sufficiently well to recommend them. It is incredible that neither the Roman Catholic Church, the English Episcopal Church, nor any Nonconformist body has made any effort as an organization to forward this essentially religious end of peace on earth. And also there must be German writings upon this same topic. I mention these diverse sources not in order to present a bibliography, but because I should be sorry to have the reader think ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... Events. One predominant. His Devotion to it. Tendency to Literature. First Studies. Influence of Antique Dwellings. Early Friends. Humor. Qualities of Mind. Sympathy for neglected Objects. A Nonconformist. Predilections. Character. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... attacks made by the Stuarts on public freedom, was well calculated to please that very portion of the community by which all the other attacks of the Stuarts on public freedom had been most strenuously resisted. It could scarcely be hoped that the Protestant Nonconformist, separated from his countrymen by a harsh code harshly enforced, would be inclined to dispute the validity of a decree which relieved him from intolerable grievances. A cool and philosophical observer would undoubtedly have pronounced that all the evil arising from all the intolerant ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... State practically wholly Christian, is now crowded, and indeed considerably overcrowded, into a corner of an Empire in which the Christians are a mere eleven per cent of the population; so that the Nonconformist who allows his umbrella stand to be sold up rather than pay rates towards the support of a Church of England school, finds himself paying taxes not only to endow the Church of Rome in Malta, but to send Christians ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Puritans, and he was sent to school with the idea that he should become a Nonconformist minister. But Defoe did not become a minister; perhaps he felt he was unsuited for such solemn duty. "The pulpit," he says later, "is none of my office. It was my disaster first to be set apart for, and then to be set apart from the honor of that ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... predict. Her antipathy to forms, he saw, was inherent. Her interest —her fascinated absorption, it might be called—in his struggle was spiritual, indeed, but it also had mixed in it the individualistic zeal of the nonconformist. She resented the trammels of society; though she suffered from her efforts to transcend them. The course he had determined upon appeared to her as a rebellion not only against a cut-and-dried state of mind, but also against vested privilege. Yet she had in her, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... choice was complete only for the rulers of the territories or Free Cities; private citizens might exercise the same choice only on leaving their homes. The hardship of this was somewhat lessened by the consideration that in any case the nonconformist would not have to go far before finding a German community holding the Catholic or Lutheran opinions he preferred. Finally, it must be remembered that, if the Peace of Augsburg aligned the whole nation into two mutually hostile camps, it at least kept them from ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... about Anne Hutchinson, who claimed to be moved by the spirit and denied that an outward conformity to the letter of the covenant was a sufficient test of true religion unless accompanied with a change in the inner life. She was a nonconformist among those who, refusing to conform to the Church of England, had now themselves become conformists of the strictest type. To Mrs. Hutchinson the "vexatious legalism of Puritanism" was as abhorrent as had been the practices of the Roman and Anglican ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... Robert Cole, once was a nonconformist, especially in the matter of ecclesiastical vestments, but eventually got rid of his objections. Ecclesiastical Commissioners then decided to have an object lesson in properly dressed clergymen at Lambeth. Mr. Cole was dressed in full ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... be a man must be a nonconformist.[165] He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness.[166] Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in that he has preserved for us this picture of Fielding, actively engaged in the stage-management of his little theatre; a picture, moreover, that does equal honour to the brilliant wit, the successful political satirist, and to that modest, gentle Nonconformist poet, the man of whom it was said that he "had the spirit of an old Roman joined to the innocence of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... monendi.(98) It is said of the apostles, that they were constituted doctrinae Christi testes, non novae doctrinae legist tores.(99) And the same may be said of all the ministers of the gospel, when discipline is taken in with doctrine. He is no nonconformist who holdeth ecclesiam in terris agere partes oratoris, seu legati obsecrantis et suadentis.(100) And we may hitherto apply that which Gerson, the chancellor of Paris, saith:(101) "The wisest and best among the guides of God's church had not so ill a meaning as ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... sought to secure his own ease by efforts after conciliation —some of them more questionable in law, and more insidious in their motives, even than his ill-considered promises to the Nonconformist ministers. To what lengths his own Roman Catholic sympathies went it is difficult to say. But there were many influences at Court which were working for the abandonment of the penal laws against the Catholics. Bristol was restless in this matter, to which personal ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... daily as a tasteless blasphemy. And they were set right, not by the professed critics of the theatre, but by religious and philosophical publicists like Sir Oliver Lodge and Dr Stanton Coit, and strenuous Nonconformist journalists like Mr William Stead, who not only understood the act as well as the Salvationists themselves, but also saw it in its relation to the religious life of the nation, a life which seems to lie not only ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... the Care of Friendless Girls I was in the habit of reporting my work to the clergy of my own church, whose sympathy and cooperation I shall ever gratefully acknowledge. Ultimately, the leading laity, as well as some Nonconformist ministers, joined with us; often these conferences were diocesan meetings—to which, however, Nonconformists were invited—with the Bishop of the diocese in the chair; and after my address free discussion took place, so that I had ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... connections his father wrote a celebrated sentence; "And I must express my tendency to believe that his longevity is (to say the least of it) extremely problematical:" and that it was to another, who had been insisting somewhat obtrusively on dissenting and nonconformist superiorities, he addressed words which deserve to be no less celebrated; "The Supreme Being must be an entirely different individual from what I have every reason to believe him to be, if He would care in the least for the society of your relations." There was ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... everything to do with money! The Harchester bishopric was a fat one, worth from ten to fifteen thousand a year. That she knew from the odious, impudent questions asked about it by some horrible nonconformist member, in the House of Commons, just after her father's death. Surely Mama must have saved a considerable amount out of so princely an income? She had always kept down expenses at the Palace. The servants left so often because ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... was the old tale retold, that to the life of every man there is a background,—that it is precisely in the unlikeliest cases that the background's darkest. What would that penny-plain- and-twopence-coloured bogey, the Nonconformist Conscience, make of such a story if it were blazoned through the land. Would Paul not come down with ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... undergoing personal hardships resulting from the disruption of industry caused by the war. "I cannot" he wrote, "but regard your decisive utterances upon the question [of human slavery] as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country[954]." Nonconformist England now came vigorously to the support of the North. Spurgeon, in London, made his great congregation pray with him: "God bless and strengthen the North; give victory to their arms[955]." Further and more general expression of Nonconformist ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... were the Bishop, who cannot be hurt by having his name mentioned, a very active and loyal Nonconformist Divine, a lady in the highest favor at Court, with whom Beatrix Esmond had communication, and two noblemen of the greatest rank, and a member of the House of Commons, who was implicated in more transactions than one in ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... for want of a better, though it is not strictly accurate as applied to Upper Canada, where there were no clearly prescribed standards of religious faith from which non-supporters of Episcopacy could be said to dissent. The word "Nonconformist" is objectionable ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... from Nova Scotia, to which his f., a Nonconformist minister, had emigrated, and became gentleman usher to a lady of quality. His first play, Juliana, appeared in 1671. He wrote in all about 17 dramatic pieces, of which the best is Sir Courtly Nice (1685), adapted from the Spanish. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... this drastic, this dishonest, this catchpenny, this gerrymandering Bill should have been brought in?.... They had heard much of late about the Nonconformist Conscience, which was said to be the backbone of the Liberal Party. He firmly believed that the Bill had been brought forward to suit the Nonconformist Conscience, to pander to the hypocritical self-righteousness, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... initiative or consciousness in their tone and attitude towards their mores, they are to be congratulated, for they have kept out one great influx of subjective and dogmatic mischief. Other nations have a "nonconformist conscience" or a party of "great moral ideas," which can be caught by a phrase, or stampeded by a catching watchword with a "moral" suggestion. "Existing morality does present itself as a purely accidental [i.e. not to be investigated] product of forces which act without sense or intelligence," ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... there are no individuals among us. Our sexes are already nearly assimilate. Women are becoming nearly as rare as ladies, and it is only at the music-halls that we are privileged to see strong men. We are born into a poor, weak age. We are not strong enough to be wicked, and the Nonconformist Conscience makes cowards of ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... the guidance of the House of Lords by Lord Lansdowne which should specially be noticed, and that is the air of solemn humbug with which this ex-Whig is always at pains to invest its proceedings. The Nonconformist child is forced into the Church school in single-school areas in the name of parents' rights and religious equality. The Licensing Bill is rejected in the highest interests of temperance. Professing to be a bulwark of the commercial classes against Radical and Socialistic ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... pulpit, as represented by some ministers not only of the Church of England, but also of the Nonconformist Churches, ministers of the gospel of peace on earth and good-will towards man—what an attitude did it assume! Surely if these clergymen had been as eager to promote peace as they were zealous to set in motion the waters of strife, they might, have accomplished a work meriting ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... Lambeth Articles, and brother of a Separatist preacher of London. What was his position in relation to church parties is shown by his letter to his cousin, the "arch-Puritan," William Gouge, written after three years' residence in Virginia, urging that nonconformist clergymen should come over to Virginia, where no question would be raised on the subject of subscription or the surplice. What manner of man and minister he was is proved by a noble record of faithful ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... set up by voluntary effort, and is only inadequately and indirectly endowed by the State.[42] Slowly and very reluctantly governments in England have come to recognise the fact that the trend of Catholic opinion in Ireland is as clearly in the direction of denominationalism as the trend of Nonconformist English opinion is in the direction of undenominationalism, and that it is impossible to carry on the education of a priest-ridden Catholic people on the same lines as a Protestant one. Primary education has become almost ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... me say that there is an admirable criticism in one of the numbers of the Nonconformist, edited by Edward Miall, one of the new members of Parliament, and certainly the most able of the dissenting organs, on our favorite poet, Dr. Holmes. Also I have a letter from Dr. Robert Dickson, of Hertford Street, May ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... of Trinity, died in 1677. His Works were edited by Archbishop Tillotson, and include Sermons that must have been very much to the mind of Sir Roger de Coverley, 'Against Evil Speaking.' Edmund Calamy, who died in 1666, was a Nonconformist, and one of the writers of the Treatise against Episcopacy called, from the Initials of its authors, Smeetymnuus, which Bishop Hall attacked and John Milton defended. Calamy opposed the execution of Charles ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... were: (1) the Presbyterians; (2) the Independents, or Congregationalists; (3) the Baptists; (4) the Society of Friends, or Quakers. Originally the name "Nonconformist" was given to those who refused to conform to the worship of the Church of England, and who attempted to change it to suit their views or else set up their own form of faith as an independent church. The name "Nonconformist" ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... manuals are fine examples of careful workmanship and scholarly industry."—"Independent and Nonconformist," 17th ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... wasn't anything particularly noteworthy. A bachelor in his fifties. No criminal record of any kind, of course, and no military career. No known political affiliations. Evidently a strong predilection for Thorstein Veblen's theories. And he'd been a friend of Henry Mencken back when that old nonconformist was tearing down contemporary society seemingly largely for the ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... under the shadow of what is called diplomacy. That is what brought the war about. It was never the will of the people. It was the Hohenzollerns and the Romanoffs, the firebrands of the French Cabinet, and your own clumsy, thick-headed efforts to get the best of everybody and yet keep your Nonconformist conscience. The people did not make this war, but it is the people who ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... misery and pain. Generally he has a hard struggle with himself before he can give up, for the superlative truth which has taken possession of him, all the habits, the pious traditions of his life. He is the real Nonconformist—half martyr, half victim, of his convictions. But that Nonconformity which has come to be the faith in which a large number of people are trained is a totally different business, and affects a very different kind ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Pearson, Burnet, Bull, hold a more prominent place in the history of the church than in that of letters. But all the writers of this age are wanting in that impressiveness and force of undisciplined eloquence which distinguished the first half of the seventeenth century. Among the nonconformist clergy, Howe (d. 1715) wrote the "Living Temple," which is ranked among the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... many generations deserve none the less honour for the consistency with which they pursued their tolerant policy. So long as the Catholics remained in control all sects were not only tolerated but placed on a footing of complete equality before the law, and as a fact both the Nonconformist persecuted in Virginia and the Episcopalian persecuted in New England frequently found refuge and peace in Catholic Maryland. The English Revolution of 1689 produced a change. The new English Government was pledged against ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... congregation taken prisoners, he and his wife being among them. There are several notices of Dr. Gunning in Evelyn's Diary. When he obtained the mastership of St. John's College upon the ejection of Dr. Tuckney, he allowed that Nonconformist divine a handsome annuity during his life. He was a great controversialist, and a man of great reading. Burnet says he "was a very honest sincere man, but of no sound judgment, and of no prudence in affairs" ("Hist. of his Own. Time"). He died July ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... rise of the bourgeoisie meant the downfall of feudalism. The plutocrat supplanted the baron, capitalism became king. The 'old nobility' of England to-day are successful brewers, bankers, and traders, and the Nonconformist Conscience dominates in the place of Holy Mother Church."[627] "The representatives of this class in Parliament repealed the Corn Laws, securing cheap bread for their workers at the expense of ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... so named from the turning stiles which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries stood at their north ends to prevent the cattle straying from Lincoln's Inn Fields. The Holborn Music-hall in Little Turnstile was originally a Nonconformist chapel. After 1840 it served as a hall, lectures, etc., being given by free-thinkers, and in 1857 was ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... some other discourse with him, which now I cannot call to mind; and I fear I have already tired your Lordship. I shall only add one circumstance, That on his death-bed he declared himself a Nonconformist, and had a fanatick preacher to be his spiritual guide. After half an hour's conversation I took my leave, being half stifled by the closeness of the room. I imagine he could not hold out long, and therefore withdrew to ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... Henry was ejected from the establishment, Dr. Busby (who had been his tutor) meeting him, said, "Who made you a nonconformist?" "You, Sir," replied he, "I made you a nonconformist!" "Yes, Sir, you taught me those principles which forbade to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... as they believed, of truth and duty, to be called factious separatists, authors of needless schism. Hence, in very self-defence, they were driven to attach all possible weight to the reasons which had placed them, loyal Churchmen as they were, in a Nonconformist position, to rally round their own standard, and to strive to the utmost of their power to show that it was they, and not their opponents, not the Jurors but the Nonjurors, who were the truest and most faithful ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the Restoration of Charles II the Act of Uniformity re-established episcopacy in a form made of set purpose as unacceptable to the Puritans as possible. Thereupon arose the rivalry of Conformist and Nonconformist which has ever since existed in England. Severely repressive measures were tried, but failed to extinguish Nonconformity; it stood irreconcilable outside the establishment. There were distinct varieties in its ranks. The Presbyterians, once largely dominant, were ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... NONCONFORMIST, with open mind on the subject of gambling, but modest means and conscientious objection to hard work, is desirous of meeting liberal-minded philanthropist who will advance him L750 to operate infallible ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... Cambridge the increase must be greater still since any earlier election at which a poll was taken. And it was certainly hoped that the increase would have been altogether favourable to the Liberal side. Among the new electors there was a large lay element, a certain Nonconformist element; even among the clergy a party was known to be growing who had found the way to reconcile strict Churchmanship with Liberal politics, and whose Christianity was not of the kind which is satisfied to walk hand-in-hand with the Turk. In these different ways it was only reasonable ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... parable deals, it would be childish trifling on the part of a Churchman to quote it as of authority against Nonconformists. In the same Bible stands the precept, "Come out from among them and be ye separate;" and the Nonconformist has as good a right, that is, no right at all, to quote it as of authority by itself against a Churchman. The matter cannot be settled, on either side, by general announcements like these, although they are selected from the Scriptures. Every case must ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... intense love of truth, which ever stimulated him to search after it as the chief part of his being's aim and end, and which never permitted him to swerve a hair's breath from it in practice. This made him a nonconformist, a separatist, an exile, an independent; a growing Christian, a profound theologian, an able controversialist; a student at Leyden University, although he had previously graduated and held a fellowship at Cambridge; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... the cap would fit all sorts of bald academic heads. It might well be maintained that Herbert Spencer was an anarchist. It is practically certain that Auberon Herbert was an anarchist. But Herbert Spencer was an extraordinarily typical Englishman of the Nonconformist middle class. And Auberon Herbert was an extraordinarily typical English aristocrat of the old and genuine aristocracy. Every one knew in his heart that the squire would not throw a bomb at the Queen, and the Nonconformist would not throw a bomb at anybody. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... not much to choose between him and them. One line of counter attack they did indeed hit upon, which was followed up for generations with no small success against the Nonconformists, and that is the charge of hypocritical abuse of the influence which the Nonconformist teachers early acquired over women. The germs of the unmatched passages to this effect in The Tale of a Tub may be found in the rough horseplay of Pap with a Hatchet and An Almond for a Parrot. But the spirit of the whole controversy is in fact a spirit of horseplay. Abuse takes the place ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the festivals of the Christian year. They were wise men who, for all futurity, connected with certain dates the outstanding events of the sacred history, the memory of great saints, confessors and martyrs. Probably we of the Nonconformist pulpits might here learn a lesson in homiletic tactics from our friends of the Roman and Anglican churches. There should only be one subject for Good Friday; one for Easter morn; one for Christmastide; one for the hour wherein the old year dies. It is ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... together, he ceases to be an artist. That is why Swinburne has gone off so much. If you want to write really fine erotic poetry, you must live an absolutely rigid and entirely respectable life. The 'Laus Veneris' could only have been produced by a man who had a Nonconformist conscience. I am certain that Mrs. Humphrey Ward is the most strictly orthodox Christian whom we have. Otherwise, her books against the accepted Christianity could never have brought her in so many thousands of pounds. I never ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... full-blooded and masculine humanitarianism in this matter has weakened and fallen silent; it has weakened and fallen silent in a very curious manner, the precise reason for which I do not altogether understand. I knew the average Liberal, the average Nonconformist minister, the average Labour Member, the average middle-class Socialist, were, with all their good qualities, very deficient in what I consider a respect for the human soul. But I did imagine that they had the ordinary modern respect for the human body. The fact, however, ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... and returned in a few minutes in the character of an amiable and simple-minded Nonconformist clergyman. His broad, black hat, his baggy trousers, his white tie, his sympathetic smile, and general look of peering and benevolent curiosity were such as Mr. John Hare alone could have equaled. It was not merely that Holmes changed his ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... spiritual life corporate in Christmas Eve. Browning, with the blood of all the Puritans in him, as his wife expressed it, could not undervalue that strain of piety which had descended from the exiles at Geneva and had run on through the struggles for religious liberty in the nonconformist religious societies of the seventeenth century and the Evangelical revival of times less remote. Looking around him he had seen in his own day the progress of two remarkable movements—one embodying, or professing to embody, the Catholic as opposed to the Puritan ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... parishioner—Miss Mary Burder. Mary Burder would have married him, it seems, but for an obdurate uncle and guardian. She was spirited away from the neighbourhood, and the lovers never met again. There are doubtful points in Mr. Birrell's story. Mary Burder, as the wife of a Nonconformist minister, died in 1866, in her seventy-seventh year. This lady, from whom doubtless either directly or indirectly the tradition was obtained, may have amplified and exaggerated a very innocent flirtation. One would like further ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... tantalize us they wore especially gorgeous apparel while we had to wear black Etons and a top hat—which, by the way, greatly annoyed us. One waistcoat especially excited our animosity, and from it we conceived the title "specklebelly," by which we ever afterwards designated the whole "genus nonconformist." The entrance to the chapel (ours was the Church!) was through a door in a high wall, over which we could not see; and my youthful brain used to conjure up unrighteous and strange orgies which we felt must take place in those precincts which we were never permitted to enter. Our Sunday ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... where Anglicanism and agriculture were beginning to lose the rigid outlines of overwhelming predominance. What was needed was the assurance of safety for the Church that her virtue might be tested in the light of nonconformist practice on the one hand, and the new rationalism on the other. What was needed also was the expansion of English commerce into the new channels opened for it by the victories of Chatham. Mr. Chief Justice ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... personal, and especially their professional, dignity, which was fortified by perfect honesty, tempered with a certain conscious uprightness. During the preceding century they had been infected by nonconformist Jansenism, which had given them a grumbling pessimistic quality, as well as a contempt for the Jesuit attitude of mind. They did not see life as beautiful: and, rather than smooth away life's difficulties, they preferred to exaggerate them so as to have good reason to complain. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... white; his manners high, too; and if his morals were not white, his cravat, that was like a parson's, more than made up for the defect. It was not surprising then that among the fraternity he was known as His Reverence, because his bearing gave the impression of a Nonconformist Minister about ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... already deploring the undue elevation of the pulpit and debasement of the Altar to which exclusive preference of preaching had led. Missions had, since the days of Carey's first opening of the subject become so predominant a thought with the Nonconformist bodies, and were often conducted so irregularly, that there was certain dread and distrust of them among the sober-minded and orthodox; but Heber was one of the first English churchmen who perceived that to enlarge her borders and strengthen her stakes was the bounden duty ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... midway between Fort William and Kingussie. We had not gone far before I heard an English voice shouting something to the passengers near in tones of great excitement. The speaker, with his black frock coat, was, to judge from his appearance, a Nonconformist English minister, who was vaguely pointing to the mountains on the left side of the road; and at last I managed to catch a few words of his oratory. They were in effect as follows: "What was there on those mountains ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... done many things. He has been very brave and quite the maker of his own fortunes. He educated himself, and then I think he edited some Nonconformist paper. Then he went into politics, and became a Churchman. Some old man took a liking to him and left him his money, and that was the condition. So I believe he is pretty well off now and is waiting for a ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... Christian Carrier," by Claverhouse in the previous week was an affair of another character. Claverhouse did not exceed his orders, and ammunition and treasonable papers were in Brown's possession; he was also sheltering a red-handed rebel. Brown was not shot merely "because he was a Nonconformist," nor was he shot by the hand ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... and sister left Manchester about midday, and spent the night in London at a little City hotel much frequented by Nonconformist ministers, which Ancrum ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Laud shows so much superstition regarding dreams as portents, it shows little or none regarding comets; but Bishop Jeremy Taylor, strong as he was, evidently favoured the usual view. John Howe, the eminent Nonconformist divine in the latter part of the century, seems to have regarded the comet superstition as almost a fundamental article of belief; he laments the total neglect of comets and portents generally, declaring that this neglect betokens ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Victuallers and the Press that is supported by these agencies, acquired such a hold over the Government Departments, the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, and Liberal politicians who are descended from county families, that it has more interest with those who govern us than the Church, the Nonconformist Conscience, the County Palatine of Lancaster or any other body of corporate opinion. So that when in September, 1913, representatives of the Turf (and no doubt of the Trade Unions) went to the Home Secretary in reference to the burning and bombing of racing stables, trainers' ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... assumed the prefix of De, for no assignable reason, was the son of a butcher and Nonconformist in Cripplegate, who had the youth educated for the ministry. Daniel, however, preferred a more exciting occupation, and took part in the unfortunate expedition of the Duke of Monmouth. Escaping from that peril he began business as a hose factor ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... he took an interest in the locality long before he purchased the estate. And he built the people a chapel on a bit of freehold he bought for them. He was a great Nonconformist, a staunch Baptist up to the day of his death—a much stauncher one,' she said significantly, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... was warned, and was advised to stay at home that night, or else to conceal himself. His departure had been already arranged; but when he learnt that a warrant was actually out against him, he thought that he was bound to stay and face the danger. He was the first Nonconformist who had been marked for arrest. If he flinched after he had been singled out by name, the whole body of his congregation would be discouraged. Go to church he would not, or promise to go to church; but he was willing to suffer ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... espoused by the famous Nonconformist, Richard Baxter, who was celebrated for the acuteness of his controversial talents, and the utility of his ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... waster, the unwanted, the do-nothing. Marcella—Lord, what's the use of words? I'm getting your trick of not being able to find words for what I mean. But you wait. Just you wait. There's a new Louis born to-night, in a funny little Nonconformist chapel. Look at him, girlie—can't you see ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... after an interval of ten years, we have thought it well, not only to carry on our story of the Sovereign and her realm to the latest attainable point, but also to give some account of the advance made and the work accomplished by the Methodist Church, which, youngest of the greater Nonconformist denominations, has acted more powerfully than any other among them on the religious and social life, not only of the United Kingdom and the Empire, but of the world. This account, very brief, but giving details little known to outsiders, will form a valuable pendant ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... however, about a heartily intolerant man: you like him, though you disapprove of him. Even if I were inclined to Whiggery, I should admire the downright dictum of Dr. Johnson, that the devil was the first Whig. Even if I were a Nonconformist, I should like Sydney Smith the better for the singular proof of his declining strength which he once adduced: 'I do believe,' he said, 'that if you were to put a knife into my hand, I should not have vigour enough to stick it into a ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... reach the City with a cheerful countenance, no less than through groans and sighs and fears. For we have not a tyrant over us, but a Father, that loveth a cheerful liver no less than a cheerful giver. Nevertheless, I thank thee for thy kind thought of one that is not of thy company, nor no Nonconformist, but a peaceful Protestant. And, lest thou be troubled with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil spirits, read that comfortable sermon of Mr. Hooker's to weak believers, on the CERTAINTY OF ADHERENCE, though they want ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... Baptists, Quakers and others rallied to the standard raised in the cause of Bulgarian nationality effected a great change in his attitude towards his Dissenting fellow countrymen. He entertained many of the representative Nonconformist ministers at breakfast, and the fidelity and devotion of Nonconformists generally to the Bulgarian cause left on his mind an impression which has only deepened with the lapse of time. The extent to which this influences him ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... 'personality' to lesser groups, even as a negation of the right to lesser loyalties. Mr. Figgis, in a number of suggestive, if unconvincing, writings, has recalled the theories of the Jesuits and other anti-state minorities and protestants on this subject, reinforcing them from the Nonconformist and Trade Union theories or inclinations of our own day: and a whole school of younger 'progressive' intellectuals made bold to follow him. The assault on state-sovereignty has, however, already been brought to a standstill by the impact of fact. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... a member of some Nonconformist sect. That, too, will be a valuable element, for it will teach him the solemn fact of his own personality; his direct responsibility to God for ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... production of "The Keighley Spectator." The paper went on nicely for eleven months, its circulation and our revenue increasing greatly. We had for some time received articles for insertion from a Nonconformist parson in the town, the Rev Mr Gray. The contributions, being on subjects foreign to our non-political and non-sectarian principles, had almost invariably been rejected, until the writer appealed to the printer, who was the proprietor ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... Road, London, near Liverpool Street Station, is located the house, chapel, burial-grounds, and tomb of John Wesley. Across the street, in an old Nonconformist cemetery, are the graves of James Watt, Daniel Defoe, and John Bunyan. Across the narrow street to the north is the tabernacle of Whitefield. We learned that Friday, July 7th, was reopening day for Wesley's Chapel. What a distinguished body of persons we found ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... should laugh, so I asked him questions instead; and all the time he seemed to be studying me in a puzzled, surprised way, as if I were a duck that had just stepped out of a chicken egg, or a goblin in a Nonconformist home. (If he keeps on doing this, I shall have to find out what he means ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... him, and he was so like Mary when he smiled that Eloquent turned his eyes away in very shame. It seemed sacrilege even to think of her in connection with anything so degraded and disgusting as Grantly's state appeared to him at that moment. His Nonconformist conscience awoke and fairly shouted at him that he should have interfered to prevent the just retribution that had overtaken this miserable misguided boy . . . but he was her brother; he was the son ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... congregation. At St. Asaph, Caerwys, at 4 or 5 a.m., Plygain, consisting of carols sung round the church in procession, was held.{24} The Plygain continued in Welsh churches until about the eighteen-fifties, and, curiously enough, when the Established Church abandoned it, it was celebrated in Nonconformist chapels.{25} ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... it—a kind of Nonconformist business? I think she's the very finest. A fellow'd hold himself up, 'd be a deuce of a swell—and, hang it all, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... York, he had studied at Oxford under Richard Hooker, whose famous book he had read in manuscript. The Ecclesiastical Polity had perhaps confirmed Sandys in a republican way of thinking; and in the year 1618 he was probably a nonconformist—a "religious gentleman," as Edward Winslow called him: at all events, a man of humanitarian and anti-prerogative instincts; a friend of the Earl of Southampton, and leader of those in the company who were in sympathy with the rising ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... all encountered such spiritual perils,—and happy may we feel that with whatever faults and failings, there is an orthodox and established form of religion amongst us in the land. For my own part, I go freely to any house of prayer, national or nonconformist, where the Gospel is preached and the preacher is capable: all I want is a good man for the good word and work—and if he has the true Spirit in him, I care next to nothing for his orders: though to many less independent minds human authorisation may be a necessity. From cradle hymns ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... clergy. Wesleyans received the same sympathetic treatment.[10] The tolerance shown by Irish Catholics, in spite of terrible provocation, is acknowledged by all reputable historians. Nor was Protestant intolerance, whether Anglican or Nonconformist, of a deeper dogmatic shade than anywhere else in the King's dominions. But in Ireland it was political, economic, and social, while in America it was purely theological, and, moreover, purely American. The Episcopalian ascendancy in Ireland represented foreign interests, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... gray hair round the sides of his head, but none on the crown nor on his face, the chief characteristics of which were the square jaw, the extremely long upper lip, the flat nose, and the very small blue-gray eyes. He looked sixty, and was scarcely fifty. He looked one moment like a Nonconformist local preacher who had mistaken his vocation; but he was nothing of the kind. He looked the next moment like a good hater and a great scorner of ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... immediately preceding? From Palmer's Nonconformist Mem. (vol. i. p. 520.), there was a Mr. William Rathband, M.A., ejected from Southwold, a member of Oxford University, who was brother to Mr. Rathband, sometime preacher in the Minster of York, and son of an old Nonconformist minister, Mr. W. Rathband, who wrote against the Brownists.—I should feel obliged by any information which would identify them with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... knowledge we all possess of the sorts of ways in which men get their opinions that makes us so little affected in our own minds by those of men for whose characters and intellects we may have great admiration. A sturdy Nonconformist minister, who thinks Mr. Gladstone the ablest and most honest man, as well as the ripest scholar within the three kingdoms, is no whit shaken in his Nonconformity by knowing that his idol has written in defence of the Apostolical Succession, and believes in special sacramental graces. Mr. Gladstone ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... to go to Owens College, I confess, but I did not care so much about Mill Hill. That was his mother's fancy; she was very strong about that. It is a Nonconformist school, but I am not a Nonconformist. I do not much admire dogmas, but I am a Churchman as my fathers were. However, John Hampden is not to go to Mill Hill. He has gone to a sort of college near Oxford, which the archbishop recommended to us; the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... slid his knife up his sleeve once more, while the Colonel, frantic with impotent anger, was seized by the bystanders, and dragged, raving with fury, back to his forlorn party. His hands were lashed with a camel-halter, and he lay at last, in bitter silence, beside the delirious Nonconformist. ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... in their veins. The Judsons had been an obscure family—people of "no account," my landlord told me, until Joseph Judson, chapman and cloth merchant in a very small way, was so fortunate as to win the heart of Ruth Haygarth, only daughter of the wealthy Nonconformist grocer in the market-place. This marriage had been the starting-point of Joseph Judson's prosperity. Old Haygarth had helped his industrious and respectable son-in-law along the stony road that leads to fortune, and had no doubt given him many a lift over the stones which bestrew that toilsome ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... little square garden of yellow roses, beside the sea," said Auberon Quin, "there was a Nonconformist minister who had never been to Wimbledon. His family did not understand his sorrow or the strange look in his eyes. But one day they repented their neglect, for they heard that a body had been found on the shore, battered, but wearing patent ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... rise to grave doubts in the minds of many members—of the family—, especially those who, like Soames, had been to public schools, and were accustomed to niceness in such matters. Could he really be considered a butler? Playful spirits alluded to him as: 'Uncle Jolyon's Nonconformist'; George, the acknowledged ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... are unwise or inequitable, is, it will be urged, an essential part of the policy of Home Rule. I admit that this is so. But this makes it the more necessary that English electors should realise what this essential characteristic of Home Rule means, or may mean. The Nonconformist conscience exposed Irish Home Rulers to painful humiliation and possible ruin by forbidding them to follow the political leader of their choice to whom they had deliberately renewed their allegiance. Is it certain that Englishmen who could not tolerate the official authority of Mr. Parnell ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... the other day I looked upon Dr. Orchard as a person unique in his generation. But I am now told by an authority in the nonconformist world that there are "two others of him"—one, I think, in Birmingham, the ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... only a nonconformist in the Medicine Creed, but he's actually a deacon in a Presbyterian chapel—or something equally heathen—and a fluent one at that, I expect. I make a point of never trusting those people. Look at his sickening son ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... to know if Thomas Heywood, the dramatist, was in any way related to Nathaniel Heywood or Oliver Heywood, the celebrated Nonconformist ministers in the seventeenth century? Could any of your correspondents give me information on ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... time. He was born about 1538, and died in 1623. His later life would have been full of trouble, and the noose or the flames at the stake might have terminated it, if powerful patrons had not sheltered him. The Nonconformist conscience was developing its passion for interfering in other people's private concerns. Byrde, to worship as he thought fit, and to avoid the consequences of doing it, had often to lie in hiding. But he got safely through, and ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... protest and panic from the hastily departing fowl. Calmness under misfortune is not an attribute of either hen-folk or womenkind, and while Mrs. Saunders declaimed over her onion bed such portions of the slang dictionary as are permitted by the Nonconformist conscience to be said or sung, the Vasco da Gama fowl was waking the echoes of Toad-Water with crescendo bursts of throat music which compelled attention to her griefs. Mrs. Crick had a long family, and was therefore licensed, in the eyes of her world, to have ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... [Father Dempsey smiles, by no means averse to this acknowledgment of his authority]. Look at yourself! you would defy the established Archbishop of Canterbury ten times a day; but catch you daring to say a word that would shock a Nonconformist! not you. The Conservative party today is the only one that's not priestridden—excuse the expression, Father [Father Dempsey nods tolerantly]—cause it's the only one that has established its Church and can prevent a clergyman becoming a bishop if he's ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... if a nasty foe, or somebody trying to be one, annoyed for the moment with him, yet meaning no more harm than pepper, smite him to the quick, at venture, in his most retired and privy-conscienced hole. And when this is done by a Nonconformist to a Doctor of Divinity, and the man who does it owes some money to the man he does it to, can the latter gentleman take a large and genial view ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... agitation against the disestablishment of the Irish Church, which they would fain compare with the present opposition to Home Rule, forgetting or ignoring the fact that the strength of Ulster resides in the Nonconformist bodies, and that these were all in favour of disestablishment, leaving the Orangemen in a hopeless minority. Now, however, the Nonconformists have joined their forces with those of the Orange bodies, which creates a very different ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the French by Charles II. Passage of a new Act of Uniformity; ejectment of nonconformist ministers from their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... given more delight to Sir Geoffrey. He could forgive a stout able-bodied sectary or nonconformist, who enforced his doctrines in the field by downright blows on the casques and cuirasses of himself and other Cavaliers. But he remembered with most vindictive accuracy, the triumphant entrance of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... James's. When the clergy of London came, headed by Compton, to express their gratitude to him by whose instrumentality God had wrought salvation for the Church and the State, the procession was swollen by some eminent nonconformist divines. It was delightful to many good men to learn that pious and learned Presbyterian ministers had walked in the train of a Bishop, had been greeted by him with fraternal kindness, and had been announced by him in the presence chamber as his dear and respected friends, separated from ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... rebel against the degrading servility of what we have come to call the "Nonconformist Conscience" Byron must always have his place in the tragically slow emancipation of the human spirit. The reluctance of an ordinary sensitive modern person, genuinely devoted to poetry, to spend any more time with Byron's verses than what ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... that the story had suffered in accuracy before it reached Miss Barrett, who, of course, was unable to attend church, and whose own ignorance on the subject may be accounted for by remembering that she had been brought up as a Nonconformist. With a little correction, however, the story may be added to the many others on record with ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... personal comfort. He had visited Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, Spurgeon's Tabernacle, the City Temple, and had studied—so he told me—English Wesleyanism and, Congregationalism in several provincial centres. He was particularly bitter about one Nonconformist who had accepted a large salary to go to the United States. He returned to Germany impressed with the idea that the Nonconformist and State Churches alike were a body of sycophants, sharing the general decadent state of the English. What struck him principally was what he referred to continually ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... been a poet, of writing an epic made up of incidents chosen from the gossip of an old maid in the upper middle classes. He was the novelist of grains and scruples. I have heard it urged that he was the supreme incarnation of the Nonconformist conscience, perpetually concerned with infinitesimal details of conduct. As a matter of fact, there was much more of the aesthete in him than of the Nonconformist. He lived for his tastes. It is because he is a ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... women suffer, and have their truth misinterpreted by her folly. She is one, she knows not what her self if you ask her, but she is indeed one that has taken a toy at the fashion of religion, and is enamoured of the new fangle. She is a nonconformist in a close stomacher and ruff of Geneva print,[55] and her purity consists much in her linnen. She has heard of the rag of Rome, and thinks it a very sluttish religion, and rails at the whore of ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... that some rumors as to Cliffe's private character had entered into the decisive defeat—in a constituency largely Nonconformist—which had befallen that gentleman at the polls. Poor Lady Tranmore! He saw her anxieties in her face, and was truly sorry for her. At the same time, inveterate gossip that he was, he regarded her with a kind of hunger. If she only ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Major, rubbing his nose, 'I can't hardly say. I imagine it's infidel or Aztec or Nonconformist or something like that. There's a church here—a Methodist or some other kind—with a parson named Skidder. He claims to have converted the people to Christianity. He and me don't assimilate except on state occasions. I imagine they worship ...
— Options • O. Henry
... Conradian personality. Then his arch-enemy, Schomberg, lieutenant of reserve, shady hotel-keeper, sensualist and craven, with his insane malice. To these enter as pretty a company of miscreants as ever sailed the Southern seas: the sinister Jones, misogynist to the point of fine frenzy, nonconformist in the matter of card-playing, and thereafter frank bandit with a high ethic as to the superiority of plain robbery under arms over mere vulgar swindling—a gentleman with a code, in fact; his strictly incomparable "secretary," Ricardo of the rolling eyes and gait ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... harshness is his fault, his one real fault; and his harshness also marks the point where his attitude towards his environment becomes unscientific. The savagery of his description of the family of Frapp, the little Nonconformist baker, and of the tea-drinkers in the housekeeper's room at Bladesover, somewhat impairs even the astounding force of this, George's first and only novel—not because he exaggerates the offensiveness of the phenomena, but because he unscientifically ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... of a Low Churchman. London. 1711. 8vo." (By James Peirce, a Nonconformist divine, largely quoted in The Scourge: where he is spoken of as "A gentleman of figure, of the most apostolical moderation, of the most Christian temper, and is esteemed as the Evangelical Doctor of the Presbyterians ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... but even as he went the thought thrust itself upon him, that half London, for some reason or the other, was abroad in the streets unusually early. His own objective was a great Nonconformist church, where one of London's most popular and remarkable preachers had ministered. He had been one of the comparatively few whose ministry had been characterized by a close adherence to the Word of God, and an occasional ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... was born at Trefriw in 1795, his father being, or having been, a shipwright. He, like Alun, was of Nonconformist parentage, and like him, attracted attention by his successes at this or that Eisteddfod. He went to S. Bees, and was ordained in 1826. He died January 21, 1855, without having obtained preferment in his own country, until ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... difficulty in admitting, still more one who considers himself the minister of God to the people, rather than of the people to God. The Thirty-nine Articles do not admit of his recognising the orders of his nonconformist brethren as equal to his own, and this has been set down to pride. Altogether, the Anglican clergyman has been put in a false position, to extricate him from which is taxing all the tact of so politic a prelate as ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... Jewish rites were equally rites and equally insufficient as bases of confidence. Do not let us fancy that dependence on these is peculiar to certain forms of Christian belief. It is a very subtle all-pervasive tendency, and there is no need to lift up Nonconformist hands in holy horror at the corruptions of Romanism and the like. Their origin is not solely priestly ambition, but also the desires of the so-called laity. Demand creates a supply, and if there were not people to think, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... weapons, and retaliate. Political parties are wrecked and public careers undone by a single indiscretion. A man had better have all the statues in London to supper with him, ugly as they are, than be brought to the bar of the Nonconformist Conscience by Donna Elvira. Excommunication has become almost as serious a business as it was ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... the sentiments expressed in the Daily Intelligencer's leaders; and then one day the Government came to the conclusion that something definite and drastic must be done. A deputation, consisting of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, four leading financiers, and a well-known Nonconformist divine, made its way to the offices of the paper. At the door leading to the editorial department the way was barred by ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... chapels down to the year 1779 must have been either Trinitarians or rogues. Now, Sir, I believe that they were neither Trinitarians nor rogues; and I cannot help suspecting that the great prelate who brought this charge against them is not so well read in the history of the nonconformist sects as in the history of that Church of which he is an ornament. The truth is that, long before the year 1779, the clause of the Toleration Act which required dissenting ministers to subscribe thirty-five or thirty-six of our thirty-nine articles had almost ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... social revolt is of more value than mere politics and avoids the vulgarity of the novel with a purpose. His revolt is not a revolt of the commercialist against the feudalist, of the Nonconformist against the Churchman, of the Free-trader against the Protectionist, of the Liberal against the Tory. If he were among us now his revolt would not be the revolt of the Socialist against the Individualist, or of the Anarchist against the Socialist. His revolt was simply ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... this one) as the second greatest, if not the greatest, authority on the relations of savages to language. He was known to the neighbourhood of Hart Street, Bloomsbury, as a bearded man with a bald head, spectacles, and a patient face, the face of an unaccountable Nonconformist who had forgotten how to be angry. He went to and fro between the British Museum and a selection of blameless tea-shops, with an armful of books and a poor but honest umbrella. He was never seen without the books ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... course of these debates served to band Nonconformists and reformers in a close alliance. Hitherto they had alike supported Pitt and the royal prerogative, especially at the time of the Regency struggle. In May 1789, when Pitt opposed the Nonconformist claims, Dr. Priestley wrote that Fox would regain his popularity with Dissenters, while Pitt would lose ground.[23] Now, when the doors of the franchise and of civic privilege were fast barred, resentment and ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Murdock, above average in intelligence but a belligerently independent nonconformist, found himself on a "hush-hush" government project at a secret base in the Arctic. The very qualities that made him a menace in civilized society were valuable traits in a man who must successfully act the part of a merchant trader of the Beaker people ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... found was illuminating. The President was like a Nonconformist minister, perhaps a Presbyterian. His thought and his temperament wore essentially theological not intellectual, with all the strength and the weakness of that manner of thought, feeling, and expression. It is a type of which there are not now in England and Scotland such magnificent specimens ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... of extreme persecution. For the fact that the modern enthusiast will undergo some inconvenience for the creed he holds only proves that he does hold it, which no one ever doubted. No one doubts that the Nonconformist minister cares more for Nonconformity than he does for his teapot. No one doubts that Miss Pankhurst wants a vote more than she wants a quiet afternoon and an armchair. All our ordinary intellectual opinions are worth a bit of ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... represents one of the daughters, or possibly the wife, of the sixth Earl of Devon. An interesting inscription in the south transept perpetuates the name of John Wilkins, who was minister from 1647 to 1660 when, as a Nonconformist, he ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... From the Nonconformist point of view, Peter had very strong claims to be considered Antichrist. He had none of the staid, pious demeanour of the old Tsars, and showed no respect for many things which were venerated by the people. He ate, drank, and habitually associated with heretics, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... tobacco-ash is an excellent thing for killing moth in carpets, and Time,—when one is compelled to bestow it upon dull people; and a perfectly healthy, Nonconformist conscience must be a comfortable lodger. But as regards the sacred roof, and the defended table, it's a question how long both British institutions remain intact, with those big guns getting into position round ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... was instructed daily, he says, both at grammar schools and under private masters, "as my age would suffer," he adds, in acknowledgment of his father's considerateness. Like Disraeli two centuries afterwards (perhaps the single point of resemblance), he went for schooling to a Nonconformist in Essex, "who," says Aubrey, "cut his hair short." His own hair? or his pupil's? queries Biography. We boldly reply, Both. Undoubtedly Milton's hair is short in the miniature painted of him at the age of ten by, as is believed, Cornelius Jansen. A thoughtful little face, that of ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... perhaps past that age. He had a full beard, snow-white, and a clean-shaven upper lip, reminiscent of the fashion of half a century ago. He lives, of course, in comfort now and enjoys a dignified, happy old age. Vigorous still, he continues to preach in the chapel of the Nonconformist denomination of which he is a member. I tried to picture him as he must have been fifty years back, a studious, middle-aged man, rigidly religious, a confirmed bachelor, dividing his time between his calling, on the one hand, and the study of the ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... conviction is that we must suit our teaching to the progressive spirit of this modern world of ours. Personally I am willing, if necessary, to sacrifice very much so-called dogma to conciliate our worthy Nonconformist brethren; while I shall lose no opportunity of cutting at the roots of those Romanising tendencies which are so lamentably and insidiously active in the very heart of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... royal donor of these lands, when the grant was first made. The second point was, that the admission of this inherent right of the Church of England to be an established church in Upper Canada, would extinguish the right of each one of the nonconformist bodies to the status of a Church. It can well be understood that in a contest which involved vital questions like these (that is, of the exclusive endowment of one Church, and its consequent superior status as a dominant Church), the struggle ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... theatres where poignant allusions to the most exciting questions of the day perpetually called forth applause and hisses, of pulpits where the doctrines of the High Churchman, of the Low Churchman, of the Nonjuror, of the Nonconformist, were explained and defended every Sunday by the most eloquent and learned divines of every persuasion. At that time, therefore, the metropolitan electors were, as a class, decidedly superior in intelligence and knowledge ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Corsack, a worthy man, was, unfortunately for himself, a Nonconformist. First he was fined in four hundred pounds Scots, and then through cessing he lost nineteen hundred and ninety-three pounds Scots. He was next obliged to leave his house and flee from place to place, during which wanderings he lost his horse. His wife and children were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... On Nonconformist, as on Orthodox, is laid the burden of severe fasting; as Master Chancellour tells us, in 1553, "This people hath four Lents,"—indeed, the eating working year is reduced to some 130 days. In the North, where vegetables and berries are few and fruit non-existent, the Mujik is left to fast ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... walked by, with the aged Rector. The Rector was Daniel's friend. Never before had the Rector spoken to the Nonconformist Samuel, but now he spoke to ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... had not the initial impulse to depart from ancient usage that my father had in his habitual scepticism. He had always been a nonconformist in his heart; she bore lovingly the yoke of prescribed conduct. Individual freedom, to him, was the only tolerable condition of life; to her it was confusion. My mother, therefore, gradually divested herself, at my father's bidding, of the mantle ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... whose encroachments Mill feared most and resented most has been driven back and forced to keep within his own bounds—though such names as Dissenter and Nonconformist, which were formerly used in society as fatal darts, seem to have lost all the poison which they once contained—Mill's principal fears have nevertheless not been belied, and the blight of uniformity which he saw approaching ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... times an elusive common soul. It is a gathering together of all the smaller interests which find themselves at a disadvantage against the big established classes, the leasehold tenant as against the landowner, the retail tradesman as against the merchant and the moneylender, the Nonconformist as against the Churchman, the small employer as against the demoralising hospitable publican, the man without introductions and broad connections against the man who has these things. It is the party of the many small men against the fewer prevailing men. It has no more essential reason ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... Dissenting ministers who are wholly free from the fault he pointed out; but in the purely rural districts, in the small villages where the small men are found, it is certainly common to hear unpleasant things said of the parish priest by his Nonconformist rival; and should the parson have some well-known fault or make a slip, the other is apt to chuckle over it with a very manifest and ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... writers who have suffered hard fates we must mention the illustrious author of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe. A strong partisan of the Nonconformist cause during the controversial struggle between Church and Dissent in the reign of Queen Anne, he published a pamphlet entitled The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), in which he ironically advised their entire extermination. This pleased certain of the Church Party who had ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... were there—but others—equally unaccustomed to nonconformist worship: Mr Davis, for instance, to whom Sally acted as chaperone; for he sat in the minister's pew, as a stranger; and, as she afterwards said, she had a fellow-feeling with him, being a Church-woman herself, and Dissenters had ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... crush the Nonconformist party notwithstanding the promises that had been held out to them in the Declaration of Breda. He secured the enactment of a number of laws, the Act of Uniformity (1662), the Conventicle Act (1664) and the Five Mile Act (1665) known as the Clarendon Code, which, though ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... how, and which, as long as their origin is not examined, can be created by any clever organiser who is paid to do so. The most easily manipulated State in the world would be one inhabited by a race of Nonconformist business men who never followed up a train of political reasoning in their lives, and who, as soon as they were aware of the existence of a strong political conviction in their minds, should announce that it was a matter of 'conscience' and therefore ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... set for at least a hundred people. Suddenly I received a shock. Seated underneath the hedge, hatless and coatless, with his hair in picturesque disorder, was Mr. Jonas' cousin, also a violent opponent of my politics, and a nonconformist. He had a huge tumbler by his side, which—seeing me—he raised to ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... excellent designs. The Whigs, however, did much. They succeeded in obtaining a law in the provisions of which a philosopher will doubtless find much to condemn, but which had the practical effect of enabling almost every Protestant Nonconformist to follow the dictates of his own conscience without molestation. Scarcely a law in the statute-book is theoretically more objectionable than the Toleration Act. But we question whether in the whole of that vast mass ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
