"Nonconformist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... formula by noting that 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 ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... was more than hate in the affront that he had offered; there was calculation—to an even greater extent than we have seen. It happened that through his own fault young Richard was all but penniless. The pious, nonconformist soul of Sir Geoffrey Lupton—the wealthy uncle from whom he had had great expectations—had been so stirred to anger by Richard's vicious and besotted ways that he had left every guinea that was his, ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... ribands, welcomed the common deliverer to Saint 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 ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "busiest man of his age" strongly suggests Bunyan in his life and writings. Like Bunyan, he was poor and uneducated, a nonconformist minister, exposed continually to insult and persecution; and, like Bunyan, he threw himself heart and soul into the conflicts of his age, and became by his public speech a mighty power among the common people. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... late Mr Barber Hopkinson, surveyor of this town, I subsequently undertook the 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 of the paper, and happened to be one of the parson's "flock." ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... 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
... 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 composed a ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... 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
... neniu. Noise bruo. Noisome nauxza, malbonodora. Noisy (of children) petola. Nomad migranto. Nomadic migranta. Nom-de-plume pseuxdonomo. Nomenclature nomaro. Nominal nominala. Nominative nominativo. Nonchalance apatio. Nonconformist nekonformisto. Nondescript nepriskriba. None neniom. Nonentity neestajxo. Nonsense sensencajxo, malsagxeco. Non-success malprospero. Nook anguleto. Noon tagmezo. Noose ligotubero. Nor nek. Normal ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... whose ideas he clings to, a subject of a 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 to prison for the blasphemy of offering Bibles for sale in the streets of Khartoum. ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... photographs of Mr. Asquith before and after the dawn of the twentieth century may see what I mean. In the earlier photographs his face is keen, alert, powerful, austere; you will read in it the rigidity of his Nonconformist upbringing, the seriousness of his Puritan inheritance, all the moral earnestness of a nobly ambitious character. In the later photographs one is struck by an increasing expression of festivity, not by any means that beautiful radiance of the human spirit ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... frustrated these 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 of legislation, from the Great Charter ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ordered to be burnt by the hangman a pamphlet against the Test, which one John Humphrey, an aged Nonconformist minister, had written and circulated among the members of Parliament.[154:1] There seems to be no record of the pamphlet's name; and I only guess it may be a work entitled, A Draught for a National Church accommodation, whereby the subjects of North and South Britain, however ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... holy affection and harmony hath so far reconciled the Nonconformists that diverse of them use his Psalms in their congregation." I doubt if the version were used in New England Nonconformist congregations. Some ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... from "BASES OF BELIEF," by Edward Miall, one of the best books on the truth and divinity of Christianity I have had the happiness to read. Mr. Miall is a Congregational minister, editor of the Nonconformist Newspaper, and Member of Parliament. As his remarks are lengthy, we are obliged to abridge ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... 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 would be a protracted and bitter ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... 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
... we are resolved is done, decided, born. Life is in it. It is; and the future is but the development of its being. Ours, therefore, is a perpetual triumph. Our deeds are, all of them, component elements of success." (Miall's Essays; Nonconformist, Vol. iv.) ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of the creed, of which I knew and cared nothing (for my own religious horizon had always included all "good-willing men," and I had no conception of the distinctions of creed which would send on one side of the line of safety an Established Churchman and on the other a Nonconformist), we agreed very well, and in the general impression I set Linnell down as a devout Christian of the Cromwellian type, and he certainly was a man of remarkable intellectual powers, both in art and in theology. His Christianity might have taken a form of less domestic sternness, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... prevailing superstitions, and although condemned as holding heretical opinions, he yet died in peace, A.D. 1387. Rome revenged itself by digging up his bones and burning them, about thirteen years later. Rebellion spread even among the monks of the Church, and a vast number of some nonconformist Franciscan monks, termed Spirituals, were burned for their refusal to obey the pope on matters of discipline. The intense hatred between the Franciscan and Dominican orders made the latter the willing instrument of the papacy; and, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... race of Frenchmen who had a lofty idea of the law, and duty, the social conventions, their 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 ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... BURTON, "asked why 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, and the sham respectability ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... children. If it is true of the German people that there is no moral 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 ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... 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 ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... sister left Manchester about midday, and spent the night in London at a little City hotel much frequented by Nonconformist ministers, which ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... body, with no other aim than their 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 ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... 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 ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... 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 Babylon for a ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... country. Anything would be a relief from the weekly total of London deaths, which is our chief subject of conversation, or the General's complaints that there is no one in town but himself to transact business, or dismal prophecies of a Nonconformist rebellion that is to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... reviving seriousness in the upper classes of lay society to a reaction against the horrors and impieties of the first French Revolution in its later stages." And this reviving seriousness was by no means confined to Nonconformist circles. In the eighteenth century the religious activities of the time proceeded largely (though not exclusively) from persons who, from one cause or another, were separated from the Established Church. Much theological learning and controversial ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... men ready to bow to established authority of whatever kind; while others demand of every such authority its reason, and reject it if it fails to justify itself? And must not the minds thus contrasted tend to become respectively conformist and nonconformist, not only in politics and religion, but in other things? Submission, whether to a government, to the dogmas of ecclesiastics, or to that code of behaviour which society at large has set up, is essentially of the same nature; ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... 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 ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... idea of a holy palmer. COCOA, PHOENIX, and ARECA, one after the other, went in at his eyes and through his head; none of them pleased him. His wife, however, who in her smiling way had fallen in with his whim, helped him out of his difficulty. She was the daughter of nonconformist parents in Lancashire, and had been encouraged when a child to read a certain old-fashioned book called The Pilgrim's Progress, which her husband had never seen. He did not read it now, but accepting her suggestion, named the boy Christian. When a daughter came, he would have had her Christiana, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... dirigendi et 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 ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... of our shipmates had put up tents in the neighbourhood, and at night we all gathered round the camp fire to talk and smoke away our misery. One, whose name I forget, was a journalist, correspondent for the 'Nonconformist'. Scott was an artist, Harrison a mechanical engineer. Doran a commercial traveller, Moran an ex-policeman, Beswick a tailor, Bernie a clogger. The first lucky digger we saw, after Picaninny Jack, came among us one dark night; he came suddenly, head foremost, into our fire, and plunged his hands ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... being leader in the Lords. Mr W. E. Forster, who had taken a much more prominent part in public life, was the only other possible nominee, but he declined to stand. Lord Hartington's rank no doubt told in his favour, and Mr Forster's education bill had offended the Nonconformist members, who would probably have withheld their support. Lord Hartington's prudent management in difficult circumstances laid his followers under great obligations, since not only was the opposite party in the ascendant, but his own former chief ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... hands pointed to five minutes to noon. She ordered books to be shut and slates to be put away; and going to the harmonium, gave out the hymn, "Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing." The Managers had agreed upon this hymn; the Nonconformist majority insisting, however, that the concluding 'Amen' should be omitted. Omitted accordingly it was on the slips of paper ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the 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 ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... 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 ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... your duty. What a dear old chap he must be!—so thoroughly prosy and honest. I'm sure I should love him. I know just the sort of man he is. A downright Nonconformist minister of the midland counties, who was consecrated a ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... of his fathers is 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 of sentiments. Personal ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... excitement gathered 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 churches to the Puritans, and, ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... was ordained as a missionary to Mongolia in Augustine Chapel, Edinburgh, on February 10, 1870, and, in accordance with Nonconformist custom, he made a statement about the development of his religious life from which we take ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... The managers 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 behalf ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... Palmerston believes that the clergy of the Established Church were never more exemplary in the performance of their duties, more respected by the Laity and, generally speaking, on better terms with the Nonconformist body than at ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... 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 ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... well as his life, The fact that a man, with a deep sense of religion, should not have attended any place of public worship, has given great trouble to Milton's biographers. And the principal biographers of this thorough-going nonconformist have been Anglican clergymen; Bishop Newton, Todd, Mitford; Dr. Johnson, more clerical than any cleric, being no exception, Mitford would give Milton a dispensation on the score of his age and infirmities. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... had been a non-juring clergyman, one of the many ejected from their livings on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662; and he himself had been educated as a Nonconformist at Mr. Morton's famous academy on Newington Green, where Daniel Defoe had preceded him as a pupil, and where he had heard John Bunyan preach. At the conclusion of his training there he was pitched upon to answer some pamphlets levelled against the Dissenters, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 at this meeting! ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... Protestants live side by side in Ireland with fully as much amity as elsewhere, but whereas the Catholic instinctively, and by upbringing, looks to the parish priest as his director in all affairs of life, the Protestant dislikes and resists clerical influence as strongly as does the Nonconformist in England and Wales—and with much better reason. For the latter has never known clericalism as it exists in a Roman Catholic country where the Church is wholly unrestrained by the civil power. He has resented what he regards as Anglican arrogance in regard to educational management or the use ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... in 1661, the year after the restoration of Charles II. The boy's parents wished him to become a dissenting minister, and so intrusted his education to a Mr. Morton who kept an academy for the training of nonconformist divines. How long Defoe staid at this school is not known. He seems to think himself that he staid there long enough to become a good scholar; for he declares that the pupils were "made masters of the English tongue, and more of them excelled in that particular than of any school at ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... 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
... Act it must be religious, for Anglican Bishops in South Africa have denounced this law in their episcopal charges (vide 'Church Chronicle', 1913, October issues), and Anglican Bishops in South Africa are nothing if they are not religious. Nonconformist Ministers have condemned this law in their annual synods and conferences. Ex-Premier W. P. Schreiner, K.C., C.M.G., at present the London representative of the Union of South Africa, is the son of an old South African missionary. He was member of the Union ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... where Force for centuries has failed," added the Philosopher. "One notices the tendency even in public affairs. It is bad form nowadays to belong to the Opposition. The chief aim of the Church is to bring itself into line with worldly opinion. The Nonconformist Conscience grows every day a ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 us...." She waved her small hand, its once well-tended ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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 ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... readers who should naturally have enjoyed them. He is a poet, of fantastic wit and often reckless imagination, and he has been travestied in a long black coat and white choker, as though he were an embodiment of the Nonconformist conscience. ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... 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 most ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... social 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 ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... millions of the public money, while millions of their countrymen refuse to enter its doors, how can they for a moment object to the passing of a measure which will give some sort of show of assistance to that Church to which millions of the Irish people belong? The Nonconformist or Dissenting party in this country are opposed to the measure; but by some of them a spirit is mixed up with their agitation of this question which shows that they do not understand, or do not value, the great principles of Nonconformity, for which their forefathers struggled ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... relation of these denunciations to Marcionite doctrine, I will suppose a parallel. I take up a book written by a Nonconformist, and I find in it an attack (I am not concerned with the truth or falsehood of the opinions attacked) on the doctrines of episcopal succession, of sacramental grace, of baptismal regeneration, and the like. It is wholly silent about claims ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... Socialist in Jesus Christ, and wanted to disestablish the Church of England) by "taking the chair" for her when she announced these tenets to the rabble in Hyde Park one fine Sunday afternoon. A Heredith a socialist and nonconformist! These were bitter blows to Miss Heredith, a woman soaked in family and Church tradition, but she bore the shock with uncompromising front, and was able to make the shortcomings of Phil's mother a vicarious sacrifice for the misdeeds of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... unusually high and 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 to ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... [v.04 p.0567] church-rate, and the second for parliamentary reform, by which Rochdale successfully claimed to have a member allotted to it under the Reform Bill. In both these movements John Bright took part. He was an ardent Nonconformist, proud to number among his ancestors John Gratton, a friend of George Fox, and one of the persecuted and imprisoned preachers of the Society of Friends. His political interest was probably first kindled by the Preston election in 1830, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... 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 costume. His expression, his manner, his very soul seemed ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... puritan, many of her martyrs had died for the prayer book which Knox would have destroyed. His tract cannot have added to the affection which Elizabeth bore to the author of "The First Blast." In after years, as we shall see, Knox spoke in a tone much more moderate in addressing the early English nonconformist secessionists (1568). Indeed, it is as easy almost to prove, by isolated passages in Knox's writings, that he was a sensible, moderate man, loathing and condemning active resistance in religion, as to prove him to be a senselessly violent man. All depends on the occasion ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... been formed as to the person who lies under this stone. Nothing appears to be known for a certainty. ?The Rev. Mr. Morris, a Nonconformist, a sufferer for conscience' sake; a worthy man, who having been deprived of his benefice after the accession of William III, lived to an old age in extreme destitution, on the alms of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... opinion. Naturally, the church that is "disestablished" will be a most bitter opponent of the plan, as was the Church in Ireland, in Scotland, and in Wales. In England the "dissenters"—as all the members of the nonconformist churches are entitled—are practically unanimous for the disestablishment of the State or Episcopal Church, while the Episcopalians believe that such an act would "provoke the wrath of God upon the country wicked enough to perpetrate it." ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... the Peace, would hardly have been possible but for this training. Other agencies may be mentioned. The temperance movement, the organisation of working-men's clubs, and the local preaching of the Nonconformist Churches—particularly the Primitive Methodist denomination—have all helped to educate workmen in the conduct of affairs, and to create that sense of personal responsibility which is the only guarantee of an ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... Laird of 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him 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 principal, and all the tutors are clergyman—of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... Arius a Protestant; and if John Ball was a Reformer, Latimer was not a Reformer. But though the new heresies did not even hint at the beginning of English Protestantism, they did, perhaps, hint at the end of English Catholicism. Cobham did not light a candle to be handed on to Nonconformist chapels; but Arundel did light a torch, and put it to his own church. Such real unpopularity as did in time attach to the old religious system, and which afterwards became a true national tradition against Mary, was doubtless started by the diseased energy of these fifteenth-century bishops. Persecution ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... me!" he gasped. "Picture to yourself this Crispin Galliard blushing and giggling like a schoolgirl beset by her first lover. Picture it, I say! As well and as easily might you picture old Lucifer warbling a litany for the edification of a Nonconformist parson." ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... the world to take its course he expected the same privilege. He wished neither to interfere nor to be interfered with. And he was a most cheerful nonconformist withal. He says: 'To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer is to have kept your soul alive.' Independence and optimism are vital parts of his unformulated creed. He hated cynicism ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... him bear, this dreadful man of gore, A brace of battleaxes at the slope; I see him fling his gauntlet on the floor, And (shouting, "BYLES for REDMOND and the POPE!") Let loose the Nonconformist Dogs of War. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... distinguished nonconformist, visited him in his confinement. 'When I was there,' he writes, 'there were about sixty dissenters besides himself, taken but a little before at a religious meeting at Kaistor, in the county of Bedford, besides two eminent dissenting ministers, ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... 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 ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... investigations which seem to have proved that La Rochefoucauld was acquainted with an English book of edification and even that he deigned to make use of it in the fashioning of his famous "Maximes." This was "The Mystery of Self-Deceiving," published in 1615 by a semi-nonconformist Puritan divine, Daniel Dyke, minister of Coggeshall in Essex, and translated obscurely into French by a certain Vernulius. Of the original work Fuller wrote, "It is a book which will be owned for a truth while men have any badness in them, and will be owned as a treasure whilst they have any goodness ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... Nonconformist divine, was far advanced in life before he met the excellent woman who eventually became his wife. He was too laboriously occupied in his vocation of minister to have any time to spare for courtship; and his marriage was, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... come, come! You are no more a child of sin than any Jew, or Mohammedan, or Nonconformist, or anyone else born outside the Church. But you see how it affects my view of the situation. To me there is only one marriage that is holy: the Church's sacrament of marriage. Outside that, I can recognize no distinction between one civil contract and another. There was a time when ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 to the sketch of the general ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... 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
... while the diary of Archbishop 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 ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... are we— Tho' hating Nonconformity, We yet believe the cash no worse is That comes from Nonconformist purses. Indifferent whence the money reaches The pockets of our reverend breeches, To us the Jumper's jingling penny Chinks with a tone as sweet as any; And even our old friends Yea and Nay May thro' the nose for ever pray, If also thro' the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... incarcerated nearly twelve years, and had determined to suffer to the end. Here he found time 'to weigh, and pause, and pause again, the grounds and foundations of those principles for which he suffered,' and he was a Nonconformist still. 'I cannot, I dare not now revolt or deny my principles, on pain of eternal damnation,'[267] are his impressive words. 'Faith and holiness are my professed principles, with an endeavour to be at peace with all men. Let they themselves be judges, if aught they find in my writing or preaching ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... strong point of Nonconformist churches. We pride ourselves on our individualism, and that is all very well. We believe in direct access of each soul to Christ, that men must come to Him one by one, that religion is purely a personal matter, and the firmness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 a short temper, ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... right good English stock, both on his father's and his mother's side. His grandfather, Dr Andrew Reed, a Nonconformist minister of note in his day, left his mark in some of the soundest philanthropic undertakings of the century. His thoughtfulness and self- sacrificing energy have lightened the sufferings and soothed the old age of many thousands. ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... immediately referred to, where certain Nonconformist ministers of the metropolis are described under images taken from the vegetable world, the late Rev. Thomas Tailer (of Carter Lane), whose voice was feeble and trembling, is thus ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... the merit of not being a compilation, which is more than can be said of the great majority of books produced in these days to satisfy the revived taste for topographical gossip. Mr. Ritchie is a Suffolk man—the son of a Nonconformist minister of Wrentham in that county—and he looks back to the old neighbourhood and the old times with an affection which is likely to communicate itself to its readers. Altogether we can with confidence recommend this book not only to East Anglians, but to all readers ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... use this word 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
... Warren, 'and, as I told you, a man of principle. My attachment to the Temperance cause'—and he fingered his blue ribbon—'procured for me the honour of a defeat at the last general election, but endeared me to the consciences of the Nonconformist element in the constituency. Yet, sir, I am at this moment the most unpopular man in Bulcester; but I shall fight it out—I shall fight it to ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... light of the word of the Lord. They complain of the general lack of finesse and Latin; the licence of the pulpit has usurped the reverence of the altar. It is perfectly true that statements are sometimes made in nonconformist pulpits which are bald and offensive to the ear of scholarly accomplishment. But the complaint of secularization is singularly inept. Nothing could be more secular in the way of complacent acceptance of the worldly reasons for leaving awkward questions alone than the attitude ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... knapsack on the bench went out into the high road in the direction indicated. He walked slowly, his head bent deep in thought, realizing for the first time the exact nature of the extraordinary compact which he had made with the little nonconformist who had chosen him for a traveling companion. The more he thought of the situation the more apparent became the gravity of his responsibility. Why had he yielded to her reckless whim? Only this morning he had been thanking his lucky stars that he was well rid of women of ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... 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 ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... individual character, which fail so to conform. Morality is, more concisely, the mores of the moment; Immorality is the mores of some other moment, it may be a better, it may be a worse moment. Every nonconformist action is immoral, but whether it is thereby good, bad, or indifferent remains another question. Jesus was immoral; so also ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... change in economic conditions, with the growth of manufacture, the 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 the landlords and the farmers. The new masters opposed the Factory Acts, championed ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... mother were 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
... and prose in the Welsh language, an essay on punctuality being, if I remember right, one of them; a poem on the march of Havelock, another. This went on for some time. Then Dr. Vaughan,—the well-known Nonconformist minister, a Welshman, and a good patriot,—addressed us in English. His speech was a powerful one, and he succeeded, I confess, in sending a faint thrill through our front benches; but it was the old familiar thrill which we have all of us felt a thousand times in Saxon chapels ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... in London alone) I shall make no attempt to deal. But it may be well to say that many of them pay very badly and many of them do not pay at all. The best, speaking from a journalistic point of view, is the British Weekly, a Nonconformist journal which prints all sorts of things, and which is edited with brilliant skill; unfortunately it has the bad habit ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... 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
... meeting was held of the Nonconformists to effect important alterations in the Education Act, and you are acquainted with the discussion in Parliament which arose in consequence of that meeting. Gentlemen, I have due and great respect for the Nonconformist body. I acknowledge their services to their country, and though I believe that the political reasons which mainly called them into existence have entirely ceased, it is impossible not to treat with consideration ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... movement and influence in the respective fields of the argumentative and the spiritual; the one a philosopher writing for the educated, the other a missionary preaching to the poor. Butler, educated a nonconformist, turned to the church, and in an age of unbelief consecrated his great mental gifts to roll back the flood of infidelity; and died early, when his unblemished example was so much needed in the noble sphere of usefulness which Providence ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Bass, Chairman of the Board, in the honored seat of Deacon Moses Hatch, the perquisite of the church in Coniston! The idea was heresy. As a matter of fact, Jock himself uttered it as a playful exaggeration. Certain nonconformist farmers, of whom there were not a few in the town, had come into Jonah Winch's store that morning; and Jabez Miller, who lived on the north slope, had taken away the breath of the orthodox by suggesting that Jethro Bass be nominated ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... control he would send for her; and he soon got married and became a prominent member of the Dominion Legislature, and in none of his not over frequent letters said a word about his promise to send for her. Now, her father was some time dead; her stepmother had married Mr. Saulsbury, an elderly Nonconformist minister, who was shocked at all the ways of Alceste's admirer, and with whom she could not get on. It would take a very sweet and resigned nature to make one who had had these experiences absolutely in love with the human race, and especially with men; and Alceste accordingly became more dear than ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Wallace's early childhood was spent in an orthodox religious atmosphere, which, whilst awakening within him vague emotions of religious fervour, derived chiefly from the more picturesque and impassioned of the hymns which he occasionally heard sung at a Nonconformist chapel, left no enduring impression. Moreover, at the age of 14 he was brought suddenly into close contact with Socialism as expounded by Robert Owen, which dispelled whatever glimmerings of the Christian ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... 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 of the living Church. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 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 indignation began to arouse the groups of the unprivileged ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Englishmen 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 will ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... 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 ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... religious, doesn't 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, I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... appear that the figure 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 was ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. Now, I never moralise. A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain. There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience. And most women know ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... Bunyan 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 whatever punishment ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... who would insist most strongly on the necessity of preserving the Church's ancient order do not usually maintain the attitude to dissent of the Anglican High and Dry School, which was still common in the middle of the 19th century. The work which Nonconformist bodies have done for the spiritual and moral life of England, and the immense debt which we all owe to them on that account, are thankfully admitted. No one indeed can do otherwise than admit it ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... other sects being nothing but impostors? We have 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 ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... trial came on at Guildhall, a crowd of those who loved and honoured Baxter filled the court. At his side stood Doctor William Bates, one of the most eminent of the Nonconformist divines. Two Whig barristers of great note, Pollexfen and Wallop, appeared for the defendant. Pollexfen had scarcely begun his address to the jury, when the Chief Justice broke forth: "Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a mark on you. You are the patron of the faction. This is an ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... could have 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 Hugh Peters through the breach of his Castle; and for his sake, without nicely distinguishing betwixt ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Wellington, Eldon, Westmoreland, Bathurst, and Bexley—though the latter afterwards took advantage of his second thoughts and returned to the fold. Although an opponent of Parliamentary reform and of the removal of Nonconformist disabilities, Canning gave his support to Catholic emancipation, to the demand for free trade, and the abolition of slavery. Canning's accession to power threw the Tory ranks into confusion. 'The Tory party,' states Lord Russell, 'which had survived the follies and disasters ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... surrounded with soldiers, and the 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
... of his father, a sturdy English Nonconformist who some years before had emigrated from Banbury in England to Boston in America. As the family was so large the children had to begin early to earn their own living. So at the age of ten Benjamin was apprenticed to his own father, ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... lies a popular English fallacy—Gladstonians often refer to the Orange 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 aspect of affairs. The English Home Rulers say ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... . . It is this which inspired the saying of Nelson—Victory or Westminster Abbey. It is this which has intertwined it with so many eloquent passages of Macaulay. It is this which gives point to the allusions of recent Nonconformist statesmen, least inclined to draw illustrations from ecclesiastical buildings. It is this which gives most promise of vitality to the whole institution. Kings are no longer buried within its walls; even ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... 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 of that gracious lady who was set as a fixed star in the firmament of his admirations; ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... 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 ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... went, all the birds jeered at and persecuted him. Even the nightingales would not listen to his brotherly voice. They made fun of his black coat, and called him a Nonconformist without a conscience. "All this has come about," thought he, "because God never meant anything beautiful ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... of the Athanasian Creed will suggest 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 respect to ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... difficulty and at best imperfectly. After 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 gradually overtaken numerically ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... 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, ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... Biography: Few 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. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... 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. It is amusing, and enjoyed a long continued vogue. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... prejudices"; the giving of a kind of divine authority to something we will insist on doing though it brings no good, even causes harm, to ourselves and offends and injures others, or the giving a name which should be sacred as commanding what we want to do for other reasons. A staunch Nonconformist—one of the clearest thinkers and probably the finest preacher of the last generation—how he would have hated the phrase, but one cannot pause for another!—truly said of the passive resisters in his day, "There is a deal more ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... Church is less rigid and the religion is nearer Rationalism, the people are more prosperous, more intelligent, and less superstitious. So, again, the rule of the English Church seems less beneficial than that of the more rational and free Nonconformist. The worst found and worst taught class in England is that of the agricultural labourers, who have been for centuries left entirely in the hands ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... 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 some kind of gods or idols yet. But Skidder says ...
— Options • O. Henry
... the same way. Chesterton would seem to have felt the great change early in the war. Soon he will break his silence, and we shall know whether we have amongst us a giant with strength renewed or a querulous Nonconformist Crusader, agreeing with no man, while claiming to speak for every man. Early in the course of this study a distinction was drawn between Christians and Crusaders. Chesterton has been throughout his career essentially a Crusader. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... write, they write; or else they do not write at all; but, like the writer of these lines, stop discouraged, live disheartened, and die leaving fragments which their friends treasure, but which a rushing world never heeds. The Nonconformist writers are neglected, the Conformist writers are encouraged, until perhaps on a sudden the fashion shifts. And as with the writers, so in a less degree with readers. Many men—most men—get to like or think ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... 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 wag, had named ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... very self-sufficient; adversity had taught him so to be. A more tender-hearted man, possessing his vision and his knowledge, might have found cause for tears in the contemplation of these ardent, simple, Nonconformist sheep going forth to the shambles—escorted to the rallying ground on Castle Field by wives and daughters, sweethearts and mothers, sustained by the delusion that they were to take the field in defence of Right, of Liberty, and of Religion. For he knew, as all Bridgewater ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Nonconformist religious communities, the Wesleyan, Congregational, Primitive Methodist, Baptist, and New Church or Swedenborgian, each now having substantially built chapels, resident ministers, with Sunday, and, in one case, Day Schools. Through the courtesy of the Rev. John ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... Protestant? Anglican or Nonconformist? . . . I won't ask you to give away your own side. So we'll take the Protestant Nonconformists. There are a good many down at the Club: you heard some of the things they said and printed during the Election; and while your charity won't deny that they are religious—some ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... putting on his stockings, "how could I stand being cast off for that hobgoblin, that looks as if he had been cut out of a root of yew with a blunt knife, and all crooked! I that always was your sweetheart, to see you consorting with a mis-shapen squinting Whig of a Nonconformist ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Satires, i. 131. Dr. James Foster, the Nonconformist preacher. Johnson mentions 'the reputation which he had gained by his proper delivery.' Works, viii. 384. In The Conversations of Northcote, p. 88, it is stated that 'Foster first became popular from the Lord Chancellor Hardwicke stopping in the porch of his chapel in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Anglican organisation were elastic enough to permit the order of lay-readers to be developed on strongly Evangelical lines, the lower middle class might find within the Church the mental food which it now seeks in Nonconformist chapels, and might gain in breadth and dignity by belonging once more to a ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Department, Church of England or Nonconformist. And it's sixpence a swear in this mess." Arnold ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... monster, monstrosity, rarity; freak, freak of Nature, weirdo, mutant; rouser, snorter* [U.S.]. individuality, idiosyncrasy, originality, mannerism. aberration; irregularity; variety; singularity; exemption; salvo &c. (qualification) 469. nonconformist; nondescript, character, original, nonesuch, nonsuch[obs3], monster, prodigy, wonder, miracle, curiosity, flying fish, black sheep, black swan, lusus naturae[Lat], rara avis[Lat], queer fish; mongrel, random breed; half-caste, half-blood, half-breed; metis[Lat], crossbreed, hybrid, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... crooked at him. [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 ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw |
