sectourt

See secutour. secular (sek'ū-lär), a. and n. [Formerly also sæcular; The secular year was kept but once in a century. Add is on. turbations, etc. See the nouns. - Secular games ( lud i sæculares), a festival of imperial Rome, celebrated at long but (despite the name, which would imply a fixed period or cycle) irregular intervals in honor of the chief among the gods and the prosperity of the empire. The festival lasted three days and nights, and was attended with sacrifices, illuminations, choral hymns, and games and dramatic representations of every description. This festival was a survival in a profoundly modified form of the Tarentine or Taurian games of the republic, a very ancient festival in propitiation of the infernal deities Dis and Proser pine. Secular refrigeration, in geol., the cooling of the earth from its supposed former condition of igneous fluidity. Syn. 4. Temporal, etc. See worldly. II. n. 11. A layman. Whether thou be male or female, ordred or unor dred, wys or fool, clerk or seculeer. Chaucer , Parson's Tale. The clergy thought that if it pleased the seculars it might be done. Hales , Letter from the Synod of Dort, p. 6. ( Latham .) 2. An ecclesiastic, such as a parish priest, who lives in the world and not in a monastery, is not subject to any monastic order or rule, and is bound only to celibacy; a secular priest' opposed to religious or regular . If cloistered Avarice scruple not to wrong The pious, humble, useful Secular , And rob the people of his daily care. Words worth, Eccles. Sonnets, ii. 19. While the Danish wars had been fatal to the monks the "regular clergy" as they were called - they had also dealt heavy blows at the seculars, or parish priests. J. R. Green, Conq. of Eng., p. 332. 3. An unordained church officer. secularisation, secularise. See secularization, secularize. secularism (sek'ū-lär-izm), n. [ secularism ignoring or exclusion of religious duties, instruction, or considerations. See secularist. Secularism is the study of promoting human welfare by material means, measuring human welfare by the utilitarian rules, and making the service of others a duty of life. Secularism relates to the present existence of man, and to action. R. J. Hinton , Eng. Rad. Leaders, p. 317. In secularism the feeling and imagination, which in the religious world are bound to theological belief, have to attach themselves to a positive natural philosophy. E. B. Tylor , Prim. Culture, II. 407.