"Nonconformist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... 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 ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 a little coffee-house ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... 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 eternal ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... 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 ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... 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 ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... 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 outside the sympathy of many of our theatre critics, ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... 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
... 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 a ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... wanted 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 ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... compositions began: pieces of verse 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 and meeting-halls, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... 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
... 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 ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... conscience sake. In 1711 a measure was carried through the British parliament that provided that all persons in places of profit or trust, and all common councilmen in corporations, who, while holding office, were proved to have attended any Nonconformist place of worship, should forfeit the place, and should continue incapable of public employment till they should depose that for a whole year they had not attended a conventicle. A fine of L40 was added to be paid to the informer. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... 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 ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... in journalism was to study the particular journal and write what was suitable to it. And, partly by accident and ignorance and partly through the real rabid certainties of youth, I cannot remember that I ever wrote any article that was at all suitable to any paper. . . . I wrote on a Nonconformist organ like the old Daily News and told them all about French cafes and Catholic cathedrals; and they loved it, because they had never heard of them before. I wrote on a robust Labour organ like the old Clarion and defended mediaeval theology and all the things their readers had never heard ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... 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. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... 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, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... 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 ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... 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 ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... subjects with which the 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. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... 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
... 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" (or Dissenter) ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... 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
... 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 like that." ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 leather ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... This learned nonconformist was born at Reading about 1575, and educated at Winchester School, and New College, Oxford. He had been Chaplain to the Princess Elizabeth. He died at Newbury, July 20, 1646. Wood says, "his plain preaching was esteemed good; his solid disputations were ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... the employment which is the most open, as it is the most lucrative, to literary aspirants. To nine out of ten the "profession of literature" means Journalism; while Journalism often means dishonesty, always conformity. Carlyle was, in a sense deeper than that of the sects, essentially a nonconformist; he not only disdained to write a word he did not believe, he would not suppress a word he did believe—a rule of action fatal to swift success. During these years there began an acquaintance, soon ripening into intimacy, the memories of which are enshrined in one of the most ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... 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 adapted to ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... Dempsey looked 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 if he's not a Statesman as well ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... Nonconformist divine, native of Shropshire, at first a conformist, and parish minister of Kidderminster for 19 years; sympathised with the Puritans, yet stopped short of going the full length with them; acted as chaplain to one of their regiments, and returned to Kidderminster; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 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, and this set him on a course of reading ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Upton, great and small, conformist or nonconformist, were proud of their rector. It was no unusual sight for a dozen or more carriages from a distance to be seen waiting at the church door for the close of the service, not only on a Sunday morning, when custom demands the observance, but even in the ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... 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 a well-nurtured, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... the armorial bearings above the tomb it would 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 ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... second stanza, is intended, no doubt, Henry Barrow, the Nonconformist enthusiast who was executed at Tyburn in 1592. A follower of Robert Browne, founder of the Brownists, whence sprang the sect of Independents, he brought upon himself, by his zeal and imprudence, a vengeance which his wary leader contrived to evade. Browne himself is alluded to punningly in The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... term logic the act and process of reasoning involved and latent in any series of connected propositions, or this same act and process formally abstracting itself as an art and system of reasoning. For instance, if you should happen to say, 'Dr. Isaac Watts, the English Nonconformist, was a good man, and a clever man; but alas! for his logic, what can his best friend say for it? The most charitable opinion must pronounce it at the best so, so'—in such a case, what is it that ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... 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 of politics than ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... John Eliot and Cotton Mather were somewhat generally concerned about the harsh treatment of the Negro and the neglect of his spiritual welfare. Somewhat more to the point was Richard Baxter, the eminent English nonconformist, who was a contemporary of both of these men. "Remember," said he, in speaking of Negroes and other slaves, "that they are of as good a kind as you; that is, they are reasonable creatures as well as you, and born to as much natural liberty. If their sin have ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... 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 ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the nonconformist lawyer. So called from his chief work, entitled The First Century of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... 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 ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... judicious Hooker, author of "The Ecclesiastical Polity," was for six years Master of the Temple—"a place," says Izaak Walton, "which he accepted rather than desired." Travers, a disciple of Cartwright the Nonconformist, was the lecturer; so Hooker, it was said, preached Canterbury in the forenoon, and Travers Geneva in the afternoon. The benchers were divided, and Travers being at last silenced by the archbishop, Hooker resigned, and in his quiet parsonage of Boscombe renewed the contest in print, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... not the 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 with which we hold ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... be fully informed about the period of English literature, and the men and women who then figured in society, must read Dr. Hill's volume, or miss much that is essential to a full comprehension of it."—THE NONCONFORMIST, August 28th, 1878. ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... 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
... 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 work. He found a true workfellow in Dale. When this statesmanlike ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... 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
... storm was raised over this reactionary bill that Mr. Disraeli was obliged to modify its provisions considerably before it could become a law. Mr. Gladstone was also active at this time in delivering addresses at Liverpool College, the Buckley Institute and the well-known Nonconformist College at Mill Hill. ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... been said: "Mundus vult decipi"; the world wishes to be deceived; certainly the Anglican world does. But no one else is taken in. The Dissenter, the Nonconformist, and others who have no axe to grind, know well that "fine words butter no parsnips," and are far too shrewd to be deluded. Why, even the old Catholic cathedrals with their holy-water stoups, their occasional altars of stone, still remaining, their Lady chapels, ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... &c.: The chief protagonist is a young Nonconformist minister. / Unlike a number of the leading protagonists in the Home Rule fight, Sir Edward Carson was not in Parliament when.... / It presents a spiritual conflict, centred about its two chief protagonists, but shared in by ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... Brotherhood movement opposes the Natives' Land 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. ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... dangers as beyond his power to remedy. It was not till after he had entered Parliament in 1685 that he made any public utterance on politics. In the last two years of James's reign the Test Act was enforced against Nonconformist Protestants but not against Roman Catholics. Lauder, being then in Parliament, considered it his duty to take a part, and he made one or two very moderate speeches, which, although expressed with studious respect to the sovereign, were doubtless ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... 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 and independent ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... eyes of 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 ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... to 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 they like that which is ever before them, and which those around them ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... 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 ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... claim upon all Americans to rally to his support. But, alas! they did not come up to his expectations. Some were Roman Catholics; others, of whom I was one, had an affection for the more formal, punctilious service of the Church of England; and even two or three nonconformist teachers realized that a too open devotion to the missionary cause would hopelessly endanger their usefulness ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... as all eccentricity does the world in general, more than vice or malignity. They talked it over among themselves, till they got wrought up to a desire of punishing, once for all, this sometimes amusing, but so often provoking nonconformist. ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... Germany—what Santa Croce is to Italy. . . 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 the splendour of pageants has ceased to attract. But the desire to be buried in Westminster ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... 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
... meteoric 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 those great familiar lyrics printed ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... There also hovered near her the learned Doctor Yore; Mr. Small, a profound writer, who never printed his works; the Reverend Mr. Brook, rector; the Very Reverend Dr. Taylor, dean; and the undoubtedly Reverend Mr. Tinkleton, Nonconformist, who had slipped into the fold ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... "Charles Doe, a 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, Mr. Wheeler and Mr. ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... anxious 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... speech for publication to circulate among the dissenters who, he said, know nothing about religious liberty. It was something, however, to find Mr. Gladstone, the greatest living churchman, and Bright, the greatest living nonconformist, voting in the same lobby. The fight was stiff, and was kept up until the end of the summer. The weapon that had been forged in this blazing furnace by these clumsy armourers proved blunt and worthless; the law was from the first a dead letter, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... county and district councils, and its Justices of 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 ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... that the passage in Gladstone's "Nullity of Leadership" letter, which was the root cause of all the trouble that followed, would never have been published were it not that the political hacks, through motives of party expediency, insisted on its inclusion. That plant of tender growth—the English Nonconformist conscience—it was that decreed the fall of ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... the Mercury down to 1859, when, on the death of his brother, he was chosen by his fellow-townsmen to succeed him as their representative in Parliament. He had there a most honourable career. He was, like his father, a Nonconformist, and he was also a strict teetotaller. When he entered the House of Commons there was only one other teetotaller in that body. A generous and cultured man, filled with enthusiasm for the public good, he succeeded during his Parliamentary ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... his cold and repellent manners still hindered him from making friends.[197] His power was strengthened in this session by the general approval elicited by his bill for the reduction of the national debt by means of a sinking fund. In forming his plan he received much help from Price, a nonconformist minister, distinguished as a writer on financial questions. When introducing his bill he was able to show that the public revenue would exceed the expenditure by about L900,000, which he proposed to raise to L1,000,000 ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... has no more loyal subjects than the Welshmen, but apparently they do not greatly incline towards admitting his claims as their spiritual head. The Church of England in Wales is greatly inferior in numbers and influence to the various nonconformist branches. This is especially true ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... 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 ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... 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
... 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 of ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... Englishman of today, instead of being, like the forefathers 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 ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... Rather curiously, 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 that this neglect ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... 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 ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... P. A. TAYLOR asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he had received memorials from many thousands of persons, including clergymen of the Church of England, Nonconformist ministers, and persons of high literary and scientific position, asking for a mitigation of the sentences of George William Foote and William James Ramsey, now imprisoned in Holloway Gaol on a charge of blasphemy; whether they have already ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... enough to be the father of the Book Society. And though Coward College is now absorbed in a more extensive erection, the founders of St. John's Wood College should rear a statue to Doddridge, as the man who gave the mightiest impulse to the work of rearing an educated Nonconformist ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... as we know, 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 ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... 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 ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... interest of the tale, such as it is, centres round two men, Colonel Goring and Morty Sullivan, the Cromwellian and the Celt. These men are enemies by race and creed and feeling. The first represents Mr. Froude's cure for Ireland. He is a resolute 'Englishman, with strong Nonconformist tendencies,' who plants an industrial colony on the coast of Kerry, and has deep-rooted objections to that illicit trade with France which in the last century was the sole method by which the Irish people were enabled to pay their rents ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... 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 for a ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... well as instructive piety, and, on these principles, 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 ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... such an important matter there is bound to be great diversity of 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
... a manufacturer of hosiery in the midlands, was at this time acting regularly as an official ambassador of the Cabinet. The fact that he was a leading Nonconformist was, I fancy, supposed to commend him in some obscure way to the Ulster party. He spent the evening after the meeting in flying about in his motor between the House of Commons where Babberly was proposing amendments to the Bill, Moyne House ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... 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
... time, Parliament 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 ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... brutal thing, the thing that called names. This is the great difference between some recent developments of Nonconformity and the great Puritanism of the seventeenth century. It was the whole point of the Puritans that they cared nothing for decency. Modern Nonconformist newspapers distinguish themselves by suppressing precisely those nouns and adjectives which the founders of Nonconformity distinguished themselves by flinging at kings and queens. But if it was a chief claim of religion that it spoke plainly about evil, it was the chief claim of all that it spoke ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... 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 wag, had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the "Nonconformist" [March 8, 1871]. I like to see all that is written, and it is of some real use. If you hear of reviewers in out-of-the-way papers, especially the religious, as "Record", "Guardian", "Tablet", kindly inform me. It is wonderful that there has been no abuse ("I feel a full conviction that my chapter ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... talks in this way I always try to forget that she came of a family far inferior to our own, the Razorbills. Indeed, her people—of the Nonconformist stock—really had nothing but wealth and rectitude, and I think my brother Bob, in his genuine love for her, was willing to overlook the latter for the sake of ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... "as an entire arch of fire from the Three Cranes to the other side of the bridge, and in a bow up the hill, for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it." Vincent also likens its appearance at this juncture to that of a bow. "A dreadful bow it was," writes this eloquent nonconformist preacher, "such as mine eyes have never before seen; a bow which had God's arrow in it with a flaming point; a shining bow, not like that in the cloud which brings water with it, and withal signifieth God's covenant not to destroy the world any more ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... Duty 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
... 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 to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage[167] of the world. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... 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 ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... completely supplanted his youthful arrogance, and which made him shrink from impelling others to follow in his steps, endued him also with the teachableness of a child towards those whom he accepted as his spiritual mentors. It was a peasant nonconformist writer, Soutaev, who by conversing with him on the revelations of the Gospels helped him to regain his childhood's faith, and incidentally brought him into closer relations with religious, but otherwise ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... welcomed the noble and beloved Bishop Charles P. McIlvaine of Ohio to my Lafayette Avenue Church pulpit, where he pronounced a grand discourse on "The Unity of All Christians in the Lord Jesus Christ." If I lived in England I should be heart and soul a nonconformist. But I can gratefully acknowledge the many kind courtesies which I have received from the clergy of the Established Church. Once, when in London, I was invited to the annual dinner given by the Lord Mayor to the archbishops and bishops, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... thousand pounds each when their father died: ten thousand pounds' worth of profitable house-property. It was not to be sneezed at: they felt so themselves, and refrained from sneezing away such a fortune on any mere member of the proletariat. Consequently, bank-clerks or nonconformist clergymen or even school-teachers having failed to come forward, Matilda had begun to give up all idea of ever leaving ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... Henry, a pious and eminent Nonconformist divine, gives this account of the awful sensation generally produced by the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... 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 ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... accepted a call from some congregation in the outskirts of the great city. He held a salaried post as well as Metropolitan secretary to his sect, and had become a person of importance. He was in association with a firm of printers who worked mainly for the big Nonconformist bodies, and an odour of sanctity was supposed, by the Armstrong household at least, to rest upon the labours upon which Paul was about to enter in their office. Paul had examples of the office craftsmanship set before him. Technically they were excellent, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... 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], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 it, I'm ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde |
