Religion Books

THE PREFACE It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England, ever since the first compiling of her Public Liturgy, to keep the mean between the two extremes, of too much stiffness in refusing, and of too much easiness in admitting any variation from it. For, as on the one side common experience sheweth, that where a change hath been made of things advisedly established (no evident necessity so... more...

Introduction Variableness of outward practice of Christianity—The like as to that of Mahometanism—Roman Catholicism most subject to that modification—Excesses of Roman Catholicism in Spain accounted for by Spanish history—The Goths and Moors of Africa—Their conversion to Christianity—The aborigines of America—Traditional coincidences with scriptural truth—National character of the... more...

INTRODUCTION “Once upon a time,” in the winter season suggests happy, young faces grouped about a blazing fire. A heavy snowstorm promises plenty of sport for tomorrow, but at present the cosiness indoors is very attractive, especially now that the evening story hour is at hand. And while the story-teller is slowly choosing his subjects he hears the children’s impatient whispers of... more...

CHAPTER I NATURE OF RELIGION 1. It appears probable that primitive men endowed with their own qualities every seemingly active object in the world. Experience forced them to take note of the relations of all objects to themselves and to one another. The knowledge of the sequences of phenomena, so far as the latter are not regarded as acting intentionally on him, constitutes man's science and... more...

CHAPTER I OLD-TIME CHOIRS AND PARSONS A remarkable feature in the conduct of our modern ecclesiastical services is the disappearance and painless extinction of the old parish clerk who figured so prominently in the old-fashioned ritual dear to the hearts of our forefathers. The Oxford Movement has much to answer for! People who have scarcely passed the rubicon of middle life can recall the curious... more...

PULPIT AND PRESS By Rev. Mary Baker Eddy First Pastor of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, Mass. Delivered January 6, 1895 Text: They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house; and Thou shall make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures.—Psalms xxxvi. 8. A new year is a nursling, a babe of time, a prophecy and promise clad in white raiment, kissed—and encumbered with... more...

BOOK 1. 1. I Suppose that by my books of the Antiquity of the Jews, most excellent Epaphroditus, have made it evident to those who peruse them, that our Jewish nation is of very great antiquity, and had a distinct subsistence of its own originally; as also, I have therein declared how we came to inhabit this country wherein we now live. Those Antiquities contain the history of five thousand years, and... more...

PART I Sunshine and a garden path . . . flowers . . . the face and neck and bosom of the nurse upon whose heart I lay, and her voice telling me that she must leave me, that we must part, and immediately after anguish—blotting out the sunshine, the flowers, the face, the voice. This is my first recollection of Life—the pain of love. I was two years old. Nothing more for two years—and then the... more...

PREFACE. It is with a solemn feeling of responsibility that I send forth this volume of Sermons. The ordinary emotions of authorship have little place in the experience, when one remembers that what he says will be either a means of spiritual life, or an occasion of spiritual death. I believe that the substance of these Discourses will prove to accord with God's revealed truth, in the day that... more...

WHAT THE CHURCH MEANS TO ME The Church to me means all who, consciously or unconsciously, are forwarding God's kingdom on earth. In the broad definition of the Master it means "all those who are not against us." The way in which men associate for worship, or in which they consider it most remunerative to invest their efforts to forward the kingdom, gives them no right to arrogate to... more...