Religion Books

Invitation. 1 Come to the house of prayer, O ye afflicted, come! The God of peace shall meet you there, He makes that house His home. 2 Come to the house of praise, Ye who are happy now; In sweet accord your voices raise, In kindred homage bow. 3 Ye aged, hither come, For ye have felt His love; Soon shall ye lift a holier song In fairer courts above. 4 Ye young, before His throne, Come, bow; your... more...

AN APOLOGY FOR ATHEISM It would be absurd to doubt that religion has an important bearing on all the relations and conditions of life. The connexion between religions faith and political practice is, in truth, far closer than is generally thought. Public opinion has not ripened into a knowledge that religious error is the intangible but real substratum of all political injustice. Though the... more...

CHAPTER I. SOULS UNDER DIVINE INFLUENCE ARE IMPELLED TO SEEK AFTER GOD, BUT IN DIFFERENT WAYS—REDUCED TO THREE, AND EXPLAINED BY A SIMILITUDE. As soon as a soul is brought under divine influence, and its return to God is true and sincere, after the first cleansing which confession and contrition have effected, God imparts to it a certain instinct to return to Him in a most complete manner, and to... more...

First Lecture. Brothers:—Every time that we come here together to study the fundamental truths of all religions, I cannot but feel how vast is the subject, how small the expounder, how mighty the horizon that opens before our thoughts, how narrow the words which strive to sketch it for your eyes. Year after year we meet, time after time we strive to fathom some of those great mysteries of life, of... more...

Every child that is born is born of a community and into a community, which existed before his birth and will continue to exist after his death. He learns to speak the language which the community spoke before he was born, and which the community will continue to speak after he has gone. In learning the language he acquires not only words but ideas; and the words and ideas he acquires, the thoughts he... more...

Buddhism is geographically divided into two schools[FN#1]—the Southern, the older and simpler, and the Northern, the later and more developed faith. The former, based mainly on the Pali texts[FN#2] is known as Hinayana[FN#3] (small vehicle), or the inferior doctrine; while the latter, based on the various Sanskrit texts,[4] is known as Mahayana (large vehicle), or superior doctrine. The chief tenets... more...

SERMON I.  THE MYSTERY OF THE CROSS.  A GOOD FRIDAY SERMON. Philippians ii. 5-8. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a slave, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient... more...

The Defects of the Negro Church. The writer does not undertake to point out all the defects of the Negro church. He does not lay any claim to omniscience. The limits of time and the scope of the subject prevent him from discussing even what he knows in part. It is only some of the leading defects in the Negro Church which will be presented for discussion. It may be necessary to state at the onset that... more...

ON THE EXCAVATIONS OF THE ROMAN BATHS AT BATH. Re-printed from the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archæological Society. Vol. VIII., part I. Leland, on his visit to Bath in the year 1530, with tolerable fulness describes the baths, and after completing his description of the King's Bath goes on to say "Ther goith a sluse out of this Bath and servid in Tymes past with Water... more...

CHURCH WORK AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE SOUTH I take as the South the eleven old slave states, which stood at one time in armed array against the rest of the United States, which are to-day as loyal and true to the General Government as any other states in this great and favored land of ours. They are Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana,... more...