Since the Koenig Wilhelm, of the Dutch East India Service, left Batavia, the sky had been torpidly blue, that suffocating indigo which seems so neighborly that the traveller fancies were he a trifle taller he could touch it with the ferule of his stick. When night came, the stars would issue from their ambush and stab it through and through, but the glittering cicatrices which they made left it bluer... more...

There was, many years ago, a gentleman who had a charming lady for his wife. They had one daughter only, who was very dutiful to her parents. But while she was still very young, her mamma died, to the grief of her husband and daughter. After a time, the little girl’s papa married another lady. Now this lady was proud and haughty, and had two grown-up daughters as disagreeable as herself; so the poor... more...

ETERNAL LIFE. "This is Life Eternal—that they might know Thee, the True God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent."—Jesus Christ. "Perfect correspondence would be perfect life. Were there no changes in the environment but such as the organism had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which it met them, there would be eternal existence and eternal... more...

GALILEE At first sight the historian of religions appears to be faced by a number of clearly distinguished entities, to each of which he feels justified in giving the name of a separate religion; but on further consideration it becomes obvious that each one of these entities has been in a condition of flux throughout its history. Each began as a combination or synthesis of older forms of thought with... more...

CASE I: SECRET WORSHIP Harris, the silk merchant, was in South Germany on his way home from a business trip when the idea came to him suddenly that he would take the mountain railway from Strassbourg and run down to revisit his old school after an interval of something more than thirty years. And it was to this chance impulse of the junior partner in Harris Brothers of St. Paul's Churchyard that... more...

Albrecht and I went down in a shuttleship, leaving the stellatomic orbited pole-to-pole two thousand miles above Alpha Centauri's second planet. While we took an atmosphere-brushing approach which wouldn't burn off the shuttle's skin, we went as swiftly as we could. A week before we had completed man's first trip through hyperspace. We were now making the first landing on an... more...

A WORD OF APOLOGY FOR MY TITLE. Before I begin my story, let me crave my reader's indulgence for a brief word of explanation, for which I know no better form than a parable. There is an Eastern tale—I forget exactly where or by whom told—of a certain poor man, who, being in extreme distress, and sorely puzzled as to how to eke out a livelihood, bethought him to give out that he was a great... more...

When I saw the little house building, an eighth of a mile beyond my own, on the Old Bay Road, I wondered who were to be the tenants. The modest structure was set well back from the road, among the trees, as if the inmates were to care nothing whatever for a view of the stylish equipages which sweep by during the summer season. For my part, I like to see the passing, in town or country; but each has his... more...

INTRODUCTION THE MORMON PURPOSE Almost a half century ago, being in 1857, John Doyle Lee, a chief among that red brotherhood, the Danites, was ordered by Brigham Young and the leading counselors of the Mormon Church to take his men and murder a party of emigrants then on their way through Utah to California. The Mormon orders were to "kill all who can talk," and, in their carrying out, Lee and... more...

With Discussion by Messrs. Joseph Wright, S. Bent Russell, J.R. Worcester, L.J. Mensch, Walter W. Clifford, J.C. Meem, George H. Myers, Edwin Thacher, C.A.P. Turner, Paul Chapman, E.P. Goodrich, Albin H. Beyer, John C. Ostrup, Harry F. Porter, John Stephen Sewell, Sanford E. Thompson, and Edward Godfrey. Not many years ago physicians had certain rules and practices by which they were guided as to when... more...