Description Details
The improved theory and practice of religion and of medicine are mainly due to the people's improved views of the Supreme Being. (from The People's Idea of God )...

Excerpt Details
Religion

Description Details
The Gospel of Luke is the most literary of the four gospels which recount the life and work of Jesus Christ. Although anonymous, the book is generally attributed to Luke, a physician and a missionary companion of the Apostle Paul. His account contains events which are unique in the four gospels including the visits of Gabriel to Mary and Zacharias, the visit of the shepherds to the birth of Jesus, and the story of the young Jesus at the temple. This gospel contains the most references to women and is favorable to the Gentiles for whom it was written. Perhaps the most well-known of all New Testament passages is the second chapter of Luke which tells of the birth of Christ. (Summary by Susan Denny)...

Excerpt Details
Religion

Description Details
The Book of Job (American Standard Version) is presented in forty-two chapters and is one of the Old Testament Wisdom Books. The narrative chronicles the trials of Job as he is brought low from a comfortable and exalted position in his community to face loss of his fortune, children and health. Joined by three friends who initially commiserate and sympathize with him, there ensues a lengthy argument about the fate of the wicked and the just and much questioning about the character of God and the justice He metes out to his creations. A quite lively and poetic discussion ensues among these wise elders and their suppositions and conclusions are eventually contested by a youth who enters the discussion toward the end. God has the final word in this narrative and Job is left to abjectly acknowledge that his complaints and knowledge mean little in the face of that which is so far beyond his ability to comprehend. Debate regarding the meaning, purpose and author of this book is still hotly contested among biblical scholars. It is far beyond the scope of this summary to offer any conclusions regarding this work. The reader offers the words...

Excerpt Details
Religion

Description Details
El Castillo Interior or Las Moradas (trans.:The Interior Castle or The Mansions) was written by Saint Teresa of Ávila in 1577. After being ordered to write her autobiographical La Vida de la Santa Madre Teresa de Jesús (The Life of S. Teresa of Jesus), Teresa was hesitant to begin writing again on her views of the perfection found in internal prayer. In the hands of the Inquisition at that time, her Life was commonly believed to be the weight in the scale of whether to call her experiences heretical or not. Her humility and claims that, “I am not meant for writing; I have neither the health nor the wits for it,” almost prevented Teresa from composing The Interior Castle. However, according to a letter written by Fray Diego, one of Teresa’s former confessors, Teresa was finally convinced to write her book after a she received a vision from God. Diego wrote that God revealed to Teresa, ...a most beautiful crystal globe, made in the shape of a castle, and containing seven mansions, in the seventh and innermost of which was the King of Glory, in the greatest splendour, illumining and beautifying them all. The nearer one got to the centr...

Excerpt Details
Religion

Description Details
The Curtezan unmasked or, the Whoredomes of Jezebel Painted to the Life: With Antidotes against them, or Heavenly Julips to cool Men in the Fever of Lust is a fire-and-brimstone polemic by A Spiritual Physician to persuade young men not to succumb to harlotry and its accompanying perils. (Introduction by Denny Sayers)...

Excerpt Details
Religion, Satire

Description Details
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions is a 1624 prose work by the English writer John Donne. It is a series of reflections that were written as Donne recovered from a serious illness, believed to be either typhus or relapsing fever. (Donne does not clearly identify the disease in his text.) The work consists of twenty-three parts describing each stage of the sickness. Each part is further divided into a Meditation, an Expostulation, and a Prayer. The seventeenth meditation is perhaps the best-known part of the work. It contains the following passage: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee....

Excerpt Details
Religion, Literature

Description Details
Strauss was an early pioneer in the ongoing 'Quest of the Historical Jesus' movement, and his Life of Jesus is one of the few landmarks in the field. The first edition of Strauss' book was published in Germany in 1835, when he was only 27 years old. He focused his attention on battling two theological fronts which were current at the time - the biblical Literalists who believed the miracles in the Gospels were to be taken as literal history, and the Rationalists, who believed that the Gospel miracles were true but could be explained by natural and rational causes. Strauss rejected both camps and, in a historical analysis of the Gospels that was scrupulous and exhaustive, concluded that our knowledge of the Historical Jesus is hopelessly buried under layers of legend and myth.The price that Strauss paid for publication was high – his book scandalized Europe, and cost him his job as Chair of Theology at the University of Zurich, and ultimately his career. Dozens of books, mostly from Germany, were written in rebuttal. The school of Rationalism died in the 19th century, due in no small part to Strauss' criticism. The school of Literali...

Excerpt Details
Philosophy, Religion

Description Details
A very wise physician has said that “every illness has two parts—what it is, and what the patient thinks about it.” What the patient thinks about it is often more important and more troublesome than the real disease. What the patient thinks of life, what life means to him is also of great importance and may be the bar that shuts out all real health and happiness. The following pages are devoted to certain ideals of life which I would like to give to my patients, the long-time patients who have especially fallen to my lot. (Summary by Herbert J Hall - from the Preface)...

Excerpt Details
Advice, Religion, Psychology

Description Details
John Donne was an English Jacobean preacher, sometime lawyer, later in life a Member of Parliament and Royal Chaplain. Marrying for love against the wishes of his influential father-in-law; Donne's career was cast into shadow: forcing him to support his wife, Anne, as best he might under a specter of unforgiving penury. Despite such hardships - perhaps because of them - Donne's writings demonstrate a mastery of poetry layered with metaphysical meaning and mystery: which continues to delight and challenge modern-day readers. Donne's divine poems - the focus of this collection - present profound theological insights using absorbing allegories and beautiful imagery. At the end of Donne's life - as his health deteriorated under illnesses of increasing severity - his poetry served him as: distraction, consolation, and even public confession. With them, Donne cheerfully but soberly faces the limits of his own mortality: and contemplates the mysteries that lie beyond the grave. (Introduction by Godsend)...

Excerpt Details
Poetry, Religion

Description Details
The Westminster Larger Catechism, along with the Westminster Shorter Catechism, is a central catechism of Calvinists in the English tradition throughout the world. The Westminster Shorter Catechism was to be easier to read and concise for beginners and the Larger Catechism was to be more exact and comprehensive. The Catechism was completed by the Westminster Assembly in 1647. It was then adopted by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1648 and (with modifications relating to the civil magistrate) by the Presbyterian Synod of New York and Philadelphia in 1788....

Excerpt Details
Religion

Description Details
Martin Luther strove to give a verse by verse exegesis of the Epistle to the Galatians in the work. The original work, written in Latin in around 1516, was much longer. This translation by Theodore Graebner strove to produce a copy of the work in a format and with wording much more applicable to the general English-speaking American public. (Summary by Timothy Perkins)...

Excerpt Details
Religion

Description Details
De Imitatione Christi (De navolging van Christus) is een middeleeuws boek dat handelt over hoe je een goed christen wordt. Het werd in de vijftiende eeuw geschreven door de Nederlandse augustijn Thomas a Kempis. Dit werk was na de Bijbel het meest verspreide boek van de late Middeleeuwen en wordt ook nu nog door veel christenen gelezen. (bron: Wikipedia, kattekliek)...

Excerpt Details
Religion

Description Details
Hosea was the son of Beeri and a prophet in Israel in the 8th century BCE. He is one of the Twelve Prophets of the Jewish Hebrew Bible, also known as the Minor Prophets of the Christian Old Testament. We know practically nothing about the life or social status of Hosea. According to the Book of Hosea, he married the prostitute Gomer, the daughter of Diblatayim, at God's command. He lived in the Northern Kingdom in the period 740–725 BCE. In Hosea 5:8 ff., there is a reference to the wars which led to the capture of the kingdom by the Assyrians (ca. 734–732 BCE). It is not certain if he has also experienced the destruction of Samaria, which is foreseen in Hosea 14:1. Hosea's family life reflected the adulterous relationship which Israel had built with polytheistic gods. His children's names made them like walking prophecies of the fall of the ruling dynasty and the severed covenant with God — much like the prophet Isaiah a generation later. Hosea is often seen as a prophet of doom, but underneath his message of destruction is a promise of restoration. (From Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Religion

Description Details
Charles Foster Kent was one of the premier scholars in Jewish Studies at the turn of the century. He was particularly well-known for his comparisons of early Christianity to its Jewish roots. He also wrote several distinguished histories of Israel, the Jewish people, Torah studies, and the development of oral Torah. (Summary by Kirsten Ferreri)...

Excerpt Details
History, Religion

Description Details
Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch. The Hebrew title, [spoken] words, is taken from the opening phrase, These are the words...; the English title is from the Greek and Latin, both meaning second law, a mistranslation of the Hebrew phrase mishneh ha-torah ha-zoth, a copy of this law, in Deuteronomy 17:18. The book consists of three sermons or speeches delivered to the Israelites by Moses on the plains of Moab, shortly before they enter the Promised Land. The first sermon recapitulates the forty years of wilderness wanderings which have led to this moment, and ends with an exhortation to observe the law (or teachings); the second reminds the Israelites of the need for exclusive allegiance to one God and observance of the laws he has given them, on which their possession of the land depends; and the third offers the comfort that even should Israel prove unfaithful and so lose the land, with repentance all can be restored. One of its most significant verses is Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema, which has become the definitive statement of Jewish identity: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the ...

Excerpt Details
Religion, History