The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). It offered a modernist approach, discussing religion dispassionately as a cultural phenomenon, rather than from a theological perspective. Although most of its theories have subsequently been exploded (the most famous one being that of the relationship between magic, religion and science), its impact on contemporaneous European literature was substantial...

The History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, by Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigné, is a classic work on the great events that re-opened the Christian gospel to a needy world. It tells of how the twenty-year-old Martin Luther, browsing through books in the library at the University of Erfurt, takes down from the shelf a particular volume that has caught his interest. He has never seen anything like it. It is a Bible! He is astonished to find in this volume so much more than the fragments of gospels and epistles that were selected for public reading in churches...

The History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, by Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigné, is a classic work on the great events that re-opened the Christian gospel to a needy world. The author was a Swiss Protestant pastor. He was also a historian with a great understanding of the Bible, along with a broad and deep knowledge of the Reformation.D’Aubigné tells the story of outstanding people who had a love for God and his word, and who dared to present biblical truths which had been obscured for centuries...

Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Motte-Guyon (commonly known as Madame Guyon) (April 13, 1648 – June 9, 1717) was a French mystic and one of the key advocates of Quietism. Quietism was considered heretical by the Roman Catholic Church, and she was imprisoned from 1695 to 1703 after publishing a book on the topic, A Short and Easy Method of Prayer. This translation is by Thomas Taylor Allen was first published in 1897. Allen’s dates are unknown.

Originally published in 1685, Madame Guyon’s A Short and Easy Method of Prayer is considered a classic of Christian mysticism, influencing great writers and speakers such as John Wesley and Charles Spurgeon. In it, Madame Guyon carefully and briefly sets out her ‘unmethodical method’ by which any and all can commune with God at any time and under any circumstances.

Hurlbut's Life of Christ For Young and Old is a detailed, chronological presentation of the life of Christ, relying heavily on quoted portions of Scripture/ Rev. Hurlbut makes the gospel story accessible for the reader as each episode and teaching is presented as natural dialog. The Life of Christ is a worthy companion to his larger multi-volume Story of the Bible. These are true classics of Christian literature. - Summary by Larry Wilson

Grace Abounding is the spiritual autobiography of John Bunyan, who also penned Pilgrim’s Progress, perhaps one of the most significant pieces of Christian literature, second only to the Bible. Grace Abounding follows Bunyan’s struggle to find true repentance and forgiveness, his battle with Satan’s temptations of unbelief, his comfort found in the Bible and his overarching victory gotten by the grace of God through Jesus Christ his Son. Readers familiar with Pilgrim’s Progress will recognize...

John Bunyan (November 28, 1628 – August 31, 1688), a Christian writer and preacher, was born at Harrowden (one mile south-east of Bedford), in the Parish of Elstow, England. He wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress, arguably the most famous published Christian allegory. In the Church of England he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August. Bunyan became a popular preacher as well as a prolific author, though most of his works consist of expanded sermons. In theology he was a Puritan, but there was nothing gloomy about him. The portrait his friend Robert White drew, which has often been reproduced, shows the attractiveness of his true character.

Now, my design in this work has been to prepare and qualify students of theology for the reading of the divine word, that they may have an easy introduction to it, and be enabled to proceed in it without any obstruction. For I think I have given such a comprehensive summary, and orderly arrangement of all the branches of religion, that, with proper attention, no person will find any difficulty in determining what ought to be the principal objects of his research in the Scripture, and to what end he ought to refer any thing it contains...

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...

There is a tendency in the modern Church to neglect the study of Bible history. Such neglect will inevitably result in a loss of power. The gospel is a record of something that has happened, and uncertainty about the gospel is fatal weakness. Furthermore the historical study of the apostolic age—that age when divine revelation established the great principles of the Church's life—is the best corrective for a thousand vagaries. Much can be learned from modern pedagogy; but after all what is absolutely fundamental, both for teacher and for student, is an orderly acquaintance with the Bible facts...