Ethelred Preston is a story for boys written by Fr. Finn, SJ. The hero, Ethelred, while on his way to college, meets Packy Jarloe, a peddler, who induces him to change places with himself, so that Packy goes to Henrytown College, announcing himself as Ethelred Preston, while Ethelred takes Packy's peddler's pack and sets out on the road to make his fortune There is a mixture of the ludicrous and serious in what follows, but the fraud is finally discovered and Ethelred after much suffering finds himself installed as a regular student and universal favorite at Henrytown College.

Written anonymously by "a working 'medium' for the past twenty years", this little book was an inspiration for a young Harry Houdini, and also rather hard to find until a facsimile edition was published in 1922, due to all the copies being bought and destroyed by spiritualists. According to the preface, "the most wonderful of the 'medium's' phenomena will be so thoroughly explained and so completely dissected that, after reading this book, you can perform the feats yourself". - Summary by Jordan

A treatise concerning the sacred and only true manner and method of preaching. To the faithful ministers of the gospel and to all that are desirous of and do labour for the knowledge of holy learning. That common place of divinity, which concerneth the framing of sermons, is both weighty and difficult, if there be any other throughout all that sacred science. For the matter, which it is to explicate and treat on is prophecy; an excellent gift indeed, whether we consider it in respect of dignity, or of use...

Rabbi Loeb creates a clay man to house a perfect soul that he hopes will not be blighted by human prejudices. The plan does not go as he hoped... This is one of many stories about the golem, all of which involve Rabbi Loeb , a 16th-century talmudic scholar known as The Maharal. Rodolf Lother was an Austrian writer. This story was published in the B'nai Brith journal The Menorah in 1896 and subsequently included in the author's German language book Der Golem: Phantasien und Historien . - Summary by Adrian Praetzellis

The celebrated German-British composer G.F. Handel premiered his now famous oratorio "Messiah" in 1742. In 1785 there was a celebration at Westminster Abbey of Handel's birth 100 years before. It was on this occasion that John Newton decided to preach 50 sermons from the Bible passages that form the libretto of Messiah. The sermons were preached over two years in the Parish Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard-Street - 3 miles from Westminster Abbey. - Summary by InTheDesert

"The story of Joseph is at once so simple that childhood is arrested and rivetted by it, and so profound that sages may deepen their wisdom by meditating on the truths which it embodies. An attempt is here made to point out some of the more important lessons which the narrative teaches,—to manifest the wisdom and the watchfulness of Providence,—and show how God on high exercises his prerogative of educing good from what we are often tempted to regard as only and hopelessly evil. While man displays...

The 32 works in this volume contain many diverse works from the period including sermons, essays, letters, commentaries, poems and reports. Many pieces are by the Anglican writers John Newton and Augustus Toplady. Christianity in the 18th and 19th Century, Volume 1

The fifth volume and the first of two in the fourth part of Frazer's seminal work on the evolution of belief deals with the semi mythological legends of the Mediterranean and the eastern civilizations. Many analogies are traced between the worship of Osiris and the worship of the dead, especially of dead kings. The conclusion to which these analogies appear to the point is that under the mythical pall of the glorified Osiris, the god who died and rose again from the dead, there once lay the body of a dead man...

Against Celsus, preserved entirely in Greek, is a major apologetics work by the Church Father Origen of Alexandria, written in around 248 AD, countering the writings of Celsus, a pagan philosopher and controversialist who had written a scathing attack on Christianity in his treatise "The True Word". Among a variety of other charges, Celsus had denounced many Christian doctrines as irrational and criticized Christians themselves as uneducated, deluded, unpatriotic, close-minded towards reason, and too accepting of sinners...

Young's Literal Translation of the Bible. Translated according to 'the letter and the idioms of the original languages.' - Summary by KevinS

The Diatessaron is such an impersonal work that we do not need to know very much about its compiler. It will suffice here to say that he tells us himself that he was born "in the land of the Assyrians," and brought up a heathen. After travelling in search of knowledge, he settled at Rome, where he became a pupil of Justin Martyr, professed Christianity, and wrote in Greek his Address to the Greeks, translated in vol. iii. of the Ante-Nicene Christian Library. He was too independent in his attitude to maintain a permanent popularity, and after Justin's death left Rome and returned to Mesopotamia...

“‘Little gal,’ he repeated, ‘air ye all alone in the world?’ This time the sound resolved itself into an unmistakable sob.”With these words we are introduced to young Doris Avery. Newly orphaned, penniless, and without a single friend, Doris is sent to Waverly Ridge where she has been hired to work in a farm household. With her mother’s last words, “Remember, dear, you are God’s little girl,” echoing in her mind still, Doris enters service in a house full of strangers. Many are ambivalent toward her, all are lonely, and some fill the house with hate.

The Old and New Covenants, translated according to the letter and idioms of the original languages. - From the title page

This volume of The Age of the Puritans begins with Theodore Beza's 1575 catechism, brief and simple enough to be learned by children. William Perkins preaches a sermon on a life centred on 'Christ crucified', Pierre du Moulin, the Huguenot, on suffering as a Christian and Richard Sibbes on 1 Peter 4:18. John Owen gives his oppinion on how dissenters should consider their own excommunication. Richard Sibbes preaches sermons on 1 Peter 4:17-19 and Philippians 1:23-24. Thomas Cartwright's preface to...

This is a collection of sermons which were preached in the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Cleveland, Ohio, during the autumn and winter or 1898 and 1899. They were all delivered during evening services, and therefore, as the author explains, were intended as messages to sinners, not to Christians. - Summary by Devorah Allen

Written after his conversion, G.K. Chesterton explains his understanding of Catholicism, and discusses the nature and the process of conversion to the Catholic faith.

Sermons 126 through 140 cover the Gospel According to Luke 18:35 through 22:6. - Summary by The Reader

The gospel method of sanctification, as well as of justification, lies so far out of the understanding of natural reason, that if all the rationalists in the world, philosophers and divines, had consulted together to lay down a plan, for repairing the lost image of God in man, they had never hit upon that which the divine wisdom had pitched upon, viz., That sinners should be sanctified in Christ Jesus, 1 Cor. 1:2, by faith in him, Acts 26:18. Nay, being laid before them, they would have rejected it with disdain as foolishness, 1 Cor...

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...

St. Jerome's most famous letter , written to St. Eustochium, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the Roman widow St. Paula. St. Jerome exhorts St. Eustochium to embrace virginity and teaches her the proper conduct of a young woman. It contains his: 1. view that God, though omnipotent, cannot restore a fallen virgin 2. vivid description of fasting and temptation 3. view of abortion, that it is murder 4. term superbiam sanctam, virginity a "holy pride" 5. praise of wedlock, that it gives him virgins 6...

Movement of Animals begins with a discussion of the physics of motion and asks whether God, the Unmoved Mover, exists outside of our Universe. Progression of Animals asks why animals have the parts they do and to what end these parts are possessed. - Summary by Geoffrey Edwards

Luther's 1521 exposition of the Magnificat was written for John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony , at that time a teenager. It was written in two parts, being interrupted by Luther's appearance at the Diet of Worms. It is sermonic in form but written to be read rather than heard. - Summary by InTheDesert

This book is no other than a perfect map of man and anatomy of all ages; A "nosce te ipsum", which is the highest pitch and hardest lesson of all human learning; An universal dial which yet serves for all meridians, and shows how the minutes of man's life pass away from the first rising to the last setting thereof, and even from Solomon upon his golden throne, to Job scraping himself with potsherds upon the ash-heap; for what man is he that shall not see death? and after that comes judgment to heaven or hell for ever.

This volume contains a prevalence of items relating to Warfield's interests in Christology and in the thought of John Calvin. It also contains his take on questions that many would not dare tackle like "Should one repent of original sin?" and several items of a more personal nature relating to his colleagues, friends and teachers. - Summary by InTheDesert The B. B. Warfield Collection, Volume 1 The B. B. Warfield Collection, Volume 2 The B. B. Warfield Collection, Volume 3

This book is intended principally to remind those whose hearts the European War has stricken of the hope and comfort which lie ready for their wounds in our Lord Jesus Christ. I shall be glad indeed if anything in my pages may bring help to other sorrowing souls; for grief and death do not suspend their normal visitation among us, the infliction of the sore pains and losses of common life, because of their tremendous activities today on the field of battle, in the war-hospital, and on the deep. But I have written with these latter troubles more directly in view...

I beg to present this my humble work to the English reader. It is the history of the Universe from its birth to its dissolution. I have explained the science of creation, its making and its mechanism. In doing so I have drawn my information from the recorded facts in the Sacred Books of the Root Race of mankind. Some facts and explanations are herein furnished for the first time in any modern language. This book embodies true Hinduism.

The Counter-Reformation, also called the Catholic Reformation, and remembered for its infamous Inquisition, was the period of Catholic resurgence which was initiated in response to the Protestant Reformation. Adolphus Ward writes, that it was "a movement pursuing two objects...the regeneration of the Church of Rome, and the recovery of the losses inflicted upon her by the early successes of Protestantism...The onset of the combat is marked by the formal establishment of the Jesuit Order as a militant...

Against Celsus, preserved entirely in Greek, is a major apologetics work by the Church Father Origen of Alexandria, written in around 248 AD, countering the writings of Celsus, a pagan philosopher and controversialist who had written a scathing attack on Christianity in his treatise "The True Word". Among a variety of other charges, Celsus had denounced many Christian doctrines as irrational and criticized Christians themselves as uneducated, deluded, unpatriotic, close-minded towards reason, and too accepting of sinners...

Joseph Butler's great work is the Analogy, published in 1736, and from that day read and admired by every highly-cultivated mind. He was induced to write by a state of things very remarkable in the history of religion. Debauchery and infidelity were almost universal, not in any one class of society but in all. England had reached the culminating point of irreligion, and the firm re-establishment of Episcopacy had as yet done nothing to mend the nation’s morals. Piety was deemed a mark of ignorance and vulgarity, and multitudes of those who professed it were persecuted to dungeons and death...

The Faithful Covenanter in two sermons upon Genesis 17:7 by the late learned and reverend divine, Richard Sibbs, Doctor in divinity, master of Katherine Hall in Cambridge and sometimes preacher to the honourable society of Grayes-Inne. Nehemiah 1:5 O Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him. - Summary from the Title Page

The reading-over of these present sermons will sufficiently declare what commodity and profit they may bring with them: As in very deed the author of them right well showeth throughout all his work, in what sort the Lord God hath heretofore been served and also how ordinarily he is served by him. And therefore, for a full recommendation as well of the author as also of the work itself, I intend through God his assistance to set forth none other thing than the same fruit and profit, which they have already gotten that have read them and that fruit which they may make report of, that shall hereafter read them...

There are some persons who suppose that the freedom of the will is denied whenever God's grace is maintained, and who on their side defend their liberty of will so peremptorily as to deny the grace of God. This grace, as they assert, is bestowed according to our own merits. It is in consequence of their opinions that I wrote the book entitled On Grace and Free Will. This work I addressed to the monks of Adrumetum, in whose monastry first arose the controversy on that subject, and that in such a manner that some of them were obliged to consult me thereon. The work begins with these words: "With reference to those persons who so preach the liberty of the human will."