Practical Religion


Book Description

Reproduction of the original: Practical Religion by John Charles Ryle







American Sympathy


Book Description

“A friend in history,” Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “looks like some premature soul.” And in the history of friendship in early America, Caleb Crain sees the soul of the nation’s literature. In a sensitive analysis that weaves together literary criticism and historical narrative, Crain describes the strong friendships between men that supported and inspired some of America’s greatest writing--the Gothic novels of Charles Brockden Brown, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the novels of Herman Melville. He traces the genealogy of these friendships through a series of stories. A dapper English spy inspires a Quaker boy to run away from home. Three Philadelphia gentlemen conduct a romance through diaries and letters in the 1780s. Flighty teenager Charles Brockden Brown metamorphoses into a horror novelist by treating his friends as his literary guinea pigs. Emerson exchanges glances with a Harvard classmate but sacrifices his crush on the altar of literature--a decision Margaret Fuller invites him to reconsider two decades later. Throughout this engaging book, Crain demonstrates the many ways in which the struggle to commit feelings to paper informed the shape and texture of American literature.




Burn for Christ Just . . . Don’t Burn Out!


Book Description

At one time or another, all ministers ask the questions or face the challenges of losing their passion for ministry. This author contends that the major contributor to a loss of passion or interest in ministry in general is burnout. This book consists of two major sections. In the first major section, chapters 2 through 4 are about our vertical relationship with God in terms of our passion to serve, our spirituality, our understanding and practice of rest (Sabbath), and our compatibility. In the second major section, chapters 5 through 7 are about our horizontal relationship with others in terms of our confidence, our management of conflict with others, and our approach to the culture around us.







Burning Zeal


Book Description

In the chaos of the Reformation, a declaration of one's faith was not solely a religious matter, but at times a choice between life and death. Sixteenth-century Europe witnessed a renaissance of martyrdom and the rebirth of a specific rhetoric that celebrated the sacrifice, constancy, and conviction of the martyr. This rhetoric shaped and defined the experiences and worldview of the French Calvinist community.










Biblical Preaching and Teaching Volume 1


Book Description

One objective of this book is to set forth the heart of God's Gospel. This volume is composed of a compilation of sermons and in-depth studies designed to strengthen and encourage Christians in their daily walk with God and with one another. Since the Cross of Christ is pivotal to a proper understanding of Christianity, numerous chapters in this book explore the "ins" and "outs" of the importance of the Cross in the lives of God's people. Not only does this book focus upon the scheme of God's redemption and evangelism as a part of every believer's ministry, it also calls attention to Christian apologetics, that is, a defense of Christianity. Three chapters are devoted to this kind of study: (1) Christianity versus Skepticism, (2) Credibility and Candor of the New Testament Writers, and (3) Paul's Conversion: Apologetic for Christianity. Also, this book allocates three chapters to the subject of baptism and its meaning to God's children. And, finally, four chapters are dedicated to a detailed study of worship within the Christian community. Dallas Burdette has been a serious student, teacher and preacher of the Bible for fifty-eight years, supporting himself for many years as an agent for AFLAC. He has written numerous articles for religious journals, as well as many essays and sermons which are available on his website (www.freedominchrist.net). He has developed a keen interest in promoting unity among God's people through a more accurate reading of the Word. He has degrees from Amridge University (formerly Southern Christian University) where he also was Director of Extended Learning for five years. He holds the Doctor of Ministry degree (1999) from Erskine Theological Seminary.




Religious Dissimulation and Early Modern Drama


Book Description

Kilian Schindler examines how playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe represented religious dissimulation on stage and argues that debates about the legitimacy of dissembling one's faith were closely bound up with early modern conceptions of theatricality. Considering both Catholic and Protestant perspectives on religious dissimulation in the absence of full toleration, Schindler demonstrates its ubiquity and urgency in early modern culture. By reconstructing the ideological undercurrents that inform both religious dissimulation and theatricality as a form of dissimulation, this book makes a case for the centrality of dissimulation in the religious politics of early modern drama. Lucid and original, this study is an important contribution to the understanding of early modern religious and literary culture.