Excerpt from Essays on Moral and Religious Subjects Come of this man. When such a question arises in thy mind, 0 my fellow Christian, think thou hearest the voice of thy Divine Master, checking thy irnpertinence in the words addressed to the Apostle, What is that. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Essays in Religion and Morality brings together a dozen papers of varying length to these two themes so crucial to the life and thought of William James. Reflections on the two subjects permeate, first, James's presentation of his father's Literary Remains; second, his writings on human immortality and the relation between reason and faith; third, his two memorial pieces, one on Robert Gould Shaw and the other on Emerson; fourth, his consideration of the energies and powers of human life; and last, his writings on the possibilities of peace, especially as found in his famous essay "The Moral Equivalent of War." These speeches and essays were written over a period of twenty-four years. The fact that James did not collect and publish them himself in a single volume does not reflect on their intrinsic worth or on their importance in James's philosophical work, since they include some of the best known and most influential of his writings. All the essays, throughout their varied subject matter, are consistently and characteristically Jamesian in the freshness of their attack on the problems and failings of humankind and in their steady faith in human powers.

Michael Oakeshott's interest in religion and theology was especially prominent in his essays of the 1920s and 1930s. This book consists of four important unpublished pieces, together with six essays by Oakeshott that originally appeared in remote and inaccessible journals. Much of the collection was written early in his career and reveals not only Oakeshott's initial intellectual preoccupations but the idiosyncratic nature of his religious outlook and the moral convictions that governed his own life. The opening essay, "Religion and the World," which dates from 1925, reflects his view of what it means to live "religiously" in the world and prefigures arguments later elaborated in Experience and Its Modes. All the essays probe the meaning of words commonly--but often inappropriately--used in the discussion of political life. Thus Oakeshott explores meanings of religion and worldliness, society and sociality, authority and the state, political activity, and the character of political ideas and political philosophy. His writing is persuasive and compelling, and the essays are distinguished by great clarity and a genuinely philosophic spirit. In a substantial introduction, Timothy Fuller provides the first full explanation of Oakeshott's religious ideas, setting them within their philosophical and political contexts. He shows how, over a thirty-year period, Oakeshott elaborated the implications of Experience and Its Modes, worked out his political theory as summarized in Rationalism in Politics, and gradually assembled his own philosophical account of the ideal that European civilization had made concrete in history--civil association under the rule of law--and to which he gave definitive expression in On Human Contact. Timothy Fuller is Dean of the College, Colorado College, and editor of The Voice of Liberal Learning: Michael Oakeshott on Education.

The first African American to publish a book on any subject, poet Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784) has long been denigrated by literary critics who refused to believe that a black woman could produce such dense, intellectual work. In recent decades, however, Wheatley's work has come under new scrutiny as the literature of the eighteenth century and the impact of African American literature have been reconceived. Fourteen prominent Wheatley scholars consider her work from a variety of angles, affirming her rise into the first rank of American writers. --from publisher description.

Drawing on a deep knowledge of history and human affairs, the essays pinpoint the key issues facing Christians and non-believers in determining the future of modern democratic life

The Abolition of Man is one of C.S. Lewis’s most important and influential works. In three weighty lectures, given at the height of the Second World War, Lewis defends the objectivity of value, pointing to the universal moral law that all great philosophical and religious traditions have recognized. This critical edition, prepared by Michael Ward, helps readers get the most out of Lewis’s classic work with an introduction placing the book in the context of his life and times; a fully annotated version of the text; a commentary on key passages; and a set of questions for group discussion or individual reflection. Scholarly, detailed, yet accessible, it is the must-have version of an essential volume.