Julian the Apostate, emperor of Rome, "having found by experience that no wild beasts are so hostile to men as Christian sects in general...

George Washington: Circular to the State Governments "America has been almost amused out of her liberties. We have frequently heard the...

John Adams to Abigail Adams: "But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow. It is like a large Fleet sailing under...

As the lower ranks of society are governed by imitation, the conversion of those who possessed any eminence of birth, of power, or of...

It must still be acknowledged that the Christians, in the course of their intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on...

The church of Rome was undoubtedly the first and most populous of the empire; and we are possessed of an authentic record which attests...

Under the reign of Theodosius, after Christianity had enjoyed, during more than sixty years, the sunshine of Imperial favour, the ancient...

Note 73: The Odeum of Pericles was under the south-eastern extremity of the Acropolis. The Odeum served for the rehearsal of new comedies...

The camp of a Roman legion presented the appearance of a fortified city. As soon as the space was marked out, the pioneers carefully...

The veteran of First Baptist Church building care, however, is Clarence C. Harris, who began November 1, 1926, the same afternoon he first applied for the job. Harris has the distinction of having fallen through the auditorium ceiling in 1936, and living to tell it.

On his second Sunday in Dallas Truett called the trustees into conference about a proposed offering for state missions. The brethren made no attempt to back down on their promise that he was free to take such a collection, but they pointed out that the church was not accustomed to such offerings and that the pastor must not be disappointed if the amount were small. He asked,” How much do you brethren think we can get?” The trustees replied, “Twenty-five dollars at the most.”

For the Macedonian phalanx is like some single powerful animal, irresistible so long as it is embodied into one, and keeps its order, shield touching shield, all as in a piece; but if it be once broken, not only is the joint force lost, but the individual soldiers also who composed it lose each one his own single strength, because of the nature of their armour; and because each of them is strong, rather, as he makes a part of the whole, than in himself.

For as horses ran brisker in a chariot than singly, not that their joint force divides the air with greater ease, but because being matched one against the other emulation kindles and inflames their courage; thus he thought brave men, provoking one another to noble actions, would prove most serviceable, and most resolute, where all were united together.

There was the great Jesuit Church. Under the old regime it required sixty priests to engineer it—the Government does it with five, now, and the others are discharged from service. All about that church wretchedness and poverty abound. At its door a dozen hats and bonnets were doffed to us, as many heads were humbly bowed, and as many hands extended, appealing for pennies—appealing with foreign words we could not understand, but appealing mutely, with sad eyes, and sunken chee

Mark Twain visited an island that had never embraced change, sounds like a lot of churches:

"When the death of Augustus became known, the simple minds of the majority came under the influence of the masses of town-slaves who had recently been conscripted in the capital. Naturally insolent and lazy, they now argued that the moment had come for old soldiers to demand long-overdue demobilization, and for the younger men to demand an increase in pay. Everyone should insist on relief from their hardships, and retaliate against the savagery of their company-commanders...

In London, contemporary with young Charles H. Spurgeon, was an older preacher who had been in the city for a generation. This young man, Charles Spurgeon, came to London when he was about twenty years of age. Immediately (I do not mean in a year or two or three, but immediately), there could not be found an area large enough to hold the people who wanted to hear him preach. He was like a star, like a galaxy that appeared in the sky. The older minister said that when the thron

We get a graphic picture of this informal evangelism in Origen's reply to Celsus. 'We see in private houses workers in wool and leather, laundry workers and the most illiterate and bucolic yokels, who would not dare to say anything at all in from of their elders and more intelligent masters. But they get hold of the children privately, and any women who are as ignorant as themselves. Then they pour out wonderful statements: "You ought not to heed your father or your teachers.

"For the church is the society which only lives when it dies, only grows when it gives its heart away. It is, as Archbishop William Temple succinctly put it, the only society in the world which exists for the benefit of those who are not its members."

Nearly unnoticed amid the great influx of dollars and students was the steady weakening of traditional Christian habits. At Harvard, for example, compulsory chapel came to an end in 1886. As money from businessmen increased, so also did the concern that boards of trustees and college administrators function in a businesslike way. So it was that businessmen replaced clergymen as trustees, and professional educators replaced ministers as presidents. In 1839, fifty-one of the fi

Because the sermon was the dominant form of communication in colonial New England, its history is in many ways the history of New England. Most New Englanders who lived a full life would have heard seven thousand sermons (averaging nearly two hours each) while at the same time reading very few books and having little recourse to newspapers and other forms of communication that are taken for granted today. Once the importance of the sermon for all New England is established,

During the war a young soldier decided to find a church:

"Men, the lecture-room of the philosopher is a hospital; you ought not to walk out of it in pleasure, but in pain."

III.28 A. Said R. Huna, “Whoever prays behind the synagogue is called wicked,