This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

An ex-convict returns to his Chicago community a changed man—but maybe not for the better—in this “vivid, suspenseful, funny, and compassionate novel” (Booklist). One of Booklist’s Top 10 First Novels of the Year One of Roxane Gay’s Top 10 Books of the Year After fourteen years in prison, Gerald “Stew Pot” Reeves, age thirty-one, returns home to live with his mom in Parkland, a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. The residents are in a tailspin, dreading the arrival of the man they remember as a frightening delinquent. The anxiety only grows when Stew Pot announces that he experienced a religious awakening in prison. Most folks are skeptical, with one notable exception: Mrs. Motley, a widowed retired librarian and the Reeves’ next-door neighbor, who loans Stew Pot a Bible, which is seen by him and many in the community as a friendly gesture. With uncompromising fervor (and with a new pit bull named John the Baptist), Stew Pot soon appoints himself the moral judge of Parkland—and starts wreaking havoc on people’s lives. Before long, tension and suspicion reign, and this close-knit community must reckon with questions of faith, fear, and forgiveness . . . “[A] novel of epiphanies, tragedies, and transformations . . . perfect for book clubs.” —Booklist, starred review “May slowly builds suspense as he persuasively unfolds the narrative in this work that reads like an Agatha Christie mystery.” —Library Journal “A wonderful urban novel full of vitality and pathos and grit.” —Dennis Lehane

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"It is a remarkable fact that many of the religious errors of today, as well as of the past, are due in great part to false philosophical principles. This fact emphasizes the importance of the considerations herewith presented, wherein the rational grounds of religion are established. True religion presupposes sound philosophy: revealed religion is built on the foundation of natural religion: the necessity of Catholicity, as Christianity in the concrete, rests on the necessity of religion in general. Here, as elsewhere, grace neither destroys nor neglects nature, but completes and perfects it. It is hoped that the reflections set forth in these discourses will be of use as an antidote to the poison of irreligion, which is often masked under the guise of pretentious erudition and deceives the unwary or the self-conceited by the glamor of a false science."This work is in essence an apologetics text designed to defend the Catholic Faith against modern errors. "It is of untold advantage in warfare to know the tactics of the enemy and the objective towards which his attacks are chiefly directed; for the defense is then surer and more effective than it would be in ignorance of the methods or the purpose of the foe. This is a fact trumpeted throughout the whole of the battle-scarred world: the same fact is true in the conflict waged for the safeguard of what is dearer to us than life itself, the blessed faith for which the loved Christ died. Different in different ages have been the onslaughts on truth by its ruthless enemies; manifold, the diverse onsets of "the gates of hell" against the Church the Master builded: but in these later years the hostile aggression has been against the very groundwork of faith through assaults upon the foundations of revealed religion."Let us consider this: "Let us look around us in the world. Let us dive into the depths of human thought and volition. What do we see? Everywhere we see beings that are capable of nonexistence, since as a matter of fact they do not always exist in unchanging perfection. The rocks are wearing away, as they have worn away for uncounted ages: the minerals are entering into new combinations and are taken up into higher forms of being. Animals begin to breathe and move, and then they die and corrupt. Man is born, lives his little life, and goes the way of all flesh and is put away from the eyes of men. Take the world of sense and physical science, and accept the latest of Modern theories about its formation and development; and the conclusion becomes but the stronger, that at least its mode of motion, bewildering in the smallest portion of matter, is dying down. If so, it must have had a beginning, or else long ago, nay, almost an eternity ago, it would have come to complete inertness."Let us close with a consideration of Heaven: "The heaven of nature would be a something more thrilling than we can quite realize. Never to know a pang of sorrow, never a pain or a doubt or a misgiving; never to experience the stab of separation from loved ones; never to fear the possibility of falling away from God through the weakness of a faltering will: and besides all this, to have the fulness of joys to satisfy every longing in the throbbing ecstasy of blessedness; always unto everlasting to hold God by the powers of mind and will,-truly even this is more than we can appreciate."

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Excerpt from The Bedrock of Belief, the Foundations of Religion The present work concludes the line of thought set forth in the two companion vol umes, Christ's Masterpiece and He's Only Son. Combined, the three courses of lec tures, which are given to the public in the form in which they were delivered as Lenten Lectures in St. Francis Xavier (college) Church, form a compendious exposition of Christian apologetics. 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.