DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Views of St. Paul's Cathedral, London" by W. J. Sparrow-Simpson. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

The present St Paul's Cathedral, Christopher Wren's masterpiece, is the fourth religious building to occupy the site. Its location in the heart of the capital reflects its importance in the English church while the photographs of it burning during the Blitz forms one of the most powerful and familiar images of London during recent times. This substantial and richly illustrated study, published to mark the 1,400th anniversary of St Paul's, presents 42 scholarly contributions which approach the cathedral from a range of perspectives. All are supported by photographs, illustrations and plans of the exterior and interior of St Paul's, both past and present. Eight essays discuss the history of St Paul's, demonstrating the role of the cathedral in the formation of England's church and state from the 7th century onwards; nine essays examine the organisation and function of the cathedral during the Middle Ages, looking at, for example, the arrangement of the precinct, the tombs, the Dean's household during the 15th century, the liturgy and the archaeology. The remaining papers examine many aspects of Wren's cathedral, including its construction, fittings and embellishments, its estates and income, music and rituals, its place in London, its library, its role in the book trade and its reputation.

From the bestselling author of A History of God and The Great Transformation comes a balanced, nuanced understanding of the role religion plays in human life and the trajectory of faith in modern times. Why has God become incredible? Why is it that atheists and theists alike now think and speak about God in a way that veers so profoundly from the thinking of our ancestors? Moving from the Paleolithic Age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the lengths to which humankind has gone to experience a sacred reality that it called God, Brahman, Nirvana, Allah, or Dao. She examines the diminished impulse toward religion in our own time when a significant number of people either want nothing to do with God or question the efficacy of faith. With her trademark depth of knowledge and profound insight, Armstrong elucidates how the changing world has necessarily altered the importance of religion at both societal and individual levels. And she makes a powerful, convincing argument for structuring a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age.