Reproduction of the original: Practical Religion by John Charles Ryle

“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.

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.

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.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.