I read "Spiritual Torrents" after reading Guyons autobiography, which had NOT been edited by Gene Edwards and was disappointed by what editing or "modernizing" had done to the text. I will now look for the original text or earlier translations.

To translate "Soul" with "Christian" or "devotee" is a faux pax which I find not only ignorant but also irresponsible . The editing lost much of Guyon's deeply moving spirituality in the process and watered it down. Though I appreciate the republishing, I wish Mr. Edwards had left the text alone and allow the readers be moved by the Spirit according to HIs desire.

The Soul is the Soul and not Christian! It may when on a spiritual journey come to know Christ. The text as written by Guyon is lovingly fruitful for all religious seekers, though in this editing it feels like it turned into the coin the moneychangers made suitable for the temple's purposes. But whose temple?

I hope when you read this review you will still be glad to hear and know about Guyon. But look for the earlier translations!

if you've read any of Guyon's other works, particularly her autobigraphy, and found that you have experienced anything similar to what she describes, then this is a great book to read. i found in it the only accurate description of the difficulties and pains of the deserts the God brings a surrendered Christian through. it was a comfort to me during the most difficult time in my spiritual walk, even more then her autobiography or "experiencing the depths of Jesus Christ." if you know what it is like to feel that God has left you or even that He is slaying you, read this book. if not, it will be difficult for you to understand or accept what she describes.

this was a worthwhile book to have, it hits on most major points in the lives of the subjects and does a decent job but i thought that it was a bit dry and sometimes hard to read through. there were also some selections that i thought were unnecessary while i found myself wishing that others had been included. but overall it is a good book to have on the shelf and nothing is poorly done so it gets three stars from me. but i would recommend 'invitation to christian spirituallity' by john r tyson. i'm probably biased because he was one of my professors but i still just feel that it is better written.

If you need a comprehensive overview of spirituality throughout the world, especially with an in-depth treatise of the practice of spirituality in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, this book is a must! It is a compilation of essays by many authors with a detailed bibilography for each chapter. The writing is clear and deeply stimulating. It is, of course, theological in nature, but excellent for the lay person as well as clergy.

I did not appreciate some of the statements made in this booklet. I do not believe that Mr Welch has any basis to substantiate his claim that ADD is not a physical problem. I believe he makes blanket statements that offend a family who is really struggling to make sense of ADD and how it effects their family.
No amount of "spirituality" will help a child with asthma will it? Yet there are no blood tests or x-rays to diagnose this. Does Mr. Welch actually know for certain that there is no medical tests to diagnose this problem? I have read material to suggest that an MRI does diagnose.
I thought this booklet to be stated in an offensive way. Does Mr. Welch have a child of his own that struggles and cries and tries his absolute hardest to remember and obey? I do! Until Mr. Welch can tell me that he walks in my shoes and knows for certain that ADD is just a spiritual problem, his words do nothing but offend.

This book was truly a God-send! It was so easy to read and understand and can be finished in one quick sitting. But don't let the size of this book fool you. It gave me a new way to view my child's (and husband's) ADD, from both the physical and the spiritual sides. This book was encouraging and made me re-think all I had previously read about the subject of ADD. This is a "must-read" for those wanting help and biblical wisdom in dealing with those you love who fit the description of ADD. Author Ed Welch and "Resources for Changing Lives" are at the top of my reading list!

Arthurian fiction in general is steeped with awful fiction, and short story collections are a mixed bag. Let me simply say that I was left unimpressed - and often disgusted - by the stories in here. There are some good ones, but they are few and far between. (Do not be led astray by the pretty cover art! It is pretty, but that's almost all it has going for it)

We start with an icky poem by Jane Yolen; then a groanworthy Mercedes Lackey story "The Cup and the Cauldron" -- it stars girls and yes, has more Christian-pagan stuff if you're as sick of that as I am; an incoherent Andre Norton story "That Which Overfloweth"; Marion Zimmer Bradley's equally groanworthy feminist-Goddess-server "Chalice of Tears." We hit something far better in Diana L. Paxson's "Feast of the Fisher King," which is both well-written and entertaining, as well as being in play format; also Brad Strickland's enjoyable elf-fantasy-Arthurian story "Gift of Gilthiliad."

Then it's back into "groan" territory with Ilona Ouspenskaya's gypsy tale "Curse of the Romany," where you wonder what-the-heck-does-this-have-to-do-with-it? James S. Dorr's "Dagda" is pretty; Gene Wolfe's odd "Sailor who Sailed After the Sun" is another where you wonder what the relevance is; Lee Hoffman's indifferently-written western-fantasy "Water" takes a long time to get to the point, as does Alan Dean Foster's "What You See..." and Richard Gilliam's "Storyville, Tennessee" and Jeremiah Phipps' "Hell-Bent for Leather" (are you seeing a pattern of irrelevance here?)

Lisa Lepovetsky pens another icky poem; Orson Scott Card's "Atlantis" stretches indefinitely; Dean Wesley Smith's "Invisible Bars" is pretty amusing; Janny Wurts bores and annoys with "That Way Lies Camelot"; Kristine Katherine Rusch's "Hitchhiking across an Ancient Sea" is a pale, pale short story; Lawrence Watt-Evans's story has a good idea, but is poorly written; Lionel Fenn's "The Awful Truth in Arthur's Barrow" is just plain bizarre, as is Brian M. Thompson's "Reunion." Margo Skinner redeems the poetry angle with "Quest Now"; Neil Gaiman's "Chivalry" is enchanting; Bruce D. Arthurs is weird again in "Falling to the Edge of the End of the World", same with Rick Wilber's "Greggie's Cup."

As you can see, this mixed bag tends toward the dull, irrelevant, pretentious and just poorly written. Half the stories seem to have the Grail thrown in (if it's there at all) just as an afterthought. Except for Margo Skinner's poem, the poetry all stinks; only a few of the stories retain the beauty and prose that one espects to see in an Arthurian story. When I buy a book classified as Arthurian fiction, I WANT Arthurian fiction; I do not want stories about pregnant gypsies, fantasy westerns, or genies.

There are much better collections out there, however bright the bright spots in this are. Read "The Doom of Camelot" and the upcoming "Legends of the Pendragon" if you want good Arthurian short stories.

The Gaiman story in this collection is brilliant. There are other bright spots as well, particularly the contributions from Diana Paxson and Alan Dean Foster. Good, fun stuff.

This volume is a random assortment of socially (not biblically) driven sermons. While Taylor can hold your attention with his skills as an effective communicator, what he actually communicates is a moralistic message based on Pelagian errors. Not recommended. If you want to read interesting sermons try Spurgeon instead.

A must read for all preachers. Take time to see how the masters did it.

This is a textbook, it's not something to just pick up and read for the fun of it. I've personally used it to pass Western Civ. Anyway, it's slightly dated (1971) but is still easier to read and understand then some. It's also not too long. The chapters are laid out in a way that make it easy for learing it buy event or getting info for papers. I hope this is helpful info.

This book provides quite a bit of semi-useful information regarding Dagara/Dagaare (homeland = northwestern Ghana) religious beliefs, but fortunately falls down in it's stated purpose, which is to one-up the indigenous spirituality by unfair, chauvinist comparisons with Christianity. The book's stated purpose (outlined briefly on the back cover) is to provide a guide for missionaries and others trying to convert the Dagaare to monotheistic Christianity.

Kuukure is trying to do to the Dagaare what Rattray did to the Ashanti . . . outline their religious beliefs and practices in exquisitely minute detail, though trying to derail their validity at each and every juncture. Kuukure's writing is probably not as comprehensive as was Rattray, nor is he quite as talented. But neither is he as vicious, these being somewhat gentler times.

Kuukure begins his thinly disguised diatribe with the supposedly factual claim that the Dagara are possibly alone among African religions in the fact that they even have an eschatology - an arrogant proposition/assumption at best. This is just so much half-baked rhetoric based on false assumptions of knowledge the author doesn't even possess - like as if he's actually studied all over the continent - other than reading books by other men with similar colonialist and post-colonialist aims and orientations.

But once he has "established" that the Dagaare are 'oh so unique', he attempts to undermine this indigenous system at every turn. Whenever he seems to be taking you right into the soul of Dagara cosmology/eschatology, each time he deliberately pulls up short, then injects one of his putrid little sound bites to show where the Dagara fall down as compared with the Christian way.

If you really want to get a feel for the workings of the Dagara/Dagaare belief system from the insiders' point of view, I recommend any and all of Malidoma Patrice Some's books. Even better, read them in tandem with those of his wife Sobonfu Some. In addition to being profound thinkers, both are highly skilled writers.

From the more scholarly point of view, Jack Goody is much less jaded than is Kuukure, if you can master his writing style, which is full of anthropological concerns and the attendant terminology. Goody takes you some places even the Somes don't go, though he's going there intellectually, not showing one how to begin to "be" there (as are the Somes). If not currently available for purchase, Goody's 'Death, Property and the Ancestors' and 'Myth of the Bagre' are relatively accessible in university and public libraries around the country. And his further addition to the Bagre literature is to be published soon.

Words are inserted in this version that change the meaning of certain thoughts and take away from its power. Bounds is still good though - it's just better to get it the way he wrote it. Buy The Complete Works of E.M. Bounds on Prayer published by Baker instead. (That version was also changed to use modern language but definitely compares better than this version.)

This collection of ancient "Christian" commentators is well done, it is on the NT books of GALATIANS, EPHESIANS and PHILIPPIANS. It is beautifully printed and formatted. The binding is a cheap glue injection, much of the volume does not lay open. Printed on acid-free paper, though not ANSI certified.

322 pages give the readings (comments) upon these 3 books by such notables as Chrysostom, Jerome, Ambrosisater, Hilary of Poitiers, Origen, Fulgentius, Theodoret, Augustine, et al. Most notable are comments by Marius Victorinus (which comments are not easy to examine elsewhere), his comments alone (even in translation) are worth the price of the book.

The text is nicely laid out, and is easy to use. But it is not for scholarly use (largely) as the comments are ALL translated into English, not in their original Greek or Latin. Too bad, if the original texts would have been added, then this would have been a 5 star book! As it is, one can only get a general idea of each commentators meanings -- being totally reliant upon the translations of the editors.

Such an ecumenical agenda, causes users to wonder why such and such a translation was made, certain Greek and Latin phrases were rendered in such a way as to be suspicious. Thus without the original texts, the work cannot be tested. Again too bad, as a collection in the original languages with English translation would have been very very useful.

Too general, too subdued. Pretty book though.

Read for a college Theology class. Difficult to follow & hard to understand at times. But, it has some good points about mystery, grace.