I recently joined the staff of a large church. When it was my week to give the devotions at a staff meeting, I was anxious. There are 20 staff members and 6 of them are pastors! This book helped to create a devotion. This is a great book if you don't know where to start. I liked the large selection of topics(over 50) available. These topics can also be used by someone more experienced in giving devotions.

Acton is probably most known for his quote: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1804-1902) was born to a wealthy English aristocrat and become a brilliant scholar. He was Victorian England's most renowned historian and political thinker. Acton was a Roman Catholic educated under the Catholic historian Ignaz von Dollinger in Munich. Acton found the idea of Papal Infallibility to be appalling. To Acton, holding the Vatican on a pedestal as the infallible arbiter of religious and moral conscience was detrimental to the cause of liberty. Acton was a classical liberal who seems to possess the prescriptive wisdom and prudence of Edmund Burke when it comes to politics.

This collection of essays and commentary features a selection of Acton's thoughts on the interrelation between church and state, religion, politics and morality. The first section features essays on Liberal Catholicism; the second section includes Acton's commentary on the Vatican Council; and the third section features Perspectives on History, Religion and Morality. The fourth and final section features an intriguing collection of quotations on various topics like Liberty, Conscience, Church, Democracy, Federalism, Nationality, Property and Socialism to name a few. This final section makes the book very useful resource for Acton's witticisms. I don't wholeheartedly embrace all of the ideas of Acton, but this book is nonetheless an eye-openning window into European Old Whig political thought during the 19th century.

The Navy life of Captain Frederic Walker has been well described. Through this book you can feel en relive his unbending and relentless approach to anti-submarine warfare during the battle of the Atlantic. Anybody interested in ASW should read this book. It is also a great narritive of a too short life of an outstanding RN officer.

L.Bruin, CDRE

James "the Just", "the brother of the Lord", is remembered in Christian tradition as the first bishop of Jerusalem and the author of a canonical epistle. In the Orthodox Church, his feast day is marked by a special liturgy, celebrated on no other occasion. In short, he holds a place as a Great Man in the early Church. Nevertheless, his theoretical greatness is coupled with practical obscurity. Next to the towering figures of Peter and Paul, James is a shadowy presence. Even the one writing attributed to him, a high point of "Wisdom literature", has suffered neglect, burdened by Martin Luther's contemptuous dismissal of its contents as "straw".

John Painter seeks to restore the portrait of "Just James" to its original brilliance. He considers every ancient text that bears on James: the handful of references in the New Testament, the short but significant testimony of Josephus, the thin line of orthodox remembrance and the much more abundant Gnostic and heretical appropriation of James' image. The available information about James has never before been so carefully and thoroughly assembled. Sadly, though, the pigments on the canvas remain scattered and faded, so that the Painterly picture has in it, in the end, more of the artist than the subject.

On some elements of James' life, Professor Painter is fresh and convincing. He demonstrates the weakness of the evidence underlying the conventional opinions that James and the other "brothers of the Lord" converted to belief in Jesus only after His death and that James did not become the "leader" (whatever leadership may signify at that point in Christian history) of the Jerusalem church until Peter departed from the city. He also offers a clear treatment of the early controversy over mission strategies, though his symmetrical schema of six "positions" in the debate over preaching to non-Jews may be too abstract and tidy to reflect reality.

On the other hand, his discussion of other topics is less satisfactory. On the degree of kinship between Jesus and James, he presents the standard arguments against Jerome's hypothesis (that the two were cousins) but rejects the traditional view of the Eastern Church (that they were half-brothers) without grappling with it. His argument is half well-poisoning (guilt by association with the often-preposterous Protevangelium of James) and half literalism ("adelphos" means "brother", and that's that, as if there were any other natural Greek word to use for a brother by only one parent).

Even worse is his analysis of the motives that led the Jerusalem authorities to put James to death in 62 A.D., an action that the non-Christian Josephus characterizes as a judicial murder. The natural assumption, unanimously supported by Christian accounts, is that James was martyred for professing Christ. Professor Painter, on virtually no evidence, prefers to believe that James was closely associated with economically distressed Temple priests of pharisaic tendencies and was executed for his advocacy of their interests. Such a socioeconomic interpretation may resonate today, but one wonders how James and his small congregation could have genuinely threatened the political power of the High Priesthood and whether Professor Painter is right to presume that Pharisees would not have objected to injustice against someone who was not of their own faction.

Questionable points like these do not, however, undermine the value of this scholarly labor. The limitations of the surviving sources necessarily make the history of early Christianity largely a study of two apostles (or of one and a half, since Pauline material is so much more abundant than Petrine). An effort to fill in some of the rest of the picture is welcome.

Fantastic!! The minor gramatical errors are easily excused in this wonderfuly told story of a young man with confusing questions. Questions which allow anyone who is, or has been, 21 years (sun-cycles) old on this, Mathew Adams Jr's home world, to relate to. I found it to be a quite wonderful read as all the stories of "parallel worlds" have been unable to do what this new author has done: parallel worlds with intersecting lines!!! The ties are masterfully crafted to allow one to not only believe in the viability of the epic, but to appreciate the author's sincerity in relating both the past and the future, the physical and theological, religious and non-religious, and told so creatively that forgetting the story is not something which I suspect will come easily. Kudos to Mr. Webb***I am anxiously awaiting another entry by this somewhat unrefined, yet masterful, moral story-teller.

Dr. John W. Kleinig presents his doctoral thesis on the position of choral music (as well as instrumental music) in the theology of ancient Israel. The price is very high, and Dr. Kleinig's research is very thorough. However, he brings many insights into the use of music in the Old Testament as well as it's New Testament and ecclesiastical implications. This work is well-grounded in the Biblical books as well as secondary literature.

Kleinig begins by examining the figure of King David in the liturgical life of ancient Israel. He writes, "David is... presented in Chronicles both as the heir of Moses in enacting his ritual legislation and as a second Moses in establishing the worship at the temple in Jerusalem," (pg. 29). David grounds his liturgical directions from rituals described in the Pentateuch, including the development of a Levitical choir to sing praise after receiving the proleptic gifts in Old Testament worship.

"The Lord's Song" also presents many interesting views on the connections between music to the whole burnt offering, music to the warfare of ancient Israel and music to Israelite life in general. These connections are insightful and valid. I found that the relationship between the Levitical choir and the Israelite army well-thought out and described.

The only drawbacks of this book are the following: 1) the price is too high; 2) reading this book moves at a very slow pace even if you are already well-read in theology; 3) Kleinig only hints at some of the New Testament connections woven into the threads of Chronicles... for instance, he mentions a little at the end about the relationship to Jesus as the leader of the Church's praise (based on Zephaniah 3:17, Rom. 15:9 and Heb. 2:12), but not as much as this topic deserves. The rest of his work is dedicated specifically to Old Testament historical usages, which is interesting but not of much current soteriological value.

Nonetheless, Kleinig's work is informative, Biblical, well-thought out and well-argued. I recommend this book, even though it comes with a heavy price tag.

I really enjoyed reading these poems. Lear is the master of his domain and his silly poems are always funny.
This is an anthology of poems, of different lengths. Lear's style can make even the most serious adult burst with laughter. I was stifling my laughs in the library. I think you're never too old for funny poems such as these, and reading books like this can be cathartic during stressful times.
Read these poems to everyone you know.

As the saying goes the glory is not in never falling but in rising every time you fall. In John Lords Book song of the phoenix he talks of the real purpose of failure and uses real life examples of people who have failed at one or several things in their life but have used the opportunties given by these failures to explore new territory with their selves and their lives. Lord also goes into the westeren attitudes of failure and how it can be destructive or counter productive to growth.He diminishes the myth of failure as being a terrible thing by explaining how often times failure can just be an experiment and opportunity for growth. He even tells of a class at a school where students are encouraged to fail called failure 101. With this fresh new view on failure people can be encouraged to take chances and not let a failure get them down , they can forge ahead and try again with something else. Like Helen Keller once said " Life is either a daring adventure or nothing" Keller also said that security does not exist in nature and the fearful get caught as often as the bold. This book is so enlightening and sheds light on a sore and misunderstood experience in life failure but it is not such a terrible thing. Sometimes it is just lifes' way of redirecting you to something better. With Lords book you will be inspired to try new and different things after you fail at one thing. This book is out of print now but I highly recommend that anyone who has struggled with failures to attain it at a used book shop or see if you can find a friend who has this book. You wont regret it.

This collection must be the first serious effort to look at Lord of the Rings as "serious" literature, largely due to Tolkien's overwhelming popularity in the 1960s. Some of the essays are by such notorious writers such as C.S. Lewis and M.Z. Bradley. They look at Tolkien's world, races, characters, and the meaning of power in the trilogy, and the tones range from admiring to a little bit smug (surely, Lord of the Rings isn't "literarature" because... and then looking at a fixed idea, at the time, of what "literature" is.) The essay collection is, on the whole, interesting and insightful. Recommended, if you can find it (it's currently tough to find

I bought this book because I was sure it would contain Cranmer's "Defense of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Lord's Supper." Well, it did, but there was only one problem. Like every good theological tract written during this period, I assume it was originally written in Latin, therefore, this volume contained the work I needed, only in a language that was inaccessible to me at the time (and still is). It does contain, however, certain other works, like the "Disputations at Oxford" and the "Answer to Smith's Preface." The better part of this volume is dedicated to "An Answer to a Crafty and Sophistical Cavillation devised by Stephen Gardiner." Evidently, Gardiner wrote a pro-Catholic response to Cranmer's "Defense" and then Cranmer had to write a rejoinder to Gardiner's response, which is what "An Answer" is. It really is a must have source for anyone seeking to do first-hand study of the theological thought of Thomas Cranmer, especially concerning his view of the Eucharist.