Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

Fear and Trembling

Frygt og Bæven

Søren Kierkegaard · 1813–1855

A pseudonymous meditation circling Abraham on the road to Moriah, refusing to let the story be admired at a distance, and asking whether faith can require a suspension of the ethical that no philosophical system can absorb.

Apologia Pro Vita Sua

John Henry Newman · 1801–1890

Provoked by a public charge that he did not regard truth as a virtue, Newman answered with the history of his own religious opinions — the whole slow argument that carried him out of the Church of England and into Rome.

Lectures to My Students

Charles Haddon Spurgeon · 1834–1892

Friday afternoon talks to the men of Spurgeon's own pastors' college: on private prayer, on choosing a text, on the voice, on when to be brief, and on the fainting fits that visit even successful preachers.

Holiness

J. C. Ryle · 1816–1900

Chapters on sin, sanctification, the fight, the cost, and assurance — written in short sentences and plain Saxon words by a bishop who thought most religious writing of his day was too vague to be any use.

The Brothers Karamazov

Bratya Karamazovy

Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1821–1881

A patricide and its aftermath in a provincial Russian town, carrying inside it the century's fiercest indictment of God over the suffering of children and, set against it, a monk who answers with love rather than argument.