Excerpt: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth -- 2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was uponthe face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of thewaters -- 3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light -- 4. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the lightfrom the darkness -- 5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.And the evening and the morning were the first day -- 6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,and let it divide the waters from the waters -- 7. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which wereunder the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so....

Excerpt: Chapter 1. The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham -- 2. Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren -- 3. And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram; 4 And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon -- 5. And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse -- 6. And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias -- 7. And Solomon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa; 8 And Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias....

Excerpt: Chapter 1. The word of the LORD that came to Micah the Morasthite in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem -- 2. Hear, all ye people; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is: and let the Lord GOD be witness against you, the LORD from his holy temple -- 3. For, behold, the LORD cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth....

Excerpt: LO I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske, As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds, Am now enforst a far vnfitter taske, For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds, And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds; Whose prayses hauing slept in silence long, Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds To blazon broad emongst her learned throng: Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song....

Excerpt: Preface to Fanny?s First Play. Fanny?s First Play, being but a potboiler, needs no preface. But its lesson is not, I am sorry to say, unneeded. Mere morality, or the substitution of custom for conscience was once accounted a shameful and cynical thing: people talked of right and wrong, of honor and dishonor, of sin and grace, of salvation and damnation, not of morality and immorality. The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car. Nowadays we do not seem to know that there is any other test of conduct except morality; and the result is that the young had better have their souls awakened by disgrace, capture by the police, and a month?s hard labor, than drift along from their cradles to their graves doing what other people do for no other reason than that other people do it, and knowing nothing of good and evil, of courage and cowardice, or indeed anything but how to keep hunger and concupiscence and fashionable dressing within the bounds of good taste except when their excesses can be concealed....

Excerpt: The Book of Nehemiah, the Sixteenth Book of the King James Version of the Bible.

Introduction: 1. The Occasion of the Work. -- Luther did not impose himself as reformer upon the Church. In the course of a conscientious performance of the duties of his office, to which he had been regularly and divinely called, and without any urging on his part, he attained to this position by inward necessity. In 1515 he received his appointment as the standing substitute for the sickly city pastor, Simon Heinse, from the city council of Wittenberg. Before this time he was obliged to preach only occasionally in the convent, apart from his activity as teacher in the University and convent. Through this appointment he was in duty bound, by divine and human right, to lead and direct the congregation at Wittenberg on the true way to life, and it would have been a denial of the knowledge of salvation which God had led him to acquire, by way of ardent inner struggles, if he had led the congregation on any other way than the one God had revealed to him in His Word. He could not deny before the congregation which had been intrusted to his care, what up to this time he had taught with ever increasing clearness in his lectures at the Uni...

Preface: Thirteen men were banded together in Paris under the Empire, all imbued with one and the same sentiment, all gifted with sufficient energy to be faithful to the same thought, with sufficient honor among themselves never to betray one another even if their interests clashed; and sufficiently wily and politic to conceal the sacred ties that united them, sufficiently strong to maintain themselves above the law, bold enough to undertake all things, and fortunate enough to succeed, nearly always, in their undertakings; having run the greatest dangers, but keeping silence if defeated; inaccessible to fear; trembling neither before princes, nor executioners, not even before innocence; accepting each other for such as they were, without social prejudices,--criminals, no doubt, but certainly remarkable through certain of the qualities that make great men, and recruiting their number only among men of mark....

THE SIXTY-SECOND BOOK OF THE HOLY BIBLE CONTAINING THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS TRANSLATED OUT OF THE ORIGINAL TONGUES AND WITH THE FORMER TRANSLATIONS DILIGENTLY COMPARED & REVISED SET FORTH IN 1611 AND COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE KING JAMES VERSION ...

Excerpt: Chapter 1. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life -- 2. (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) -- 3 That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ -- 4. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full -- 5. This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all -- 6. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth -- 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin....

Excerpt: The Divine Comedy, Volume One, Hell [The Inferno] by Dante Aligheri, trans Charles Eliot Norton.

Contents INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................7 AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE DIVINE COMEDY .......................................................... 14 HELL .............................................................................. 16 CANTO I. Dante, astray in a wood, reaches the foot of a hill which he begins to ascend; he is hindered by three beasts; he turns back and is met by Virgil, who proposes to guide him into the eternal world. ....................................... 16 CANTO II. Dante, doubtful of his own powers, is discouraged at the outset.?Virgil cheers him by telling him that he has been sent to his aid by a blessed Spirit from Heaven.?Dante casts off fear, and the poets proceed. ................ 19 CANTO III. The gate of Hell.?Virgil lends Dante in.?The punishment of the neither good nor bad.?Aeheron, and the sinners on its bank.?Charon.?Earthquake.?Dante swoons. ................................................................. 22 CANTO IV. The further side of Acheron.?Virgil leads Dante into Limbo, the First Circle of Hell, cont...