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Galatians is a letter from Paul of Tarsus to a number of Early Christian communities in the Roman province of Galatia in central Anatolia. Paul is principally concerned with the controversy surrounding Gentile Christians and the Mosaic Law within Early Christianity. The main theme of Ephesians is “the Church, the Body of Christ.” The Church is to maintain the unity in practice which Christ has brought about positionally. Another major theme in Ephesians is the keeping of Christ's body (that is, the Church) pure and holy. Philippians was written by the Apostle Paul circa 62 while Paul was in prison. The letter was written to the church at Philippi, one of the earliest churches to be founded in Europe. They were very attached to Paul, just as he was very fond of them. The Philippians had sent Epaphroditus, their messenger, with contributions to meet the needs of Paul; and on his return Paul sent this letter with him. Written in the 50s while Paul was in prison, Colossians is similar to Ephesians, also written at this time. Colossians declares Christ's supremacy over the entire created universe and exhorts Christians to lead godly live...

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Religion

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Audubon's life naturally divides itself into three periods: his youth, which was on the whole a gay and happy one, and which lasted till the time of his marriage at the age of twenty-eight; his business career which followed, lasting ten or more years, and consisting mainly in getting rid of the fortune his father had left him; and his career as an ornithologist which, though attended with great hardships and privations, brought him much happiness and, long before the end, substantial pecuniary rewards. (Summary from the Preface of John James Audubon )...

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Biography

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Voltaire was an atheist. Diderot was Enlightened. But trite titles seldom encompass completely the beliefs of any individual. And this one fact is certainly true when dealing with Sir Francis Bacon.The youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Francis was born in Strand, London, on Jan. 22, 1561. He went to Trinity College at Cambridge. He was elected to Parliament; he was Queen’s Counsel; he even became Attorney General before finally gaining the position of Lord Chancellor.But as do the careers of so many politicians, in 1621 his political career ended in disgrace.And yet, for all of this, both Diderot and Voltaire considered him “the father of modern science.” Others consider him only the father of the “scientific method.” (That process of collecting and organizing data.) Bacon’s “The Essays,” to which we now turn our attention, are–if they are nothing else–a delightful collection in decided disarray. That is, they seem to take no true progression. But an essay is not meant to be a treatise. And for all that, these essays are still a pleasure to read.Encompassing a broad field of interest, their largesse denotes the broad learning of t...

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Essay/Short nonfiction

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Florence Scovel Shinn, an illustrator living in New York City, became a teacher of New Thought after a divorce. New Thought was a movement which holds the belief that individuals can create their own reality through intentional thoughts and prayer, much like the current Law of Attraction movement. The Game of Life and How to Play It is her first book, and is remarkable for being written by a woman and meant for a genteel female audience. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Advice

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In der Abhandlung „Zum ewigen Frieden wendet Kant die Grundsätze seiner Moralphilosophie auf die Beziehungen zwischen Staaten an. Er stellt klar, dass Frieden kein natürlicher Zustand sei und deshalb gestiftet werden müsse. Um das Ziel „Weltfrieden“ zu verwirklichen, müssten sich die Staaten einem allgemein verbindlichen Völkerrecht unterordnen. In seinen Bestimmungen und Erläuterungen nimmt Kant zahlreiche Entwicklungen hin zum modernen Völkerrecht vorweg. In his essay Perpetual Peace, Kant applies the principles of his moral philosophy to the relations between nations. He points out that peace is not a natural state and therefore must be instituted through human effort. To make world peace come true, all nations should submit to general and binding international laws. In his definitions and explanations, Kant anticipates many aspects of the development of modern international law. (Summary by Al-Kadi)...

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Philosophy

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An intensely personal account of the immigration experience as related by a young Jewish girl from Plotzk (a town in the government of Vitebsk, Russia). Mary Antin, with her mother, sisters, and brother, set out from Plotzk in 1894 to join their father, who had journeyed to the Promised Land of America three years before. Fourth class railroad cars packed to suffocation, corrupt crossing guards, luggage and persons crudely disinfected by German officials who feared the cholera, locked quarantine portside, and, finally, the steamer voyage and a famiily reunited. For anyone who has ever wondered what it was like for their grandparents or great grandparents to emmigrate from Europe to the United States last century, this is a fascinating narrative. Mary Antin went on to become an immigration rights activist. She also wrote an autobiography, The Promised Land, published in 1912, which detailed her assimilation into American culture. (Summary by Sue Anderson)...

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Memoirs

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Consolation of Philosophy (Latin: Consolatio Philosophiae) is a philosophical work by Boethius written in about the year 524 AD. It has been described as the single most important and influential work in the West in medieval and early Renaissance Christianity, and is also the last great work that can be called Classical. - Consolation of Philosophy was written during Boethius' one year imprisonment while awaiting trial, and eventual horrific execution, for the crime of treason by Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great. Boethius was at the very heights of power in Rome and was brought down by treachery. It was from this experience he was inspired to write a philosophical book from prison reflecting on how a lord's favor could change so quickly and why friends would turn against him. It has been described as “by far the most interesting example of prison literature the world has ever seen.” - The Consolation of Philosophy stands, by its note of fatalism and its affinities with the Christian doctrine of humility, midway between the heathen philosophy of Seneca the Younger and the later Christian philosophy of consolation represented by T...

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Philosophy

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During the time of the Judges when there was a famine, an Israelite family from Bethlehem - Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their sons Mahlon and Chilion - emigrate to the nearby country of Moab. Elimelech dies, and the sons marry two Moabite women: Mahlon marries Ruth and Chilion marries Orpah. Then Mahlon and Chilion also die. Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem. She tells her daughters-in-law to return to their own mothers, and remarry. Orpah reluctantly leaves; however, Ruth says, Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me. (Ruth 1:16-17 NIV) The two women return to Bethlehem. It is the time of the barley harvest, and in order to support her mother-in-law and herself, Ruth goes to the fields to glean. The field she goes to belongs to a man named Boaz, who is kind to her because he has heard of her loyalty to her mother-in-law. Ruth tells her mother-in-law of Boaz's kin...

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Religion

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The Amendments to the Constitution of the USA are a continuously modified document that attempts to secure all basic and other rights for American citizens. The most recent amendment was made in the early 1970's during the Vietnam war; this amendment lowered the voting age to 18. The first ten amendments (A.K.A. the Bill of Rights) was made by the founding fathers shortly after the actual constitution was made. The Bill of Rights covers all those things that the settlers found wrong with the rule of King George III of England. Such as: Quartering of soldiers, Freedom of speech, and Search and seizure. (Summary by Shurtagal)...

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History

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After the parishes of Saxony were visited in 1528 and found to be in a terribly dismal state, Martin Luther penned the Large Catechism as an aid to the clergy in teaching Christian doctrine. It consists of sermons on each of the Ten Commandments, each article of the Apostles' Creed and each petition of the Lord's Prayer, together with a treatment of Baptism and of the Sacrament of the Altar. This recording also includes the Brief Exhortation to Confession which Luther appended early on. This last piece was translated by Ambrose and Socrates Henkel in 1851 while all the rest follows the translation of F. Bente and W. H. T. Dau from the Concordia Triglotta of 1921. (Introduction by Jonathan Lange)...

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Religion

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God permits Satan, or in some translations the adversary or the accuser, to put the virtue of Job to the test, at first by giving him power over his property, but forbidding him to touch his person. Satan begins by taking away all of Job's riches, his livestock, his house, his servants, and his children; a series of four messengers informs him that they have perished in various tragedies. In the meantime, only three of Job's friends come to visit him in his misfortune — Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. A fourth, Elihu the Buzite, first begins talking in chapter 32 and bears a distinguished part in the dialogue; his arrival is not noted. The friends spend a week sitting on the ground with Job, without speaking, until Job at last breaks his silence and complains of his misery....

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Religion

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1 Maccabees is an apocryphal/deuterocanonical book written by a Jewish author after the restoration of an independent Jewish kingdom, probably about 100 BC. It is included in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox canons. Protestants, Jews, and some others regard it as generally reliable historically, but not a part of Scripture. The setting of the book is about a century after the conquest of Judea by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, after Alexander's empire has been divided so that Judea was part of the Greek Seleucid Empire. It tells how the Greek ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted to suppress the practice of basic Jewish religious law, resulting in a Jewish revolt against Seleucid rule. The book covers the whole of the revolt, from 175 to 134 BC, highlighting how the salvation of the Jewish people in this crisis came from God through Mattathias' family, particularly his sons, Judas Maccabeus, Jonathan Maccabaeus, and Simon Maccabaeus, and his grandson, John Hyrcanus. The doctrine expressed in the book reflects traditional Jewish teaching, without later doctrines found, for example, in 2 Maccabees. (Summary by Wikipedia, modi...

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Religion

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Deuteronomy (Greek: Δευτερονόμιον, second law) or Devarim (Hebrew: דְּבָרִים‎, literally things or words) is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fifth of five books of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch. A large part of the book consists of five sermons delivered by Moses reviewing the previous forty years of wandering in the wilderness, and the future entering into the Promised Land. Its central element is a detailed law-code by which the Israelites are to live within the Promised Land. Theologically the book constitutes the renewing of the covenant between YHWH, the Jewish God, and the 'Children of Israel.' (Summary by Wikipedia)...

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Religion

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The title, History of Holland, given to this volume is fully justified by the predominant part which the great maritime province of Holland took in the War of Independence and throughout the whole of the subsequent history of the Dutch state and people.(Summary from book prologue)...

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History

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The Gettysburg Address is the most famous speech of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and one of the most quoted speeches in United States history. It was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 19, 1863, during the American Civil War, four and a half months after the Battle of Gettysburg. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Essay/Short nonfiction

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This tripartite essay – published variously as “On the Popular Judgment” (J. Richardson trans.), “On the Old Saw” (E.B. Ashton trans.), or “On the Common Saying” (both M.J. Gregor and H.B. Nisbet) – Kant takes up the issue of the relation of theory to practice in three distinct ways. In the first, he replies to Christian Garve’s criticism of his moral theory, in the second, he distances himself from Thomas Hobbes, and in the third, Moses Mendelssohn. The three taken together are representative of the breadth of Kant’s moral and political thought; the first section being concerned with the individual, the second with the state, and the third with the species. Although this is, on the whole, a difficult piece to approach, the second and third sections are often read as a way into Kant’s political thought, and serve this purpose well, especially when read alongside his Perpetual Peace. (Summary by D.E. Wittkower.)...

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Philosophy

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Isabella Matilda Davis Brittingham was a significant early American Bahá'í and was posthumously designated by Shoghi Effendi as one of the 19 Disciples of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and Heralds of the Covenant. She was born in 1852, the daughter of Benjamin Davis, who was a grandson of John Morton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Her sister-in-law heard about the Bahá'í Faith in 1897 and in 1898 Isabella herself became a part of the nascent American Bahá'í community. In September 1901, Isabella went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where she met 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the leader of the Bahá'í Faith and son of the Founder, Bahá'u'lláh. She used the knowledge she gained there to write The Revelation of Baha-ullah in a Sequence of Four Lessons, which was published by the Bahai Publishing Society of Chicago in 1902. There were nine editions of this work, the last being in 1920. It was one of the earliest accurate accounts of the Bahá'í Faith published in the West. The main purpose of the book is to demonstrate the truth of Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation through Biblical prophecy....

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Literature

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This essay of Kant’s on copyright argues that the unlicensed copying of books cannot possibly be permissible, due to the fact that it assumes a consent on the part of the author which it is logically impossible for the author to give. The argument is dependent upon an assumption that the writings be commodified, for the reason why the author is unable to possibly give consent to multiple publishers is due to the author’s will – to communicate with the public – necessitating the profitability of the publisher, for, it is assumed, there is no way to communicate with the public at large without a great expense which can only be borne by a publishing firm. This is, of course, no longer a necessary assumption. - Other arguments here are also of interest: this is a foundational document in claims regarding the moral rights of authors, and Kant’s account of the connection between the communicative intent of the author and the rights resultant is of continuing importance (even though it is not often taken into account in contemporary debates, and has only a tenuous relation to contemporary copyright law); the distinction between works and a...

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Philosophy

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This 1787 document defines the rights and responsibilities of federal government of the United States of America.

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History

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The Riot Act was passed by the British Parliament in 1714, the first year of the reign of George I, and came into effect in August 1715. This was a time of widespread social disturbance, as the preamble describes; the Act sought to put an end to this. A group of twelve or more people, “being unlawfully, riotously and tumultuously assembled”, would be read a proclamation; they must disperse within an hour, on pain of death. The same fate would befall anyone preventing the reading of the proclamation, or damaging buildings while on a riot. If the law enforcement officers happened to injure or kill a rioter, they were immune from prosecution. The reading of the proclamation, the wording of which is detailed in the Act, was the necessary first step before action could be taken against the rioters. This gave us the phrase “to read the riot act”, to give a stern warning or rebuke. The Act was repealed in Britain in 1973, but had long since fallen into disuse there. A version is still in force in Canada....

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Essay/Short nonfiction