The Pleasures of Life by Sir John Lubbock
page 54 of 277 (19%)
page 54 of 277 (19%)
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of our fellow-men. I doubt whether in any other respect it will seem to
repay perusal, and to most persons probably certain extracts, not too numerous, would appear sufficient. The writings of the Apostolic Fathers have been collected in one volume by Wake. It is but a small one, and though I must humbly confess that I was disappointed, they are perhaps all the more curious from the contrast they afford to those of the Apostles themselves. Of the later Fathers I have included only the _Confessions_ of St. Augustine, which Dr. Pusey selected for the commencement of the _Library of the Fathers_, and which, as he observes, has "been translated again and again into almost every European language, and in all loved;" though Luther was of opinion that St. Augustine "wrote nothing to the purpose concerning faith." But then Luther was no great admirer of the Father. St. Jerome, he says, "writes, alas! very coldly;" Chrysostom "digresses from the chief points;" St. Jerome is "very poor;" and in fact, he says, "the more I read the books of the Fathers the more I find myself offended;" while Renan, in his interesting autobiography, compared theology to a Gothic Cathedral, "elle a la grandeur, les vides immenses, et le peu de solidite." Among other devotional works most frequently recommended are Thomas a Kempis' _Imitation of Christ_, Pascal's _Pensees_, Spinoza's _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, Butler's _Analogy of Religion_, Jeremy Taylor's _Holy Living and Dying_, Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, and last, not least, Keble's beautiful _Christian Year_. Aristotle and Plato again stand at the head of another class. The _Politics_ of Aristotle, and Plato's _Dialogues_, if not the whole, at any rate the _Phaedo_, the _Apology_, and the _Republic_, will be of course read by all who wish to know anything of the history of human thought, |
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