TGS Publishing

A rare look and study into little known Christian manuscripts outside of the 'established' Greek and Latin.

There is undeniably a mystic side of Christianity once you throw off the chains of closed minded fundamentalism.

In ransacking old court records, newspapers, diaries and letters for the historic foundation of the books which I have written on colonial history, I have found and noted much of interest that has not been used or referred to in any of those books. An accumulation of notes on old-time laws, punishments and penalties has evoked this volume. The subject is not a pleasant one, though it often has a humorous element; but a punishment that is obsolete gains an interest and dignity from antiquity and its history becomes endurable because it has a past only and no future. That men were pilloried and women ducked by our law-abiding forbears rouses a thrill of hot indignation which dies down into a dull ember of curiosity when we reflect that they will never be pilloried or ducked again.

Phrenology is a system of Mental Philosophy. It enquires into the quality and condition of the mind, estimating the faculties, sentiments, and propensities of the individual, without being deceived by personal esteem or the voice of partial praise; for as it too frequently occurs that minds of the highest order are more or less under the influence of self love, or a desire for the admiration of others, so are they blinded to their own weaknesses and in some measure rendered incapable of acknowledging their faults even to themselves.

THE Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes is one of the prodigies of literature. The boldness and perverse ingenuity with which its author, from a long array of irrelevant scripture texts, seeks to construct an impossible theory of the universe can scarcely fail to astonish everyone who reads it. It made its appearance at that period in the world's history, when Christendom, fast losing the light of Greek learning and culture, was soon to be shrouded in the long night of mediaeval ignorance and barbarism.

A kind of mysterious veil hangs over the manner in which spiritual needs were satisfied during the older civilisations by those who sought a deeper religious life and fuller knowledge than the popular religions offered. If we inquire how these needs were satisfied, we find ourselves led into the dim twilight of the mysteries, and the individual seeking them disappears for a time from our observation.