"I Believe" and other essays

Produced by Mark C. Orton, Matthew Wheaton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain mater...

We must set men free from phrases and get them to think. It suits the game of the party politician to pretend that ethics are easily self-evident, and that there is a simple fun...

The novel with a purpose, and especially with a religious purpose, fails only, when it does fail, because the author’s knowledge of the average man in his sins and his temptatio...

“The personal causes of this mischief are fear of pain (_i. e._ failure to see in pain the discipline of God which elevates human nature), hatred of duty, shirking of responsibi...

Such people are not, of course, of a very spiritual life, or very acute intelligence, or they would easily find the answer to such a question for themselves. But very few of us...

I am aware that I am going to say some astonishing things, nor am I, under the sense of a strong conviction, confounding antipathy with duty. My words may fail to penetrate into...

This memorable book is a protest against the charlatanry of the pseudo-scientific school of history. The acts and intentions of people in the past cannot be known better than th...

I do not wish to say whether, in my opinion, Professor Oman’s views of history are generally sound or if they are not. He would not be where he is, I suppose, were he not credib...

As my last essay dealt with the education supplied at Oxford University, it will be well to begin by considering the Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto. Six colleges comprise the f...

I remember, as a young man, going to an ice carnival at Hengler’s Circus with one of the cleverest middle-weight boxers of modern times. He had invited many of his friends of th...

Pigeon-shooting--if that is indeed a sport, which I personally beg leave to doubt--has become no trial of skill and readiness, but an occasion upon which, when the betting is in...

Before the tale began to appear I had several conferences with Lord Northcliffe, then Sir Alfred Harmsworth, the editor of the newspaper. Certain facts were told me; a mass of e...

In the spring of this year I was staying in the South of France with a friend who is a great employer of labour. He employs nearly 16,000 men. He told me that, quite unknown to...

The classes of persons whom the magistrates are directed (by Article 13 of the Law) to send to be confined in a Beggars’ Depôt, are all persons not suffering from incapacity, wh...

As Cowper said, “None but an author knows an author’s cares,” and not the least of them is the number of letters he receives asking for money. There is a rooted idea in the gene...

“As you are not unwilling to receive letters from strangers, perhaps this from a distant land might not be unacceptable to you. I am a missionary and have not read two novels du...

There have been thousands of personal letters from readers about this one book. Dozens of them were from clergymen, from pastors of the Nonconformist and also the Anglican Churc...