The Scotsman George Combe (1788 1858) was an energetic and vocal promoter of phrenology, natural philosophy, and secularism, who rose from humble origins to tour widely in Europe and the United States and become a best-selling author. His most famous book, The Constitution of Man, was published in 1828, and had sold approximately 350,000 copies, distributed by over 100 publishers, by 1900. It put forward Combe's version of naturalism, and was hugely influential perhaps more so even than Charles Darwin in changing popular understanding of the place of humanity in the natural order, as subject...

The Scottish scholar James McCosh (1811 94) was a champion of the Free church, a successful and much-published philosophy professor at Belfast for 16 years, and an energetic and innovative President of Princeton University from 1868 to 1888. The Religious Aspect of Evolution was published in 1888, and this second edition from 1890 took account of A. R. Wallace's latest work, Darwinism (1889, also reissued in this series). McCosh, who already in Ireland had developed a 'theory of the universe conditioned by Christian revelation' was one of very few clergymen in America who defended...

An 1854 expedition to West Africa as experienced by the Sierra Leonean clergyman and linguist Samuel Crowther.

The Reverend Henry Venn (1725 1797) was an Anglican clergyman who became a central figure in the English evangelical revival movement of the late eighteenth century. This book, containing a substantial selection of his letters and a biography written by his son John, was edited for publication in London in 1834 by his grandson Henry (who himself became an influential clergyman and missionary). The elder Henry Venn, after studying at Cambridge and being ordained priest, had ministered in parishes including Clapham, Huddersfield and Yelling. He was famous for his preaching, which attracted...

A founding member of the Jesuit order, Francis Xavier (1506 1552) travelled as a missionary to India, Japan and China in the mid-sixteenth century. He is traditionally associated with legends of miraculous works and the conversion of tens of thousands of people. This controversial 1862 biography by the Anglican missionary clergyman Henry Venn (1796 1873) uses Xavier's own words to examine the future saint's character and private thoughts. Xavier's correspondence reveals a sensitive, energetic and occasionally vengeful man who was not averse to employing aggressive means. Containing numerous...

A moving biography of an eighteenth-century missionary to the Native North Americans, compiled from his journals and letters.

David Brainerd (1718 1747) was a colonial American missionary to Native Americans made famous when Jonathan Edwards (1703 1758) posthumously edited his journal and other writings into a popular biographical narrative. Having spent time at Yale University, Brainerd entered the ministry in 1742 and dedicated his life to work amongst native peoples in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey before expiring at the age of 29. This 1902 edition of The Diary and Journal of David Brainerd provided readers with a broader picture of his life and the source material from which Edwards composed his...

David Brainerd (1718 1747) was a colonial American missionary to Native Americans made famous when Jonathan Edwards (1703 1758) posthumously edited his journal and other writings into a popular biographical narrative. Having spent time at Yale University, Brainerd entered the ministry in 1742 and dedicated his life to work amongst native peoples in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey before expiring at the age of 29. This 1902 edition of The Diary and Journal of David Brainerd provided readers with a broader picture of his life and the source material from which Edwards composed his...

James Hudson Taylor (1832 1905), the founder of the large and respected China Inland Mission, wrote the pamphlet China's Spiritual Need and Claims in 1865. It was subsequently published as a book and reprinted in numerous editions. This volume contains the seventh edition, first published in 1887. The work is both a survey of Protestant missionary activity in China since the treaty of Tientsin in 1858 and a recruitment pamphlet that inspired many English men and women to travel to China as missionaries. It provides a wealth of demographic and cultural information about nineteenth-century...

This volume brings together three journals of George Fox (1624 1691) the founder of the Religious Society of Friends. It was edited by Norman Penny and first published in 1925 to mark the tercentenary of Fox's birth. The Short Journal, dictated by Fox during his detention in Lancaster prison (1663 1664), records Fox's missionary wanderings and the persecutions he faced between 1648 and 1663. The Itinerary Journal, compiled by John Field, contains an account of Fox's missionary work, church organisational activities and family life from 1681 to his death in 1691. The Haistwell Diary, written...