1896

“The triumph of Christianity over Paganism was followed by the rise of Free Thought in the Middle Ages, and the return to the primitive faith which characterized the Reformation was succeeded by the reactionary wave of infidelity which rolled over Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Joseph Hocking is the Lutheran Librarian’s favorite Christian novelist. During his lifetime he was widely read and greatly beloved throughout the English speaking world. Most of his books deal in some way with the struggles and conflicts of living as a Christian in the modern world.

Joseph Hocking is the Lutheran Librarian’s favorite Christian novelist. During his lifetime he was widely read and greatly beloved throughout the English speaking world. Most of his books deal in some way with the struggles and conflicts of living as a Christian in the modern world.

Joseph Hocking is the Lutheran Librarian’s favorite Christian novelist. During his lifetime he was widely read and greatly beloved throughout the English speaking world. Most of his books deal in some way with the struggles and conflicts of living as a Christian in the modern world.

“In the Church… influential men (opposed) genuine Lutheranism. They clung ardently to the name, and gloried in their ecclesiastical ancestry; but they held that under that name they could be Calvinists, Zwinglians, or Arminians.

“In throwing these various adventures together, I have followed as nearly as possible the actual course of my journeying from one country to another, so as to form the whole into a sort of continuous narrative, though in one case I jump from Brazil to Texas in order to bring in some relevant incidents which occurred long after the one related in the first part of the Brazilian story.

“They who declared that reason would not allow them to believe that God could once become Incarnate, saw no reason to doubt the manifold Reincarnation of Man. They who complained that they found the straight and level highway of Christianity too difficult a road for them to follow, or that there was no sure foothold therein, were content to lose themselves among the mazes of Superstition, or to flounder and stumble among the stony wastes of Unbelief.