Excerpts from
Living Biographies of Religious Leaders
(Fully Illustrated eBook Edition)
by Henry and Dana Lee Thomas
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Description
This superbly written and absorbing book
presents the lives of twenty great founders and leading advocates of
the world's foremost religions. Here are the historical facts and
legends associated with these forceful personalities who have inspired
and influenced humankind through the centuries.
The Thomases, who have written collaborate biographies on famous
philosophers and composers here tell us their view of 20 influential
religious leaders. The well known, such as Moses, Jesus, Buddha, and
Mohammed, are here, as well as the not-so-well known, such as
Swedenborg, Brigham Young, and Mary Baker Eddy. The authors seem to
imply the existence of a higher being and see in the religious impulse
a common spring for all faiths.
In the telling of these vivid and fascinating life stories,
the authors have also simply and clearly outlined the principal
teachings of each of the great religions. The book will give greater
significance to the reader's own faith and a better understanding of
the faith of others.
The great religious leaders whose lives and tenets are
presented here are: Jesus Christ, Moses, Isaiah, Zoroaster, Buddha,
Confucius, John the Baptist, Paul, Mohammad, Francis of Assisi, John
Huss, Luther, Loyola, Calvin, George Fox, Swedenborg, Wesley, Brigham
Young, Mary Baker Eddy, and Gandhi.
Introduction
THE GREAT RELIGIONS are upward paths to God. Not to
different Gods, but
to the selfsame God under different names. In the study of the supreme
religious leaders of the world it is heartening to note how many are
the points on which they agree, how few the points on which they
differ. However they may vary in the prescription of their services,
they are all alike in their devotion to service. "So many ways that
wind and wind" to the simple creed of being kind. It is of the utmost
significance that the founders of all the great religions, drawing
their inspiration obviously from a single source of light, have based
their philosophy upon an identical foundation of faith and hope and
love.
Faith. All
the
religious
leaders, however separated by time and space, have arrived at the same
conviction that there is a divine purpose in life. They believe in the
justice of God and in the goodness of man. With all his faults, every
man "carries heaven in his heart." He is born with a definite
instinct—an instinct which the prophet endeavors to translate into a
dynamic urge—to make himself useful to his fellowmen. For every living
creature is an essential note in the universal symphony of life. And
this symphony is created and directed by an all-purposeful and
all-merciful design.
Hope. In this
purposeful and
merciful design of God—agree the prophets—the individual human soul is
embarked upon a divine journey. The earth is the borderland of the
heavens. Our present life is a transition from a dead past to a
deathless future. "Man is born upon earth in order that he may become
an angel in heaven." All suffering is but a learning for future
happiness. And this future happiness is reserved for each and every one
of us. This is the good news—the prophets insist that this is the true
news—that all the great religions bring to mankind. All the prophets
alike subscribe to this hope that "good shall fall at last—far off—at
last, to all."
Love. The
motif that
binds the
symphony of faith into a unit of hope is love. "Where love is, there
God is." All the great religions agree that love—call it sympathy or
friendship, if you prefer—is the joyous call of comrade to comrade upon
man's universal journey to the divine. All men are brothers, because
God is the Father of Love. It is as simple as all that—and as profound.
For love is light; light is wisdom; wisdom is power; power is life;
life is beauty; beauty is harmony; harmony is love. And this
love-in-all-things and all-things-in-love is God.
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in Adobe
PDF eBook or printed form for $9.95 (+ printing charge)
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