Fox, Emmett. The Sermon on the Mount. 1934.

A Believer

You can take the whole dose, or one teaspoon of it, and it is still good for you. It is not necessary to believe in God to understand how being a good person might not be a bad thing. Fox, a Scientific Christian, carefully deconstructs the Sermon on the Mount and the Lord's Prayer. He is supremely meticulous about language, and explains every line in detail. He is also an excellent, persuasive, and exhilaratingly emphatic writer. I am an impressionable reader and true zeal bowls me over in any context that doesn't advocate hatred or violence. I believe in this book more than the publishers at HarperSanFrancisco, who didn't bother to provide a golden anniversary proofreading for the 1989 cheap paperback reprint, nor did they bother with any front or back matter to help contextualize this text so loving that while reading it, knowing nothing about it, I guessed correctly it had been written before the invention of the atomic bomb. It's the first book on the teachings of Christ I've read, I have strayed far from the path of my reading up until now, and yet this is entirely appropriate for me. And if you laugh at me I forgive you, bless you.