Every true Christian longs to be closer in their relationship to Jesus Christ, and obtain a more intimate communion with God. This is the point of this puritan devotional. Herle has taken the role of a preacher, and presented the preaching of the Gospel, particularly the passion and death of Christ, in a devotional manner. What is a devotional? A devotional is akin to the meditative aspects of a sermon (direct application to the self) and how the text launches the reader into their own meditations (how it applies to “me” personally) as directly applied to the soul. Devotionals, like this one, do this step by step, one day at a time. Each chapter is a respective day’s meditation. In this work, there are 41 devotionals on the passion and death of Christ, with a concluding meditation on the resurrection; that Christ is a dying and rising Savior. In addition, Herle thought it important to add into each devotional a kind of ending prayer. Each day there are two or three prayers linked to the devotionals that allow you to become more thoughtful about these important biblical points as they relate to what happened to Jesus, what he did for his people, and how they can be prayed back to him for the soul’s edification and benefit. The goal in this devotional is to meditate and consider the passion of the Lord Jesus (from the Garden of Gethsemane to his death at Golgotha), and then consider what happened on the cross as he is nailed there dying for sinners. These devotionals work themselves out daily. Readers would draw the most virtue from this work, and from Jesus Christ, if they deal with one chapter each day for 41 days. But they are only as helpful as they are thoughtful and dedicated about considering them. Devotionals are not about simply flexing one’s theological muscles each day. It is primarily to gain the real blessing of the Spirit, further conformity to the image of Jesus Christ, and a deeper fellowship with the Father as you come to understand the passion of Christ, and his death on the cross in redeeming sinners.

For many Christians in America, becoming filled with Christ first requires being empty of themselves—a quality often overlooked in religious histories. In Emptiness, John Corrigan highlights for the first time the various ways that American Christianity has systematically promoted the cultivation of this feeling. Corrigan examines different kinds of emptiness essential to American Christianity, such as the emptiness of deep longing, the emptying of the body through fasting or weeping, the emptiness of the wilderness, and the emptiness of historical time itself. He argues, furthermore, that emptiness is closely connected to the ways Christian groups differentiate themselves: many groups foster a sense of belonging not through affirmation, but rather avowal of what they and their doctrines are not. Through emptiness, American Christians are able to assert their identities as members of a religious community. Drawing much-needed attention to a crucial aspect of American Christianity, Emptiness expands our understanding of historical and contemporary Christian practices.