Building on critical work in biblical studies, which shows how a historically-bounded heretical tradition called Gnosticism was 'invented', this work focuses on the following stage in which it was "essentialised" into a sui generis, universal category of religion. At the same time, it shows how Gnosticism became a religious self-identifier, with a number of sizable contemporary groups identifying as Gnostics today, drawing on the same discourses. This book provides a history of this problematic category, and its relationship with scholarly and popular discourse on religion in the twentieth century. It uses a critical-historical method to show how and why Gnosis, Gnostic and Gnosticism were taken up by specific groups and individuals - practitioners and scholars - at different times. It shows how ideas about Gnosticism developed in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, drawing from continental phenomenology, Jungian psychology and post-Holocaust theology, to be constructed as a perennial religious current based on special knowledge of the divine in a corrupt world. David G. Robertson challenges how scholars interact with the category Gnosticism, and contributes to our understanding of the complex relationship between primary sources, academics and practitioners in category formation.

The God of All Comfort is an inspiring manual of faith by Hannah Whitall Smith, who was one of the leading authors of Christian advice in the late nineteenth century. Smith, having lived and witnessed a life of supreme faith to God, writes her account of the principles of the Lord and Jesus Christ. Her aim is to inspire Christians who may be doubting their faith, as well as those who need guidance through crises or struggles in life. With a close reading of the Bible, Whitall Smith is able to demonstrate the sublime comfort and serenity which the Lord God can dispense through His love. Blessed with a gift for words and eloquent turns of phrase, Hannah Whitall Smith places both her faith and her affinity for language front and center in this book. For many years this book has been consulted as a sublime manual of true Christian advice, notable for the greathearted way in which lessons on how to live and take joy as a follower of God are dispensed.