ccel.org

www.ccel.org - Christian Classics Ethereal Library

Imagine a virtual online library that has hundreds of classic books on Christianity, many written by the early church fathers themselves, including St Augustine. Imagine that you could read them all for free. Well imagine no more, because you have just found the Christian Classics Ethereal Library!

It contains hundreds of public domain works written by hundreds of writers throughout history on multitudes of Christian subjects. I don't believe that there is any other website collection quite like it anywhere. (If I am wrong please share with me other resources like this).

"The mission of the CCEL is to build up the church by making classic Christian writings available and promoting their use." - Taken from their site.

At first navigating the site is a little overwhelming, because there is so much to browse through! However, once you become accustomed to it, you will appreciate how incredibly useful this site is.

Browsing the library

There are options to browse by keywords relevant to subject matter, so that if, for example, you were searching for hope and love, it would then search all the text WITHIN the hundreds of books online to deliver the ones that you need. (Wow!)

You can search by book title or book author.

You can search by Bible Chapter and verse.

Early Church Fathers

You will notice that there is a section called Church Fathers which collects the writings of all the early Church Fathers covering the ante-nicene, nicene and post-nicene eras, covering the writings from the second century AD through to more modern times. I find this section to be very useful. Here you can read the writings of Polycarp, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Anatolius and many more. Special prominence has been placed on the St Augustine volumes which give a valuable insight into the growth and and understanding of the early church.


Bible Study

The section labeled study Bible allows you to find related books specific to each chapter of each book of the Bible. The sections where available offer books relating to background information on the writing and translation, commentaries written about the books, any audio bibles available, expository outlines, studies and notes.

Any of these books can be viewed online for free. You also have the option to download the books in multiple formats: pdf, microsoft reader ebook, palmbook, word document, html or rtf (rich text formatting). You are required to register to download the books in any format other than rtf. Some books may not be free for download in all formats, but you have the option of buying the book in for example pdf format.

(I have myself downloaded books in rtf from here in the past, and although this is good, the files are huge, and can be quite difficult to browse through), I would recommend either viewing them online, or downloading in a superior format, pdf, microsoft reader format etc.

Bible Browser

It has its own bible browser, so you can browse through the Bible on screen, in different translations including the American Standard Version, the Douay-Rheims, the King James Version, Webster's Bible and the New International Version and many more. It also allows you to browse Bibles in multiple languages including Chinese, Spanish, English, Dutch, Italian, Swedish etc.

The real power of this browser however, is that the Bible translation is displayed on the left side of the screen, while on the right side of the screen are options to browse the hundreds of commentaries, writings, notes etc. available in their online library. This is completely free and does not require registration to use. It is very powerful. This is my favourite and most used section of the site.


Store

It has an online store where you can buy plenty of classic books, CDs etc. There is also a very good forum with some really great posts.

If you are curious try this ccel research tool. Type in any Chapter and verse from the Bible that you would be interested in researching, press enter and it will display a list of relevant books to your search, (remember, they are all free to view online), enjoy.

Research a Bible passage: