INTRODUCTION

THIS is in my opinion a most excellent book, and if I mistake not, will be looked upon as one of the most spiritually helpful books of all the long series which we have issued in Lent.

The main contention of it is summed up truly and well at the end of the seventh chapter--" The only obstacle to a better world is the lack of a great many more and a great many better servants of God."

This is brought home in chapter after chapter, illustrated from the writer's long and varied experience as a parish priest, and the whole forms a book so cogent and so interesting that you cannot put it down till you have finished it.

To explain its interest, I must turn against the writer one of his own stories. Two curates were being compared with one another by an old lady in a parish. One had left for some other work, and for this one she had a kindly feeling and said that she was praying for his future work; but of the other, the one who had come, she said that he "had saving experience.”

I believe it is because Canon Peter Green has had saving experience" that every argument tells, and the whole book "finds you." I think that out of the many timely warnings contained in the book, the one most needed to-day is the warning against the idea that "the System" is the bottom of all our social ills, as he tells us

all his young Socialist friends imagine, whereas, as he points out, no change of "System" is necessarily going to alter character; it is the man himself who has to be changed. But I need not quote any more. One only spoils a beautiful view by pointing out the beauties in detail, and my belief is-and I can't say more that any man or woman who reads this book and takes home its many lessons-will be a better man or woman.

A. F. London:

PREFACE

THE aim and motive of this book are, I think, indicated with sufficient clearness by the motto I have prefixed to it. It is indeed a fair and necessary question to ask whether the advance, which we so earnestly desire, in public righteousness, will be attained without a great advance in personal holiness. Ten years ago, writing on the topic of personal religion, I suggested that the tasks before the church were (i) the re-statement of the one Faith; (ii) the reunion of Christendom; (iii) the Conversion of the world to Christ; and (iv) the application of His teaching to social needs. To these tasks we must to-day add two more at least, namely (v) the refounding of civilization, shaken by the war; and (vi) the discovery of a way to international brotherhood. Is our religion adequate to these tasks? Are we good enough? Or is it true that " the children are come to the birth and there is not strength to bring forth?" It is my own deep conviction that a great advance in personal holiness will alone supply the necessary power in which the tasks before the Church will be performed. We shall "receive power," but only "after that the Holy Ghost is come upon us." Hence the line I have followed in this book. Chapter I discusses the futility of all attempts to do good without trying to be good. Chapter II treats of first hand religion as the only sort that has power. The next four chapters discuss the

1 Isaiah xxxvii. 3.

ix

"2

2 Acts i. 8.

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question of the knowledge of God, and the ways in which souls come to that knowledge. The remaining chapters seek to shew how this first hand knowledge of God, this religion firmly based on experience, is what the world needs, and how it may be used in the world's service.

It may well be that some of my readers, anxious to do something to help a suffering and distracted world, longing, as they will say, to "get to work to help others," will be impatient with my insistence on the need for personal holiness, personal religion. If any reader does feel that impatience I can only repeat that this whole book is inspired by nothing else but the conviction that personal holiness is an absolutely necessary preliminary to all effective social service For what the world really wants is not you or me but God. And He can only shine through a sanctified personality, and only work through a surrendered will. When we have perfectly learned that truth no triumphs will be too great for us to achieve.