unprecedented expansion of opportunity and responsibility of our generation. These studies and spiritual exercises in helping men and women to form that most transforming, most energizing, and most highly productive habit-the habit of Christlike prayer-will do much to overcome this danger. JOHN R. MOTT. GOD'S CARE FOR THE INDIVIDUAL.. IV. PRAYER AND THE GOODNESS OF GOD.. V. HINDRANCES AND DIFFICULTIES.. PREFACE This little book has been written in the hope that it may help to clarify a subject which is puzzling many minds. Prayer is the soul of religion, and failure there is not a superficial lack for the supply of which the spiritual life leisurely can wait. Failure in prayer is the loss of religion itself in its inward and dynamic aspect of fellowship with the Eternal. Only a theoretical deity is left to any man who has ceased to commune with God, and a theoretical deity saves no man from sin and disheartenment and fills no life with a sense of divine commission. Such vital consequences require a living God who actually deals with men. In endeavoring to clear away the difficulties that hamper fellowship with this living God, the book has used the Scripture as the basis of its thought. But the passages of Scripture quoted are not employed as proof texts to establish an opinion; they are uniformly used as descriptions of an experience which men have actually had with God. In a study such as this, the Bible is the invaluable laboratory manual which records all phases of man's life with God and God's dealing with man. A debt of gratitude is due to many books and many friends consulted by the author. In particular, Professor George Albert Coe, Ph.D., of the Union Theological Seminary, New York City, and Mr. Frederick M. Harris, of Association Press, have given generously of their time and counsel. Each chapter is divided into three sections: Daily Readings, Comment for the Week, and Suggestions for Thought and Discussion. This arrangement for daily devotional reading -"The Morning Watch," for intensive study, and for study group discussion, has met such wide acceptance in my previous book that it has been continued here. Special acknowledgment is gladly made to the following: to the Pilgrim Press for permission to use selections from Dr. Rauschenbusch's "Prayers of the Social Awakening"; to E, P. Dutton & Company for permission to use prayers from "A Chain of Prayers Across the Ages"; to the Rev. Samuel McComb and the publishers for permission to draw upon "A Book of Prayer," Copyright, 1912, Dodd, Mead & Company; to George W. Jacobs & Company for permission to make quotations from "The Communion of Prayer"; to Mrs. Mary W. Tileston for the use of "Prayers Ancient and Modern"; to Fleming H. Revell for permission to quote from Henry Ward Beecher's "Book of Public Prayer"; and to the author and publishers of W. E. Orchard's "The Temple," E. P. Dutton & Company. June 1, 1915 H. E. F. |