In sending forth this book on Prayer a word of explanation is due. The chapters were written for Joyful News, and appeared as devotional meditations during Lent. That explains everything except why they are now published in book form, and that is explained by the importunity and persistence of those to whom they were made a blessing. They were never intended for a book. They were written for the sole purpose of helping Joyful News readers in the Life and Ministry of Prayer.
The Joyful News Mission was born of the prayers of Thomas and Mary Champness fifty years ago, as they prayed one morning between the hours of four and five. It has lived and worked by Prayer ever since, and is itself a witness to the teaching of this book concerning the power of Prayer. The relation of Editor and readers has always been intensely personal and affectionately intimate. That explains the homely and practical intimacy of the articles. They were not written for critics nor for scholars, but for plain people who are deeply religious and sincerely simple in their trust. Hundreds of these readers wrote me grateful letters, and begged that the articles should be put into a book. In the glow of their appreciation I promised that they should, and then became shy of my promise. If they had been written for a book the approach and treatment would have been different, but they might have lost the artlessness of a simple purpose. They are sent forth in the form in which it pleased God to bless them. No one can be more conscious of their limitations than myself. Of one thing I am confident; I have written out of an honest heart, that has sought above all things to be effectual in the communion and ministry of Prayer, and to which there has come no greater joy than the fellowship of the inner sanctuary.
I have no knowledge of the sources to which I have been indebted. I have nothing that I have not received, but I have kept no commonplace book, and have quoted sparingly. For more than fifty years I have read in every school of Prayer, and especially in the devotional literature of the Mystics and the Discipline of Religious Orders; but I have written out of the experience of my own prayer life, in the hope that what has helped me may be helpful to others.
I am deeply indebted to my colleague, the Rev. J. I. Brice, without whose persistent patience and enthusiastic toil the book would never have been published.
