he Church. Yet I wonder if there was ever a time when true
spiritual worship was at a lower ebb. To great sections of the Church
the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come
that strange and foreign thing called the "program." This word has been
borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of
public service which now passes for worship among us.

Sound Bible exposition is an imperative _must_ in the Church of the
Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any
strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such
way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment
whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God
Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal
experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible
is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and
satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may
delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the
very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.

This book is a modest attempt to aid God's hungry children so to find
Him. Nothing here is new except in the sense that it is a discovery
which my own heart has made of spiritual realities most delightful and
wonderful to me. Others before me have gone much farther into these holy
mysteries than I have done, but if my fire is not large it is yet real,
and there may be those who can light their candle at its flame.

A. W. Tozer Chicago, Ill. June 16, 1948

I

_Following Hard after God_

My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth
me.--Psa. 63:8

Christian theology teaches the doctrine of prevenient grace, which
briefly stated means this, that before a man can seek God, God must
first have sought the man.

Before a sinful man can think a right thought of God, there must have
been a work of enlightenment done within him; imperfect it may be, but a
true work nonetheless, and the secret cause of all desiring and seeking
and praying which may follow.

We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within
us that spurs us to the pursuit. "No man can come to me," said our Lord,
"except the Father which hath sent me draw him," and it is by this very
prevenient _drawing_ that God takes from us every vestige of credit for
the act of coming. The imp