PREFACE TO FIEST EDITION

Some apology may be deemed necessary for the publication of this book. My excuse is to be found in the following facts.

When these communications first saw the light they attracted a large amount of attention, and brought me much correspondence. Many found in them words which were suitable to their own experience, and more or less helpful to themselves. It seemed that no case is quite singular, and that the record of my own spiritual education was not merely of private application.

Since that time many requests have been made for the publication of these Teachings in a connected form. The compliance, however, did not rest with me, and it is only lately that I have been enabled to present the complete series, duly revised, by the same method as was originally employed in writing them, and arranged in such order as was possible with so disconnected a mass. For these are but specimens taken from a great bulk, and from them are excluded some of the most striking by reason of their purely personal application.

They are now strung together on a thread that is strong enough, perhaps, to hold them together in some sort of relation. But no attempt of mine can even faintly reproduce their force and coherence when originally given. They must go forth, a curious record of an educational influence brought to bear from without and unsought on a, mind that endeavoured strenuously to sift and probe what was said. They pretend to no dogmatic authority, to no literary completeness. They will be to each reader only what he makes them.

(M.A. OXON.).