The more abundant life; Lenten readings, selected chiefly from unpublished manuscripts of the Rev. Phillips Brooks ...

Preface

The observance of Lent as a season of spiritual awakening and refreshment, is steadily growing in favor with the Christian world. This crowded and complex modern life really demands a yearly period of comparative quietude, wherein the life of the soul — too often thrust aside and starved in the ordinary rush of business or pleasure — may come to the front, to be fostered and fed, and strengthened for whatever of trial or sorrow it must encounter as its days go on. Bishop Phillips Brooks, by largeness of sympathy and fineness of insight, is well fitted to guide us into this quiet, penitential season. No one is less open than he to the charge of formalism, yet no one has made a more earnest plea for the due observance of Lent than that which is chosen for the Ash- Wednesday Reading in this book. It is no narrow asceticism to which he invites us, but a " more abundant life," not of the flesh but of the spirit, to be lived in loving dependence upon the Saviour, in loving commemoration of the suffering and death

IV PREFACE.

which He endured in order that all who believe on Him might have life.

The compilation, chiefly from unpublished manuscripts, has been a labor of love. I humbly hope that it may help some of us to find or keep the " way of life " through earthly Lents to the heavenly Easter.

W. M. L. Jay."