The Salvation Army, contrary to what has often been thought by surface observers, has owed its existence, its strength, and its success chiefly to our careful attention to the profoundest questions of the soul. And still, as always, we wish to urge upon all the study of those great practical truths, without the proclamation of which our work for men would cease to have any abiding value. We glory in the knowledge of Christ as a perfect Saviour just as much for this, our own time, as for any past generation, or for any generation yet to come. The pretence that this age has reached some superior development, whether mental or moral, for which a new kind of Saviour is needed, seems to us absurd. And we do not believe it can long endure where Christ is really known. To the most thoughtful, therefore, as well as to those who have the least time for thought, I earnestly commend the words of devout and practical men upon those great questions, which I hope to see reproduced in the series of which the present volume is the first.