The Epistles and Gospels for each Sunday in the year represent a sequence of thought which has been pursued in the worship of the Christian Community from almost its earliest days. The stream of teaching embodied in them is part of that fundamental inheritance of Christians which is common to all the Churches, and which writers of every Communion, even outside the Christian pale, have developed and illustrated.

It is the object of this little book to detach and emphasize some cardinal points of Christian teaching (not always the thought most plainly obvious) thus associated with each Sunday and Holy-day; and to present it in its different aspects for daily meditation throughout the week, illuminated and enforced by cognate testimony drawn from the minds of those who, from age to age, have seemed to catch most truly the Heavenly Vision,—to hear most clearly the Divine Voices,—to apprehend in fullest measure the realities of God's Purpose amongst men. . .

. . . This little book has owed some of the noblest testimonies to Christian thought to writers of other Communions than my own. I should be glad if it could repay the debt by being found useful in its turn beyond the limits of the Church of England. Even to such as do not share our own lifelong associations with the progress of the Church's year, a Golden Treasury of great thoughts and aspirations culled from ancient and modern, from religious and secular writers, may be helpful.

For, when we penetrate through the vesture of doctrine and dogma to the Living Spirit within, have not "all spiritual influences, however antagonistic they may appear, more in common with each other than they have with the temper of the world"? (Jowett)

From the Preface by Edith Lyttelton Gell