Practicing His Presence (The Library of Spiritual Classics, Volume 1)

If you wish to know your Lord in a deeper way, you are invited to join the vast host of Christians who, over three centuries, have turned to this book more than any other--except the Scriptures--in order to begin that journey to the depths of Christ.

Imagine a book that is 300 years old and has never been out of print! Such is the book you hold in your hands. Other than Pilgrim's Progress, there is probably no other piece of Christian literature that has stood the test of the centuries so well. An estimated 22 million copies of the original The Practice of the Presence of God have been printed in the English language alone. In recent years, however, interest in this book has waned as the original English edition became so outdated that it was virtually unreadable. The publishers have now revised and reissued this book under the title Practicing His Presence and the profundity, depth, and beauty of Brother Lawrence's masterpiece lives again!

We have included in this edition, not only the letters of Brother Lawrence--from the 17th century--but also those of Frank Laubauch--from the 20th century--who, like Brother Lawrence before him, wrote a series of letters chronicling his experiences in practicing the presence of Jesus Christ.

Despite his lowly position in life and the priory, Brother Lawrence's character attracted many to him. He had a reputation for experiencing profound peace and visitors came to seek spiritual guidance from him.[9] The wisdom he passed on to them, in conversations and in letters, would later become the basis for the book, The Practice of the Presence of God. The conversations had been conducted and recorded by a notable cleric, the Abbé Joseph de Beaufort, who compiled this work after Brother Lawrence died.

Frank Charles Laubach (September 2, 1884 - June 11, 1970), from Benton, Pennsylvania was a Congregational Christian missionary educated at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University, and a mystic known as "The Apostle to the Illiterates." One of his most widely influential devotional works was a pamphlet entitled "The Game with Minutes." In it, Laubach urged Christians to attempt keeping God in mind for at least one second of every minute of the day. In this way Christians can attempt the attitude of constant prayer spoken of in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians. The pamphlet extolled the virtues of a life lived with unceasing focus on God. Laubach's insight came from his experiments in prayer detailed in a collection of his letters published under the title, Letters by a Modern Mystic.