The author, D.E. Hoste, was one of the "Cambridge Seven" who went to China in 1885. In 1900 he succeeded Hudson Taylor as the General Director of the China Inland Mission. This responsibility he carried for thirty-five years.
He learned deep secrets as he went on doing the will of his Master, and some of those secrets were divulged in the letters and articles he wrote for the benefit of fellow missionaries of whom he had been entrusted with the oversight. From these writings, and a few of his addresses, have been culled the author's comments on some of the vital principles governing our relationship to God and our fellow-men.