The Pursuit of God

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The Pursuit of God

able to slowly learn to trust living Christians and became an active member in his church. 26 Visiting used bookstores is one way to find spiritual classics. This was Tozer’s preferred method. But there is also much wisdom in starting with spiritual classics recommended by others. One can ask friends about their favorite classics and read and discuss those. Two other helpful places to begin are anthologies and collections. Anthologies are short readings from a collection of spiritual classics. These give you a taste of what they are like. Two excellent ones to begin with are Devotional Classics and Spiritual Classics , both edited by Richard Foster. Broader and more comprehensive are the anthologies by John Tyson, Invitation to Christian Spirituality , and Bernard McGinn, The Essentials of Christian Mysticism . Collections, or series, of spiritual classics are books that have been selected by a group of editors who want to recommend a particular set of spiritual classics. Classics of Western Spirituality is a well-known series published by a Roman Catholic publishing house. Popular Patristics is a helpful series for reading spiritual classics especially important to Orthodox Christians. The Puritan Paperbacks series is a helpful place to begin exploring Puritan spiritual classics. This book is part of the Sacred Roots Spiritual Classics, a series especially aimed at providing recommendations for global Christians interested in reading spiritual classics from an evangelical perspective (evangelical

26 Eugene H. Peterson, Take and Read: Spiritual Reading: An Annotated List (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), xi–xii.