On the opening page Mgr. Knox explains what the aim of his book is: ''In this retreat, I am going to do something which is, I suppose, unusual, but which will not, I hope, seem unduly farfetched. I mean to take as my text for each meditation, or rather the subject which acts as a jumping-off point for each meditation, a story from the Old Testament. After all, St. Paul is our authority for saying that these old histories were written for our learning. I don't mean that I want to enter very fully into Old Testament history; certainly I don't mean to examine the historical character of various incidents, or justify the rather unconventional behavior of various characters. I only want to use the Old Testament stories, more or less in their order, as a thread on which we can hang our meditations, as a rough outline of various spiritual situations, which will allow us to fill in the details in correspondence with our own needs. And, in most cases, I shall choose also some incident in the New Testament, and put it side by side with the other, as type and anti-type; between the two, we ought by God's help to be able to see what warning it was, or what encouragement, that the Holy Ghost meant us to draw, when he inspired the sacred authors to write as they did." Inside cover