Tozer concludes his marvelous little introduction to the attributes of God, The Knowledge of the Holy, with a chapter titled “The Open Secret.” Below are the opening three paragraphs.

Notice particularly as you read how he declares that the need of the church to know God must begin with the individual. Do you wish to see reformation and revival in the church? Begin by knowing God more yourself.

Then viewed from the perspective of eternity, the most critical need of this hour may well be that Church should be brought back from her long Babylon Captivity and the name of God be glorified in her again as of old. Yet we must not think of the Church as an anonymous body, a mystical religious abstraction. We Christians are the Church and whatever we do is what he Church is doing. The matter, therefore, is for each of us a personal one. Any forward step in the Church must begin with the individual.

What can we plain Christians do to bring back the departed glory? Is there some secret we may learn? Is there a formula for personal revival we can apply to the present situation, to our own situation? The answer to these questions is yes.

Yet the answer may easily disappoint some persons, for it is anything but profound. I bring no esoteric cryptogram, no mystic code to be painfully deciphered. I appeal to no hidden law of the unconscious, no occult knowledge meant only for the few. The secret is an open one which the wayfaring man may read. It is simply the old and ever-new counsel: Acquaint thyself with God. The real lost power the Church must be to see heaven opened and have a transtorming vision of God.

Pp. 195-196