The Inner Life: Its Nature, Relapse, and Recovery

The Inner Life

Its Nature, Relapse, and Recovery

Octavius Winslow

Foreword by Tanner G. Turley

Strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.

—Ephesians 3:16

Reformation Heritage Books

Grand Rapids, Michigan

The Inner Life

© 2023 by Reformation Heritage Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Direct your requests to the publisher at the following addresses:

Reformation Heritage Books

3070 29th St. SE

Grand Rapids, MI 49512

616-977-0889

orders@heritagebooks.org

www.heritagebooks.org

Scripture taken from the King James Version. In the public domain.

Electronic text provided by Grace Gems

Printed in the United States of America

23 24 25 26 27 28/10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Winslow, Octavius, -1878 author. | Turley, Tanner G., other.

Title: The inner life : its nature, relapse, and recovery / Octavius Winslow ; foreword by Tanner G. Turley.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : Reformation Heritage Books, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: An examination of the spiritual life of a Christian and how it grows-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023037700 (print) | LCCN 2023037701 (ebook) | ISBN 9798886860344 (paperback) | ISBN 9798886860351 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Spiritual life--Christianity. | Christian life. | Conflict (Psychology) | Spiritual warfare.

Classification: LCC BV4501.3 .W564 2023 (print) | LCC BV4501.3 (ebook) | DDC 248.4--dc23/eng/20231010

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023037700

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023037701

For additional Reformed literature, request a free book list from Reformation Heritage Books at the above regular or email address.

Contents

Foreword

Preface

1. The Nature and Manifestation of the Inner Life

2. The Inner Life in Its Gradual and Imperceptible Relapse

3. The Inner Life Contrasted with Its Counterfeit

4. The Inner Life in Its Relapsed Influence

5. The Re-quickening of the Inner Life

6. The Penitence and Prayer of the Inner Life

7. The Renewed Anointing of the Inner Life

8. Establishment in the Faith Essential to the Advancement of the Inner Life

9. The Influence of Sanctified Trial upon the Inner Life

10. The Resurrection of Christ in Its Relation to the Inner Life of the Christian

11. Heaven, the Consummation of the Inner Life

Foreword

The apostle Paul dropped to his knees before God the Father and prayed for his friends in Ephesus that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man (Eph. 3:16). This strengthening would result in nothing less than Christ dwelling in their hearts through faith, a deeper comprehension of the incomprehensible love of Jesus, and the filling of all the fullness of God. Paul carried a deep conviction that the only way for them to walk worthy of Jesus was through strengthening their inner life (3:14–4:1).

Octavius Winslow echoed this truth eighteen centuries later in the opening words of his first book, The Inquirer Directed to an Experimental and Practical View of the Atonement. There he said, The religion of the Lord Jesus is valuable only as its power is experienced in the heart. Over the next four decades, he never shifted course. Sermon after sermon and book after book confirmed his unwavering resolve to maintain a laser focus on authentic Christianity. Eminent Holiness, The Man of God, Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul, The Precious Things of God, as well as his outstanding devotionals, Morning Thoughts and Evening Thoughts, all provide excellent examples of his tenacious commitment, but the greatest evidence may be the work before you, The Inner Life.

This book was penned in a time when the quantity of religion was increasing, but its quality was deteriorating. Sadly, our day is marked by the deterioration of both. The Western church is experiencing a significant decline in the quantity and quality of Jesus followers. People are walking out the doors and hardly looking back. Pastors and church leaders are burning out, dropping out, or being taken out by Satan’s schemes and their own sin. The tepid temperature of our missionary zeal results in fewer people experiencing the life Jesus died to bring. Our anemic efforts to make robust disciples only compound the challenges.

What will stem the tide? Clearer strategic thinking? Better leadership development? An increase in effective training of everyday Christians? More dynamic worship services? Less cultural hostility? A biblical vision for faith and work? The mobilization of missionaries to neighborhoods and nations? All of these might help. Most are essential, but none are most important. The greatest need of God’s people from first-century Ephesus to mid-nineteenth-century England, all the way to our technological age is the same.

We need a renewal of spiritual power.

The Inner Life provides a guide to this power, describing the nature, relapse, and recovery of the spiritual life of the believer. Originally delivered as a series of extemporaneous sermons, then tailored for publication, Winslow’s message delivers truth unreservedly and soaked in the grace-drenched cross of Christ. If you desire to live with the conscious power of truth in your soul, to be so intensely glowing with the love of Christ, as to be ever ready to open your lips for God—a well always full, and running over, if you crave that your soul feel more, weep more, love more, pray more and live more, and if your heart burns for a greater anointing in Christ-exalting, soul-awakening, soul-winning, soul-searching, soul-loving ministry, this book is for you.

Prayerfully and humbly receive Winslow’s words. As you do, I am confident the hope of spiritual renewal will move from the distant horizon of tomorrow into the contours of your heart today. Jesus has never been more worthy. Jesus has never been more ready to pour out His love and power. Let’s receive it and return to the love we had at first!

Wilt thou not revive us again:

that thy people may rejoice in thee?

—Psalm 85:6

Tanner Turley

Medford, Massachusetts

Preface

It was the dying observation of Jane Taylor, one of the most amiable and intellectual of women, penned the day preceding her departure: If you knew what thoughts I have now, you would see, as I do, that the whole business of life is preparation for death.¹ In contrast with this weighty sentiment of the dying Christian, we place the solemn testimony of the dying worldling: I have all my days, said he, been getting ready to live, and now I must die! What an affecting declaration is this! And how true of the great mass of our fellow immortals—all planning, and toiling, and preparing to live—how few preparing to die! To place before such the subject of real life, and to awaken in their minds a consideration of its nature, and a sense of its solemnities, is one design of the following pages.

But they address themselves more especially, and at length, to a smaller though by no means limited class: the religious professors of the day. The subject of his work suggested itself to the author’s mind during a visit to the metropolis. His close intercourse at that time with what is called the religious world forced upon his mind the painful conviction that, while religious profession was greatly on the increase (and never more so in the higher classes of society than at the present) vital godliness was in proportion on the decline. While, to speak commercially, the commodity of religion was increasing, its quality was deteriorating. The vast number whose Christian profession was avowed—whose religious character was recognized, whose theological creed was sound, whose conversation was pious, whose sacred observances were rigid, whose benevolence was applauded, whose zeal was admired, who prided themselves upon their eloquent preacher and favorite religious author—but who yet were living in the world and as the world and to the world, deeply and painfully affected him. The question frequently arose in his mind, Where is the salt? Where are the really living souls? Where are those who know what true conversion is? Who are following Christ and are living for God? Where are the possessors of the inner life? Alas, the world has become so like the church and the church so closely resembles the world—the one so religious and the other so carnal—an unskilled eye may be deceived in searching for the essential points of difference. Nor this alone. Even among those in whose souls it would be wrong, no, impossible, to deny the existence of spiritual life, how few are found who really seem for themselves to know it!

On his return to his flock, the author unburdened his mind from the pulpit in his usual extemporary mode of address. The result, in a calmly written and greatly amplified form, is now with lowliness and prayer presented to the public. Deeply sensible as he is of the many imperfections of his performance, he yet does not regret its undertaking. The hours of holy, tranquil thought—stolen from the pillow, abstracted from the attractions of the domestic circle and engagements of a pleasant pastorate—devoted to the preparation of this work have been to his own mind inexpressibly soothing and solemn. May a kindred influence, tenfold in its measure, rest upon the spirit of the reader!

The object of this simple treatise, as its title sufficiently intimates, is to unfold the nature, relapse, and recovery of the spiritual life of the believer. The work may with propriety—and with God’s blessing, profitably—be placed in the hands of the unconverted, to whom much of its contents are particularly and earnestly addressed. However, it chiefly appeals to the conscience of the religious professor and is designed to meet the general character of the prevailing Christianity of the day. But the experienced and matured Christian is not overlooked in the discussion of the subject. The temptations, conflicts, trials, and various fluctuations of feeling through which he passes in his difficult but blessed way to his heavenly rest, together with his encouragements, consolations, and hopes, pass under review in these pages.

To the prayers of the living soul the work is commended. To the blessing of the Holy Spirit of life it is committed. To the glory of the triune God it is dedicated. And should He condescend to own it, to the quickening of any dead soul, to the reviving of spiritual life in any believer, to the confirmation of any wavering, or to the comfort of any tried child of God—to Him shall be all the praise. Amen.

LEAMINGTON,

January 1850

1. The Writings of Jane Taylor (New York: Saxon and Miles, 1846), 267.

Chapter 1

The Nature and Manifestation of the Inner Life

I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

—GALATIANS 2:20

It is impossible for a truly spiritual mind to resist the conviction or close the eye to the fact that inward vital godliness by no means keeps pace with the profession of Christianity which almost universally prevails. A more alarming sign could scarcely appear in the moral history of the world. If the prevalence of a nominal Christianity be one of the predicted and distinct characteristics of the approaching consummation of all things—if it is to be regarded as the precursor of overwhelming judgments, immediately ushering in the coming of the Son of Man—then who can contemplate the religious formalism which so generally exists among professing Christians without a feeling of sadness and the excitement of alarm? We see around us a spectacle of multitudes substituting signs for things, symbols for realities, an external profession of Christ for the indwelling of Christ, the mere semblance of life for life itself. If we were duly affected by this, how should we sigh and cry, sympathizing with man and jealous for the Lord as those who have God’s mark upon their foreheads (Ezek. 9:4).

It seems only proper that in a work called forth by this alarming state of the professing church and designed to lay open that state in some of its scriptural and figurative delineations, we should commence with a consideration of the nature, properties, and actions of the spiritual or inner life of the quickened soul. It is a self-evident truth that the absence of spiritual life is but the existence of spiritual death. There is no link that unites the two conditions. A soul is either living or dead. The artificial representation of life is no more real life than a painted sun is the real sun, or than a corpse under powerful galvanic¹ shocks is a living body. The reader will therefore at once perceive that in entering upon an inquiry into this state of religious formalism it is of the greatest moment that we have a clear and distinct idea of that inward, deep, spiritual life. Apart from that life, a man—with all his intellectual light, orthodox creed, and religious profession—is dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1). I know of no words which more distinctly and beautifully bring out this subject than those of the apostle, in referring to his own experience—I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

The first great truth which the passage suggests is that every true believer in the Lord Jesus is the subject of an inward, spiritual life: I live. It is altogether a new and supernatural existence. The old and the natural state, as we have just affirmed, is a state of death. Death! It is a solemn word! Dead! It is an awful state! And yet how difficult to bring a man to a real belief and conviction of this his condition! And why? Because he is dead. No argument, no reasoning, no persuasion, however profound or affecting, can convince a corpse that it is lifeless. Equally impossible is it to convince the natural man that his soul is spiritually dead, and that before he can be a true expectant of heaven, an heir of glory, he must be born again, and so become the subject of a new and spiritual life. Indignant at the statement, he rejects, spurns, and deprecates the idea. The reason is, that in pressing home upon him the fact, we are met with death in the judgment, with death in the will, with death in the affections, with death in the whole soul. The original sentence under which every individual of the human family lies is thus recorded: In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die; in the Hebrew, Thou shalt die the death (Gen. 2:17). Our parent disobeying this law died and in him, as their federal head, died every son and daughter of Adam. You hath he quickened, who were dead (Eph. 2:1). He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life (1 John 5:12). On another occasion Jesus said, Let the dead bury their dead (Matt. 8:22); that is, let those who are spiritually dead bury those who are naturally dead. What an appalling condition! The spectacle of a dead body is solemn. The idea of natural death is awful. To see the eye that gleamed with bright intelligence fixed and glazed in death; the lips that spoke so kindly and discoursed so profoundly sealed in unbroken silence; the countenance whose every feature was radiant with the light of intellect and love, cold and rigid—how instinctively we shudder at the sight and recoil from the touch! But with all the affecting and humiliating circumstances of our natural dissolution, what, in comparison, is this spectacle of a lifeless form of clay with that of the soul dead in sin? With all its intellectual greatness, splendid genius, powers of thought, rich endowments, varied acquisitions, creative energies, brilliant achievements, religious creed and forms and observances, and its name to live—it is yet spiritually dead. Dead to all that is worthy the name of life, dead to every lofty consideration and feeling, purpose and enterprise, in harmony with its creation, and parallel with its endless being. Dead as to any spiritual understanding of God, knowledge of Christ, transforming power of the Holy Spirit, or experience of those spiritual exercises, sacred feelings, hallowed emotions, and animating hopes which belong to the soul made alive unto God. The question is repeated: What, with all its attendant circumstances, humiliating and affecting, is the spectacle of a lifeless body, in contrast with the spectacle of a lifeless soul? We might almost reply—nothing. The dissolution of the body is not the destruction of the soul. The perishing of the material is not the annihilation of the immaterial. Death is not the end of our being; no, it is not even an interruption of it. It is an event that befalls a man at a certain point of his existence, but it is a change of place and circumstance only, involving the suspension of his immortality—no, not for a moment. How infinitely more momentous, solemn, and appalling, then, is that spiritual state of man which links his future destiny to all the certain horrors of the second death! O that this might be a quickening truth, a startling, an arousing reflection to the unconverted reader! What grand impertinences, what mere non-entities, do all other considerations appear in contrast with this! You may lose and recover again everything else but your soul. This, once lost, is irrecoverably and forever lost. And have you never paused and reflected upon the probability of your losing it? You are at this moment the subject of spiritual death: in the strong language of the Savior you are condemned already; and the last enemy, with the funeral pall of your soul in his hands, stands prepared to enshroud you within its dark folds, at the Word of Him in whom you live, and move, and have [your] being (Acts 17:28). Does not this affect you, alarm you, rouse you? Spirit of God! Who but Thyself can quicken the soul? Who can convince of danger, convict of sin, and lead to Christ but Thee? Speak but the word, and there shall be light. Touch but the soul, and it shall awaken. Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live (Ezek. 37:9).

But with regard to the great truth before us, we again remark that every truly gracious man is a living soul. He is in the possession of an inner, spiritual