Like ancient temples, let in at my top.”
Over against the mystic who glories in the infinite depths of his own soul, the evangelical, with excessive humility, allows not even a spark of native grandeur to the soul and denies that the inner way leads to anything but will-o’-the-wisps. This is a very inept and unnecessary halving of what should be a whole. It spoils religious life, somewhat as the execution of Solomon’s proposal would have spoiled for both mothers the living child that was to be divided. Twenty-five hundred years ago Heraclitus of Ephesus declared that there is “a way up and a way down and both are one.” So, too, there is an outer way and an inner way and both are one. It takes both diverse aspects to express the rich and complete reality, which we mar and mangle when we dichotomize it and glorify our amputated half. There is a fine saying of a medieval mystic: “He who can see the inward in the outward is more spiritual than he who can only see the inward, in the inward.”
This little book on the “Inner Life” does not assume to deal with the whole of the religious life. It recognizes that the outer in the long run is just as essential as the inner. This one inner aspect is selected for emphasis, without any intention of slighting the importance of the other side of the shining shield. Men to-day are so overwhelmingly occupied with objective tasks; they are so busy with the field of outer action, that it is a peculiarly opportune time to speak of the interior world where the issues of life are settled and the tissues of destiny are woven. There will certainly be some readers who will be glad to turn from accounts of trenches lost or won to spend a little time with the less noisy but no less mysterious battle line inside the soul, and from problems of foreign diplomacy to the drama of the inner life.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| Introduction | [v] |
| Chapter I. The Inner Way | [1] |
| Sec. 1. The Momentous Choice | [1] |
| Sec. 2. Making a Life | [9] |
| Sec. 3. The Spirit of the Beatitudes | [14] |
| Sec. 4. The Way of Contagion | [23] |
| Sec. 5. The Second Mile | [30] |
| Chapter II. The Kingdom within the Soul | [39] |
| Sec. 1. Bags that Wax not Old | [39] |
| Sec. 2. Otherism | [46] |
| Sec. 3. Scavengers and the Kingdom | [50] |
| Sec. 4. “The Beyond is Within” | [56] |
| Sec. 5. The Attitude toward the Unseen | [61] |
| Chapter III. Some Prophets of the Inner Way | [70] |
| Sec. 1. The Psalmist’s Way | [70] |
| Sec. 2. The New and Living Way | [77] |
| Sec. 3. An Apostle of the Inner Way | [82] |
| Sec. 4. The Ephesian Gospel | [90] |
| Chapter IV. The Way of Experience | [97] |
| Sec. 1. Waiting on God | [97] |
| Sec. 2. In the Spirit | [105] |
| Sec. 3. The Power of Prayer | [111] |
| Sec. 4. The Mystery of Goodness | [116] |
| Sec. 5. “As One having Authority” | [123] |
| Sec. 6. Seeing Him Who is Invisible | [133] |
| Chapter V. A Fundamental Spiritual Outlook | [138] |
| Chapter VI. What does Religious Experience Tell Us about God | [164] |