Reading these wonderful books brings a sad reminder of the low state of spiritual life in myself and in the church at large. Andrew Murray laments it in his day, Samuel Chadwick in his, Watchman Nee in his own indirect way as he carefully delineates the character of the spiritual life, which is enough to make it clear how few really live that life. And it's no better and most likely much worse in our time. It inspires me to pray for all the churches, as we all should be doing, as well as for revival from my own miserable condition.
I remember hearing a couple of fairly well known Reformed radio personalities saying how wrong all this higher life stuff is. There are many versions of this complaint but I'm remembering particularly their saying how in their younger days they'd "tried" to surrender absolutely to God and couldn't do it -- an allusion to Murray's classic book, Absolute Surrender. They'd concluded from their own failure that such all-out surrender is impossible and went over to the Reformed camp in reaction, where apparently holiness is something a Christian just sort of naturally and slowly acquires over a lifetime. No matter that Murray himself testifies that it is indeed possible and in fact a necessity, and reports that others have too, along with all the others who write in this same vein. But the Reformed branch seems to have entrenched itself behind a doctrine of its impossibility and therefore its non-necessity. The fundamentalist churches also seem to lack an appreciation for such writings but I don't know their reasoning on the subject. So great segments of the Church cut themselves off from the life of God that is so sorely needed.
I left the charismatic movement because there was just too much carnality masquerading as spirituality -- and very likely even the working of evil spirits at times -- and too little concern for spiritual discernment of the source of the phenomena they experienced, and went over to a Reformed church that had recently appeared in town because the preaching was systematic and Biblical and included exhortations to holiness that I also found disregarded in the charismatic environment. But every branch of the Church has its strengths and weaknesses. The charismatic churches are also the only place I ever experienced genuine spiritual life -- genuine spiritual fellowship I should say -- despite all the questionable and outright counterfeit spirituality; and the solid doctrine of the Reformed churches which is so comforting after the confusions of the charismatics also comes at the expense of spiritual life as it tends to dominate the whole life of the church. The charismatics err in the direction of experiential chaos to the point of irresponsibility, but the Reformed are truly in danger of snuffing out the Spirit altogether. The complaint of the charismatics that doctrine is not the essence or center of Christian life has validity, but so does the complaint of the Reformed in response that there is no true spirituality without true doctrine.
However, NONE of the denominations of the Church has anything to boast of at the moment as there hasn't been a genuine revival anywhere that I know of in a long long time so spiritually dead are they all. But revivals have occurred in all the denominations at one time or another, and "higher life" teachers have come out of all of them at one time or another. It always takes someone seeing the desperate lack of spiritual life and putting himself/herself out, you could even say actually taking himself to the altar, to the cross, to die for the church -- that's really what it takes -- and then God comes down. Someone who counts the cost and puts self on the altar to pray for God's intervention in the Church with lengthy wrestling prayer for all its members -- better all the elders of a church, as happened in the revival on the Isle of Lewis, or prayer meetings that attract people from all denominations that happened in New York more than a century ago and brought a huge revival. But it hasn't happened that I know of in quite a while -- anywhere in the West at least despite the fact that it's sorely needed. The revival in Saskatchewan in the 70s that Bill McLeod prayed for so avidly is possibly the last.
Reading in the Higher Life library one enounters over and over, as I say at the start of this post, laments about the condition of the churches. It comes from all denominations. I just happened to read this one by G D Watson in his book White Robes about the dismal condition of the Methodists in his time (the early 20th century):
When a church loses heart holiness, it must try ritualism, or machinery, or lyceums, or concerts, or festivals, or 'sacred dramas,' or oyster suppers, or something as a miserable substitute for primitive power. It has ever been that when the visible Church does not raise healthy children for God, she raises lap-dogs for the devil... Hundreds of Churches of Methodism have not enough holiness to produce revivals and clear, happy conversions; and as a substitute for revival and the Holy Ghost, they feel compelled to go at something. They must raise dainty pets, and spend all their strength on a trained choir or nursing a dainty manuscript minister, or working up little giggling, dissipating Church socials, or little Sunday school dramas, or a soul-starving literary lyceum, or a star lecturing course, or an old folk's concert, or some wax doll arrangement to atone for the Church's lack of purity and power.I've been in churches where there is a lot of this sort of thing, maybe even beautifully done classical Christian music as a performance, but it's still just a performance and the Church itself has no spiritual life. Converts are more like inductees to a social club than born again believers.
God will never accept these little Church poodles as substitutes for holiness and Heaven-born children. The little petty idols being stuck up in some Protestant churches are just as abominable to God as the big idols stuck up in Romanism. [pp 85-6]
But a church doesn't have to go all out in that direction to show its lack of spiritual power. Any dependence on human means is a clue already, drumming up human sympathy for needed financial support being a very common one, instead of relying on God for the support. Is the project even one which He approves? Have they taken the time to find out? If it is, shouldn't He be expected to provide for it? I'm guilty as an individual of this same sort of spiritual failing, not trusting God for provision, not submitting all needs to Him, bowing to His will over my own. I wish I weren't. I know it's a symptom of spiritual weakness and I am making an effort now to overcome -- a big effort. But I do recognize the same symptom everywhere in Christendom, and pray more and more that the Lord will break us all and come down, convict us of our deadness first of all, revive us, empower us, inspire us and lead us. Watson goes on:
You can hear from Methodist pulpits many an innuendo against the old-time sobbing and crying at a mourner's bench, many an apology for modern Church vices, many a cold fling at entire sanctification, yet these men are devoted to the mere Church system, and that passes as a substitute for their personal holiness.Sad. Whatever one thinks of Methodist theology it has to be recognized that there was a time when that denomination was spiritually alive and it's sad to read Watson's description of what it had become in his day, many of them even embarrassed about their previous spiritual vitality. Today it's even worse than that.
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