The Inner Chamber suggests thoughts of the utmost importance. The daily need of retirement and quiet; the true Spirit of prayer; the Devotional reading of God^s Word; the Fellowship with God for which these are meant and by which alone they bring a blessing; the Spiritual Life which they are meant to strengthen and fit for daily duty in intercourse with the world; the Service for the Kingdom of God in Soul-winning and Intercession—all these truths have their share in making our devotions a source of joy and of strength. In this little book, I have not attempted to take them up systematically, but I hope that the fragments I have given may bring help to some in the cultivation of the hidden life and its intercourse with God.
In this South African country, there are various diseases that affect our orange trees. One of them is popularly known by the name of the root-disease. A tree may still be bearing, and an ordinary observer may not notice anything wrong, while an expert sees the beginning of a slow death. The phylloxera in the vineyards is nothing but a root-disease, and it has been found that there is no radical cure but by taking out the old roots and providing new ones. The old sort of grape is grafted on an American root, and in the course of time you have the same stem and branches and fruit as before, But the roots are New and able to resist the disease. It is in the part of the plant that is hidden from Sight, that the disease comes, and where healing must be sought.
How the Church of Christ, and the spiritual life of thousands of its members, suffers from the root- disease; the neglect of secret intercourse with God. It is the lack of secret prayer, the neglect of the maintenance of that hidden life "Booted in Christ," "rooted and grounded in love," that explains the feebleness of the Christian life to resist the world, and its failure to bring forth fruit abundantly. Nothing can change this but the restoration, in the life of the believer, of the inner chamber to the place which Christ meant it to have. As Christians learn, instead of trusting their own efforts, what it is daily to strike their roots deeper into Christ, and to make the secret personal fellowship with God their chief care, true godliness will flourish. "If the root be holy, so are the branches." If the morning hour be holy to the Lord, the day with its duties will be so too. If the root be healthy, so are the branches.
The most of these chapters have already appeared in The South African Pioneer; it is at the request of some who read them that I have consented to these now being republished. I pray that God may bless them to some of His children in the pursuit of the deeper and more fruitful life, the life hid with Christ in God.
As this book has been published before and had been republished as well, the question is, Why another republishing. This book is trendy among Christians because of its value in content. Even with all the electronic copies online, I was having trouble finding one that was not a scanned copy, and most of them were inferior copies. With all the technologies we have available today I still found that the best way to republish was by hand. After transferring to an ebook format, I then ran it through Grammarly and made a few corrections. This process took some time, but I believe I have an excellent republication to this beautiful work of Andrew Murray
You will find most copies to be just scanned works with no corrections. Hopefully, you will not see that with this release. This republishing also can use the read out loud feature found in most Ereaders.
by Irving W. Risch
