In 1733, an earnest 18-year-old Oxford undergraduate was striving to live a holy life. But something was missing. He had a circle of spiritual friends, and one of them passed him a book entitled The Life of God in the Soul of Man. It was a breakthrough. “I never knew,” he wrote, “what true religion was, till God sent me that excellent treatise by the hands of my never-to-be-forgotten friend” (George Whitefield’s Journals, 46–47).

That undergraduate was George Whitefield, and he would go on within a few years to become the leading preacher of a spiritual awakening that spanned both sides of the Atlantic. The friend who passed on this book to him was Charles Wesley, and he would become the great hymnwriter of that same revival. Indeed, almost all the leaders of the early evangelical movement read this book at some point and testified to its importance.

“This little book was there at the very roots of the evangelical revival.”

Somehow this little book was there at the very roots of the evangelical revival. It was like an underground aquifer that allowed life to appear in the soil above. What was it about this book that made such an impact on George Whitefield and so many others?

Henry Scougal, Protestant Mystic

The book was written by a young Scottish minister named Henry Scougal, who died at only 28 years of age. Published anonymously in 1677, it was originally a tender letter of spiritual direction to a female friend, Lady Gilmour, and it retains the warmth and directness of this personal correspondence. When we read it today, it feels like listening in on spiritual counsel.

Though young, Scougal had absorbed the spirituality of past classics like a sponge. He had read Augustine and many of the church fathers, medieval spiritual writers such as Thomas à Kempis, and more recent devotional authors such as Teresa of Avila and Madame Guyon. But somehow, he assimilated all this material such that when he wrote his own book, it was the core truths that came through. He didn’t need to mention any of these authors by name.

In his hands, the teaching of the mystics was neither particularly monastic nor Catholic. Shorn of its complexity, reduced to its essentials, it was the basic teaching of the apostle Paul for all Christians. His message was simple: we are all meant to experience a “union of the soul with God, a real participation in the Divine nature.” Scougal explains by quoting Paul’s letter to the Colossians: “In the apostle’s phrase, ‘it is Christ formed within us’” (44).

What Is True Religion?

A clue to the importance of this book is that Whitefield says it taught him “true religion.” For all his earnestness and discipline, for all his religious observance and sincerity, he had still not discovered the central reality about being a Christian. As he read this book, he was surprised to find that his religious duties were not regarded by Scougal as the essence of religion. Not at all. Whitefield later recalled the experience:

“Alas!” thought I, “if this be not true religion, what is?” God soon showed me; for in reading a few lines further, that “true religion was union of soul with God, and Christ formed within us,” a ray of Divine light was instantaneously darted in upon my soul, and from that moment, but not until then, did I know that I must be a new creature. (George Whitefield’s Journals, 47)

The breakthrough for Whitefield, as for others, was the discovery that union with Christ was the center of the spiritual life. Everything else flowed from this. John Calvin had said something similar at the beginning of book 3 of the Institutes. The work of Christ as our mediator is useless to us until we are united to Christ by the Spirit.

“The essence of Christianity or ‘true religion’ is to have a new vital principle animating the soul.”

Correct doctrine, correct practice, correct morality — all this is fine and good, but it isn’t the thing itself. The essence of Christianity or “true religion” is to have a new vital principle animating the soul. Christianity is not just an idea. “I know not how the nature of religion can be more fully expressed,” wrote Scougal, “than by calling it a Divine life” (44). It is to find God himself taking up residence and living in me. It is all contained in his title: The Life of God in the Soul of Man.

This then was Scougal’s great theme. After clearing the decks of all the mistaken ideas of religion, he focused his attention on this one imperative. He wanted his reader to experience this. “Here, here it is, my dear friend, that we should fix our most serious and solemn thoughts, ‘that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith’” (126).

Without this indwelling presence, a person is no more religious “than a puppet can be called a man” (48). But if Christ himself lives in us by the power of the Holy Spirit, then his very life shines like a candle in the soul. “Nay,” says Scougal, “it is a real participation in his nature, it is a beam of the eternal light, a drop of that infinite ocean of goodness; and they who are endued with it, may be said to have ‘God dwelling in their souls,’ and ‘Christ formed within them’” (49).

Just as our bodily life is characterized by sensation, so also our spiritual life is characterized by faith, “a kind of sense, or feeling persuasion of spiritual things.” And it is not just faith in general but “faith in Jesus Christ” (55). As an active vital principle, this divine life goes to work to make us more like Christ in love to God, charity to our neighbor, purity of heart, and humility of mind.

Excellencies of True Religion

A great spiritual classic not only tells you what ought to be, but it also helps you to desire it. Part of the power of Scougal’s book lies here. In the second part, he paints a compelling picture of the beauty of the divine life: it is what we have really been longing for all our lives, if we only knew it — what in fact we were made for.

He understood as well as any psychologist that human beings have an insatiable desire planted deep in our hearts. The soul “hath in it a raging and unextinguishable thirst, an immaterial kind of fire . . . importunate cravings” (112–13). But he redirects us to see that this most basic desire is fundamentally a longing of the creature for the Creator.

“What,” he asks, “is a little skin-deep beauty, or some small degree of goodness to match or satisfy a passion which was made for God?” Or again, “What an infinite pleasure must it needs be, thus as it were to lose ourselves in him . . . swallowed up in the overcoming sense of his goodness” (74, 78).

Infinite pleasure. I remember as a young person wondering whether following God might mean giving up the pleasures one might otherwise enjoy. A turning point came for me in reading Psalm 16, which concludes, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). In Scougal’s words, “Never doth a Soul know what solid Joy and substantial pleasure it is, till . . . it give itself fully unto the Author of its being, and feel itself to become a hallowed and devoted thing” (78).

Far from missing out on anything, living in union with God promises transcendent joys that are greater than we can imagine. All the streams of desire empty into this ocean.

Practical Guidance

Scougal also offers practical counsel on sustaining life in union with God. All heaven is engaged on our behalf and stands ready to support us. “Why should we think it impossible that true goodness and universal love should ever . . . prevail in our souls?” (96). And there are steps we can take. “We must not lie loitering in the ditch,” he says, “and wait till Omnipotence pulls us thence” (98).

In the first instance, he counsels us that if we desire the divine life in our souls, we can be careful to avoid sin and guard against temptation. We cannot expect to be healed while we are drinking poison. He outlines several practices of self-examination to assist us to a deeper watchfulness over our souls.

He also offers counsel on prayer and contemplation to help us keep our eyes on Christ, and he urges a practice of “consideration.” Just as a spouse might consider the qualities of the beloved, so we might consider God’s perfections. All this serves to increase love. We might also consider with gratitude God’s gifts: “Whatever we find lovely in a friend,” for example, can elevate our affections, for “if there be so much sweetness in a drop, there must be infinitely more in the fountain” (122).

Scougal knows too that in our continued pilgrimage here below, we are often tempted to despair. Yet Christ has sent his Spirit to assist such weak and languishing creatures as we are. He encourages us that where the Spirit has taken hold, where there is the faintest spark of God’s love in the soul, the Spirit will preserve this and “bring it forth into a flame, which many waters shall not quench” (95).

So, when we feel spiritually barren, we may humbly offer up to God a prayer of simple regard. “Here I am, and I present myself to you just as I am. I am here, and I am yours.” Or as Scougal writes, “Let us resign and yield ourselves up unto him a thousand times” (117).

Take Up and Read

Jonathan Edwards began his great treatise on the Religious Affections by saying that there was no question of greater importance to mankind than this: “What is the nature of true religion?” He had read Scougal, and I wonder if he was thinking of this book as he wrote.

Scougal gave what is still one of the best and simplest answers to this question. For any of us still asking today what true religion really is, and how to experience “the life of God in the soul of man,” it is worth turning again to read his little book.

I keep hearing stories about young couples who do not want children.

Many are refusing kids for no better reason than preference (a euphemism for selfishness). Articles are written of lonely grandparent-age adults who “empowered” their kids to chase their career ambitions (and to neglect having children), and now are no grandparents at all. They feel something missing. You can’t read books or play catch or have sleepovers with a new boat. You don’t hang pictures of your country club on the fridge. But that is what their successful children have to offer.

The last name seems close to becoming an endangered species. We live for first names — it is John, just John — as if we came from nothing and have nothing to extend. These couples seem content to be the end of a family tree that branches no farther than them — all their ancestry leading, fortunately for them, to their personal happiness, vacations, and easy retirement. You only live once, you know; why spend it on children? If we want companionship, get a dog.

Now contrast this portrait of living for us and our first names with the alternative (men, pay close attention to your part):

Man rises above time. He can grasp his existence, he can see it in the context of a family that extends far into the past and will extend far into the future. And it is more than a blood relationship. It is also cultural: there is a sense in which he can say, We are the Smiths, and mean to include not only persons but their histories and their way of life. The father is the key to this transcendence. Think. Forget the slogans, the ideology of sexual indifference, and face what is real. A child’s connection with his mother requires no explanation. Body depends upon body. It is the father who requires explanation. (Anthony Esolen, No Apologies, 127)

Living by yourself, for yourself, requires no explanation. Living for money, for fame, for personal gratification requires no explanation. But to birth and guide and nurture immortal souls, to live and build a name and family history that transcends you, to bow as a foundation stone to a new way of living for Christ or to place your stone upon a pile already stacked — especially as a man, Esolen argues — requires explanation.

Generation of First Names

One of the most famous discussions about names shows the difference between living for one’s first or last name. What’s in a name? lovesick Juliet asks. Thinking upon her Romeo, the forbidden son of the rival Montague family, she sighs that the romance should remain a dream because of a last name. If he had another, they could be together. “’Tis but thy name that is my enemy,” she reasons upon her balcony.

What’s Montague? It is not hand, nor foot,Nor arm, nor face, nor any other partBelonging to a man. O, be some other name!What’s in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other word would smell as sweet. (2.2.41–47)

An arm is not a name. A smile is not a name. A man is not a name. A rose, whatever you call it, still smells as sweet, still looks as fair. Call the flower crimsonella, and the thorny stem and red petals remain. In a world of ever-expanding names to keep pace with our so-called ever-evolving self, we are tempted to ask the same question — what’s really in anything but a first name?

Teenage Juliet spoke of last names as arbitrary symbols keeping her from her desire. Reality, to her, remained untouched by swapping one label for another. In one sense, this is true. God, the first namer, could have called the waters “land” and the lands “water,” the moon “sun” and the sun “moon,” the night “day” and the day “night.” Adam, likewise, could have called the tiger “zebra” to no effect on either’s stripes.

“We are Christians, a people who have the Father’s name and Lamb’s name written on our foreheads.”

But her elders knew that more lay in the personal name Montague. For the elder Montagues, history lay in the name — deeds done, and deeds done against. Honor or shame was bound in the name, and bitter enmity too. More than a name lived in Montague; a past did too, ground as sacred as the graves of buried ancestors. To them, that name held something larger and older and deeper than a fleeting teenage infatuation. Montague was a body with different parts, a tree with different branches, something that outlived and outweighed the individual. A family name not to be cheaply sold as Esau’s birthright.

Erased from Earth

The spirit of Western individualism inclines us toward our own balconies, happy to cast lineage — or even biology — aside for personal desire. Each is his own author, his own alpha and omega. Families and their names are mere formalities when roadblocks to personal happiness or self-definition.

But most in the past (as well as many today in the East) did not think this way. A lot was in a name; they valued genealogies. Hear the blessing that God promises Abraham: “I will bless you and make your name great” (Genesis 12:2). Great, that is, not through his life alone, but through the lives of his offspring. Conversely, a chief curse in Israel was to “blot out [one’s] name from under heaven” (Deuteronomy 29:20). We do not know enough to rejoice in the benediction or shiver at the warning. How was a name blotted out? Overhear Saul pleading with David, “Swear to me . . . by the Lord that you will not cut off my offspring after me, and that you will not destroy my name out of my father’s house” (1 Samuel 24:21).

To have your name blotted from heaven usually meant to have your lineage end (especially without a male offspring), leaving no continuance of your memory under heaven. “Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up for himself the pillar that is in the King’s Valley.” Why make this pillar? “For he said, ‘I have no son to keep my name in remembrance’” (2 Samuel 18:18). Declining birth rates tell of a people building pillars in the valley because they don’t prefer sons. Yet to be finally erased from earth — physically in death, and intangibly in name — often resulted, in the Old Testament, from God’s wrath.

In that day, your name was your memory, a thread of immortality, a part of you that lived on earth after death. Solomon used “memory” and “name” interchangeably: “The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot” (Proverbs 10:7). The memory of the righteous man would live on as a blessing to his children, but the name of the wicked would rot and be forgotten. Juliet was right: Montague was not a hand or a foot — flesh and blood were mortal. But a name blessed of God lives forever.

Names in Heaven

The modern story has become no larger than our personal stories. We clamor to write our autobiographies — of our triumphs, oppressions, abuses, sexuality, freedoms. Self-consciousness, self-determinism, and self-expression are inalienable rights. We build to the heavens to make names for ourselves. Family, legacy, past generations, future — what of it? It’s Romeo, just Romeo. We are a people of first names. God, come confuse our speech to cure our madness.

But (and this narrows the point) we are not mere collectivists; we are Christians. Idolatry can be both self-absorbed or family-consumed. A people can refuse the only name given among men by which they must be saved in favor of their first name or their last. Our great hope is not in any name we have, but in the name of Jesus Christ, who, for his great name’s sake, has acted to save us.

We care about our children and future generations because we care about Christ. We care about our last names because we want a household to serve the name of Jesus Christ. What we labor to build is no Babel to either of our names, but a spiritual legacy to his. What is a Smith, a Morse, a Melekin, or a Montague? What is a Johnson or Jerome compared with Jesus? His is the name raised far “above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:21). “On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16). Those in hell live to curse this name (Revelation 16:9); we love his name, bless his name, hallow his name.

Jewels in His Crown

Before his name, all names shrink into obscurity. What is really in a name? Only that which finds its place next to his. He alone bestows upon us that name worth having beyond death; he alone makes his sons into his pillars:

The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. (Revelation 3:12)

We are Christians, a people who have the Father’s name and Lamb’s name written on our foreheads, inscribed by the Spirit of God (Revelation 14:1; 22:4). He names us sons, daughters, citizens, saints, children, conquerors. We name him Lord, Savior, Groom, Master, Friend. We live to bring all glory to his name. We raise families, not simply for our family name, but (we pray) for his. We live and breathe and have our being in relation to his name. It is our sun by day, our North Star by night. Our names shine as diadems set within his crown, as spoils from his victory, as letters written in his book recording his great triumph — “the book of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8).

“Could she have included Jane in the scheme, every part would have been perfect.” So thinks Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. If only her sister were there, if only they could go for walks together, all would be complete — then she would be perfectly happy.

Yet another moment’s reflection teaches her a lesson untraveled by much of humanity:

“But it is fortunate,” thought she, “that I have something to wish for. Were the whole arrangement complete, my disappointment would be certain. But here, my carrying with me one ceaseless source of regret in my sister’s absence, I may reasonably hope to have all my expectations of pleasure realized. A scheme of which every part promises delight can never be successful; and general disappointment is only warded off by the defense of some little particular vexation.” (166)

Did you catch it? This paragraph will be surgical if you let it. Upon reflection, Elizabeth discovers that she doesn’t really want her sister there at all. Why? Because she wants to maintain at least one excuse for why she isn’t finally happy. She knows that if her sister comes — if they go for their walks through the gardens — she will still not possess that happiness she longs for. And what is worse: she will no longer possess any reason for why not. What then?

Then she would have to turn and face it: she does not know what will finally make her happy, what will finally banish the ache. Maybe in the end, all hopes are false. Should she risk touching bottom? No, thinks she, the shallow disappointment of a missing sister must shield from the deeper, tongueless throb silenced of rebuttals.

Chasing Our Tail

What makes Elizabeth’s reasoning so unsettling is that she knows her sister would not fulfill her happiness — yet she prefers deception to reality. Her passions rise in mutiny against reason; she allows them the helm without struggle. She prefers to wish for her sister than to have her sister (and so break the spell). Does that sound familiar (though we are less honest)? Sure, we sigh loudly enough, but have we ever noticed the relief that comes from realizing at least one of our Janes is elsewhere, and so certain disappointment is kept at bay?

Peter Kreeft describes man’s plight this way:

If he experiences winning, he is not happy for long; but if he plays with the hope of winning, he can be happy for a long time by being both diverted (by playing) and deluded (believing he’d be truly happy if he won). Success is the sure spoiler. We are happy only climbing the mountain, not staying peacefully on the summit; only chasing the fox, not catching it; only courting, not marrying; only traveling, not arriving; only fighting wars, not keeping a boring peace. (Christianity for Modern Pagans, 181)

Success is the sure spoiler. And so, the 27-year-old Tom Brady gives an interview with 60 Minutes atop the world’s mountain — three Super Bowl rings, fame, money, power — only to question, Is this it? There has to be more . . . And so, Yo-Yo Ma tells the story of getting halfway through a perfect concert — for which he trained his whole life — only to notice, of all things, his own perfect boredom. And so, the king of Ecclesiastes, who denied his heart no pleasure, writes over and over from within a stupor, “All is vanity.” Elizabeth, with great foresight, knows the yawn found at the world’s mountaintop, as we should too, if only we were brave enough to sit in a silent room and consider it.

Well at the World’s End

I wonder if our love for the chase but not the catch, the distraction but not the dominion, doesn’t also explain some of envy’s saltiness. If jealousy be that “green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on,” have we no pleasure in being consumed?

We have a saying for finding our unmet desires (our Janes) living in another’s lawn: “The grass is always greener on the other side.” But what if we almost prefer it that way? What if our neighbor’s green grass (so pristine from this side of the fence) keeps our hopes of greater happiness watered and fed? Perhaps if we were unfortunate enough to receive an invitation into our neighbor’s yard, we might make the ill-fated discovery that our grass, in fact, is just as green (if not greener). What now?

This is orphaned man: we have not known what we desire, yet we say it is just over there. Boys chasing dragons through the forest. “On whatever plane you take it, it is not what we were looking for,” C.S. Lewis writes. He whispers what we already know over our shoulders:

Lust can be gratified. Another personality can become to us “our America, our New-found-land.” A happy marriage can be achieved. But what has any of the three, or any mixture of the three, to do with that unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of a bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves? (Afterword to The Pilgrim’s Regress, 237)

No idol has yet stayed true to its promises — but who could live in a world without worship? Should the next love, next promotion, next child finally be that ladder who makes a name for itself by placing its top in the heavens? We know (oh, we know). They too will fail to punctuate; our desires will remain running sentences. We thirst but cannot find the Stream, but our thirst proves there is a stream somewhere. “Nature makes nothing in vain” (237). “Nearly there now” — the refrain of our lives. But we’ve been “there” before. The nearer we got, the browner the water. We are lovers of if only.

Walk with Elizabeth

If I were to go on a walk with Elizabeth, I would tell her exactly what she fears to know: The child of her joy is too thin and frail to survive. Her honeyed hope is false, and she is but half-serious about living to be so freely swallowed by a dream. But the irrepressible longing to crown something her mirth’s monarch is not given in vain.

Her God has placed it there.

But she stands evicted from such heights of happiness, gripping a branch below with broken wings because of sin. Justice holds a rifle at her; her life (and joy) hang by a thread sustained by the God she has sought to find happiness without. She has not honored him or given him thanks, and so that “God-shaped hole in her heart” — along with her God-programmed conscience — bears witness (graciously) to her estrangement (Romans 1:21; 2:15). Both denounce her pride and her prejudice, and point her, if she has eyes to see, to the Lord of glory who authored her.

“If only” cannot defend against the inevitable disappointment (and what is much worse) of a life unreconciled to God. Only Christ can, who “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). And this Christ, fully God and fully man, through his sinless life and substitutionary death and subsequent resurrection, received by faith and repentance and evidenced by living obedience, offers to put his joy — supernatural joy — in you. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

Here, and nowhere else, can your joy be made full. One drink from this well, says he, and you shall never thirst again.