by "Brother Roberts"

"The deadness which periodically afflicts the believer is never total but always partial. It is, however, a serious disease of the soul and weakens him in every way. He prays still; but his prayers are languid and formal. He goes through the motions of all spiritual duty; but he is uneasily aware that all is not well with himself. He feels like a man in a dream or in a daze. A film of worldliness has somehow coated over every faculty of his heart and mind. He tries to shake off his lethargy but finds it alamingly difficult to do so. He no longer lives consciously upon the life that is in Christ but goes through the routine of service to God more because he ought to do it than because he wants to.

One lesson we may learn from it is that our souls, being clogged with corruption, are constantly deceiving us into a state of formalism and hypocrisy. One day we seek Christ with all our hearts and find him. But then we imperceptibly decline in earnestness. We cease to pant after God. We do not pursue him till we find him and get his felt presence. Next we grow accustomed to living at a distance from him. When months, perhaps, have gone by we become guiltily conscious that something has gone wrong with our relationship with God. The sun of righteousness does not shine upon our hearts. A damp mist or fog has covered the landscape of the soul and God is enjoyed only in theory but not as a present reality. All this is a sure sign that we have unwittingly drifted into formalism. We have lost our ardour and are following afar off.

A time of spiritual death is not a thing to be taken lightly by us as Christians. When the soul sleeps the owls of the night fly abroad. Temptations flit across the believer's life with sevenfold mischief. It is the harvest time of the devil when we follow Christ from afar. Now Satan sees the hour he has long waited for in which we sleep on the lap of carelessness. He will strike when the iron is hot. He will, if he can, approach us at that hour with the shears to cut off our locks of consecration and render us a blow which we may never recover from all our life.

When we feel deadness of heart, we are to look for the remedy only by repentance. Repentance ought to be a believer's daily and hourly companion. Brokenness of heart and tenderness of spirit should be the hallmark of our whole character. Every emotion we have needs to be sweetened and purged with this spirit of penitence. But, though this is true as a general rule of life, there is a place for special repentance in our experience when we find ourselves spiritually dead. It is in repentance that our deliverance lies.

We make no spiritual progress apart from repentance. When we come to our Bibles and to good books, or else to prayer and preaching it will be found true that we get good and feel God's blessing in proportion as we handle these means of grace with tenderness of heart and with self-abasement. It is not the having of spiritual privileges which yields the advantage or confers the blessing upon us. It is the having of a humble heart and an exercised spirit as we handle the things of God."