Evelyn Underhill was a prolific English writer whose works on spirituality still have an immense impact on people 50 years after her death. Mysticism was for her a way of life, a transforming of personality, and a reworking of every aspect of reality.
This paperback consists of three informal talks to English clergy in 1926. Underhill, who was the first woman to give a series of lectures on theology at Oxford, encourages her listeners to deepen and enrich their inner lives through adoration, awe, and service of God. At one point, she urges Christians to keep the soul fit through silence, prayer, and spiritual reading: "They stretch and re-stretch our spiritual muscles; and even in the stuffiest surroundings, can make us take deep breaths of mountain air."
Underhill promises clergy that this emphasis upon a devotional life will lead to increased energy and a lessening of dryness in preaching and teaching. The author's terse and poetic ruminations in Concerning the Inner Life are both bracing and relevant.