The Hidden Life: White Tree Publishing Edition

By JR Miller

J R Miller writes that the dragonfly is born at the bottom of the pond, and for a time lives there in the darkness and mud. It does not know of anything better ‒ that there is a higher sphere where insects and other creatures have wings and fly in glorious freedom in the sunny air.
But one day there comes a wondrous change. This dragonfly of the darkness and the mud now breathes heaven’s sweet air. It has wings, and the lovely creature soars aloft. It is dead to its old life in the ooze, and lives now in the brightness and the fragrance of the fields and gardens. This is a picture of the new life in Jesus to which human souls may rise.
The chapters in this short book have their message to some who are striving to live near the heart of Jesus. It is the hidden life that makes the character. What we are in the depths of our being, where no human eye can penetrate, we are actually as God sees us. This inner life will ultimately work its way through to the surface, transforming the character into its own quality. Nothing can be more important, therefore, than that the hidden life be true, pure, beautiful, and Christlike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: White Tree Publishing
• Release date: Mar 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781913950224

Book preview

About the Book

J R Miller writes that the dragonfly is born at the bottom of the pond, and for a time lives there in the darkness and mud. It does not know of anything better ‒ that there is a higher sphere where insects and other creatures have wings and fly in glorious freedom in the sunny air.

But one day there comes a wondrous change. This dragonfly of the darkness and the mud now breathes heaven’s sweet air. It has wings, and the lovely creature soars aloft. It is dead to its old life in the ooze, and lives now in the brightness and the fragrance of the fields and gardens. This is a picture of the new life in Jesus to which human souls may rise.

The chapters in this short book have their message to some who are striving to live near the heart of Jesus. It is the hidden life that makes the character. What we are in the depths of our being, where no human eye can penetrate, we are actually as God sees us. This inner life will ultimately work its way through to the surface, transforming the character into its own quality. Nothing can be more important, therefore, than that the hidden life be true, pure, beautiful, and Christlike.

The Hidden Life

JR Miller

(1840-1912)

eBook ISBN: 978-1-913950-22-4

Published by

White Tree Publishing

Bristol

UNITED KINGDOM

More books on www.whitetreepublishing.com

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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this revised edition.

Cover image by miniformat65 from Pixabay

Contents

Cover

About the Book

About the Author

White Tree Publishing Introduction

Author’s Introduction

Chapter 1: The Hidden Life

Chapter 2: The Outer and Inner Life

Chapter 3: Satisfaction ‒ not Repression

Chapter4: Comfort in Christ's Knowledge of Us

Chapter 5: A Condition of Divine Blessing

Chapter 6: Secrets of Contentment

Chapter 7: Our Unanswered Prayers

Chapter 8: For the People who fail

Chapter 9: The Sin of not Praying for Others

Chapter10: On Growing Old Successfully

About White Tree Publishing

More Books by JR Miller

Author Biography

James Russell Miller was an amazingly prolific Christian author. In addition to having the post of Editorial Superintendent of the Presbyterian Board of Publication, he was the pastor of several Presbyterian churches in Pennsylvania and Illinois during his working life. He was born on March 20, 1840 near Frankfort Springs, Pennsylvania. His parents had a total of ten children, but his older sister died before he was born. When James was about fourteen years old, his father moved to a farm near Calcutta, Ohio. In the new home James was as popular among his schoolmates as he had been in his Pennsylvania home.

We can see when reading about James Miller’s early family life, how it is that he was able to write with great understanding and sympathy about the needs of individual Christians. His biographer, John T. Faris, (The Life of Dr. J. R. Miller: Jesus and I Are Friends 1912) tells us that, The young people of the neighborhood delighted to gather at the Miller [James’s parents] fireside to enjoy one of the evenings of good fellowship for which the household was noted.

Faris also tells us that family prayers in Miller’s family home, when he was young, were given absolute priority over everything else. There was to be no reading of a single Bible verse and a brief prayer!

Miller married Louise King in 1870. They had three children. He died in Philadelphia at the age of seventy-two in July 1912, having been used by God to bring a great blessing to many thousands through his various pastorates, and to countless readers through more than thirty Christian periodicals, and through the sale of more than two million copies of his books in his lifetime.

White Tree Publishing is publishing several eBook editions of Miller’s titles, as seen at the end of this book. Please also see our website for updates.

White Tree Publishing Introduction

J R Miller is one of our most popular authors. His books give helpful and challenging thoughts for living a Christian life of genuine, unforced gladness and power. Some words have been updated where they have either fallen out of use today, or changed their meaning. In all his books, Miller uses the name Christ far more often than he uses that of Jesus. Readers nowadays generally prefer to think of God’s Son as Jesus rather than by the more formal title of Christ, which means the Messiah or Anointed One. While sometimes keeping the name Christ in this book, we have sometimes made changes to that of Jesus, helping to make God’s Son more personal and immediate to us today. Miller’s teaching and doctrine are unchanged.

As always with our Christian non-fiction books, we have inserted references to Bible quotes in brackets where these are missing in the original. It may be that many authors thought they were writing to readers who were so familiar with the Bible that references were unnecessary, but we believe it is important for all readers to be able to check the words and context in their own Bibles. The version used here by Miller is the American Standard Version (ASV).

Author’s Introduction

The chapters in this little book have their message to some who are striving to live near the heart of Jesus. It is the hidden life that makes the character. What we are in the depths of our being, where no human eye can penetrate, we are actually as God sees us. This inner life will ultimately work its way through to the surface, transforming the character into its own quality. Nothing can be more important, therefore, than that the hidden life be true, pure, beautiful, and Christlike.

J. R. M.

Philadelphia.

Chapter 1

The Hidden Life

In a sense, all life is hidden. The blood courses through the veins as the heart keeps throbbing, throbbing, day and night. You can lay your finger on your wrist and feel the pulsings. The lungs also continue breathing, inhaling, exhaling, without pause, from infancy’s first gasp until at last watching friends, say, He’s gone!

Pulsings, breathings ‒ yes, but have you found the life? What is it that keeps the heart throbbing and the lungs respiring? Life! you say. Yes, but what is life?

Take the mind. It is very active. One man thinks, and writes beautiful poems or charming stories. Another thinks, and puts marvelous visions on canvas, or throws great bridges over rivers, or erects a noble cathedral. But who ever saw the processes of thought? Mental life is hidden.

Take heart-life ‒