ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE, GREENWICH, JULY 25TH, 1893

ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE, GREENWICH, JULY 25TH, 1893

My Dear Brother, — I am glad to reply to your letter and to give you as clearly as I am able the thought which ‘inner man’ conveys to my mind. Undoubtedly there is in every man a ‘within’ and a ‘without’, i.e., what a man is in heart and mind — and what he is in appearances and the two may not correspond — the latter being often a blind to the former, but this does not explain to my mind the force of the Scripture expressions ‘inner man’ and ‘outward man’ — I do not think they are used save as speaking of saints — I do not agree with the thought in the article you sent me on the subject. The writer virtually makes the body the outward man. I doubt if a body is a man. I think the expression ‘outward man’ refers to the man (the christian) as to what he is in mere outward life in the world — which perishes. But his real self or identity with God is the inward man — that in which God has formed his soul in grace — and this is renewed day by day — and is to be clothed with the house out of heaven. I do not think the inner man is simply the natural faculties of heart and mind common to men but, so to say, a new moral being really formed in the christian by divine power, and true for faith, and which as before God is really himself. I trust the above will make my thought clear,

With love in the Lord,
Your affectionate brother,
F. E. Raven.