The Prince of Preachers Charles
Haddon Spurgeon has been called England's greatest contribution
to the spread of the gospel in the
19th century.
One of his contemporaries said that the chief
secret of Spurgeon's attractiveness was the fact that,
in every sermon, no matter what the text
or the occasion, he explained the way of
salvation in simple terms.
Spurgeon's messages remain one of the great treasure
houses of Christian literature, still bringing the light
of the gospel and the comfort of the
scriptures to hungry souls long after the preacher
has passed into glory.
This is Charles Kelsch inviting you to listen
to a message from the Prince of Preachers.
Spurgeon's Message C.
H.
Spurgeon preached this message on June 20th, 1858,
in the music hall of the Royal Surrey
Gardens.
It is entitled, The Outpouring of the Holy
Spirit.
The text is found in Acts chapter 10
and verse 44.
While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy
Ghost fell on all them which heard the
word.
The Bible is a book of the revelation
of God.
The God after whom the heathen blindly searched,
and for whom reason gropes in darkness, is
here plainly revealed to us in the pages
of divine authorship, so that he who is
willing to understand as much of Godhead as
man can know may here learn of it,
if he be not willingly ignorant and willfully
obstinate.
The doctrine of the Trinity is specially taught
in Holy Scripture.
The word certainly does not occur, but the
three divine persons of the one God are
frequently and constantly mentioned, and Holy Scripture is
exceedingly careful that we should all receive and
believe that great truth of the Christian religion,
that the Father is God, that the Son
is God, that the Spirit is God.
And yet there are not three gods, but
one God, though they each of them be
very God of very God.
Yet three in one and one in three
is the Jehovah whom we worship.
You will notice in the works of creation
how carefully the Scriptures assure us that all
the three divine persons took their share.
In the beginning Jehovah created the heavens and
the earth, and in another place we are
told that God said, Let us make man,
not one person, but all three taking counsel
with each other with regard to the making
of mankind.
We know that the Father hath laid the
foundations and fixed those solid beams of light
on which the blue arches of the sky
are sustained.
But we know with equal certainty that Jesus
Christ, the eternal Logos, was with the Father
in the beginning, and without Him was not
anything made that was made.
Moreover, we have equal certainty that the Holy
Spirit had a hand in creation, for we
are told that the earth was without form
and void, and darkness was upon the face
of the earth, and the Spirit of the
Lord moved upon the face of the waters.
And brooding with His dovelike wing, He brought
out of the egg of chaos this mighty
thing, this fair round world.
We have the like proof of the three
persons in the Godhead in the matter of
salvation.
We know that God the Father gave His
Son.
We have abundant proof that God the Father
chose His people from before the foundations of
the world, that He did invent the plan
of salvation, and hath always given His free,
willing, and joyous consent to the salvation of
His people.
With regard to the share that the Son
had in salvation, that is apparent enough to
all.
For us men and for our salvation, He
came down from heaven.
He was incarnate in a mortal body.
He was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descended into Hades.
The third day He rose again from the
dead.
He ascended into heaven.
He sitteth at the right hand of God,
where also He maketh intercession for us.
As to the Holy Spirit, we have equally
sure proof that the Spirit of God worketh
in conversion.
For everywhere we are said to be begotten
of the Holy Spirit.
Continually it is declared that unless a man
be born again from above, he cannot see
the kingdom of God.
While all the virtues and the graces of
Christianity are described as being the fruits of
the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit doth from
first to last work in us, and carry
out that which Jesus Christ hath beforehand worked
for us in His great redemption, which also
God the Father hath designed for us in
His great predestinating scheme of salvation.
Now it is to the work of the
Holy Spirit that I shall this morning specially
direct your attention, and I may as well
mention the reason why I do so.
It is this.
We have received continually fresh confirmations of the
good news from a far country, which has
already made glad the hearts of many of
God's people.
In the United States of America there is
certainly a great awakening.
No sane man living there could think of
denying it.
There may be something of spurious excitement mixed
up with it, but that good, lasting good,
has been accomplished, no rational man can deny.
Two hundred and fifty thousand persons, that is,
a quarter of a million, professed to have
been regenerated since December last, have made a
profession of their faith, and have united themselves
with different sections of God's church.
The work still progresses, if anything, at a
more rapid rate than before.
And that which makes me believe the work
to be genuine is just this, that the
enemies of Christ's holy gospel are exceedingly wroth
at it.
When the devil roars at anything, you may
rest assured there is some good in it.
The devil is not like some dogs we
know of.
He never barks unless there is something to
bark at.
When Satan howls, we may rest assured he
is afraid his kingdom is in danger.
Now this great work in America has been
manifestly caused by the outpouring of the Spirit,
for no one minister has been a leader
in it.
All the ministers of the gospel have cooperated
in it, but none of them have stood
in the van.
God Himself has been the leader of His
own hosts.
It began with a desire for prayer.
God's people began to pray.
The prayer meetings were better attended than before.
It was then proposed to hold meetings at
times that had never been set aside for
prayer.
These also were well attended.
And now, in the city of Philadelphia, at
the hour of noon, every day in the
week, three thousand persons can always be seen
assembled together for prayer in one place.
Men of business in the midst of their
toil and labor find an opportunity of running
in there and offering a word of prayer,
and then returning to their occupations.
And so, throughout all the states, prayer meetings,
large or small in number, have been convened.
And there has been real prayer.
Sinners beyond all count have risen up in
the prayer meeting and have requested the people
of God to pray for them, thus making
public to the world that they had a
desire after Christ.
They have been prayed for, and the church
has seen that God verily doth hear and
answer prayer.
I find that Unitarian ministers for a little
while took no notice of it.
Theodore Parker snarls and raves tremendously at it,
but he is evidently in a maze.
He does not understand the mystery and acts
with regard to it as swine are said
to do with pearls.
While the church was found asleep and doing
very little, the Socinian could afford to stand
in his pulpit and sneer at anything like
evangelical religion.
But now that there has been an awakening,
he looks like a man that has just
awakened out of sleep.
He sees something, he does not know what
it is.
The power of religion is just that which
will always puzzle the Unitarian, for he knows
but little about that.
At the form of religion he is not
much amazed, for he can to an extent
endorse that himself.
But the supernaturalism of the gospel, the mystery,
the miracle, the power, the demonstration of the
spirit that comes with the preaching, is what
such men cannot comprehend.
And they gaze and wonder, and then become
filled with wrath.
But still they have to confess there is
something there they cannot understand, a mental phenomenon
that is far beyond their philosophy, a thing
which they cannot reach by all their science,
nor understand by all their reason.
Now if we have the like effect produced
in this land, the one thing we must
seek is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
And I thought perhaps this morning, in preaching
upon the work of the Holy Spirit, that
text might be fulfilled, Him that honoreth me,
I will honor.
My sincere desire is to honor the Holy
Spirit this morning, and if He will be
pleased to honor His church in return, unto
Him shall be the glory forever.
While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy
Ghost fell on all them which heard the
word.
In the first place, I shall endeavor to
describe the method of the Spirit's operation.
Secondly, the absolute necessity of the Spirit's influence,
if we could see men converted.
And then, in the third place, I shall
suggest the ways and means by which, under
divine grace, we may obtain a like falling
down of the Spirit upon our churches.
In the first place, then, I will endeavor
to explain the method of the Holy Spirit's
operations.
But let me guard myself against being misunderstood.
We can explain what the Holy Spirit does,
but how He does it, no man must
pretend to know.
The work of the Holy Spirit is the
peculiar mystery of the Christian religion.
Almost any other thing is plain, but this
must remain an inscrutable secret into which it
were wrong for us to attempt to pry.
Who knoweth where the winds are begotten?
Who knoweth, therefore, how the Spirit worketh?
For He is like the wind.
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou
hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell
whence it cometh or whither it goeth.
So is every one that is born of
the Spirit.
In Holy Scripture, certain great secrets of nature
are mentioned as being parallel with the secret
working of the Spirit.
The procreation of children is instanced as a
parallel wonder, for we know not the mystery
thereof.
How much less, therefore, shall we expect to
know that more secret and hidden mystery of
the new birth and new creation of man
in Christ Jesus.
But let no man be staggered at this,
for they are mysteries in nature.
The wisest man will tell you there are
depths in nature into which he cannot dive,
and heights into which he cannot soar.
He who pretends to have unraveled the knot
of creation hath made a mistake.
He may have cut the knot by his
rough ignorance and by his foolish conjectures, but
the knot itself must remain beyond the power
of man's unraveling until God Himself shall explain
the secret.
There are marvelous things that as yet men
have sought to know in vain.
They may perhaps discover many of them.
But how the Spirit works, no man can
know.
But now I wish to explain what the
Holy Spirit does, although we cannot tell how
He does it.
I take it that the Holy Spirit's work
in conversion is twofold.
First, it is an awakening of the powers
that man already has, and secondly, it is
an implantation of powers which he never had
at all.
In the great work of the new birth,
the Holy Spirit first of all awakens the
mental powers.
For be it remembered that the Holy Spirit
never gives any man new mental powers.
Take, for instance, reason.
The Holy Spirit does not give men reason,
for they have reason prior to their conversion.
What the Holy Spirit does is to teach
our reason right reason, to set our reason
in the right track, so that we can
use it for the high purpose of discerning
between good and evil, between the precious and
the vile.
The Holy Spirit does not give man a
will, for man has a will before.
But He makes the will that was in
bondage to Satan free to the service of
God.
The Holy Spirit gives no man the power
to think or the organ of belief, for
man has the power to believe or think
as far as the mental act is concerned,
but He gives that belief which is already
there a tendency to believe the right thing,
and He gives the power of thought the
propensity to think in the right way, so
that instead of thinking irregularly, we begin to
think as God would have us think, and
our mind desireth to walk in the steps
of God's revealed truth.
There may be here this morning a man
of enlarged understanding in things political, but his
understanding is darkened with regard to spiritual things.
He sees no beauty in the person of
Christ.
He sees nothing desirable in the way of
holiness.
He chooses the evil and forsakes the good.
Now the Holy Spirit will not give him
a new understanding, but He will cleanse his
old understanding, so that he will discern between
things that differ, and shall discover that it
is but a poor thing to enjoy the
pleasures of sin for a season and let
go an eternal weight of glory.
There shall be a man here, too, who
is desperately set against religion and willeth not
to come to God, and do what we
will, we are not able to persuade him
to change his mind and turn to God.
The Holy Spirit will not make a new
will in that man, but He will turn
His old will, and instead of willing to
do evil, He will make him will to
do right.
He will make him will to be saved
by Christ.
He will make him willing in the day
of His power.
Remember, there is no power in man so
fallen, but that the Holy Spirit can raise
it up.
However debased a man may be, in one
instant, by the miraculous power of the Spirit,
all his faculties may be cleansed and purged.
Ill-judging reason may be made to judge
rightly.
Stout, obstinate wills may be made to run
willingly in the ways of God's commandments.
Evil and depraved affections may be, in an
instant, turned to Christ, and old desires that
are tainted with vice may be replaced by
heavenly aspirations.
The work of the Spirit on the mind
is the remodeling of it, the new forming
of it.
He doth not bring new materials to the
mind.
It is in another part of the man
that He puts up a new structure, but
He puts the mind that had fallen out
of order into its proper shape.
He builds up pillars that had fallen down
and erects the palaces that had crumbled to
the earth.
This is the first work of the Holy
Spirit upon the mind of man.
Besides this, the Holy Spirit gives to man
powers which they never had before.
According to Scripture, I believe man is constituted
in a threefold manner.
He has a body.
By the Holy Spirit, that body is made
the temple of the Lord.
He has a mind.
By the Holy Spirit, that mind is made
like an altar in the temple.
But man, by nature, is nothing higher than
that.
He is mere body and soul.
When the Spirit comes, He breathes into him
a third, higher principle, which we call the
Spirit.
The Apostle describes man as man, body, soul,
and spirit.
Now, if you search all the mental writers
through, you will find they all declare there
are only two parts, body and mind.
And they are quite right, for they deal
with unregenerate man.
But in regenerate man there is a third
principle, as much superior to mere mind as
mind is superior to dead animal matter.
That third principle is that with which a
man prays.
It is that with which he savingly believes.
Or rather, it is that which compels the
mind to perform their acts.
It is that which, operating upon the mind,
makes the same use of the mind as
the mind does of the body.
When, after desiring to walk, I make my
legs move, it is my mind that compels
them.
And so my spirit, when I desire to
pray, compels my mind to think the thoughts
of prayer, and compels my soul also, if
I desire to praise, to think the thoughts
of praise, and lift itself upward towards God.
As the body without the soul is dead,
so the soul without the spirit is dead.
And one work of the spirit is to
quicken the dead soul by breathing into it
the living spirit.
As it is written, The first man Adam
was made a living soul, but the second
Adam was made a quickening spirit.
And as we have borne the image of
the earthy, so must we bear the image
of the heavenly.
That is, we must have in us, if
we would be converted, the quickening spirit, which
is put into us by God the Holy
Ghost.
I say again, the spirit has powers which
the mind never has.
It has the power of communion with Christ,
which to a degree is a mental act,
but it can no more be performed by
man without the spirit than the act of
walking could be performed by man, if he
were destitute of a soul to suggest the
idea of walking.
The spirit suggests the thoughts of communion which
the mind obeys and carries out.
Nay, there are times, I think, when the
spirit leaves the mind altogether, times when we
forget everything of earth, and one almost ceases
to think, to reason, to judge, to weigh,
or to will.
Our souls are like the chariots of a
Minidib, drawn swiftly onwards without any powers of
volition.
We lean upon the breast of Jesus, and
in rhapsody divine and in ecstasy celestial, we
enjoy the fruits of the land of the
blessed and pluck the clusters of eshkol before
entering into the land of promise.
I think I have clearly put these two
points before you.
The work of the spirit consists first in
awakening powers already possessed by man, but which
were asleep and out of order, and in
the next place in putting into man powers
which he had not before.
And to make this simple to the humblest
mind, let me suppose man to be something
like a machine.
All the wheels are out of order.
The cogs do not strike upon each other.
The wheels do not turn regularly.
The rods will not act.
The order is gone.
Now, the first work of the spirit is
to put these wheels in the right place,
to fit the wheels upon the axles, to
put the right axle to the right wheel,
and then put wheel to wheel so that
they may act upon each other.
But that is not all his work.
The next thing is to put fire and
steam so that these things shall go to
work.
He does not put fresh wheels.
He puts old wheels into order, and then
he puts the motive power which is to
move the whole.
First he puts our mental powers into their
proper order and condition, and then he puts
a living, quickening spirit so that all these
shall move according to the holy will and
law of God.
But mark you, this is not all the
Holy Spirit does.
For if he were to do this and
then leave us, none of us would get
to heaven.
If any of you should be so near
to heaven that you should hear the angels
singing over the walls, if you could almost
see within the pearly gates, still, if the
Holy Spirit did not help you the last
step, you would never enter there.
All the work is through his divine operation.
Hence it is the Spirit who keeps the
wheels in motion and who takes away that
defilement which, naturally engendered by our original sin,
falls upon the machine and puts it out
of order.
He takes this away and keeps the machine
constantly going without injury until at last he
removes man from the place of defilement to
the land of the blessed, a perfect creature,
as perfect as when he was come from
the mold of his maker.
And I must say, before I leave this
point, that all the former part of what
I have mentioned is done instantaneously.
When a man is converted to God, it
is done in a moment.
Regeneration is an instantaneous work.
Conversion to God, the fruit of regeneration, occupies
all our life.
But regeneration itself is effected in an instant.
A man hates God.
The Holy Spirit makes him love God.
A man is opposed to Christ.
He hates his gospel, does not understand it
and will not receive it.
The Holy Spirit comes, puts light into his
darkened understanding, takes the chain from his bondaged
will, gives liberty to his conscience, gives life
to his dead soul, so that the voice
of conscience is heard and the man becomes
a new creature in Christ Jesus.
And all this is done, mark you, by
the instantaneous supernatural influence of God the Holy
Ghost, working as he willeth among the sons
of men.
Having thus dwelt upon the method of the
Holy Spirit's work, I shall now turn to
the second point, the absolute necessity of the
Spirit's work in order to conversion.
In our text we are told that while
Peter spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell
on all them which heard the word.
Beloved, the Holy Ghost fell on Peter first,
or else it would not have fallen on
his hearers.
There is a necessity that the preacher himself,
if we are to have souls saved, should
be under the influence of the Spirit.
I have constantly made it my prayer that
I might be guided by the Spirit, even
in the smallest and least important parts of
the service.
For you cannot tell but that the salvation
of a soul may depend upon the reading
of a hymn or upon the selection of
a chapter.
Two persons have joined our church and made
a profession of being converted simply through my
reading a hymn, Jesus, lover of my soul.
They did not remember anything else in the
hymn, but those words made such a deep
impression upon their mind that they could not
help repeating them for days afterwards, and then
the thought arose, Do I love Jesus?
And then they considered what strange ingratitude it
was that he should be the lover of
their souls, and yet they should not love
him.
Now I believe the Holy Spirit led me
to read that hymn, and many persons have
been converted by some striking saying of the
preacher.
But why was it the preacher uttered that
saying?
Simply because he was led thereunto by the
Holy Spirit.
Rest assured, beloved, that when any part of
the sermon is blessed to your heart, the
minister said it because he was ordered to
say it by his master.
I might preach today a sermon which I
preached on Friday and which was useful then,
and there might be no good whatever come
from it now because it might not be
the sermon which the Holy Ghost would have
delivered today.
But if with sincerity of heart I have
sought God's guidance in selecting the topic, and
He rests upon me in the preaching of
the word, there is no fear, but that
it shall be found adapted to your immediate
wants.
The Holy Spirit must rest upon your preachers.
Let them have all the learning of the
wisest men and all the eloquence of such
men as Demosthenes and Cicero.
Still, the word cannot be blessed to you
unless, first of all, the Spirit of God
hath guided the minister's mind in the selection
of his subject and in the discussion of
it.
But if Peter himself were under the hand
of the Spirit, that would fail unless the
Spirit of God then did fall upon our
hearers, and I shall endeavor now to show
the absolute necessity of the Spirit's work in
the conversion of men.
Let us remember what kind of thing the
work is, and we shall see that other
means are altogether out of the question.
It is quite certain that men cannot be
converted by physical means.
The Church of Rome thought that she could
convert men by means of armies, so she
invaded countries and threatened them with war and
bloodshed unless they would repent and embrace her
religion.
However, it availed but little, and men were
prepared to die rather than leave their faith.
She therefore tried those beautiful things, stakes, racks,
dungeons, axes, swords, fire, and by these things
she hoped to convert men.
You have heard of the man who tried
to wind up his watch with a pickaxe.
That man was extremely wise, compared with the
man who thought to touch the mind through
matter.
All the machines you like to invent cannot
touch mind.
Talk about tying angels' wings with green whips
or manacling the cherubim with iron chains, and
then talk about meddling with the minds of
men through physical means.
Why the things don't act, they cannot act.
All the king's armies that ever were, and
all the warriors clothed with mail, with all
their ammunition, could never touch the mind of
man.
That is an impregnable castle which is not
to be reached by physical agency.
Nor again can any man be converted by
moral argument.
Well, says one, I think he may.
Let a minister preach earnestly, and he may
persuade men to be converted.
Ah, beloved, it is for want of knowing
better that you say so.
Melanchthon thought so, but you know what he
said after he tried it.
Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.
So will every preacher find it if he
thinks his arguments can ever convert man.
Let me give you a parallel case.
Where is the logic that can persuade an
Ethiopian to change his skin?
By what argument can you induce a leopard
to renounce his spots?
Even so may he that is accustomed to
do evil learn to do well.
But if the Ethiopian's skin be changed, it
must be by a supernatural process.
And if the leopard's spots be removed, he
that made the leopard must do it.
Even so it is with the heart of
man.
If sin were a thing of extra and
external, we could induce man to change it.
For instance, you may induce a man to
leave off drunkenness or swearing, because those things
are not a part of his nature.
He has added that vice to his original
depravity.
But the hidden evil of the heart is
beyond all moral suasion.
I dare say a man might have enough
argument to induce him to hang himself.
But I am certain no argument will ever
induce him to hang his sins, to hang
his self-righteousness, and to come and humble
himself at the foot of the cross.
For the religion of Christ is so contrary
to all the propensities of man that it
is like swimming against the stream to approach
it.
For the stream of man's will and man's
desire is exactly the opposite of the religion
of Jesus Christ.
If you want a proof of that, at
the lifting of my finger there are thousands
in this hall who would rise to prove
it.
For they would say, I have found it
so, sir, in my experience.
I hated religion as much as any man.
I despised Christ and His people.
And I know not to this day how
it is that I am what I am,
unless it be the work of God.
I have seen the tears run down a
man's cheeks when he has come to me
in order to be united to the church
of Christ.
And he has said, Sir, I wonder how
it is I am here today.
If anyone had told me a year ago
that I should think as I now think
and feel as I now feel, I should
have called him a born fool for his
pains.
I used to say I never would be
one of those canting Methodists.
I like to spend my Sunday in pleasure,
and I did not see why I was
to be cooping myself up in the house
of God listening to a man talk.
I pray, sir?
No, not I.
I said the best providence in all the
world was a good, strong pair of hands
and to take care of what you've got.
If any man talked to me about religion,
why, I would slam the door in his
face and pretty soon put him out.
But the things that I loved then I
now hate, and the things that then I
hated now I love.
I cannot do or say enough to show
how total is the change that has been
wrought in me.
It must have been the work of God.
It could not have been wrought by me,
I feel assured.
It must have been someone greater than myself
who could thus turn my heart.
I think these two things are proofs that
we want something more than nature, and since
physical agency will not do and mere moral
suasion will never accomplish it, that there must
be an absolute necessity for the Holy Spirit.
But again, if you will just think a
minute what the work is, you will soon
see that none but God can accomplish it.
In the Holy Scripture, conversion is often spoken
of as being a new creation.
If you talk about creating yourselves, I should
feel obliged if you would create a fly
first, create a gnat, create a grain of
sand, and when you have created that, you
may talk about creating a new heart.
Both are alike impossible, for creation is the
work of God.
But still, if you could create a grain
of dust or create even a world, it
would not be half the miracle, for you
must first find a thing which has created
itself.
Could that be?
Suppose you had no existence.
How could you create yourself?
Nothing cannot produce anything.
Now, how can man recreate himself?
A man cannot recreate himself into a new
condition when he has no being in that
condition, but is as yet a thing that
is not.
Then again, the work of creation is said
to be like the resurrection.
We are alive from the dead.
Now, can the dead in the grave raise
themselves?
Let any minister who thinks he can convert
souls go and raise a corpse.
Let him go and stand in one of
the cemeteries and bid the tombs open wide
their mouths and make room for those once
buried there to awaken, and he will have
to preach in vain.
But if he could do it, that is
not the miracle.
It is for the dead to raise themselves,
for an inanimate corpse to kindle in its
own breast the spark of life anew.
If the work be a resurrection, a creation,
does it not strike you that it must
be beyond the power of man?
It must be wrought in him by no
one less than God Himself.
And there is yet one more consideration, and
I shall have concluded this point.
Beloved, even if man could save himself, I
would have you recollect how averse he is
to it.
If we could make our hearers all willing,
the battle would be accomplished.
Well, says one, if I am willing to
be saved, can I not be saved?
Assuredly you can.
But the difficulty is, we cannot bring men
to be willing.
That shows, therefore, that there must be a
constraint put upon their will.
There must be an influence exerted upon them
which they have not in themselves in order
to make them willing in the day of
God's power.
And this is the glory of the Christian
religion.
The Christian religion has within its own bowels
power to spread itself.
We do not ask you to be willing
first.
We come and tell you the news, and
we believe that the Spirit of God working
with us will make you willing.
If the progress of the Christian religion depended
upon the voluntary assent of mankind, it would
never go an inch further.
But because the Christian religion has with it
an omnipotent influence constraining men to believe it,
it is, therefore, that it is and must
be triumphant.
Till like a sea of glory it spreads
from shore to shore.
Now I shall conclude by bringing one or
two thoughts forward with regard to what must
be done at this time in order to
bring down the Holy Spirit.
It is quite certain, beloved, if the Holy
Spirit will to do it, that every man,
woman, and child in this place might be
converted now.
If God, the sovereign judge of all, would
be pleased now to send His Spirit, every
inhabitant of this million-peopled city might be
brought at once to turn to the living
God.
Without instrumentality, without the preacher, without books, without
anything, God has it in His power to
convert men.
We have known persons about their business, not
thinking about religion at all, who have had
a thought injected into their heart.
And that thought has been the prolific mother
of a thousand meditations.
And through these meditations they have been brought
to Christ.
Without the aid of the minister, the Holy
Spirit has thus worked, and today He is
not restrained.
There may be some men, great in infidelity,
staunch in opposition to the cross of Christ.
But without asking their consent, the Holy Spirit
can pull down the strong man and make
the mighty man bow himself.
For when we talk of the omnipotent God,
there is nothing too great for Him to
do.
But, beloved, God has been pleased to put
great honor upon instrumentality.
He could work without it if He pleased,
but He does not do so.
However, this is the first thought I want
to give you.
If you would have the Holy Spirit exert
Himself in our midst, you must first of
all look to Him and not to instrumentality.
When Jesus Christ preached, there were very few
converted under Him, and the reason was because
the Holy Spirit was not abundantly poured forth.
He had the Holy Spirit without measure Himself,
but on others the Holy Spirit was not
as yet poured out.
Jesus Christ said, Greater works than these shall
ye do, because I go to my Father,
in order to send the Holy Spirit, and
recollected those few who were converted under Christ's
ministry were not converted by Him, but by
the Holy Spirit that rested upon Him at
that time.
Jesus of Nazareth was anointed at the Holy
Spirit.
Now then, if Jesus Christ, the great founder
of our religion, needed to be anointed at
the Holy Spirit, how much more our ministers?
And if God would always make the distinction
even between His own Son as an instrument
and the Holy Spirit as the agent, how
much more ought we to be careful to
do that between poor puny men and the
Holy Spirit?
Never let us hear you say again, so
many persons were converted by so-and-so.
They were not.
If converted, they were not converted by man.
Instrumentality is to be used, but the Spirit
is to have the honor of it.
Pay no more a superstitious reverence to man.
Think no more that God is tied to
your plans and to your agencies.
Do not imagine that so many city missionaries,
so much good will be done.
Do not say, so many preachers, so many
sermons, so many souls saved.
Do not say, so many Bibles, so many
tracts, so much good done.
Not so.
Use these.
But remember, it is not in that proportion
the blessing comes.
It is, so much Holy Spirit, so many
souls ingathered.
And now another thought.
If we would have the Spirit, beloved, we
must each of us try to honor Him.
There are some chapels into which, if you
were to enter, you would never know there
was a Holy Spirit.
Mary Magdalene said of old, They have taken
away my Lord, and I know not where
they have laid Him.
And the Christian might often say so.
For there is nothing said about the Lord
until they come to the end.
And then there is just the benediction, or
else you would not know that there were
three persons in one God at all.
Unless our churches honor the Holy Spirit, we
shall never see it abundantly manifested in our
midst.
Let the preacher always confess, before he preaches,
that he relies upon the Holy Spirit.
Let him burn his manuscript and depend upon
the Holy Spirit.
If the Spirit does not come to help
him, let him be still, and let the
people go home and pray that the Spirit
will help him next Sunday.
And do you also, in the use of
all your agencies, always honor the Spirit?
We often begin our religious meetings without prayer.
It is all wrong.
We must honor the Spirit.
Unless we put Him first, He will never
make crowns for us to wear.
He will get the victories, but He will
have the honor of them.
And if we do not give to Him
the honor, He will never give to us
the privilege and success.
And best of all, if you would have
the Holy Spirit, let us meet together earnestly
to pray for Him.
Remember, the Holy Spirit will not come to
us as a church unless we seek Him.
For this thing will I be inquired of
by the house of Israel to do it
for them.
We purpose, during the coming week, to hold
meetings of special prayer to supplicate for a
revival of religion.
On the Friday morning, I opened the first
prayer meeting at Trinity Chapel, Brixton, and I
think at seven o'clock we had as
many as 250 persons gathered together.
It was a pleasant sight.
During the hour, nine brethren prayed, one after
the other, and I am sure there was
a spirit of prayer there.
Some persons present set up their names, asking
that we would offer special petitions for them.
And I doubt not the prayers will be
answered.
At Park Street on Monday morning, we shall
have a prayer meeting from eight to nine.
Then, during the rest of the week, there
will be a prayer meeting in the morning
from seven to eight.
On Monday evening, we shall have the usual
prayer meeting at seven, when I hope there
will be a large number attending.
I find that my brother, Baptist Noel, has
commenced morning and evening prayer meetings, and they
have done the same thing in Norwich and
many provincial towns, where, without any pressure, the
people are found willing to come.
I certainly did not expect to see so
many as 250 persons at an early hour
in the morning meet together for prayer.
I believe it was a good sign.
The Lord hath put prayer into their hearts,
and therefore they were willing to come.
Prove me now here, saith the Lord of
hosts, and see if I do not pour
you out a blessing, so that there shall
not be room enough to receive it.
Let us meet and pray.
And if God doth not hear us, it
will be the first time He has broken
His promise.
Come, let us go up to the sanctuary.
Let us meet together in the house of
the Lord and offer solemn supplication.
And I say again, if the Lord doth
not make bare His arm in the sight
of all the people, it will be the
reverse of all His previous actions.
It will be the contrary of all His
promises and contradictory to Himself.
We have only to try Him, and the
result is certain.
In dependence on His Spirit, if we only
meet for prayer, the Lord shall bless us,
and all the ends of the earth shall
fear Him.
O Lord, lift up Thyself because of Thine
enemies.
Pluck Thy right hand out of Thy bosom,
O Lord our God, for Christ's sake.
Amen.
This message, The Outpouring of the Holy Spirit,
was preached by Charles Haddon Spurgeon on June
20th, 1858.
This is Charles Kelsch inviting you to join
me again for another message from The Prince
of Preachers.