C.H. Spurgeon: Baptist Preacher on the Holy Spirit

[Orthodoxy]

“Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you.” John 16:7.

There is an efficacy about the Gospel, when the Spirit is with us, little dreamed of by those who call it the foolishness of men. I am persuaded that the results which have followed ministry in our lifetime are trivial and insignificant compared with what they would be if the Spirit of God were more mightily at work in our midst. There is no reason in the nature of the Gospel or the power of the Spirit why a whole congregation should not be converted under one sermon!...

The success given was only the first fruits—Pentecost is not the harvest. We have been accustomed to look on Pentecost as a great and wonderful display of Divine power not at all to be equaled in modern times. Brethren, it is to be exceeded! I stand not upon Pentecost as upon a towering mountain, wondering at my height, but I look at Pentecost as a little rising knoll from which I am to look up to mountains far loftier!

...You must expect greater things, pray for greater things, long for greater things! Here is this England of ours, sunk in stolid ignorance of the Gospel...How is she to arise? “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord.”

The one thing, then, which we need, is the Spirit of God! Do not say that we need money—we shall have it soon enough when the Spirit touches men’s hearts. Do not say that we need buildings, Churches, edifices—all these may be very well in subservience—but the main need of the Church is the Spirit and men into whom the Spirit may be poured! If there were only one prayer which I might pray before I died, it should be this: “Lord, send to Your Church men filled with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Give to any denomination such men and its progress must be mighty—keep back such men, send them college gentlemen of great refinement and profound learning, but of little fire and Grace—dumb dogs which cannot bark—and straightway that denomination must decline. Let the Spirit come and the preacher may be rustic, simple, rough, unmannered—but the Holy Spirit being upon him—none of his adversaries shall stand against him! His word shall be with power to the shaking of the gates of Hell!

~Charles Haddon Spurgeon,
June 12, 1864, at The Metropolitan Tabernacle, London
(italics mine)