PyroManiac has served us well and honestly by providing quotes which show Spurgeons view of impressions. The balance he brings is fantastic. All of the quotes are worth reading, but here are some that stand out to me:
‘A Well-Ordered Life’ (sermon #878):
Some, I know, fall into a very vicious habit, which habit they excuse themselvesnamely, that of ordering their footsteps according to impressions.
Every now and then I meet with people whom I think to be rather weak in the head, who will journey from place to place and will perform follies by the gross under the belief that they are doing the will of God because some silly whim of their diseased brains is imagined to be an inspiration from above.
There are occasionally impressions of the Holy Spirit which guide men where no other guidance could have answered the end. I do not doubt the old story of the Quaker who was disturbed at night and could not sleep and was led to go to a person’s house miles away and knock at the door just at the time when the inhabitant was about to commit suicide just in time to prevent the act.
I have been the subject of such impressions, myself, and have seen very singular results. But to live by impressions is oftentimes to live the life of a fool and even to fall into downright rebellion against the revealed Word of God. Not your impressions, but that which is in this Bible must always guide you. ‘To the Law and to the Testimony.’ If it is not according to this Word, the impression comes not from God it may proceed from Satan, or from your own distempered brain! Our prayer must be, ‘Order my steps in Your Word.
Now, that rule of life, the written Word of God, we ought to study and obey. The text proves that the Psalmist desired to know what was in God’s Word he would be a reader and a searcher. O Christian, how can you know what God would have you to do if your Bible is unthumbed and covered over with dust? The prayer implies, too, that when David once knew God’s Word, he wished to fulfill it all. Some are pickers and choose”
lectures to my students Vol 3:
“…ordinary preachers of the Word, who only consider themselves to be under the influence of the Holy Spirit, as one spirit is under the influence of another spirit, or one mind under the influence of another mind.. We are not the passive communicators of infallibility, but the honest teachers of such things as we have learned, so far as we have been able to grasp them. As our minds are active, and have a personal existence while the mind of the Spirit is acting upon them, our infirmities are apparent as well as his wisdom; and while we reveal what he has made us to know, we are greatly abased by the fear that our own ignorance and error are in a measure manifested at the same time, because we have not been more perfectly subject to the divine power.”
“Enquiring of God” (sermon 2996)
“Sometime, too, but rarely, God guides us by very vivid impressions. I have seen so much of people who have been impressed this way, and that way, and the other way, that I do not believe in impressions except in certain cases. I was once in conversation with two friends, one of whom was guided by his judgment, while the other was swayed by impressions, and I could not help noting that the man who was guided by impressions was, as such people always will be, “unstable as water.” If I am impressed in one way one day, I may be impressed in another way the next day, so impressions are unreliable guides. There was a young man, who was impressed with the idea that he ought to preach for me one Lord’s day; but as I was not impressed to let him do so, it stood over, and probably will continue to stand over for some little time. He had no gifts of speech, but he thought his impression was quite sufficient. When I receive a similar impression, the revelation will be a proper one, and you will have the pleasure of listening to his voice, but certainly not before that.
Occasionally, impressions do guide a man right. A Quaker, one night, could not sleep; and he had a very strong impression that he must get up and saddle and mount his horse. He did so, and rode along the streets, his horse’s hoofs noisily clattering in the silence of the night. He did not know where he was to go, but there was a light in one house, and something seemed to say to him, “This is the house to which you are to go.” He dismounted, and knocked at the door, and a man came down, and asked why he was there at that time of night. “Perhaps, friend,” answered the Quaker, “thou canst tell me, for I do not know, but I have been moved to come here.” “I can tell you indeed,” said the man, with much emotion; and he took him upstairs, and showed him a short halter with which he was about to hang himself when the Quaker came to his door. Such strong impressions are not to be despised, and I have no doubt that highly spiritual minds do become like the photographer’s sensitive plate, and do receive impressions. What another man may be a fool for talking of, such men may truly speak of, for God does sometimes reveal his will in that way.”
I have seen a couple of other Spurgeon quotes that are similar in effect. One is as follows:
“If you yield yourself thus unreservedly to the mind and will of God, by-and-by, when you get out into the ministry, you will sometimes be impelled to use a strange expression or to offer an odd prayer, which at the time may have a queer look even to yourself; but it will be all explained to you afterwards, when someone comes to tell you that he never understood the truth until you put it that day in such an unusual way. You will be more likely to feel this influence if you are thoroughly prepared by study and prayer for your work in the pulpit, and I urge you always to make all due preparation, and even to write out in full what you think you ought to say; but not to go and deliver it memoriter, like a poll parrot repeating what it has been taught, for if you do that, you will certainly not be leaving yourself to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”
I also have an extensive quote about Spurgeons view of what I would call recieving the Holy Spirit.
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