The Holy Spirit is divine, and consequently he knows how to influence all kinds of men, and he can by the instrumentalities now in use reach just as many as he pleases. I recollect well when I first preached in London a remark made by a friend, which very greatly encouraged me at the time, and has proved true in my experience. When he heard that my little country chapel had been filled by the inhabitants of the village in which I had preached, he gave me hope of filling a far larger place in London: “For,” said he, “what will draw two hundred will draw two thousand, and what was useful to a few may be made just as useful to a multitude.” I saw at once that it was so.
When we are dealing with spiritual forces we have not to calculate by pounds and ounces, or by so many horse power. We have not to think of quantity. As an illustration: give me fire, I will not bargain for a furnace, give me but a single candle, and a city or a forest may soon be in a blaze. A spark is quite sufficient to begin with, for fire multiplies itself: So give us the truth, a single voice, and the Holy Spirit with it, and none can say where the sacred conflagration will end. One Jonah sufficed to subdue all Nineveh by one monotonous sentence oft repeated, and despite the weakness of our present instrumentality, if God does but bless the gospel, there is no reason why it should not speedily be felt by the whole of London.
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Additions to the Church," delivered April 5, 1874. Image by Jan Tik on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
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