The Spirit and the Word by Rev. George C. Harvard

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 30, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 38.

The Spirit and the Word.

By Rev. George C. Harvard

BUT remember, the Spirit is never against the word. At various periods of the church, men and women, good but not wise, have made a great bustle about impressions, but these are no rules to go by. We must keep to Scripture, and not live upon impressions. “Yes; but my impression is in the words of Scripture.” It may be so; but it is all nothing unless it agrees with the sense of Scripture. God often does send his word in the day of trouble, with a power of comfort; but when God gives the impression of a scripture, it is always according to the true sense and scope of the scripture. God never applies his word against its real meaning.

If you have taken up an impression which makes nonsense of the Scripture, you may depend it is either from your own brain, or else from Satan. Some people are very ready to go by chance impressions, but this is very dangerous. Those who do this are by little and little led away from the knowledge of God’s word, and nurse themselves up in ignorance; and by and by they put their own impressions in the place of Christ’s ordinances. They grow to say that they are “led by the inward light,” led of the Spirit. But the Spirit of God is never against the word,—Rev. George C. Harvard.