p. 128 | Artificial Revivals by Spurgeon

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 21, 1865

Artificial Revivals.

By Spurgeon

I KNOW of nothing more saddening than to attend a prayer meeting where the devotion is forced, and the fervor laborious; where brethren puff and strain like engines with a load behind them too heavy for them to drag. It is painful to detect an evident design to get up an excitement, and wind up the people to the proper pitch; when the addresses are adapted to foster hot-headedness, and the prayers to beget superstition. God's true saints cannot but feel that to gain the graces of the Spirit by fleshly vehemence is sad work. They retire from such a meeting, and they say,

"How different is this from occasions when God's Spirit has been really at work with us!" Then, like a ship with her sails filled with a fair wind, floating majestically along without tugging and straining, the church, borne onward with the breath of the divine Spirit, with a full tide of Heaven's grace, speeds on her glorious way. "If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence," was the request of Moses; and I think we may rather deprecate than desire a revival if God's presence be not in it. Lord, let us stay as we are, crying and groaning to see better days, rather than permit us to be puffed up with the notion of revival without thine own power in it; let us have no special prayer meetings merely for the sake of them; but let us, O let us receive special blessings as the result of prayer: if thou dost not intend to help us now, let us weep in secret, but let us not rejoice in a mere name if the substance be lacking.—Spurgeon.