To write a sonnet to compare with those Shakespeare produced, you would have to have the spirit of Shakespeare... If you want to compose music like Johann Sebastian Bach, you would have to have the spirit of Bach. If you wanted to be a statesman like Gladstone, you would have to possess the spirit of Gladstone. Now, if we are going to reproduce Christ on earth and be Christ-like and show forth Christ, what are we going to need most? We must have the Spirit of Christ! The church is called to live above her own ability. She is called to live on a plane so high that no human being can live like that in his own ability and power. The humblest Christian is called to live a miracle, a life that is a moral and spiritual life with such intensity and such purity that no human being can do it—only Jesus Christ can do it. He wants the Spirit of Christ to come to His people.
I think you will agree with me when I say that many people are confused about the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit, for instance, is not enthusiasm. Some people get enthusiasm, and they imagine it is the Holy Spirit. Some who can get all worked up over a song imagine that this is the Spirit, but this does not necessarily follow. Some of these same people go out and live just like the sinful world—but the Holy Spirit never enters a man and then lets him live just like the world that hates God. That is the reason most people don't want to be filled with the Holy Spirit—they want to live the way they want to live and to merely have the Holy Spirit as a bit of something extra. I tell you that the Holy Spirit will not be just an addition. The Holy Spirit must be Lord, or He will not come at all.
If you have been reasoned into Christianity, some wise fellow can reason you out of it! If you come to Christ by a flash of the Holy Spirit so that by intuition you know that you are God's child, you know it by the text but you also know it by the inner light, the inner illumination of the Spirit, and no one can ever reason you out of it. When I was a young man, I read most of the books on atheism. I had my Bible and a hymnbook and a few other books, including Andrew Murray and Thomas à Kempis, and I got myself educated as well as I could by reading books. I read the philosophy of all of the great minds—and many of those men did not believe in God, and they didn't believe in Christ... Do you know what I would do after I would read a chapter or two and find arguments that I could not possibly defeat? I would get down on my knees and with tears I would thank God with joy that no matter what the books said, "I know Thee, my Savior and my Lord!" I didn't have it in my head—I had it in my heart. There is a great difference, you see.
Many people know about God but don't know God Himself. There is a vast difference between knowing about God and knowing God—a vast difference! I can know about your relative—and still not know him in person. If I have never met him, I do not know the touch of his hand or the look of his eye or the smile of his face or the sound of his voice. I only know about him. You can show me his picture and describe him to me, but I still don't know him. I just know about the man. So it is that the human being can know about God, can know about Christ's dying for him, can even write songs and books, can be the head of religious organizations and hold important church offices—and still never have come to the vital, personal knowledge of God at all. Only by the Holy Spirit can he know God. Again, it is my contention that as a consequence of this kind of error, we really have two Christs. We have the Christ of history, the Christ of the creeds. On the other hand, there is the Christ whom only the Spirit can reveal.