The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit

It is R. A. Torrey's systematic account of who the Holy Spirit is and what he does. Torrey's governing concern is to show that the Spirit is not a vague influence or force but a distinct, divine Person — one to be known, trusted, and obeyed — and then to trace his work in salvation, in the believer's life, and in service and witness.

Reuben Archer Torrey was an American evangelist, pastor, and educator around the turn of the twentieth century, associated with D. L. Moody's work and a leading teacher of the era. He wrote clearly and practically for ordinary Christians; this book gathers his careful teaching on the Holy Spirit into an accessible, orderly whole.

Because he believes almost everything else depends on it. If the Spirit is only an influence, Torrey argues, we will always be asking how to get more of it and use it. But if the Spirit is a Person — indeed a divine Person — the real question becomes whether he may have all of us. Torrey marshals the Scriptures that show the Spirit thinking, willing, speaking, loving, and being grieved, to establish that he is someone, not something.

A great deal: the Spirit regenerates, indwells, assures, sanctifies, teaches, and guides, and empowers for service. Torrey lays these works out one by one, with Scripture for each, so that the reader can see the full scope of what the Spirit does — from the new birth at the beginning of the Christian life to the daily leading and strengthening that follow.

Torrey teaches it as a definite experience distinct from regeneration, given for power in service and witness rather than for salvation. He urges believers to seek it, and lays out the conditions he draws from Scripture — such as repentance, obedience, and asking in faith. This emphasis reflects his revivalist setting and his conviction that the church's weakness is largely a want of the Spirit's power.

Both, held together. Torrey builds his teaching carefully on Scripture, so it functions as a doctrine of the Spirit; but his aim is always practical — that the reader would actually know the Spirit, be filled with him, and serve in his power. He writes for the pew and the pulpit, not the lecture hall alone.

Because he means to ground everything he says about the Spirit in what the Bible actually teaches, rather than in experience or speculation. The book is dense with cited passages, and Torrey walks through them deliberately, so that a reader can test each claim against the text and come away persuaded from Scripture itself, not merely from Torrey's authority.

At the opening treatment of the Spirit's personality and deity, which is the foundation for everything after; then through his work in the believer and in service. Because Torrey builds point upon point with his Scriptures in hand, the book rewards being read in order, Bible open, testing each step as it comes.