I've read a number of Andrew Murray's book and have been benefited by them tremendously. However, one thing I've noticed whenever I've read his books is how he's reticent to refer to the Holy Spirit as divine or as a person. He doesn't outright deny it, but he sometimes makes statements which made me wonder whether he privately denied the personhood and full divinity of the Holy Spirit, and hence denied the doctrine of the Trinity.
As a Dutch Reformed theologian and pastor he was required to profess belief in the doctrine of the Trinity. It was part of his ordination process. But merely because someone is ordained in a Trinitarian denomination and professes to believe something doesn't necessarily mean that he does or continued to do so afterwards.
However, I have recently found a passage in one of Murray's books where he does seem to kind of affirm the personhood and full divinity of the Holy Spirit. It's not clear or unambiguous. His statements could still be interpreted in a Unitarian or Pneumatomachian way. But it at least approaches an acknowledgement of the full personhood and divinity of the Holy Spirit. It is the closest I recall seeing Andrew Murray doing so. The passage is the 29th chapter in his classic book Waiting On God. Here are various links to the chapter (or book) which is hosted on different websites:
Here: https://ccel.org/ccel/murray/waiting/waiting.xxxii.html
Or Here: https://archive.org/details/waitingongoddail00murr/page/134/mode/2up?ref=ol&view=theater
Or Here: https://www.biblestudytools.com/classics/murray-waiting-god/twenty-ninth-day.html
Or Here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc1.cr60098201&view=1up&seq=141
Or scroll down to chapter 29 Here: https://www.worldinvisible.com/library/murray/waiting/waiting.htm
Here's the text as taken from the last link posted above. I'll highlight in yellow the relevant passages.
Day 29. FOR THE PROMISE OF THE FATHER
"He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father." Acts1:4 ASV
In speaking of the saints in Jerusalem at Christ's birth—with Simeon and Anna—we saw how the call to waiting is no less urgent now, though the redemption they waited for has come, than it was then. We wait for the full revelation in us of what came to them, but what they could scarcely comprehend. In the same way, it is with waiting for the promise of the Father. In one sense, the fulfillment can never come again as it came at Pentecost. In another sense, and that in as deep a reality as with the first disciples, we need to wait daily for the Father to fulfill His promise in us.
The Holy Spirit is not a person distinct from the Father in the way two persons on earth are distinct. The Father and the Spirit are never without or separate from each other. The Father is always in the Spirit; the Spirit works nothing but as the Father works in Him. Each moment, the same Spirit that is in us is in God, too. And, he who is most full of the Spirit will be the first to wait on God most earnestly to further fulfill His promise and to still strengthen him mightily by His Spirit in the inner man. The Spirit in us is not a power at our disposal. Nor is the Spirit an independent power, acting apart from the Father and the Son. The Spirit is the real, living presence and the power of the Father working in us. Therefore, it is he who knows that the Spirit is in him who waits on the Father for the full revelation and experience of the Spirit's indwelling. It is he who waits for His increase and abounding more and more.
See this in the apostles. They were filled with the Spirit at Pentecost. When they, not long after, on returning from the council where they had been forbidden to preach, prayed afresh for boldness to speak in His name, a fresh coming down of the Holy Spirit was the Father's fresh fulfillment of His promise.
At Samaria, by the Word and the Spirit, many had been converted, and the whole city was filled with joy. At the apostles' prayer, the Father once again fulfilled the promise. (See Acts 8:14-7.) Even so to the waiting company—"We are all here before God"(see Acts 10:33)—in Cornelius' house. And so, too, in Acts 13. It was when men, filled with the Spirit, prayed and fasted, that the promise of the Father was afresh fulfilled, and the leading of the Spirit was given from heaven: "Separate me Barnabas and Saul" (Acts 13:2).
So also we find Paul, in Ephesians, praying for those who have been sealed with the Spirit, that God would grant them the spirit of illumination. And later on, that He would grant them, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by the Spirit in the inner man.
The Spirit given at Pentecost was not something that God failed with in heaven, and sent out of heaven to earth. God does not, cannot, give away anything in that manner. When He gives grace or strength or life, He gives it by giving Himself to work it—it is all inseparable from Himself. Much more so is the Holy Spirit. He is God, present and working in us. The true position in which we can count upon that working with an unceasing power is as we, praising for what we have, still unceasingly wait for the Father's promise to be still more mightily fulfilled.
What new meaning and promise does this give to our lives of waiting! It teaches us to continually keep the place where the disciples tarried at the footstool of the throne. It reminds us that, as helpless as they were to meet their enemies, or to preach to Christ's enemies until they were endued with power, we, too, can only be strong in the life of faith, or the work of love, as we are in direct communication with God and Christ. They must maintain the life of the Spirit in us. This assures us that the omnipotent God will, through the glorified Christ, work in us a power that can bring unexpected things to pass, impossible things. Oh, what the church will be able to do when her individual members learn to live their lives waiting on God—when together, with all of self and the world sacrificed in the fire of love, they unite in waiting with one accord for the promise of the Father, once so gloriously fulfilled, but still unexhausted!
Come and let each of us be still in the presence of the inconceivable grandeur of this prospect: the Father waiting to fill the church with the Holy Spirit. And willing to fill me, let each one say.
With this faith, let a hush and a holy fear come over the soul, as it waits in stillness to take it all in. And, let life increasingly become a deep joy in the hope of the ever fuller fulfillment of the Father's promise.
My soul, wait thou only upon God!
Around the beginning of March 2023, I found another quote that is allegedly from Andrew Murray that appears to have him implying the genuine divinity and personality of the Holy Spirit. See page 5 of the pdf HERE of Alliance Weekly. In an article by Rev. Robert D. Kilgour [starting on page 4 in the pdf], he quotes Andrew Murray as saying:
"Just as wonderful and real is the divine work of God on the throne, graciously hearing, and, by His mighty power, effectually answering prayer; just as divine as is the work of the Son, interceding and securing and transmitting the answer from above, is the work of the Holy Ghost in us in the prayer which awaits and obtains the answer. The intercession within is as divine as the intercession above." END QUOTE
Notice how the author of the quote distinguishes the person of God the Father and His work, then the Son and His work, and then the work of the Holy Spirit. The logic of the quote implies the genuine personality of the Holy Spirit and His separate activity distinct from the work of the Son and the Father. Unfortunately, Kilgour didn't cite where he got that quote. Therefore, I'm uncertain whether it really is from Andrew Murray. I'll continue searching for the source of the quote.
