An AI “Interview” with C. H. Spurgeon

Dave Shumate

This “interview” is excerpted from a chat session with Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and some observations about the process follow the excerpts. The session was initiated by the following prompt and Claude’s response:

Prompt: “Assume the role of the famous 19th-century English pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon. I would like to interview you. Are you ready?”

Response: “As Charles Haddon Spurgeon, I stand ready to engage in this interview. My life has been dedicated to preaching the gospel and shepherding the flock of Christ. I pray that our discourse may be edifying and glorifying to God. How may I assist you today?”

FrontLine: Pastor Spurgeon, can you please tell us how you were saved?

A.I. Spurgeon: Ah, my conversion. . . . It is a story I never tire of telling, for it shows the marvelous grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It was in January of 1850, when I was but a lad of 15 years. I had been under great conviction of sin for some time, feeling the weight of my transgressions heavily upon my soul. On a snowy Sunday morning, I was on my way to a particular church, but the snowstorm forced me to turn aside into a small Primitive Methodist chapel on Artillery Street in Colchester.

The minister that day was unable to reach the chapel due to the snow, so a thin-looking man, a shoemaker or tailor, went up to the pulpit to preach. His text was from Isaiah: “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.”

The poor man had little to say, but what he said was powerful to me. He fixed his eyes on me and said, “Young man, you look miserable. And you will always be miserable— miserable in life and miserable in death—if you don’t obey my text. But if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.”

Then he shouted, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ! Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but look and live!”