Full text of "D L Moody A Worker In Souls"

See other formats

DARWIN

WIVES

BARE SOULS

THE SOUL OF SAMUEL PEPYS

DAMAGED SOULS

SHADOW VERSES

A PROPHET OF JOY

PORTRAITS OF AMERICAN WOMEN

A NATURALIST OF SOULS

PORTRAITS OF WOMEN

UNION PORTRAITS

CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS

LEE THE AMERICAN

DT k "
. JL/v

A WORKER J

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.

1928

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

_B-
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE MEMORY OF

HARRIET FORD CUTLER

Nil magnum^ nil altum y nil gratum^ nil ac-
centum tibi sit } nisi fare Deus > cut de Deo sit.
IMITATION OF CHRIST.

// faut etre assez frofondement scepique four
farditre quelquefois Chretien. SAINTE-BEUVE.

Moi, je crois a tout; je suis scepique. FRENCH
COMEDY.

CONTENTS

I THE GROWTH OF A SOUL 15

II HEAVEN AND HELL 57

III MOODY THE PREACHER 99

IV MOODY AND SAN KEY 142
V MOODY THE MAN 186

VI MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS 227

VII THE MOLDER OF SOULS 264

ILLUSTRATIONS

D. L. MOODY Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

His BIRTHPLACE 20

His GRANDMOTHER 21

His MOTHER 21

MOODY'S BODY GUARD. WILL IT PAY? 50

MOODY'S BODY GUARD. IT DOES PAY 51

MR. MOODY AT 25 84

MR. AND MRS. MOODY IN 1864 AND 1869 85

SCENE OF CHICAGO ACTIVITIES 116

A PORTRAIT OF MOODY SAVED FROM THE CHICAGO

FIRE 117

CHINA FIGURES OF MOODY AND SANKEY 148

IRA D. SANKEY 149

SCENES AT MOUNT HERMON 170

PREACHING IN JERUSALEM 171

MR. AND MRS. MOODY WITH GRANDCHILDREN 190

NORTHFIELD SEMINARY 19!

THE NORTHFIELD HOME 206

INFORMAL GLIMPSES OF MR. MOODY 207

FOUR GENERATIONS OF THE MOODY FAMILY 224

MR. MOODY'S MOTHER IN HER gisT YEAR 225

MOUNT HERMON BUILDINGS 256

A PAGE FROM MOODY'S BIBLE 257

A PAGE FROM His AUTOBIOGRAPHY 296

ROUND TOP 297

D. L. MOODY:

A WORKER IN SOULS

CHRONOLOGY

D WIGHT LYMAN MOODY

Born, Northfield, Massachusetts, February 5, 1837.
Entered shoe business in Boston, 1854.

Joined Mount Vernon Street Congregational Church, 1856.
Went to Chicago, 1856.
Gave up business for religious work, 1861.
Married Emma C, Re veil, 1862.
Established Chicago church, 1863.
Met Sankey, 1870.
Revival in British Isles, 1873-1875.
Revivals in large American cities, 1875-1877.
Northfield Seminary established, 1879.
Mount Hermon School established, 1881.
Second British mission, 1881-1884.
Chicago Bible Institute established, 1887.
Northfield conferences established, 1887.
Last revival in Kansas City, 1899.
Died, Northfield, December 22, 1899.

Ira David Sankey, born August 28, 1840, died August 13,
1908.

D. L.

A IN SOULS

CHAPTER I

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

WHEN one looks upon the ease and richness and
abundance of modern American life, its kaleido-
scopic color and variety, its mad bustle and pro-
fusion of motion and locomotion, one feels more
inclined to descant upon its possessions than upon
its needs. Yet if one stops in all the hurry to re-
flect, the needs become apparent and crying, and
in all the loud hurly-burly not one need stands out
more patent than the need of God. The world has
always needed Him no doubt But it seems as if
the America of to-day needed Him most because
it is so complacently satisfied to get along with-
out Him. Oh, we have churches enough, priests
enough, sermons enough, charities and good works
enough, or at any rate abounding. But they all
seem ingeniously contrived to cover the void. For

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

divers reasons, some of which will develop later,
God seems to have drifted far away from most of
us, or we from Him, so far that neither airplane
nor wireless will suffice to call Him back. Now a
generation ago D. L. Moody was an immense,
magnificent agency for bringing men to God. You
may not sympathize with all of his methods, you
may even feel that in some cases they defeated their
object; but you cannot deny that he worked in his
own way with a tremendous, tireless zeal to supply
the greatest need of his country and of the world,
and for that reason the study of his methods, his
purposes, his results, and of his personal character,
must always have a profound interest As to the
need we have his own testimony: "I do not know
of anything that America needs more to-day than
men and women on fire with the fire of heaven." *
As to the zeal and the effort we have the admirable
statement of Mr. Duffus: "In his rage to save souls
he traveled more than a million miles, addressed
more than a hundred million people, and person-
ally prayed and pleaded with seven hundred and
fifty thousand sinners. All in all, it is very prob-
able, as his admirers claim, that he reduced the
population of hell by a million souls." 2
Dwight Lyman Moody was born in Northfield,

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

Massachusetts, In 1837. The three names are suf-
ficient to show the Anglo-Saxon stock, and the man
typified that stock in all respects, so much so that
he was almost as much at home in England as in
America. His father, who was a mason, died
when the boy was very small, and the mother
brought up a large family with patience, devotion,
and self-sacrifice. Dwight knocked about the New
England country town as a child. As a youth he
went to Boston, and after some struggles settled
into his uncle's business of shoe-selling. He was a
vigorous and aggressive salesman. In 1856 he
became a member of the Mount Vernon Street
Church. The business of working for God at-
tracted him at once, but Boston did not wholly
suit him. He drifted out to Chicago and there be-
gan both to sell shoes and to save sinners. But the
latter occupation was more congenial and he soon
gave himself up to it wholly. In 1862 he married
a noble woman who was always of incalculable
help to him. He reached out first for poor boys,
then for poor men, then for poor and rich alike.
During the Civil War, though not in the army, he
did active missionary work among the soldiers.
Though he was never ordained as a minister, he
for a time carried on a church in Chicago, and

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

carried it on with his usual fierce energy and suc-
cess. He met Sankey, and at once saw how he
could employ him. Then two brief visits to Eu-
rope confirmed his instinct for larger usefulness,
and in 1873 he and Sankey started on the two-year
tour of the British Isles which founded their world
reputation as evangelists. Returning to his own
country, he continued the work everywhere with
equal success, and though in later years the ele-
ment of direct preaching gradually diminished in
proportion to that of religious and educational
organization, he was until his death in Northfield
in 1899 essentially an exhorter and teacher. It is
difficult to think of him as anything else, the more
so as he entered into his work with such immense,
exuberant relish. He enjoyed it with an enjoy-
ment all the more keen for being righteous and
divinely authorized. He could have said of him-
self, as Frances Willard did, "The chief wonder
of my life is that I dare to have so good a time,
both physically, mentally, and religiously." 3

To understand Moody we have to keep before
us always the New England background. There
was the rough, hard, simple life, energetic, up-
right, conscientious if on somewhat conventional

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

lines, but wholly unillumined, without color or
charm* There was always the atmosphere of re-
ligion, at once stimulating and stifling. In
Moody's case the religion happened to be nomi-
nally Unitarian, and therefore his doctrinal basis
had to be established later. But the Unitarianism
of that day, especially in such types as Moody's
pastor and mother, was far more orthodox than
the orthodoxy of this, and the religious tone about
the boy was not very unlike what the man carried
to his grave. Underlying it all was the New Eng-
land landscape, that varied and haunting beauty
of rolling hills with their spring and autumn
splendor, of rocky pastures, spread wide with
juniper and berry bushes, of great elm-besprinkled
meadows stretching beside the Connecticut, and
best of all the river itself, flowing forever, like
human life, out of mystery into mystery. Even if
his boyhood was not very conscious of these things,
they got hold of Moody and kept hold of him all
his days. He liked to wander, would not have
been happy to do anything else; but from all the
wandering he returned again and again to North-
field with an infinite sense of satisfaction and con-
tent

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

A good deal is told us about Moody's early
years, but it is more extensive than definite. Per-
haps the most striking fact is the lack of a father's
control in the training of such a temperament
The mother gave love and won it eminently. But
she could not maintain the sterner discipline, and
the boy's wayward, violent spirit sorely needed it
The mother herself said of him, "He used to think
himself a man when he was only a boy." 4 One
who had exactly the reverse experience, being
brought up without a mother, by a father much of
Moody's type, can well divine how it would work.

Without being ever in the least egotistical,
Moody was always contriving to bring hints and
suggestions of his early life into his sermons, and
they are therefore a rich source of biographical
information. It is evident that, like other boys,
he disliked manual labor. "When I was a boy/ 7
he says, "I used, among other things, to hoe the
corn on a farm ; and I used to hoe it so badly, in
order to get over so much ground, that at night I
had to put down a stick in the ground, so as to
know next morning where I had left off." 5 Prob-
ably he liked play better than work, but we get
very little insight into any of the boyish amuse-

s <

5- -

Q e

x -

< g

tn I

</j tr

V 2

Q n

8 -

s -

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

meats. He is said to have been a good runner, and
he was quick and active even after his weight in-
creased, but there is no mention of swimming, or
of skating, or of sliding on those tempting hills, no
suggestion of games or contests. New England
boys have always had these things in some shape
and it seems likely that Moody's energy and vigor
would have shone in them. They might have af-
forded moral lessons, also; but I have not found
that he drew them. He did have all his life a
fondness for the rather crude form of humor
called practical jokes, and in this as in some other
things, he much resembled his distinguished con-
temporary, P. T. Barnum, though Barnum's call-
ing in life was slightly more conducive to indul-
gence in such diversion. To post a notice of a
temperance lecture and draw a crowd for nothing,
to startle a farmer's horses, just as he was taking a
drink, and tip him back into his wagon, to have
a cat jump out of Caesar's coffin when the oration
of Antony was being delivered over it, such inci-
dents were a great relief in the monotonous life
of a country boy.

Of boyhood friends and associates there is little
record in Moody's later years. There may have
been such things, but he does not allude to them.

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

He sometimes refers to men whom he knew as
boys, but there is no sign of particular intimacy,
and of girls there is no suggestion at all. On the
other hand, he seems to have been devoted to his
family, perhaps in part because he left them fairly
early. He speaks with profound emotion of the
brother who disappeared for years and the death
of his younger brother Samuel caused him bitter
sorrow. Of his mother he always speaks with rev-
erence and tenderness. She did not indeed spare
old-fashioned severity, and the boy probably
needed it Once when she was whipping him, he
remarked that it did not hurt, whereupon she saw
to it that it did. 6 But her tenderness, her devo-
tion, her wisdom, made a lasting impression, and
until her death he reverted to her for counsel and
comfort.

There are numerous references in his sermons
to the religious experience of childhood; but they
are usually for edification, either positively or
negatively, and therefore cannot be entirely relied
upon. He tells us that he detested Sunday/ He
tells us that sermons bored him, and he made up
his mind that he would avoid them when he could. 8
He was of course brought up to prayer, but in
childhood he looked mainly to its practical effi-

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

cacy, as indeed he was inclined to all his life. A
heavy fence rail once fell upon him, and he could
not possibly lift it. He prayed to God to help him
and then he lifted the rail quite easily, 9 Death
and its terrors often haunted him. He would
stand beside a grave and think of its ghastiiness. 10
When the funeral bell tolled out the age of the
departed, he thought how it might some day toll
for him. "I felt terribly afraid when I thought
of the cold hand of death feeling for the cords of
life, and being launched into eternity, to go to an
unknown world." n All this to emphasize that
from such terrors in later life he was superbly
free.

Ill

The most interesting thing about Moody's boy-
hood was his education, or lack of it. He did not
like study or his books and avoided them when
he could. He tells us that a teacher who worked
by love could do more than one who punished. 12
And it is said that he learned for love of his
mother, but for nothing else. But I imagine that
love affected the intention more than the act A
story is told by one of his critics which may not be
true, but is to the point In later years he met a
man and assailed him with the usual question,

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

"Are you a Christian?" "I am a Unitarian," was
the answer. "Then you are not a Christian. I
was a Unitarian until I was seventeen when I left
Northfield and I know." But the man replied:
"I was your teacher in Northfield. You left there
before you were seventeen, and you did not know
enough to be a Unitarian." 13 Other evidence,
including Moody's own, amply supports this lack
of even rudimentary book-learning. What is more
important is that he not only lacked education, but
that at times by no means always he expressed
a contempt for it: "We are a bad lot; and what
you want is to tell men so not flatter them, and
tell them how angelic they are because they have
some education. An educated rascal is the mean-
est kind of a rascal." * 4

Which of course does not imply that he had not
the most acute, quick, versatile, and penetrating
intelligence. No man could surpass him in keen
Yankee shrewdness, applied at all times and to all
sorts of things. You could not over-reach him in
a bargain, you could not deceive him in a man's
character, unless he was willing to be deceived.
He kept up with the movement of the world and
with current events. He read the newspapers,
though perhaps chiefly to find illustrations for his

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

sermons. He watched men's faces and used them
to sound men's hearts, and his opportunities for
doing this have rarely been surpassed: "He had
unquestionably looked into the countenances of
more people than any man who ever lived
(100,000,000 Arthur T. Pierson estimates), and
had made the personal acquaintance of more indi-
viduals than many of us have ever seen. And yet
he seemed never to forget any of those who had
once made a distinct and positive impression upon
his mind." 15

The education of life was there in large meas-
ure, at least of life viewed in certain aspects. But
the education of life, even at its best, needs to be
supplemented by books and thought, and such
supplementing was not in Moody's line. General
reading he never at any time knew much about.
It is true that in his sermons there is an occasional
historical allusion which surprises, until you real-
ize how easily it might have been gathered into
that retentive memory. But of reading for the
pleasure or even the profit of it there is no sign.
History, philosophy, science, poetry in themselves
did not exist for him. Novels he abhorred: "I
could not read those flashy novels. I have no taste
for them, no desire to read them; but if I did I

D, L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

would not do it." 18 Yet novels, while perhaps
morally dissipating, are intellectually profitable
far beyond what most people believe.

Nor did Moody do much at any time in his life
in the way of abstract reflection. In his terse,
flashing way he once remarked : "There is hope for
a man when once he begins to think." 17 Some-
times the weary reader of his thousands of pages
wishes that he could ever have begun. He was so
busy, so rushed, so driven in saving souls that
quiet, thoughtful, intense reflection, for itself, was
something he had no time for. "A careful self-
analysis was unnatural if not impossible through-
out his entire life," says one of his most acute and
sympathetic critics. 18 He himself deprecates and
deplores anything of the kind. No doubt self-
dissection has its dangers. But he at least was not
greatly exposed to them, and his biographer is oc-
casionally forced to regret that he did not indulge
in self-dissection a little more freely. To attack
the great knotty problems of the world by cool,
careful, dispassionate logic was not his method.
He wanted to cut them, to tear them out of his way,
to dissipate them and crush them and forget them.

Not that he was not capable of intellectual con-

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

centration, when he felt that it was required. On
the contrary, even in later life he was a most ardent
and passionate student When he was at home in
Northfield, he would rise at four o'clock and shut
himself up to work for a long time before break-
fast Also, he met many educated men, and he
had the gift of genius for using the work of others.
He had assistants who read for him and called his
attention to passages he ought to see. But this
intellectual effort was shall I say fatally? con-
centrated upon one thing, the Bible, and in youth
and age he was little disposed to go outside of it
A friend says of his earlier years that he did not
know of Moody's owning any other book but a
copy of the New Testament 19 The same friend
said to him a little later: "Moody, If you want to
draw wine out of a cask, it is needful first to put
some in. You are all the time talking, and you
ought to begin to study." 20 The young preacher
was willing, anxious ; but his mind was intensive,
not extensive in its working: it wanted to find and
hold one clue to the whole world. To be sure, it
is said that he developed, that all his life he was
learning and growing, and this is true, A spirit
so naturally vital and progressive could not help

D. L, MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

growing. He reached out, he grasped, he seized
from everywhere, but always the things that bore
in the direction he wished. It is said that his later
sermons were much in advance of the earlier, in
finish and in breadth. This I have been unable to
discover, perhaps because the sermons as printed
have been subjected to industrious editing.

In any case the intellectual deficiencies were
there and cannot be overlooked. He himself was
not disposed to overlook them: "One great torment
of his soul was the thought that he was an ignorant
man, and yet was looked upon as a religious
teacher," says one of his biographers. 21 Perhaps
this is slightly exaggerated ; but there is no doubt
that he was sensitive on the subject, and more than
sensitive, deeply regretful that anything should
hamper his work for the Lord. Yet here, as al-
ways, in Rosalind's charming phrase, you could
not take him without his answer. When a sym-
pathetic critic once pointed out that the only draw-
back to his sermons was his imperfect knowledge
of grammar and English, Moody replied that he
knew and deplored this as much as any one.
"But," he added, "I am doing all I can for God
with the gifts I have. Are you?"

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

It is well to pause and examine more fully
Moody's intellectual and spiritual deficiencies, as
they affected and infected the larger significance
of his whole career. No doubt similar deficiencies
affected the vast mass of humanity which he was
so nobly and passionately laboring to save. Still,
one wishes that a leader of men had not been quite
so much hampered by them.

The superficial weaknesses are evident enough,
the slips in grammar, the raw colloquial English
and rough-and-ready expression. Much of this
was edited out of the printed sermons. Much of
it even disappeared in the reports given in the
more intelligent newspapers. As originally ut-
tered, the talk often had elements that were trying
to cultivated hearers. Moody was well aware of
this and did his best to overcome the defects.
But the rush and fire and enthusiasm of his main
subject swept him beyond minor considerations of
correctness, and in most cases they swept away his
hearers also. The chief thing to note is the admir-
able comment of Dr. Goss, which, if not strictly
exact, is perfectly characteristic of the man's native
genius and power of growth, that he never made
the same blunder twice. 22

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

These superficial drawbacks, however, are of
small consequence. What does matter is the wide
world of intellectual and spiritual experience
which Moody never knew anything about and
never wanted to. One gets so irritated sometimes
over the utter absence of the things that seem to
some of us to count that one is tempted to ask, of
what use is it to save a soul when there is nothing
in it worth saving? Against which should be
urged, justly, the other point of view, which
Moody never fails to emphasize, that all the cul-
ture in the world is of no value for a soul which
has not the only element that can make it a soul
at all. "Culture is all right in its place, but to
talk about culture before a man is born of God,
before he has received this incorruptible seed into
his heart, is the height of madness." 28

Yet, for example, there is science, the intense
passion for pure truth, wherever it may lead, the
eager, endless curiosity to probe more and more
deeply into the secrets of the universe. Two of
the greatest of Moody's contemporaries, Sainte-
Beuve and Darwin, are typical of this passion as
he is of a passion that is different Neither Sainte-
Beuve nor Darwin cared in the least about saving
souls. Neither bothered much about his own

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

soul, except to make it ampler and richer and
more fruitful by the endless acquisition of knowl-
edge, Sainte-Beuve's favorite motto was the old
Latin saying, "one wearies of everything except to
understand." Darwin put it in his quiet, simple,
unpretentious fashion: "I believe there exists, and
I feel within me, an instinct for truth, or knowl-
edge, or discovery, of something the same nature
as the instinct of virtue." 24 The instinct of virtue
was enough for Moody, and knowledge, except as
subordinate to that, and then in a very minor de-
gree, was infinitely inconsequential. When Gen-
eral Booth visited the British Museum, he prayed
that "God would enable me to acquire knowledge
to increase my power of usefulness." 25 This is an
excellent disposition, surely, but it is far, far from
the scientific spirit It was Moody's disposition
at all times, when he was interested in knowledge
at all. And he is too often inclined to express a
contempt for it. The essence of the scientific spirit
is a perpetual, curious questioning, of all things
and all men. Moody met millions of men. But
he was too eager to pour out himself to have much
time to question. He had but the one question,
which he plied life with in a thousand forms:

3 1

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

"Are you a Christian?" All other questions were
unnecessary.

Again, take art The beauty, the splendor of
esthetic emotion is what most makes life worth
living for some of us. It may be sculpture, it may
be painting, it may be music, it may be poetry.
All of them offer the height of rapture freely to
any one who will or can accept of it. All of them
were completely lost on Moody. Even poetry he
refers to only in the form of hymns, obviously be-
cause he thinks they may affect his auditors. The
supreme magic of high-wrought expression even
of his own supreme interests meant nothing to
him. Take the broadest and most human form
of esthetic delight, the appreciation of nature.
Moody's biographers assert that this appreciation
was strong in him and it is evident that the home
landscape associated with his childhood always
kept a pull on his heart But his sermons show not
the slightest sensibility to the charms of the natural
world. Even for his manifold purposes of illus-
tration he makes little use of them. When he
wants to deal with birds, he falls back upon the
lark and nightingale, because he has seen them
mentioned in books. The world in which Thoreau
passed his whole existence, the utterly forgetful

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

self-surrender to the magic of birds and flowers
and trees and stars, would have been incompre-
hensible to the prophet of Northfield. These
things had no value for saving souls, they had no
souls to be saved: why bother with them?

Note that in all these matters it is not the mere
ignorance and limitation that are hurtful and dan-
gerous. Ignorance is above all the mark of the age
in which we live, and it is the mark of those who
are supposed to be learned as much as of any.
Within the last two hundred years the possibilities
of human knowledge have increased with appal-
ling rapidity. This is in part what Henry Adams
means by the somewhat nebulous theory of accel-
eration which fills the later chapters of his Auto-
biography. What everybody knows collectively is
vastly, infinitely out of proportion to what any-
body knows, or can know. The best trained, the
most thoroughly educated, simply grope in an ob-
scure mist of what they might find out and ought
to find out, and never will. In simple ignorance,
therefore, minds of the Moody type differ little
from any other. The difference comes, if one may
say so, in the knowledge of ignorance, and it is in
the firm acquisition of this knowledge that, for
the future, must lie the beginning of wisdom. The

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

wise man is conscious of his limits, knows that he
knows little or nothing, and his wisdom brings
modesty, humility, quiet searching of the heart,
freedom from self-assurance, from positiveness,
from aggressive dogmatism. Now there is no
question but that Moody theoretically proclaimed
this humility, admitted that there was much that
he did not know and that others did. But the atti-
tude did not take hold of his life. The timidity,
the uncertainty, the sceptical conservatism implied
in the wisdom indicated above were utterly foreign
to his nature. He strode right out into the un-
known, with his eye so firmly fixed upon one
glorious object, that doubt and tremor and hesita-
tion were forever abandoned. There was but one
thing really worth knowing. That thing could be
known by any man or woman, any day, even by the
humblest and poorest Why trouble about know-
ing anything else? He did not trouble, could not
wholly repress his contempt for those who did.
Now the proposition, "I know the one thing need-
ful to be known," too easily resolves itself into,
"What I do not know is not worth knowing,"

There is this qualification, however, and It is
important The old saying was, knowledge is
power. It is almost equally true, especially in

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

these days, that ignorance Is power. The knowl-
edge of Ignorance, which we have seen to be the
chief ingredient of wisdom, may give tolerance
and humility, but it tends to hamper and to cripple
in practical life. Men of great, energetic, far-
reaching action often, succeed as much by their
limitations as by their intellectual equipment, as
Gaston Boissier has admirably shown in regard to
the failures of Cicero. The soldier, the statesman,
the man of large affairs, the practical reformer,
must certainly have special knowledge for his pur-
poses, but the larger knowledge of ignorance
merely restrains him by interfering with quick
decision and ready resource. "I would rather
have zeal without knowledge ; and there is a good
deal of knowledge without zeal," said Moody
himself. 26 It must frankly be admitted that his
magnificent ignorance was a great factor in the
furious energy of his attack upon indifference

and evil.

% .

On this point of ignorance and lack of education
it is interesting to compare Moody with some
prominent men who have been equally without
early advantages or indifferent to them, and have

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

had to make their way in the world, and made it
Among Moody's contemporaries he was often lik-
ened to Grant. Grant acted rather than talked,
and hence had less occasion to betray his deficien-
cies. As a critic of the day rather cruelly ex-
pressed it: "We observe the resemblance, but we
are also impressed with the difference: Grant
knows something and says little; Moody knows
nothing and talks all the time." 2r But the two had
a certain physical resemblance and they were alike
in their power over men and their singular gift
for making the best of even slight opportunities.
By far the most interesting figure to compare
with Moody, is that of Lincoln. Both had the
same struggle with narrow means and limited ad-
vantages in their youth. Both educated themselves
and used powers amounting to the highest genius
in benefiting their fellow men, Lincoln for this
world, Moody for the next There is only one
meeting recorded between them, when Lincoln
visited Moody's Sunday School in Chicago and
made some rather perfunctory remarks as to what
it might mean to the boys to have such teaching.
But one easily imagines the widest possibilities of
talk between the two, and one wonders with what
depths of tender and sympathetic irony Lincoln

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

would have met the inevitable query, "Are you a
Christian? 5 '

As to intellectual and spiritual training, Lin-
coln, like Moody, was a reverent, an assiduous, a
studious reader of the Bible. But Moody said
frankly: "I have one rule about books. I do not
read any book, unless it will help me to understand
the book." 28 To the Bible Lincoln added Shake-
speare, and one sees at once that here is a vast
spiritual difference. Shakespeare sums up all that
was outside of Moody's world. I do not find that
he read the poet, I do not imagine he ever read
him attentively. I have looked for Shakespeare
allusions and I have noted but two, an incidental
reference to the song in "As You Like It," illus-
trating Ingratitude/ 9 and a comparison of the
Bible and Shakespeare as literature, greatly to
the disadvantage of the latter. 80

The consideration of Shakespeare in connection
with Moody is especially fruitful, because some
elements of resemblance between them are so
marked. Both began at the bottom of the ladder
and made their way up by sheer personal power.
Both were without formal education and had the
richest faculty for extracting education from life.
Both made instinctive, cunning, almost inspired

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

use of words to affect the world enormously. But
what a strange difference in their spiritual atti-
tude! To Moody this world was in theory a chaos
of putrid horror, to be escaped from and forgotten
in the absorbed contemplation of another. To
Shakespeare this world was almost enough, at
least the passion and the glory and the splendor of
it fill his pages sufficiently to make another world
for the time dispensable. All men and women he
understood and loved, not as they might be, but as
they were. It was not only saints that he sought
and painted, indeed the saints, from their other-
worldliness, get but scant attention. It was not
only the pure and noble, it was common souls, torn
by passion and struggle, weltering in depths as
well as triumphing on heights, but all lovable just
because they were human like himself. He turned
to Desdemona and Cordelia and Juliet and Cleo-
patra alike. What place is there in Moody's world
for the wit of Mercutio, or for the riotous laughter
of Falstaff and Sir Toby Belch? Shakespeare had
place and genial welcome for them all.

Especially, there is one figure who to me em-
bodies largely the Shakespearean attitude, and is
the most ethereal offspring of the Shakespearean
imagination, a figure quite unparalleled in other

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

literary work, or paralleled only to prove Shake-
speare's superiority. I mean the clown, Touch-
stone, or Feste, or the Fool in Lear. Few human
beings are more opposite to the type of Moody
and more impervious to the Moody efforts at sal-
vation than the Shakespearean fool, and as such
I wish to keep him, like a gleaming thread running
through all these various chapters. It must be
understood at once that this creature of immortal,
ideal lightness and grace and sunshine and tender-
ness, is by no means a fool in the ordinary sense.
By some inborn oddity, some strange remoteness of
spiritual imperfection, or super-perfection, he
simply turns the world topsy-turvy, and makes
fleeting thistledown of the deepest passion and
thought. As the clown in a modern play, which at-
tempts to reproduce the Shakespearean ideal, ex-
presses it, "Thus ye shall know folly ever; for the
weakness of our skulls lies not in mere doltishness,
in stone-like ignorance. But we trifle where the
wise are sad, and over trifles which make the wise
merry we waste the ripe fruit of deliberation. We
dally where the world pants eagerly, we toil when
the world sleeps. Love, ambition, high contem-
plation, hungry hope these are the wise man's
passions, they are but dreams to the fool." With

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

endless depths of delicate irony and subtle grace,
this airy creature turns into inconsequent evanes-
cence the wide mouthings of statesman and re-
former and preacher and philosopher, and puffs
them away from him with the light breath of
childish melody, such as the ballad-scrap of Feste,

"When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey-ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day, 1 '

or the bit of world-deep folk-song that delighted
Anatole France,

"Les petites marionettes

Font, font, font
Trois petits tours,
Et puis s'en vont."

For clowns and Moodys alike do their three swift,
fading turns, and vanish away, the clowns accept-
ing their fate gayly or wistfully, the Moodys fight-
ing it with the best earthly and unearthly weapons
they can find or grasp*

And Moody's weapons certainly were not deli-
cate irony and subtle grace. He wanted to make
the world over, and he went at it with a hammer*

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

But before he made over the world, he had to be
made over himself, or, as it was generally put in
his day, perhaps a little less generally at present,
he had to be converted. The process is well worth
attention; for as Lincoln's Shakespeare has it,

"Out of these convertites
There is much matter to be heard and learned."

The phenomena of conversion have been elabor-
ately and fully studied within recent years by such
authorities as James, Starbuck, Coe, Leuba, and
many others, especially in their more general and
comparative aspects in the volume by Professor
Underwood entitled : "Conversion : Christian and
Non-Christian." The result of these studies is
that, while you may explain the matter very dif-
ferently according to varying philosophical and
theological points of view, the psychological ex-
perience of conversion is quite undeniable and is
of the utmost spiritual importance. "Conversion,"
says Professor Underwood, "is not simply a linger-
ing superstition among certain sects, but an un-
deniable fact, occurring at all periods In the his-
tory of the Christian Church." 81

Of the various not wholly satisfactory defini-
tions of conversion perhaps the best is that of
William James, which I should prefer to modify

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

something as follows, to the effect that a soul di-
vided, beaten, baffled by anguish, confusion, and
tragic conflict is reduced by the action of some
inward power, divine or otherwise, to unity and
peace. Professor Underwood has amply shown
the manifestations of this process in other religions
besides Christianity, in Buddhism, in Hebraism,
in Mohammedanism. Extensive investigations
have been made by Starbuck, Coe, and others as
to the age when conversion is most apt to take
place, and there seems no question that this is the
period of adolescence and is more or less contem-
porary with sexual development, but the best
authorities, like James, strenuously resist the at-
tempt to identify the religious transformation en-
tirely with the sexual. The differences between
the attitudes of the two sexes toward conversion
have also been tabulated in a most interesting if not
always very conclusive manner.

Another curious point is, how far conversion is
necessarily a gradual process. That it often ap-
pears to occur with overwhelming suddenness is
beyond doubt; but the explanation of this, in most
cases, would seem to be that an intense and pro-
longed inhibition, repression, and resistance, of
the nature so dear to the Freudians, finally gives

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

way under some touch of casual association or di-
vine influence, whichever you please, and the re-
pressed impulse sweeps all barriers before it in a
flood of relief and ecstasy.

The actual emotional experiences attending con-
version have been recorded and analyzed by in-
numerable subjects in all ages, with extraordinary
vividness and power. A more or less prolonged
agony of doubt, or distress, or question, or fear
usually precedes, and I do not know how a brief
extract can illustrate this more forcibly than does
the account given by the evangelist Finney of one
of his subjects: "Accustomed as I was to seeing
persons under great conviction, I must confess that
his appearance gave me a tremendous shock. He
was writhing in agony, grinding his teeth, and
literally gnawing his tongue for pain. He cried
out to me, 'Oh, Mr. Finney! I am lost! I am a
lost soul!' I was greatly shocked and exclaimed,
If this be conviction, what is hell?' " 82 Then in
proportion to the intensity of the misery endured
come the glory and rapture of the spiritual de-
liverance. In the words of Finney as to himself :
"I wept aloud with joy and love; and I do not
know but I should say, I literally bellowed out the
unutterable gushings of my heart. These waves

D, L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

came over me, and over me, and over me, one after
the other until I recollect I cried out, I shall die
if these waves continue to pass over me. 7 " 83 One
marked feature of the experience seems to be a
complete transformation of the outer world, which
is transfigured, glorified, as if seen with new and
heavenly eyes* The poor plumber in Harold Beg-
bie's "Twice-Born Men" comes out into the streets
alone: "He was glad in himself, and the outside
world seemed glad, The pavements shone with
fire, the distance was a haze of bright light, the
leaves of all the trees in the road, he says, seemed
like hands waving to him. He felt that he had
come out of a nightmare into a dream." 84

The great question, of course, as to such spirit-
ual changes is that of their endurance, especially
when they involve entire revolutions of moral con-
duct The debate on this point will probably
never cease. No doubt there are innumerable
cases of backsliding more or less complete. But it
is also certain that the alteration is in many cases
permanent As Professor Underwood says, "The
most remarkable fruit of conversion is seen in the
manner in which it has brought about complete
and permanent deliverance from every known

sin." 85

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

The temptation to refer to some of the endless
celebrated instances of conversion is difficult to re-
sist Probably that of Saint Paul at the very foun-
dation of Christianity is the most famous. One
cannot overlook Saint Augustine's passionately
dramatic account of the struggle in his soul be-
tween the two fiercely contending wills, first one
prevailing and then the other, until the note of
childish song, "Tolle! Lege!" "Tollel Lege!" bade
him turn to his Bible and find relief. Or a very
different type is Jonathan Edward's story of the
little girl of four years old who went through the
spiritual agonies and experienced the spiritual
ecstasy. 36

What comes home to one most is what comes
nearest to oneself. If one cannot record one's own
conversion, it is at least intensely startling to have
a person whom one loves most dearly, whom one
considers to have the clearest intelligence and the
sanest, wisest, most reasonable outlook upon life
use such words as follow: "I can't stop now to
write a long letter, but I must just write a word
to tell you that I have found the Lord or the Lord
has found me in a way I have never dreamed of
that the blessing of his presence which I have
longed for and prayed for has become mine as a

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

permanent possession. I have had it before at
times in a fitful way, but I have been an unprofit-
able, halting follower, rny usefulness hindered by
miserable doubts and uncertainties. God has
taken them away and with Him to work in me to
do the uncertain, impossible things, I enter a new
life of service. I am so intensely ashamed of the
past, but that is forgiven me. I am glorying in
the joy of the present and future, . . . You know
I have always felt that the Lord has a great work
for you and you yourself have said that you would
be a preacher if you only had a message. You are
going to have one, I know it." Alas, the message
never came.

It is interesting to get Moody's ideas as to the
general matter of conversion, as they are scattered
through his sermons, though the ideas may not be
very profound or very consistent He admits that
conversion may be at times a gradual process, and
he constantly urges that its value and especially its
external sign must consist in permanent and radi-
cal alteration of life. At the same time, as was
natural with his methods and with his activities,
he stresses most of all the sudden elements, the
miraculous transformation by which the spirit of
God enters into a soul and makes it over. "Seven-

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

teen years afterward, I was born from above; I
got life from God ; a new life, distinct and separate
from the natural life. I got a life that is as ever-
lasting as God's life; a life that there is no end to:
eternal life. How did I get it? By receiving the
Word of God into my heart 3537 Again: "Salva-
tion is instantaneous. I admit that a man may be
converted so that he cannot tell when he crossed
the line between death and life, but I also believe
a man may be a thief one moment and a saint the
next I believe a man may be as vile as hell itself
one moment, and be saved the next" 3S

As to Moody's own personal experience we have
abundant record both from others and from him-
self. The external facts are simple. When he
first went to Boston as a boy of seventeen, he had
lived with religion, but he had not felt it He
went to Dr. Kirk's Mount Vernon Street Congre-
gational Church and slept through sermons which
he did not understand. A benevolent member got
him into the Sunday School, but his ignorance was
alarming. Even when he was ready to join the
church, the committee at first thought him so ill
qualified that for some time they refused him ad-
mission, and when they at last yielded, it was with
a foreboding that he would do them more injury

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

than credit They certainly had no perception of
the astounding future.

The internal process is more curious still.
There seems to have been comparatively little in
Moody's case of the previous struggle and anguish.
He was not particularly conscious of sin or par-
ticularly overwhelmed with remorse. When it
seemed appropriate and suitable to be converted,
he was converted. Even his description of the
resultant ecstasy sounds to me a little like some-
thing he had heard of: "I thought the old sun
shone a good deal brighter than it ever had be-
fore. ... I fell in love with the birds. I had
never cared for them before." 39 He seems never
to have felt an oppressive need of salvation as he
never certainly entertained a doubt of possessing
it. On the other hand, after the conversion there
were periods of apparently much greater struggle:
"There was another time when God was calling
me into higher service, to go out and preach the
gospel all over the land, instead of staying in
Chicago. I fought against it for months ; but the
best thing I ever did was when I surrendered my
will, and let the will of God be done in me." 40
And after such struggle the acceptance and sub-
mission were accompanied by proportionate

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

ecstasy. As he told Dr. Torrey, "The power of
God fell upon him as he walked up the street and
he had to hurry off to the house of a friend and ask
that he might have a room by himself, and in that
room he stayed alone for hours; and the Holy
Ghost came upon him filling his soul with such
joy that at last he had to ask God to withhold His
Handiest he die on the spot from very joy." 41

It cannot be questioned, however, that with
Moody the essence of conversion was the impulse
to convert others. His own account of this is ir-
resistible in its vividness : "I remember when I was
first converted here in Boston and I used to hear
Dr. Kirk's sermons after I was converted I did
hear them ; I didn't hear them before, I was sound
asleep. But when God waked me up and I did
hear them, it seemed as if God set me afire. I
could not sit still, but I had to go out to preach." 42
Not for him was the passive joy of dreaming of
heaven and divine perfection. He was a worker
and to him religion meant work. Selling shoes
was very well ; but buying souls was infinitely bet-
ter. He had been waked up by having the secret
of the universe sounded in his ears. He was going
forth to proclaim it to millions of sinners so that
they might never sleep in their damning lethargy

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

again. Though he was unlike Shelley in every
other respect, he was at least like him in that he
had a passion for reforming the world.

VII

Boston was hardly the most favorable field for
such fiery, spontaneous, somewhat unchastened
energies as animated the new convert. Chicago
offered a more encouraging atmosphere, and he
went there in 1856. At first he continued to sell
shoes. But with time religious interests became
so engrossing that he abandoned the direct effort
for livelihood, and even after he was married, he
trusted to God altogether for support. The strug-
gle involved in giving up business was severe. He
had been successful, and his earlier ambition had
been to make money, not perhaps so much for the
money as for the satisfaction of achievement.
"The height of my ambition had been to be a suc-
cessful merchant, and if I had known that meeting
was going to take that ambition out of me, I might
not have gone." 43 But he was getting glimpses of
a far bigger achievement, of a more satisfying suc-
cess, and more and more he gave himself up to
what he considered to be the will of God. He said
to Dr. Torrey, "Torrey, if I believed that God

. .

Q </>
^ "^

^.
O S

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

wanted me to jump out of that window, I would
jump." 44 You cannot doubt that he would have
done it

But as a religious teacher he had everything to
learn. He did not look it, to begin with. His
heavy, solid, stolid face and figure, though capable
of sudden illumination, did not generally suggest
spiritual comfort His extreme ignorance ham-
pered him at every step. His first, last, and only
weapon of warfare was the English Bible; yet he
could not read the Bible in those early days with-
out stumbling woefully over the hard words.

Preaching of course he knew nothing of, and
indeed at the start the idea of becoming a preacher
would have seemed ludicrous to even his high-
soaring spirit In the church which he joined on
going to Chicago he was rejected as a Sunday-
School teacher. But he went out into the high-
ways and got together a class of young reprobates
whom no one else could handle. The spirit in
which he did it shows in his later comment:
"There is no place in the world that is so fascinat-
ing as a live Bible class." 45 And again there is his
own description of how he went to work: "I was
two years trying to find what my work was before
I succeeded. Wh$n I commenced to speak in

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

meetings the grown people would [not?] hear me.
I could notice them squirm their shoulders when I
got up. But at last I went out one Sunday and
got hold of eighteen ragged boys. That was about
the happiest Sunday I ever experienced. If I
couldn't teach others I could take them where
there were those who could." 48 Preaching came
upon him, as it were by accident He went to a
Sunday-School convention with a friend. The
other expected speakers gave out or failed. The
friend spoke while Moody prayed for him. Then
the friend took the praying and Moody took the
speaking turn. "He poured out such a torrent of
red-hot words words so full of spiritual life and
vigor that the people stared in surprise, and then
were moved profoundly by the eloquence of this
unlettered, rugged young giant from Chicago," 4T
Sixty conversions ensued on the spot. The gift of
tongues was born with him: all that was needed
was practice and opportunity.

Also, back of the tongue was the torrent rush of
incomparable energy, the unfailing muscular and
nervous strength, which make him stand out even
among revivalists, who are not a particularly
spineless generation. Whatever there was to be
done, he did it, not only his own work, but

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

work of others, and found out things to do which
others never imagined. He seemed tireless. No
difficulty, no opposition, could daunt him, J and no
fatigue could wear him out When he had estab-
lished his irregular church, he had to cover a vast
parish, a parish in which pastoral calls meant more
than anywhere else. He would dart from house
to house, burst in, and cry: "You know me. I am
Moody. This is Deacon De Golyer, this is Dea-
con Thane, this is Brother Hitchcock. Are you all
well? Do you all come to church and Sunday-
School? Have you all the coal you need for the
winter? Let us pray." 4S And they prayed, decor-
ously, but expeditiously, and he hurried on to the
next, and the number he would deal with in one
afternoon left his attendants gasping.

Even in the early days his extraordinary talent
for business management began to show itself and
perhaps needed cultivation less than some others.
He knew how to lead men, all kinds of men, to
make them do what he wanted, to make them
work, to make them want to work, which is the
hardest of all. Others found the money problem
difficult. It was easy to him. In the first place
he convinced men of his absolute honesty, and
then he made them give. But he not only got

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

money, he knew how to use it, and he used not
only money, but every other means to make his
enterprises successful. Other ministers preached
to empty pews. Not he, he wouldn't, and didn't.
"It was pretty hard to preach to empty chairs.
But I got a few interested in the meeting and then
we got out some hand-bills that cost about sixty
cents a thousand, and then we took some of the
young men and got them to come together every
night in the hall, and we gave them some tea and
they prayed together; and they took these hand-
bills and went out on the street, and every man had
a district, and they visited every saloon and bil-
liard hall and bowling alley, and there was not a
man who came within a mile of the building but
got from one to half a dozen of these invitations
to come to that meeting. And when a man was
converted we yoked him up with another, two and
two, and sent them out to bring others, and that is
the way we did it, and we have always had an audi-
ence ever since." 49 And if any man knew a better
way, he was welcome to come and try it Thus
this irregular pastor built up a prosperous and effi-
cient church, a church that was thoroughly alive,
and his fellow preachers became extremely curious
to know how he did it

THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

Best of all, this early Chicago experience of ten
years or more was an inestimable apprenticeship
in the art of handling souls. Dr. Goss draws a
vivid picture of Moody's contact during these
years with all sorts of people and the advantage he
derived from it for his future work. 50 No society
was too low or too rough for him to plunge into
with flawless courage and considerate tact No
group of men of the world was too wealthy or too
hardened for him to venture upon with absolute
dignity and with a keen sense of the side of his
undertaking, whatever it was, that would appeal to
them. He might fail, but it did not disturb him in
the least All he had to do was to turn somewhere
else and begin again. In these human dealings his
Civil War experience was of the greatest value to
him. He had seen men suffer and struggle and
die, and he knew what it meant. In all circum-
stances, no matter what were the surroundings or
the conditions, he went right at the heart, and
knew how to find it In working with men and for
them he learned to know them, and instinctively,
unconsciously, his own nature was broadened and
made more human, of rather, the vast humanity
which was born in him and was the secret of his
power was released and trained and deepened by

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS
his contact with all these lives, rich and poor,
gentle and simple, honest and dishonest, who all
wanted something which he was able to give them,
largely because of his immense confidence that he
had it to give. He went up and down the world,
asking all he met, "Are you a Christian? Are you
a Christian?" And the reason why he was listened
to and not struck in the face was no doubt partly
because he was not very strikable, but also what is
indicated in the remark of one of those whom he
labored to convert, though not with perfect suc-
cess: "Mr. Moody, I thank you. I have been
prayed for, and prayed at, a great many times ; but
no one ever prayed with me until now." 61

Thus equipped and partly trained, but still and
always learning his business, the call came to
Moody to leave Chicago, and wander over the
wide world, an evangelist, a bringer of good tid-
ings, a messenger of joy. He sailed for England,
in 1873, with Sankey, who was already loyally
supporting him by passionate song, to begin their
triumphant tour of the British Isles. At this point
we shall gain most by leaving the chronological
order and making a more thorough dissection of
the various elements of the evangelist's purpose,
career, achievement, and character.

CHAPTER II

HEAVEN AND HELL

WE should establish first what Moody started with
and what he had behind him, and let us begin with
the matter of doctrine. Pascal, of whom Moody
assuredly knew nothing, said, "I do not think it
worth while to probe the speculations of Coper-
nicus, but we should simply remember this, that all
life centers upon the question whether the soul is
mortal or immortal." 1 To answer this question
of Pascal, Moody used nothing, asked for noth-
ing, wanted nothing but the English Bible. His
reliance upon this authority was complete and un-
limited. The grotesqueness of founding a religion
upon a translation, when no translation ever con-
veys the original, did not affect him in the slightest.
His mother had read to him the English Bible.
He had sucked salvation from it That was
enough. Again, that the Bible was a historical
growth, that in its earlier portion it represented
the struggle of a petty oriental people to record the
confused incoherence of its passionate spiritual de-

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

velopment, meant nothing to him. It was the word
of God, whole and entire. To question it was in-
fidelity and led to hell. The contradictions and
inconsistencies did not trouble him. Either they
were explicable, that is, he could explain them, to
his own satisfaction, or it was the 'divine will that
we should let them alone. And he has this de-
lightful final word on all such difficulties: "The
Bible was not made to understand." 2 His entire
and perfect adherence to this irrefragable authority
is summed up in the beginning of the little book
on Heaven: "We believe that the Bible is inspired
because there is nothing in it that could not have
come from God. . . . There is nothing in the
Bible that is not wise, and there is nothing in it
that is not good.' 5 *

To such a mental attitude the most literal accept-
ance of all the Bible narratives and statements was
possible and easy. One of Moody's most ardent
admirers speaks of "the extraordinary voracity of
his faith." 4 Matthew Arnold, commenting on
some of the more surprising Biblical incidents,
says that even the most extreme literalist admits
that these are figurative but those who know more
than he find much else that is figurative also.
There is little sign that Moody inclined to the

HEAVEN AND HELL

figurative ever, though no doubt even he had his
moments. The story of the Flood and the Ark
was as historical to him as the record of the Civil
War. As for the adventure of Jonah, which is
usually regarded as a test stumbling-block, he
simply riots in it Christ believed the story of
Jonah and likened his resurrection to it After
that, what is to be said? To be sure, it is argued
that a whale's mouth is somewhat limited for such
substantial deglutition. What of that? "The book
of Jonah says that God prepared a great fish to
swallow Jonah. Couldn't God make a fish large
enough to swallow Jonah? If God could create a
world, I think He could create a fish large enough
to swallow a million men." 5 Then, after these ex-
travagances, he will hit upon one of those simple,
searching words that go right to the heart, as when
he quotes the reply of a young convert who was
asked, "How can you prove that the Bible is in-
spired?" and answered, "Because it inspires me." 6
It is obvious that one who approached the Bible
in this literal fashion could have had little interest
in modern critical scholarship, in the attempt to
read the Christian mysteries in the light of nine-
teenth century science and philosophy. To Moody
all such investigation was misleading and danger-

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

ous and emanated directly from the devil. To be
sure, as we have seen, he was a most assiduous
student He had oceans of commentaries and
toiled over them with the slow and weary dili-
gence of an unaccustomed brain, but his purpose
was to extract moral and spiritual nourishment for
the millions whom he was called upon to feed.
We know that he limited his choice of books to
such as could help him to understand the book; but
he did not appreciate that really to understand the
Bible one must read not only pious commentaries,
not only the meditations of theologians, but that
strange, bewildering Shakespeare, and even the
novels which Moody detested but which record
the widest wanderings and the wildest passions
of the human heart When men talked to him
about the higher criticism, about subtle interpre-
tations and figurative language, he cried impa-
tiently, "That's just the way men talk now and just
figure away everything." 7 To him it was the
Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible.
He speaks with infinite scorn of the minister who,
being afflicted with doubts, finally decided to cut
out of the sacred book everything that could be
open to question, and in the end there was nothing

HEAVEN AND HELL

left but the cover. Dr. Goss tells pathetically of
his feeling that in the later years the great preacher
did not gain so many converts, and Goss recounts
his own effort to explain to him that it was be-
cause he did not use other methods for other times*
"He fixed those great deep eyes upon me with one
of those long stares which seemed to penetrate into
my very soul, and shook his head. What I said
did not appeal to him. He knew no other meth-
ods." 8 How I should like to have Moody's ver-
sion of that interview.

Of course Moody professed not to deal much
in doctrine anyway. His idea was that he stuck
to the fundamentals and left the theoretical em-
broidery to the theologians to fuss over. When
a lady came to him and said, "I want to be frank
with you, I want you to know that I do not be-
lieve in your theology," he answered. "My the-
ology! I didn't know I had any. I wish you
would tell me what my theology is. 950 Yet this
man was 1 constantly pouring out theological prop-
ositions with an abundance which is simply stag-
gering to the unenlightened mind. "A good many
live on negations. They are always telling what
they don't believe. I want a man to tell me what

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS
he does believe, not what he does not believe. And
I like to meet a positive man." 10 All he had to do
was to look in the glass.

The fact is that he thought he was dealing with
self-evident truths, he thought he was based upon
axioms so fundamental that they could not be
classed at all with the divagations of theology. In
reality, though he had not read the theologians
widely, he had listened for years to sermons from
Doctor Kirk and others founded on recondite
metaphysical reasoning and his whole system had
become saturated with a cloudy mass of doctrine
which was made over and fused and vivified in the
fire of his passionate heart and speech. What he
believed may perhaps be not unfairly summed
up something as follows : that the Bible was ab-
solutely the word of God, that the Bible taught
that man was originally sinful and had fallen from
grace, that the Son of God had sacrificed himself
to atone for our sins, and that by accepting the
atonement of his blood and showing that accept-
ance in our lives we may escape hell and be assured
of heaven. If this is simple, it is difficult to imag-
ine what is complicated, and such a mass of im-
plicit theology certainly forms a tough morsel for
one who finds it hard to accept a single sentence of

HEAVEN AND HELL

the Apostles* Creed. Yet to Moody it was essen-
tial and there was no salvation without it

In other words, an obscure, elaborate reasoning
process worked in his close, compact, ardent in-
tellect to violently logical, or illogical conclusions.
Like many others who have not reflected upon the
nature of reason, he did not appreciate that, while
it is all we have for theoretical investigation or
for practical action, when the far surer guidance
of instinct fails us, it is yet a most delicate and frag-
ile instrument, liable to be jarred and perverted
by every flaw and tremor of passion, and quite
capable, under the influence of desire and preju-
dice, of working to exactly opposite ends* To be
sure, he sometimes belabors reason with his furious
vigor. He is even said to have declared that "the
Voice of Reason is the voice of hell." lx Just as,
on the other side t/ he could declaim with equal
energy against feeling : "Feeling 1 Feeling ! Feel-
ing! I wish that word was banished from the in-
quiry room. If that word is touched in the word
of God, I haven't been able to find it. ... I
thank God I have a better foundation for my faith
than feeling." 12 That is, he placed his reliance
upon faith itself. He did not know that to some
persons faith is simply reason gone to seed, and

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

that to others more sympathetic, but perhaps un-
regenerate, faith is a more or less unconscious rea-
soning process associated with the transfiguring
glory of religious emotion. If he had known, he
would not have cared.

Again, as noted in the previous chapter, we have
the ignorance of ignorance developing into an
assured arrogance of dogmatic positiveness.
Moody's admirers constantly proclaim that he was
broad and tolerant. On matters that he considered
inessential he was charitable to an extraordinary
degree. But when it came to the fundamentals, he
was iron. He was perhaps the original Funda-
mentalist, and it is easy to divine what would have
been his attitude towards evolution in the contro-
versies that have been recently carried OR, though
I am not aware that he alludes to the subject more
than once: "It is a great deal easier to believe that
man was made after the image of God than to be-
lieve, as some young men and women are being
taught now, that he is the offspring of a monkey," 1S
Parenthetically, it is hard to think that, from his
point of view, he was not right, and that there is
not an eternal conflict, at any rate in the popular
mind, between the scientific theory of evolution

HEAVEN AND HELL

and the type of Christianity, which to some of us
still appears the most efficient type. As Edmond
Scherer said, the world will recognize a great gap
between thought before Darwin and thought after
him. Only perhaps it would be fairer to carry the
sin still further back to Copernicus, who demol-
ished man's central position in the universe and
left an insignificant mite crawling on a grain of
sand, whirled indifferently in the vast processes of
cosmic infinitude.

But as to the matter of tolerance, it is extremely
curious to watch the interlocking of the two ex-
tremes In Moody's doctrine and temperament
His large good-nature and essential kindliness
made him friendly and sympathetic with every-
body. Probably no Protestant preacher has ever
been on better terms with the Catholics and been
more commended by them^ He himself cried : "If
I thought I had one drop of sectarian blood in my
veins, I would let it out before I went to bed ; if
I had one sectarian hair in my head, I would pull
it out." 14 Yet, he proclaimed with fervor, <C I
had rather be narrow and right than broad and
wrong;" 15 and he had deeply rooted in his soul
the cardinal principle of all intolerance, that be -

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS
lief is voluntary and therefore that unbelief is a
sin. He shrieks it from the housetops: "A great
many people think that unbelief is a sort of mis-
fortune, but do not know, if you will allow me the
expression, it is the damning sin of the world to-
day; that is what unbelief is, the mother of all
sin." 16 From such a mental attitude there is but
one step to the bonfire methods of Calvin and
The Inquisition.

The profound, dissolving character of real in-
tellectual tolerance, based on the humility of utter
ignorance, was quite unknown to Moody. The
subtle confession of Anatole France, "I love toler-
ance so much that to me it is dearer than the dear-
est of beliefs"; the final analysis of Scherer, "The
fundamental dogma of intolerance is that there are
dogmas, that of tolerance, that there are only opin-
ions," would have been a horror of horrors to
Moody : he knew. And there is this to be said for
him : pure Truth as a mistress is elusive and deceiv-
ing ; she lures us up and down the world with the
perpetual promise of attainment, but she never ful-
fills the promise, and at last leaves us unsatisfied,
departing with a mocking finger laid upon her lip*
Moody's salvation, if you can get it, and millions
have, brings with it an enduring peace.

HEAVEN AND HELL

So much for Moody's background on the doc-
trinal side. Now to turn to the side of emotion.
The religious revival obviously did not originate
with him. On the contrary, it is as old as religion
itself, and it is extremely curious to trace Moody's
relation to his predecessors.

Professor Underwood's comment upon the
Eleuslnian Mysteries of Greece is remarkably sig-
nificant for all revival movements since. The aim
of those Mysteries, he says, "was not so much to
communicate esoteric doctrine as to create an over-
powering impression by the stimulus of collective
excitement." 17 I don't know how you could
describe more effectively the various revival move-
ments of the early Church, of Catholic enthusiasts,
and of brilliant, gifted preachers, like Whitefield
and the Wesleys in England and the series, from
Jonathan Edwards down, which shook America in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, probably
by no means ending with Billy Sunday, or the Eng-
lish correlative, the Salvation Army. An acute ob-
server interestingly connects the Protestant and
Catholic Churches in this respect, taking conver-
sion as the prime object of revival activity: "The
prominence of ^conversion' in practical theology

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

began with the Order of the Jesuits and was bor-
rowed from them by the Pietists and Methodists of
last century." 18 But the general emotional stimu-
lus is certainly not confined to any sect or to any
age.

The eighteenth and early nineteenth century re-
vivals in America seem in some ways to have the
most distinctive and specific characteristics, per-
haps because they shone out in the comparative
monotony of the social life about them. The work-
ing and development of these movements have
been carefully studied, both by contemporary ob-
servers and by more scientific investigators of later
days. It appears that in some cases the agitation
began spontaneously, affecting a few individuals,
and then spreading till whole neighborhoods were
carried away. In other instances, perhaps in the
majority, the revival was a matter of careful plan-
ning. A minister, usually inspired by intense zeal
for the salvation of multitudes who were dancing
upon the borders of hell, but occasionally seek-
ing notoriety for himself, would gradually arouse
excitement and enthusiasm. Or a wandering evan-
gelist would go from town to town, carrying with
him the torch of spiritual disturbance and apply-
ing it wherever it seemed to be most needed and

HEAVEN AND HELL

most likely to do good. Favorable agents were
seized upon in the community itself and made
the instruments of conveying the glad tidings to
others. In one of the earlier revivals, for ex-
ample, a girl of fourteen "was carried over the
whole township from house to house, instructing,
admonishing, and even praying. Indeed, my in-
formant said, much as if he had been speaking
of the competition in a race-course, that 'there
was not a man in the town that could pray with
her/ " 19 Perhaps I may conclude this brief
sketch of revival movements in general with the
somewhat unfriendly comments of so acute a re-
cent analyst as Dr. Joseph Collins: Revivals
"rarely last longer than the active period of the
chief revivalist's lifetime, ten to twenty years.
They have been invariably followed by what may
properly be called religious lethargy. Their oc-
currence constitutes a cycle made up of the revival;
the apathy of emotional bluntness that follows it,
characterized by the ascendancy of materialistic
display; then a period of crass neglect of religion,
apparent deafness to the exhortations of its sane,
temp orate, earnest advocates, and finally, the re-
vival again. In fact, revivals run a course, almost

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

parallel to a disorder that is usually known as
maniac depressive insanity." 20

It is necessary to summarize to a certain extent
the more hysterical manifestations connected with
early revival activity in order to grasp its full
spiritual significance. It should be remembered
that not only the average Christian and the aver-
age minister, but men of such trained intelligence
and profound spiritual discernment as Wesley and
Jonathan Edwards regarded these manifestations
as the direct result of the working of the Holy
Spirit and not as symptoms of pathological in-
firmity, as would be usually the case to-day. What
wonder was it that sensitive, high-strung tempera-
ments, or even temperaments that were more nor-
mal, were thrown out of balance by the persis-
tent atmosphere of hell? Hell was not only
shouted from the pulpit, it murmured with the
crickets in the peaceful chimney-corner, it in-
truded its baleful suggestion into the routine of the
school-room. Of all its innumerable developments
I think few affect me more than the image of so
sane, thoughtful, and practical a woman as Mary
Lyon getting up before her crowd of sensitive,
adolescent girls at Mount Holyoke and flinging
hell at them until the flames seemed to glare and

HEAVEN AND HELL

crackle under their feet 21 Surely it was natural
for Mrs. Stowe to write of these theological agita-
tions, "With many New England women at this
particular period, when life was so retired and so
cut off from outward sources of excitement, think-
ing grew to be a disease." 22

In the full fury of the great revival meetings
the climax of hysterical outburst was sometimes
extraordinary and to the colder reader of to-day
merely horrible. Not only women but strong men
fell upon the floor and remained for hours insen-
sible. They writhed in agony, and shouted in
mortal fear. And the evangelist, when he could
get their attention, piled on the distress and dis-
turbance, all with the object of making the final
relief more intense and glorious. Finney cries in
ecstasy: "If I had had a sword in each hand, I
could not have cut them off the seats as fast as they
fell." And then when the right moment is reached,
he shouts to them: "You are not in hell yet; and
now let me direct you to Christ" 23

In the more primitive western portions of the
United States the phenomena in the early nine-
teenth century were still more remarkable. Some-
times the audience fell to barking like dogs, some-
times they were overtaken with contagious con-

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

vulsions called "the jerks/' when they shook and
quivered and brandished their limbs in uncon-
scious reminiscence of the savage antics of their
wilder ancestors. And the more extravagant the
manifestations were, the more souls were believed
to be redeemed from perdition.

It is well to emphasize all this, so as to bring
out the fact that it was intolerable and disgusting
to Moody and in every instance he discouraged
it and absolutely eliminated it from his activity
everywhere. Excitement, yes; he wanted excite-
ment and believed in it, but a true, fruitful, spir-
itual excitement, not the morbid manifestations
of encroaching hysteria. No doubt his modified
attitude was partly that of his age; but this was
not wholly true, since after his time we find the
Salvation Army pursuing the old tactics: "Big
men, as well as women, fell to the ground, lay there
for some time as if *dead, overwhelmed with the
Power from on High."

In studying all these violent symptoms, in Eng-
land and still more in America, one cannot help
feeling that we have in them the sudden outbreak
of the emotional, esthetic nature too long and too
harshly repressed, and one is reminded of Mat-
thew Arnold's oft-repeated comment that in its

HEAVEN AND HELL

reaction against the excesses of the Renaissance the
English spirit entered the prison of Puritanism
and had the key turned upon it for two hundred
and fifty years. All the grace, all the gayety,
"dance and Provencal song and sunburnt mirth,"
all the social diversions which relieved and ex-
pressed that emotional nature in southern Europe,
were treated by the Puritans as a device of the
devil. When they came over here from Eliza-
bethan England, they brought God with them, but
they left Shakespeare behind. And all that
Shakespeare represents revenged itself by these
fantastic contortions of emotional excess. The ex-
cellent and not unsympathetic English observer
Dewey asked an American friend why, when his
people were so sober and restrained In everything
else, they should have these great excitements
in religion: "How is it that you who do everything
else by calculation trust these to passion?" 25 The
answer of the American is not recorded, but it
would obviously be that the universal repression
must force an outlet in the weakest spot

After which it should not be forgotten that
under these more repellent and objectionable
symptoms there was not only a generation of spir-
itual joy but of moral dignity and self-control.

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

For the finer elements it is pleasant to quote a
lovely passage of Jonathan Edwards, because it is
so different from the horrors too apt to be asso-
ciated with him: "The soul of a true Christian
. . , appeared like such a little white flower as we
see in the spring of the year; low and humble on
the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleas-
ant beams of the sun's glory ; rejoicing, as it were,
in a calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fra-
grancy; standing peacefully and lovingly in the
midst of other flowers round about, all in like man-
ner opening their bosoms to drink in the light of
the sun." 26 But there was not only a calm ecstasy,
there was a soaring aspiration, a sweeping detach-
ment from the meager things of this world, a vast
transcendency which reached its almost unbeliev-
able climax in the willingness, even the passionate
desire, to be damned for the glory of God; and
however extravagant such a willingness may seem
to more prosaic states of mind, it must be admitted
that it added a certain largeness and splendor to
human nature.

Then comes, of course, the question of the per-
manence of these revival effects. Dr. Collins
speaks of the reaction of indifference. It is im-
possible to deny it wholly. The human spirit can-

HEAVEN AND HELL

not long exist on such heights. But statements
like the following in relation to the Great Awak-
ening of 1741 are significant, even if one feels them
to be somewhat exaggerated : "It cannot be doubted
that at least 50,000 souls were added to the churches
of New England out of a population of about 250,-
ooo, as it is estimated, . . a fact sufficient to
revolutionize, as indeed it did, the religious and
moral character and to determine the destinies, of
the country." 27 With regard to later revivals the
testimony is of course conflicting according to its
source, but the words of the New York Times
after the Moody revival of 1876 are surely worth
consideration: "The drunken have become sober,
the vicious virtuous, the worldly and self-seeking
unselfish, the impure pure, the youth have started
with generous aims, the old have been stirred
from grossness. A new hope has lifted up hun-
dreds of human beings, a new consolation has come
to the sorrowful ; and a better principle has entered
the sordid life of the day through the labors of
:hese plain men." 2S

What I should like to know is how much Moody
;tudied the history of the revivalists who preceded
lim. Obviously he reproduced many of their
nethods and adopted many of their ideas, while

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

sensibly correcting theif mistakes- He is said
to have read assiduously the sermons of the Welsh
preacher Evans and to have been much affected
by them. But I imagine he imbibed the older
traditions rather by hearsay than by direct study.
He refers occasionally to Wesley, rarely to any
of the others. And his own natural genius for
the work in hand was sufficient to lead him to re-
sults without much training.

Another question which much perplexes me is,
What would Christ himself have said if he could
have been present at an active revival meeting? I
feel myself utterly at a loss to conjecture the an-
swer and I leave the reader to think of it. But in
this connection I am glad to quote another beauti-
ful sentence of Jonathan Edwards, showing the
noble restraint and humble moderation of the man,
in spite of all his intellectual excesses. He is rep-
rehending some undue violence in the manner of
the preachers of his day and he says: "The man
Christ Jesus when he was upon earth had doubt-
less as great a sense of the infinite greatness and
importance of the eternal things and the worth of
souls as any have now; but there is not the least
appearance in his history of his taking any such
course or manner of exhorting others." 2 * Which

HEAVEN AND HELL

seems to me worth considering by all revivalists,
though Edwards was one himself.

Ill

Having thus established both the doctrinal and
the emotional background against which the burly,
energetic figure of Moody stands out, we are in a
better position to appreciate what he taught and
how he taught it. It must first be understood that
there was little or nothing of the mystic in his re-
ligious conceptions, any more than In those of the
Bible or the Jews.

The effort of the mystic is to achieve, so far as
possible, identity with the Divine, to lose this nar-
row, limited, restless human spirit in the limitless
immensity of God. Intellectually it is of course
often difficult to distinguish this ineffable aspira-
tion from Pantheism, but the distinction has never
been better expressed than in the sentence of
Goethe: "To the materialist everything is God; to
the mystical Pantheist God is everything." 30
There are all degrees of the mystic's rapture, from
the temporary ecstasy compatible with a more
definite and limited metaphysical creed to per-
manent self-abandonment and self-oblivion erected
into a fiaal and sufficient dogma. What the beauty

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

and fullness of the rapture Is cannot be much bet-
ter exemplified than in the testimony recorded by
Edwards : "The soul remained in a kind of heav-
enly elysium and did as it were swim in the rays of
Christ's love, like a little mote swimming in the
beams of the sun that come in at a window. The
heart was swallowed up in a kind of glow of
Christ's love coming down as a constant stream of
sweet light, at the same time that the soul all
flowed out in love to him ; so that there seemed to
be a constant flowing and reflowing from heart
to heart The soul dwelt on high, was lost in God,
and seemed almost to leave the body. The mind
dwelt in a pure delight that fed and satisfied it;
enjoying pleasure without the least sting or any
interruption. . . . What was enjoyed in a single
minute of the whole space, which was many hours,
was worth more than the outward comfort and
pleasure of the whole life put together." 31

It cannot be denied that for the merely exter-
nal observer the nature of this absorption is diffi-
cult to seize. The problem would seem to resolve
itself into the eternal struggle between multiplicity
and unity. Multiplicity, diversity, endless change,
mean weariness, exhaustion, infinite longing for
relief and rest, but they also mean, life. Unity

HEAVEN AND HELL

means escape, tranquillity, repose but it also
means death and nothingness. In the mysticism
of the East multiplicity is personified in the ever
tantalizing, the elusive, the mocking Mai a, and the
refuge seems to lie in Nirvana, in entire absorp-
tion in the One which is at the bottom of all di-
versity and is unchangeable for ever and ever.
The more passionate Christian mystics play with
the same idea, if such deadly earnest can ever be
called playing: "When you stop at one thing, you
cease to open yourself to the AIL For to come to
the All you must give up the AIL And if you
should attain to owning the All, you must own it,
desiring Nothing." 32

Nothing! Somehow the ideal of the mystic,
viewed too coldly, approximates Nothing with a
fatal logic, and in connection with it one cannot
but remember the concluding words of Schopen-
hauer's great study: "Rather do we freely acknowl-
edge that what remains after the entire aboli-
tion of will is for all those who are still full of
will certainly nothing ; but, conversely, to those in
whom the will has turned and has denied itself,
this our world, which is so real, with all its suns
and milky ways is nothing." 3S

But these cloudy regions had no charm for D. L.

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

Moody. His God was astonishingly, or perhaps
naturally, like himself, stout, substantial, justice-
dispensing, loving and hating, seated on a perfectly
concrete throne in a perfectly concrete heaven.
Everywhere He is represented with bewilderingly
solid humanness. For example, in connection with
the parable of the Prodigal Son we are told that
God frequently runs when He is in a hurry. 34
In other words, Deity sometimes exchanges the
solemn progress of the blackbird for the more
frivolous locomotion of the robin. And His
habitation is presented as vividly as He Him-
self. Heaven is above our heads, wherever we
are, but we are assured that it is a perfectly tan-
gible and map able city, like New York, a com-
parison singularly malodorous, at least to a native
of Boston. When we come to a description of its
attractions, there is the usual fatal resort to nega-
tives and comparatives. There is no sorrow there,
no suffering, no weariness, which dangerously sug-
gests Schopenhauer's nothing, after all. As to its
charm, it is better than anything we know, sweeter,
lovelier, which is alluring but all rather lament-
ably indefinite, though why should one expect
Moody to succeed where no one else ever has?
There is the usual promise of recognition of de-

HEAVEN AND HELL

parted friends; but there is no attempt to resolve
the endless problems of perplexity which this al-
ways carries with it.

On the other hand, hell is fiercely tangible, and
generations of exhorters have had no difficulty
whatever in making it so. Some persons tell us
that hell has disappeared forever. There was a
lady, who had been brought up with a rather aus-
tere Calvinism, and who was heard every night
to stand over her child's cradle and murmur to
him, "Jack, there is no hell, there is no hell, there
is no hell." I wonder how she knew. The truth
is, so long as self-preservation is the prime motive
of human life, and so long as fear is the prime ex-
pression of self-preservation, and so long as we
have to step from this sun-lit world into an unex-
plored abyss of darkness, so long will men, openly
or secretly, echo the wild anticipations of Claudio,

"To be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling,"

and so long will it be possible to speak to them
of hell with hideous effect

As to Moody, it is justly maintained that hell
was not the main theme of his teaching. His nat-
ural kindness and tenderness made him lean more

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS
to love, and the sermons of the English revivalist
Moorehouse crystallized this tendency at an early
stage in the American's career. Moody pro-
claimed the gospel of love, that God's mercy was
infinite and that no sinner need suffer, if he would
repent At the same time hell was at the bottom
of it all and was never forgotten. In one indis-
putable passage he shouts this aloud, so that no one
can overlook it or misunderstand it: "If there is
no hell, let us burn our Bibles. Why spend so
much time studying the Bible? . . . If I believed
there was no hell, you would not find me going
from town to town, spending day and night preach-
ing and proclaiming the Gospel and urging men
to escape the damnation of hell. I would take
things easy." S6 Even so he did not usually dilate
on the physical horrors of the nether world, how-
ever much he may have believed in them. Doctor
Abbott writes : "I think the most terrifying sermon
on future punishment I ever heard was one on
'Son, remember.' But it was wholly psychologi-
cal, a vivid portrayal of what was here and what
would be hereafter the anguish of a soul who, look-
ing back, could remember only a life of wasted
opportunities, sensual excesses, selfish cruelties." s6
And if hell was comparatively cloudy, or at

HEAVEN AND HELL

least remote, there was sin, right here in this world,
transgression of the commands of God, unescap-
able except by the road that Moody could point
out And it must be admitted that the constant
preoccupation with sin and hell made religion
largely negative. The very word that is the key-
note of the whole of it, salvation, is negative and
nothing else* Even so exquisite a mystic as Saint
Teresa can say of heaven that its principal hap-
piness "appears to me to consist in a disregard
of all earthly things, and in a peace and glory
that dwell in a soul which rejoices in the bliss of
its companions" 37 Surely a somewhat pale and
colorless conclusion. It is indeed the furious and
passionate solicitude for companions in misery, for
others, which disguises the negation in Moody's
effort He was enormously, forgetfully busy in
positive labor to save others. But when they
were saved, what then? And one is reminded of
the pestilent curiosity of the little child who was
told that living for others was the only life: "But,
mamma, if we are all to live for others, who are
the others?"

Evidently, to the charge that his effort was nega-
tive Moody would have replied at once that the
first duty was to get rid of this strangling burden

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

of hell and sin and that then the mere joy of liv-
ing would be quite enough for this world or for
another. But to one who has given a little more
time to profitless reflection it appears that the joy
of this world is to a large extent directly or in-
directly bound up with what Moody considered
sin. If we put aside the grosser pleasures, still
the simpler amusements, which he often con-
demned, the finer raptures of art, the splendor of
great tragedy, the high-wrought excitement of
romance, which he so ardently rejected, even the
subtler charms of color and tone trace something
of their attraction to being intertwined with human
grief and struggle in a way that makes them queer
stuff to construct heaven of. After considering
these matters through a long life, some of us are
inclined to echo the murmur of Obermann about
"this inconceivable universe which contains every-
thing yet does not contain the satisfaction of my
desires," 3S to extend the cry of Romeo,

"And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh,"

beyond flesh to still more wearied spirit, and to
sum up heaven wholly in the longing for complete,
untroubled, everlasting peace. But to Moody
peace was unknown and unnecessary. Mr. Duffus

MR. MOODY AT 25 : CITY MISSIONARY IN CHICAGO.

MR. AND MRS. D. L. MOODY IN 1864 AND IN 1869.

HEAVEN AND HELL

has justly pointed out how unsavory his own
heaven would have been to him. Instead, he had
little time to think of it, being too preoccupied
with the colossal task of saving this world to have
much concern to waste upon another.

For to get rid of sin, even to diminish its in-
solent and pervading empire, would seem to be
task enough to preoccupy any one. It is perhaps
true that even sin may be exaggerated* There are
people in the world, plenty of them, who like to
make themselves out to be great and distinguished
as sinners, since they cannot as anything else,
Moody's own outcry suggests something abnormal :
"For my own part, I would a thousand times
sooner have the leprosy of the body eating my
eyes out, and my feet and arms, I would rather
be loathsome in the sight of my fellow-men than
die with the leprosy of sin in my soul, and be
damned." 39 So does the confession of Edwards:
"When others have expressed the sense they have
had of their own wickedness by saying that it
seemed to them they were as bad as the devil him-
self, I thought their expression seemed faint and
feeble to represent my wickedness." 40 So again

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

does Pascal : "The true and only virtue is hate of
oneself." 41 The obsession of sin in introspective
and neurotic persons is no doubt thoroughly ab-
normal and unhealthy; yet there have been mil-
lions of such persons and they suffer.

Again, it is certain that in the last half cen-
tury, under the subtle influence of evolutionary
teaching, the moral emphasis has shifted to an ex-
traordinary extent In the minds of vast numbers
who are not directly conscious of the change mo-
rality has altered to expediency and an old-fash-
ioned sin has simply become a new-fashioned mis-
take. All the same, the moral consciousness is
grounded pretty deeply in the human spirit. No
one will accuse Lord Morley of being unduly
pietistic; yet Lord Morley wrote, in connection
with Emerson: He "has little to say of that horrid
burden and impediment on the soul which the
churches call sin and which, by whatever name
we call it, is a very real catastrophe in the moral
nature of man. 55 42 There are few men and women
who have not battled with temptation in some form
or other, who have not known enough of that
mad struggle, of its devilish insinuations, its sub-
tle and ever shifting arguments, its perpetual re-
currence when you think it has been crushed f or-

HEAVEN AND HELL

ever 5 to feel the benefit of anything that will
assuage or banish It. There are many, many who
in the bitterest moments of that struggle have
found that prayer, whether its agency be merely
subjective or objectively divine, comes like the
dew of heaven to comfort and relieve. And when
the struggle has ended in defeat, many of those
who took most pride in having disposed of primi-
tive morality find themselves tormented by agonies
of regret and remorse which are just as keen by
whatever scientific name you call them. The last
volume of the Diary of Samuel Pepys gives a suf-
ficiently poignant record of such agonies In one
who was neither morbid nor neurotic, but a hard-
ened, practical man of the world.

It might easily be felt, then, that to save souls
from sin was the noblest of all human efforts. To
be sure, one result of such a preoccupation was
that sinners grew to be one's main interest. It
was often charged against Moody that he cared
nothing for good people and did not wish to asso-
ciate with them, that his preference was for drunk-
ards, blacklegs, and harlots, and that the spice of
their reformation was what made life interesting.
The charge, though absurdly exaggerated in re-
gard to Moody as compared with some other evan-

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS
gelists, is true enough to have a certain significance.
To a temperament like Moody's work was all of
life and his work did not lie among the good who
did not need him. The strange cry of General
Booth, "I hungered for hell," 43 might have been
echoed by Moody, though I do not know that it
was. The good were no pasture for him. And he
would never have been imposed upon, as was
Emerson's Friar Bernard, who set out to convert
the world and found to his surprise that the world
did not need converting so very badly, after all.
In fact, with Moody the good get little grace and
short shrift. Moral, yes, charitable, yes, kindly,
yes; but how far do these things go in a world
where there is none good but God? "I have often
heard good people say that our meetings were do-
ing good, they were reaching the drunkards, and
gamblers, and harlots ; but they never realized that
they needed the grace of God for themselves." 44

For Moody's fundamental quarrel with the good
was that they thought themselves so, whereas there
was little to choose in reality between them and the
drunkards and the harlots, oftentimes only the in-
significant difference of a temptation or an oppor-
tunity. He would have utterly resented the naive
remark of Joseph de Maistre, "I know nothing

HEAVEN AND HELL

about the conscience of a rascal, but I do know
that of an honest man : it is something frightful."
Moody would have queried, why an honest man?
It is in the highest degree curious to trace the
intertwining of works and faith in his energetic
common sense. He always took a practical view
of life and in such a view the importance of good
works could not be overestimated. He emphasizes
it again and again, and with reiterated insistence
he takes good works, a better, purer, higher life, as
the only substantial and satisfactory sign of the
transformation that has been wrought within.

At the same time, for the individual soul good
works are nothing, simply nothing, compared with
the essential salvation which can never come from
good works at all. "We are a bad lot, the whole
of us, by nature. It is astonishing how the devil
does blind us and makes us think we are so nat-
urally good, . . . The first man born of woman
was a murderer. Sin leaped into the world full
grown, and the whole race has been bad all the
way down. Man is naturally bad." 45 Duty, mere
duty, the slow, laborious, hopeless effort to perfect
self by the painful exercise of fragile human will,
he cannot speak of it with contempt enough. The
only refuge, the only escape, the only hope is

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

through faith in the redeeming Christ, the only
means of coming to him is through passionate,
humble, self-forgetful, contrite prayer. And one
wonders whether prayer to-day is really the effec-
tive, pervading agency that it was even in Moody' s
day. There is formal prayer enough in the
churches. One is sure that an anguished, torn,
broken heart instinctively turns to prayer as it al-
ways did. But has not the same subtle, insinuating
acceptance of the cold laws of scientific necessity
which has weakened the sense of sin, tarnished the
splendor of prayer also? How many persons to-
day can even understand the meaning of the im-
pressive account of universal prayer in a time of
revival given by Finney? "Indeed, the town was
full of prayer. Go where you would, you heard
the voice of prayer. Pass along the street, and if
two or three Christians happened to be together,
they were praying. Wherever they met, they
prayed." 46

To Moody at any rate prayer was the road, al-
ways open, and leading to the direct personal
acceptance of the atoning sacrifice of Christ And
the development of this talisman of Christ's sacri-
fice, and the overwhelming belief in it, are at once
the most astonishing and the most natural thing in

HEAVEN AND HELL

the world : astonishing in that any one should sup-
pose that what may seem to the outsider a mere
verbal hocus-pocus should have power to remove
in a moment the great burden of life; natural in
that the burden is so crushing, so destructive, and
by ordinary means so utterly irremovable, that the
desperate soul turns with a gasp of relief to a
refuge so sure, so simple, and apparently so effica-
cious.

To Moody It was absolutely efficacious. He
never had one tremor of doubt about the efficacity.
"God so loved the world that he gave His only be-
gotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should
not perish but have life everlasting. 77 That was
the sum of religion. And Moody loved above all
to figure the sacrifice of Christ in the mystical
symbol of his blood. He preached on the Blood
of Christ, he constantly referred to it, it was by
that cleansing power that the world must be puri-
fied and made whole, and might be rid forever of
its sin: "Not some of them; He takes them all
away. You may pile up your sins till they rise
like a dark mountain, and then multiply them
by ten thousand for those you cannot think of; and
after you have tried to enumerate all the sins you
have ever committed, just let me bring one verse

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

in, and that mountain will melt away: 'The blood
of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from ALL
sin.' " 4T To some of us, at any rate, whether we
can accept this doctrine or not, it seems that the
enormous, unparalleled growth and power and
majesty of Christianity in the last nineteen hun-
dred years depend upon it.

And further it must be emphasized and repeated
that salvation is needed not only for actual sin>
but that the good, if there are such, require it just
as well as sinners. And here I want to protest
against the tone of patronage so often used in re-
gard to the work of Moody, the tone which an-
gered him so much, the assumption that his teach-
ing might do well enough for the ignorant and
vile, but that the cultured few could get along
without it I suppose that the suggestion of such
a tone will creep into these pages, but the writer
of them disclaims it utterly. If there appears
to be an attitude of aloofness, it springs not from
a doubt of the value of what is to be got, but from
a sense of the difficulty of getting it.

There is salvation from the objective misery of
life, the pain, the grief, the anguish, the disap-

HEAVEN AND HELL

pointment, and at best the blighting weariness,
which we all hide and fight against, but cannot
escape. Saint Paul emphasized this, not to speak
of Homer and Job before him. The great pessi-
mists have stated it often enough. Take the sim-
ple definition of Goncourt: "Life is a nightmare
between two nothings." Take the ampler splendor
of Leopardi's arraignment, which may be denied
and disputed, but can hardly be disposed of com-
pletely. Take the desolate outcry of Madame Du
Deffand, which states the pessimist position all
the more forcibly from making no pretense to
philosophical thoroughness: "For my part, I con-
fess that I have but one fixed idea, one feeling,
one sorrow, one misfortune, the regret for having
been born: there is no role that could be played
upon the world's wide stage to which I should not
prefer annihilation; yet, what will seem to you
utterly illogical, even if I had the most assured
evidence of a return to nothingness, I should none
the less live in horror of death. . . . Teach me
how to endure life or to face the end of it without
repugnance." 48

It will be said that these bitter complainers all
led unhappy lives, through fault or misfortune.
Very well, let us hear Goethe, who is universally

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

regarded as having been one of the most happy,
fortunate, and successful of men. This is Goethe's
testimony, after a long life: "I will say nothing
against the course of my existence. But at bottom
it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I
can affirm that during the whole of my seventy-
five years I have not had four weeks of genuine
well being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a
rock that must be raised up again forever." 49

And as this is for the external misery of life,
the accidents which circumstance inflicts upon us,
so there is the internal torment, the anguish of
doubt and question and perpetual, reiterated,
vain attempt to solve or put aside the mystery of
things, a torment none the less real because it
often seems willful and within our control if we
would. No doubt a great part of this misery is
caused by religion as well as cured by it. One
thinks of the suffering endured by Cowper through
a long life, by Cowper and by millions of others,
until one is almost driven to the petulant outcry
that a Deity who could not only bear that his crea-
tures should suffer as humanity does but could al-
low his own agents of salvation to make it suffer
must be himself the incarnation and embodiment of
hell. And one remembers the bitter comment of

HEAVEN AND HELL

the French cynic that the best compliment one can
pay to God Is not to believe In him. "I never
found an infidel satisfied; they want Christ to sat-
isfy them, 3 ' says Moody himself. 50 It is at any
rate certain that those who have thought till they
analyzed away sin and hell and reduced God him-
self to the shadow of a shade do not find their
life of question a life of bliss. There is Sainte-
Beuve who proclaimed to the end that his work
was only a soothing drug to get rid of the Infinite
burden of the dragging, poignant, intolerable
hours. And we read in the recent confessions of
Anatole France, who had had a life as apparently
fortunate and triumphant as Goethe's and who had
analyzed that life and all others to the dregs : "In
all the world the unhappiest creature Is man." 51
It is interesting and tragic to think of the
innumerable varied forms of escape that men have
sought from this universal despair. More than
two thousand years ago there was the Roman poet
Lucretius, who had very much the ardent mission-
ary spirit of a Moody. If men would listen to him,
all these evils, at least the imaginary ones, might
be cleared away. It was religion, with its cruel
teachings, its doctrine of a life of torment after
death, that caused the worst of human woes. And

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

Lucretius's remedy, flung at mankind with the
tender fury of a Moody, was simply eternal and
complete annihilation. Or there is Emerson, with
his remote, serene, Concord optimism. The world
is good, it must be good, of course, since God is.
Shut your eyes to the evil. Live with the good
and the good will live with you. Alas, how many
of us can accomplish neither. Or again, I hear the
gentle, mocking song of our Shakespearean clown,
making no pretensions to philosophy, or to wide-
mouthed preaching, dissolving the misery of the
moment in the all-understanding smile of the
eternal. But, alas, again, this attitude is impos-
sible for too many of us.

And then comes along this commercial dealer
in the subtle wares of the spirit, D. L. Moody,
cries out, "Are you a Christian?," and offers us the
greatest of all possible bargains at a pitiful price.
"I do not believe there is a spot where peace can
be found," he says to us, "except under the shadow
of the Cross." 52 And those who buy of him never
appear to regret it. Pain, anguish, and fear, hell
and sin and all their concomitants are shaken off
and fade away and vanish. And if you will not
believe Moody himself, listen to William James,
who had studied the process of salvation carefully,

HEAVEN AND HELL

as a philosopher, from the outside, but with the
closest scrutiny: "There is a state of mind known
to religious men, but to no others, in which the will
to assert ourselves and hold our own has been dis-
placed by a willingness to close our mouths and
be as nothing in the floods and waterspouts of God.
In this state of mind, what we most dreaded has
become the habitation of our safety, and the hour
of our moral death has turned into our spiritual
birthday. The time for tension in our soul is over,
and that of happy relaxation, of calm deep breath-
ing, of an eternal present, with no discordant fu-
ture to be anxious about, has arrived. Fear is not
held in abeyance as it is by mere morality, it is
positively expunged and washed away." 53

The passionate, transforming, transfiguring
glory of Moody's conception is summed up in the
magnificent line of Marlowe:

"See how Christ's blood streams in the firmament!"

And no doubt to some of us such symbolization
seems remote and even barbaric. Unfortunately
to many of these persons heaven and hell and
Christ and even God will seem remote also. But
there is one thing that is not remote, and that is
death. You may run or ride away from it. You

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

may try to forget it, or hide it with flowers, or
with adjectives, or with theories. But death is
there, just the same, one indisputable fact in a uni-
verse of doubt, death with all its burden of haunt-
ing, tormenting, eternal, inevitable question.
Moody's answer to that question may or may not
have present and permanent validity; but I do not
know that the ages have found any more comfort-
ing or satisfying.

CHAPTER III

MOODY THE PREACHER
I

MOODY was most himself, most eagerly and ener-
getically alive, when he stood up before a vast
expectant audience to pour out in darting, sting-
ing, animating words his gospel of the cleansing
blood of Christ The excitement and enthusiasm
of this process seem to have effected a striking
change in his manner and appearance. If you
passed him in the street, he looked heavy, stolid,
his neckless head sunk between his thick shoul-
ders, his full dark beard putting out expression, his
gross bulk of cumbering flesh certainly not sug-
gesting any peculiar illumination by the radiance
of spirit An observer, who to be sure exaggerated
some points, says of him : "When he is at rest, no
person could well seem more uninteresting or va-
cant His face is neither pleasant nor attractive,
his eye dead and heavy, his figure short and thick-
set, his bodily presence weak and his speech con-
temptible." * But the same observer dwells upon
these duller elements only to emphasize the change

D. L, MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

that took place when the right influences were at
work. "The presence of a multitude has the power
to transfigure the man and he becomes for the
time another person." 2 Every one agrees about
this. The sense that he was to deliver the message
that inspired his whole being to even one auditor,
and far more to a vast, listening, quivering as-
sembly put glory in his eyes, fire upon his tongue,
and impressiveness, even dignity into his weighty
and somewhat cumbrous movements.

It is evident that the gift of preaching came to
Moody by instinct and force of nature, since he
had none of the training or discipline of the regu-
larly taught and prepared minister. There is no
particular sign of his at any time making a study
of public speaking as an art He began by talk-
ing naturally to his Sunday-School class, because
he had something to say, and he kept it right up
in the same vein and spirit to the end. Of course
his intense keen shrewdness of attention and ob-
servation profited by every sermon that he heard,
and he was always on the watch to seize a man's
merits and to avoid his defects. No doubt, as he
was much influenced by Dr. Kirk's doctrine, so
he got something of manner from him, though
Kirk was far more formal. Moody may also have

100

MOODY THE PREACHER

been influenced by Evans, who had Moody's
homely vigor of illustration, though far more
sweep of imaginative touch. But probably no
man ever gained more by letting his own passion-
ate impulse speak through him. He would have
expressed the essential secret of his message much
as Finney did: "When I came to preach the Gos-
pel, my mind was so anxious to be thoroughly
understood that I studied in the most earnest man-
ner, on the one hand to avoid what was vulgar
and on the other to express my thoughts with the
greatest simplicity of language." s In any event
Moody never hesitated to declare his contempt for
the artificial element in preaching, for those who
make the manner all, for labored rhetoric and the
search for fine language for itself. "If God has
given you a message," he says, "go and give it to
the people as God has given it to you. It is a
stupid thing to try to be eloquent" 4

As to the preparation of his sermons, it should
be understood that he usually, if not always, spoke
without notes. No one understood better than he
the importance of having the eye right on the audi-
ence every minute, of not letting any least flutter of
effect of any kind escape. He knew also the ad-
vantage of not being tied to written words, of let-

101

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

ting the splendor of the Holy Spirit whirl him
whither it would. No one would have appreci-
ated more fully the words of Whitefield : "After
I had begun, the Spirit of the Lord gave me free-
dom, till at length it came down like a mighty
rushing wind, and carried all before it" 5

At the same time he prepared his sermons with
the greatest care. Appearing, as he did, before
such very different audiences, the substance could
be repeated over and over again, and he did repeat
it without fear, to an extent that makes continuous
reading of his printed volumes a little monotonous.
Nevertheless, he was always developing, elaborat-
ing, modifying. He gathered notes from every
direction, from his reading, from the newspapers,
from everything he saw and heard, and all this
new material was skillfully woven into the original
fabrics, so that he contrived to give an extraordi-
nary impression of freshness, even to those who
had heard him often. And this impression was
deepened and strengthened by the intensity with
which he felt everything himself before he passed
it on to others. Note his answer when asked how
he prepared his sermon on the compassion of
Christ: "I took the Bible and began to read it over
to find out what it said on that subject. I prayed

102

MOODY THE PREACHER

over the texts as I went along until the thought of
His infinite compassion overpowered me, and I
could only lie on the floor of my study, with my
face in the open Bible, and cry like a little child." 6
A man who felt his work like that and could im-
part his feeling to others could hardly fail to move
them.

As to the preacher's manner and delivery opin-
ions differ according to their source. Probably as
harsh a verdict as any is that given by the utterly
unsympathetic critic of the London Saturday Re-
view: "As for Mr. Moody, he is simply a ranter
of the most vulgar type. ... It is possible that his
low fun and screechy ejaculations may be found
stimulating by the ignorant and foolish ; but it is
difficult to conceive how any person of the slight-
est culture or refinement can fail to be pained and
shocked." 7 These severe judgments are, however,
rarely echoed by unprejudiced critics, and what
foundation there may have been for them dimin-
ished with years and experience. In spite of his
intense earnestness, it is generally insisted that
Moody's manner was restrained and his impetu-
ous fire always under control. There was nothing
whatever of the excesses of speech that have re-
cently distinguished Billy Sunday. "He was in-

103

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

tense in spirit," says Dr. Abbott, "but quiet in
method, generally conversational in tone, never
shouted, rarely was dramatic, never theatrical, his
gestures simple." 8 His voice had not exceptional
beauty or richness, but it had extraordinary car-
rying power, so that he could fill enormous audi-
toriums without appearing to force it in the least
and while still retaining full command of all its
variations of expression. In the same way he used
an astonishing rapidity of utterance, resembling
and fully equaling Phillips Brooks in that respect;
yet he never fretted or fatigued his audience by
this quality, simply gave the sense of a splendid
abundance which could not be exhausted.

As to the merely technical, linguistic character
of the sermons as printed, they have seemed to me
far above what one would expect from much of
the criticism. The savage Unitarian author of
"Tabernacle Sketches" cries, "Oh, the way that
man does mangle the English tongue! The daily
slaughter of syntax at the Tabernacle is dreadful.
His enunciations may be pious, but his pronuncia-
tions are decidedly off color. It is enough to make
Noah Webster turn over in his grave and weep to
think that he lived in vain/' 9 No doubt English
grammar is handled in a rough and ready and

104

MOODY THE PREACHER

rather colloquial fashion. But the important
point is that the language gets there. It is amaz-
ingly simple, direct, and vivid. The words are
for the most part rugged Anglo-Saxon. The sen-
tences are short Dr. Goss estimates that in vari-
ous passages of about 530 words chosen from dif-
ferent preachers. Moody uttered thirty-six sen-
tences, Spurgeon twenty-one, Bushnell twenty,
Chalmers nine. 10 In fact, his language was that
of daily life, and the common people heard him
gladly, and so did some others.

As to the structure of the sermons, they were not
elaborate or artful. Perhaps they were all the
more effective on that account. There was no at-
tempt to work up a process of extensive logical
argument. The preacher got a thorough hold of
his subject. Then he chose topics that would de-
velop it, sometimes cumulatively, sometimes by
contrast, and handled them one by one with direct
vividness of appeal, so as to bring the whole home
to his auditors. Above all, he understood the car-
dinal principal of brevity. To be sure, people
sometimes wondered at his flow of words. But he
always gave the impression that there was more
behind than the words would carry. And he knew
when to stop. In sermons, and especially in

105

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

prayers, he believed In being short "I say five
minutes, some pray fifteen minutes; I don't know
any meeting that can stand that If you can't pray
short, don't pray at all. The men who make long
prayers are generally the ones that pray least at
home. 5 ' 11

With this disposition, it would not be expected
that Moody's sermons would be marked by any
very striking qualities of imagination or poetry.
There are indeed times when the emotion rises to
a pitch that may be called distinctly poetical. For
instance, there is the description of the Flood:
C God did not permit any one to survive to tell us
how they perished. When Job lost his family,
there came a messenger to him; but there came
no messenger from the antediluvians; not even
Noah himself could see the world perish. If ,he
could, he would have seen men and women and
children dashing against that ark; the waves rising
higher and higher, while those outside were per-
ishing, dying in unbelief. Some think to escape
by climbing the trees, and think the storm will soon
go down; but it rains on, day and night, for forty
days and forty nights, and they are swept away as
the waves dash against them. The statesmen
and astronomers and great men call for mercy;

1 06

MOODY THE PREACHER

but it Is too late. They had disobeyed the God of
mercy. He had called, and they refused. He had
pled with them, but they had laughed and mocked.
But now the time is come for judgment instead
of mercy." 12

But in general Moody's strength does not lie in
ornament or in imaginative effects of any kind.
It is rather in his intense, direct, immediate appeal
to the simplest, the most permanent, the most com-
pelling emotions* The sharp, rude, energetic
vigor with which he makes this appeal must have
been almost Irresistible, when accompanied by his
commanding tone and personality. It Is true that
the vigor has at times a startling touch of the
familiar, which might well shock those accus-
tomed to the more staid and conventional manner
of formal preachers. Moody speaks of God and
to God as if He were a man around the corner,
who could be addressed and touched like a real
human friend. But it must be remembered that
this was much the manner of the Middle Ages
also, and it is a serious question whether real rev-
erence has gained greatly by the enormous added
remoteness with which later centuries have clothed
and perhaps burled the Divine Presence. We
have become so intensely reverent, so afraid of

107

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

humanizing Deity, that at times it seems as if we
tended to revere God out of existence altogether.
Such was not Moody's way. His God was nothing
if not real, a direct human agency, who could be
brought right into the immediate joys and sorrows
of life. To him love was, as it always should be,
far more than reverence, or rather the reverence
that was built on close and immediate love was
the only reverence that was of serious account

And speaking with this direct, familiar power,
there is no doubt but that he often got descrip-
tions and narratives of a high dramatic intensity,
narratives which kept his hearers fixed with eager
anticipation or thrilled with hope or terror till
they forgot him and themselves and where they
were and all their ordinary life in the overwhelm-
ing preoccupation of the things of the future and
the things of God. But I think the best observers
agree that in getting these dramatic moments
Moody did not give the impression, either at the
time or afterwards, of being melodramatic or sen-
sational, and the obvious reason was that, as we
have seen, he himself felt profoundly first every-
thing that he was trying to convey. The heart, he
cried, always go for the heart, speak to that, preach
to that, if you want to carry men with you. He

108

MOODY THE PREACHER

carried men with him because he preached to the
heart and from the heart.

One of the most effective elements of Moody's
preaching was his power of illustration, of turning
the incidents and experiences of daily life into apt
arguments to push home his points. It is said that
he was always on the look-out for bits of this kind
and picked them from every sort of source.
"With what keenness he listened to other preach-
ers for good thoughts and illustrations, and how
his face lit up as he took out the notebook which he
kept in his hip-pocket" 13 And his adventures in
life were so vast and varied, he came into contact
with so many people of all kinds, people who
opened their hearts to him as they did to few
others, that his memory gradually became a store-
house of material which he could put to the most
varied and effective use. To be sure, I think the
limits show here as in other things, and the mere
variety of illustration is not so great as one might
expect What counts is the mighty, homely force
of it, the singular power of turning a platitude into
a patitude by connecting it with some experience
which the hearer feels to be plucked right out of
his own soul.

But, alter all, perhaps the fundamental secret

109

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

of Moody's preaching lay mainly in the fact that
he stood up before thousands and spoke to them
simply as man to man* He himself tells the story:
"Let me say right here that I like to say 'to speak'
better than 'to preach, 5 because if I can only get
people to think I am talking with them, and not
preaching, it is so much easier to hold their atten-
tion. The other night I was walking home in the
dark, and two people right behind me were talk-
ing about the meeting. One of them said, 'Did
Moody preach to-night?' The other said, 'No,
he didn't preach, he only talked. 5 " 14 If that
simple motto could be written over the doors of
the theological schools, it might help them to
change the world.

But, preaching or talking, it is evident that
words were the main agency that Moody used to
arouse, to stimulate, to make over, perhaps to
save, thousands of souls. Words were the su-
preme, practically the only, weapon in his armory,
as in that of all other preachers since the beginning
of time. And one is lost in astonishment when one
reflects upon the power of these diminutive puffs
of breath, power which lies sometimes in the vast

MOODY THE PREACHER

suggestion of thought they carry with them, but
sometimes also, alas, in the mere intonation, the
music, the resonance of the voice that puts them
forth.

Words are and must be the chief medium of
contact between soul and soul, so far as such con-
tact is possible at alL For the mysterious and
fleeting entity which we call soul is so remotely
immured in these involving, separating bodies,
that any real contact escapes us until those who
reflect feel themselves isolated in a shuddering
solitude which no effort can bridge or overcome.
No doubt we can penetrate the mask a little
by the aid of expression and gesture. But the only
real means we have of even attempting to make
our way under it is by the medium of speech. The
lesson of the moving pictures is most fruitful and
significant on this point. The cruder, more vio-
lent, more primitive emotions and situations can be
suggested on the screen with poignant intensity.
But all the finer grades and shades of spiritual
experience seem to cry out for speech and to perish
from a pitiful dumb incapacity to convey the
straining of life to life.

Words are logical vehicles, by which one man
conveys to another his more or less elaborate

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

processes of thought A man works out a system
of reasoning which, as it seems to him, is bound to
change the social conditions of the world, to over-
throw the tyrannous dominion of capital and en-
able all mankind to enjoy the fruits of their labor
in equalized content He puts quick and vivid
words to his theory and thousands catch it up and
shake the social fabric with a vague unrest
Words are emotional vehicles. A man's soul burns
with love and hate, alas, more often hate, and if he
has the gift of words, he can make his love or hate
spread with a wide wave motion to the end of the
world. Few things show the power of words more
than their capacity for boredom. An empty head
with a tongue that quivers with words can take you
by the sleeve and make life seem an impossible
thing. A great audience gathers, full of enthusi-
asm and eagerness, ready to be carried off its feet
by one who knows words in all their magic. In-
stead, the conventional orator gets up, pours out
his flood of nothing, and all the enthusiasm melts
away and like enough the audience also.

It would be easy to maintain that words are the
greatest power in the world. They are mighty
with individuals, they can undermine friendship,
they can break off love, they can wear out even the

112

MOODY THE PREACHER

most divine patience, and when you look for the
huge cause of all the trouble, you find it to be just
ill-managed words. They are mighty with na-
tions. Thrones have been wrecked, governments
have crumbled to pieces, hearts have been broken
and heads cut off, only for words. What is most
terrifying is that the power of words is not neces-
sarily greatest in the wise, in those who best
understand the use of them. The ignorant, the
prejudiced, the shallow have often a cunning
sleight of speech which sways the vulgar at
their will, when the skilled and the thoughtful,
who should lead, cannot find their way at all.
Take the strange force of abstract words, to which
no two persons attach the same definite meaning.
Take Liberty. As Madame Roland said, What
crimes have been committed under that name.
Yet those who shriek most wildly for liberty have
each a different interpretation of it Take the
greatest of all words, God. Men in all ages have
derived from those three little letters, or their
equivalent, the greatest ecstasy. Over and over
men have fought and bled and died for those let-
ters. Yet who will fix a meaning for them that
men will not fight over, and some persons maintain
that they have no meaning except in the subjective

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

associations which have such a mighty hold on al-
most all of our lives. Truly, one who has played
with words and worked with them and felt the
charm of them hardly knows which to admire
most, their appalling power or their emptiness.

It is curious, too, to note that words have an
especial magic and fascination for those who have
not been highly or carefully trained in the use of
them. The most interesting illustration of this is
Shakespeare. With his excitable imagination, his
eager and attentive ear, it is evident that he was
extraordinarily quick to catch the use of words
about him ; but neither among his contemporaries
nor anywhere else in literature does there seem
to have been any one who had such intense delight
in words as playthings, who so loved to mold
them, to bend them, to create them, as it were, out
of nothing, and make them do his will even to the
most fantastic ends. Or a somewhat similar case
is our own American Whitman, who was irregu-
larly trained like Shakespeare and like him loved
to make daring, bewildering, complex experi-
ments with words.

And Moody was as untrained as Shakespeare
and Whitman were. And, like them, he loved
to do great things with words. But words were

114

MOODY THE PREACHER

never toys to him. They were clubs, they were
slings, they were arrows, with which to go out
and do battle against the clinging, overmastering
evil of the world. As to any slightest conscious-
ness of the nature of words, their power, their
danger, or their working, I have found no evi-
dence of it in him whatever. He took them as they
came and was simply interested in what he could
make them do. How they did it was not in the
least his concern. No doubt, in this as in other
things, his ignorance was his force, and by accept-
ing these mighty, winged, subtle, intangible
agents unquestioningly, he was enabled to get
more out of them than if he had understood their
fragility. At any rate, no one can question what
he did get Shakespeare could weave them to-
gether for the delight of millions. Moody could
pour them out so that thousands had their souls
stirred and shaken by them like leaves in an
autumn wind.

Ill

Now let us look a little more closely into the
character of the audiences to which he preached
and the way he affected them. To begin with,
from the time of his first real success in the eaxly

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

seventies, the audiences were always large, Im-
mense, and he liked it so, would have it so. He
was at his best with a throng and he did not pro-
pose to speak to fewer if he could help it. The
numbers ran usually into the thousands, some-
times to ten thousand or more, and he somehow
contrived to make them hear him, or think they
heard him, to make them feel him at any rate. To
be sure, it is said that in later years he deliberately
tried to break up these multitudes, to divide them
for more immediate effect But to the very end he
could draw an immense crowd when he chose. On
his last visit to Chicago he insisted on having the
meetings in the busiest part of the working day.
Dr. Torrey explained to him that men were too
much engaged to come at that hour, but Moody
bade him do as he was told, and Torrey went ahead
with some misgiving; "When the doors were
opened at the appointed time, we had a cordon of
twenty policemen to keep back the crowd, but the
crowd was so great that it swept the cordon of
policemen off their feet and packed eight thousand
people into the building before we could get the
doors shut. And I think there were as many left
on the outside as there were in the building." 15
In such a vast number there naturally were

116

$*&&$$* ^

L-'iwmifcEteSSs

MOODY'S TABERNACLE.

First building erected after Chicago fire. Occupied for two years. A scene of remarkable

evangelistic effort.

ILLINOIS STREET CHURCH, CHICAGO.
First building erected by Mr. Moody. Scene of his efforts before Chicago fire.

D. L MOODY.

From a portrait in oil by Healey. The one relic saved by Mrs. Moody from
Chicago fire.

the

MOODY THE PREACHER

people of all sorts. There were people of high
intelligence, there were people of low intelligence.
There were many who went from mere curiosity
or even animosity, and some who went to make a
careful study of an important psychological phe-
nomenon. Perhaps in some corner, or even right
down in the front, we might have found our ubi-
quitous Shakespearean clown, impervious to soul-
appeals because he had no soul or had all soul, but
quick to feel the wide and varied laughter and pity
of the world. And it seems that Moody's power
touched almost all of them in some way sooner or
later. An astonishing number of those who came
to scoff remained to pray. Yet, it is probable that
the bulk of Moody's audiences everywhere were
men and women something of his own kind,
church members, or people with church connec-
tions or associations, who were instinctively drawn
to that form of excitement or entertainment An
excellent observer makes this remark about the
congregations of Billy Sunday: "The first thing
that strikes one on entering Sunday's tabernacle is
that there is an extraordinary homogeneity of the
audience. . . Scrutinize them as carefully as
one may, they display a like-facedness that never
ceases to be a source of wonder to the perspicuous

117

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

sympathetic onlooker, and the more their conduct
is observed, the more one becomes convinced of
their like-mindedness." 1S It should be remem-
bered that almost any average assembly gives such
an impression of homogeneity. Furthermore I
Imagine that Moody's audiences were far more
varied than those here analyzed. Still, he him-
self complained that his popularity with the re-
ligious masses prevented his getting to the people
he most desired to reach : "I am not blind to facts,
nor troubled with mock humility. Reputation is
a great injury in many places, for we cannot get
the people that we are after." 1T

However his audiences were composed, there
is no doubt as to his power of managing them when
he had once got them before him. After all prac-
tical explanations of this power have been offered,
it sometimes seems as if there must have been
some mysterious magnetic influence which could
enable one man, and he not the most imposing in
appearance, to control so absolutely such enor-
mous multitudes* But to some extent it is pos-
sible to understand the skillful methods that he
employed. Very likely he never heard of crowd
psychology or of the epidemic suggestibility of
masses of people, but his practical appreciation of

118

MOODY THE PREACHER

these things was perfect. There must be nothing
disturbing, nothing out of accord with the spirit
that he was trying to use and infuse, If any spec-
tator sought to take an offensive part, to introduce
noise or confusion, the ushers were trained to dis-
pose of him with the least possible disturbance
The preacher studied the conditions with the ut-
most care. People would not listen unless they
were comfortable. The room must not be too hot,
it must not be too cold. There must be plenty of
fresh air, yet no one must be exposed to drafts.
He looked out for all these things, or saw that they
were looked out for. Then he had no heavy for-
mality, no pompous professional manner. Dr.
Abbott emphasizes this : "As he stood on the plat-
form he looked like a business man; he dressed
like a business man ; he took the meeting in hand
as a business man would; he spoke in a business
man's fashion." 18 And he planned every detail
so that there should be no break, no dragging, no
slightest occasion or excuse for a yawn. "From
the time he came before his great audiences to the
moment when he rose to preach he kept the entire
body absorbingly occupied with something inter-
esting." ia

It is curious to note the quickness and skill with

119

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

which he took advantage of every Incident or acci-
dent that occurred while he was preaching, and
turned it from a hindrance into a help. If there
was an interruption of any kind, he used it to point
a moral Once a lost child turned up in the audi-
ence and began to wail. Moody held it up before
the crowd and called out, "A lost child! A lost
child!" until the mother appeared. Then he pro-
ceeded to bring home to the multitude that they
were all lost children and could only be found
again through the agency of Christ One of his
secrets in dealing with such vast assemblies was to
point his talk directly at an individual, in such a
way that every one present felt that the individual
meant him or her. "I always select a few people
in the audience here and there, to whom I speak.
If I can interest them and hold their attention, I
have the entire audience. If any one of these goes
to sleep or loses interest, I work to secure the at-
tention of that one." 20 He thrust his "Are you a
Christian?" into sleepy faces, till they had to make
him an answer. The suddenness, the startling
directness, of these appeals made them piquant and
telling to everybody. "I wish that friend over
there would just wake up, and I'll tell him some-
thing which is important to him." 21 He would

1 20

MOODY THE PREACHER

call out to this red-headed man, or that chattering
girl. All at once the man and the girl found the
attention of thousands turned to them, and it woke
up them and the audience both.

There is abundant evidence as to the effect pro-
duced by these and other ingenious methods and
devices, backed and sustained as they always were
by the passionate earnestness and enthusiasm
which were more than any device. It is easy to
suppose that Moody might have equaled the vio-
lent hysterical tumults of his predecessors, if he
had chosen to do so. His effects were of the spirit,
but, as he willed, he could draw forth the shudder
of spiritual terror and still more the acme of
spiritual joy. Dr. Goss says of this influence:
"There were certain passages in some of his ser-
mons where, judged by the effect they produced, it
must be said he rose to a, sublime eloquence. I
heard him preach his sermon on 'Elijah' in the
city of Detroit, when it appeared to me that super-
natural things were actually occurring in the
room. The line of demarcation between the real
and the imaginary seemed broken down. . . . The
excitement was almost unendurable." 22 But I like
best Moody's own quiet comment, with its little
humorous touch of intentional sophistry: "What

12.1

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

we want is preaching for effect. Some people say,
Oh, that sermon is all preached for effect' Of
course it is; that is what we want, to wake people
up." 23 If effect was what he wanted, he got it.

But what interests me most of all is not his effect
upon his audiences, but their effect upon him.
The psychology of those who work directly in
immediate presence upon multitudes of men is of
profound significance, at any rate to one who feels
that love and glory are the only two things that
approach making existence endurable, the tragedy
of existence being that love is something we can-
not keep and glory something we cannot get. The
writer, the painter, the sculptor work mainly in
solitude and the echo of glory comes to them
dimmed and obscured by distance and reflection.
The public performer, whether preacher or orator
or actor or singer or prize fighter, gets his glory
direct, immediate, in huge, intoxicating doses,
mingled with immediate bitter, which often in-
duces jealousy and anger and despair. He acts
consciously upon his public and his public reacts
upon him with a quick, intense excitement, which
is hardly equaled by any other upon earth, except

122

MOODY THE PREACHER

that of actual physical conflict. This psychology
has not, I think, been studied so widely as it might
be; but the difficulty of the study is no doubt in-
creased by the fact that the objects of it are not
usually of a temperament to help us very much
themselves. Prize fighters and baseball players
are not inclined to be introspective, and it is doubt-
ful whether actors and musicians are much more
so. To be sure, there is a good deal to be gleaned
from the memoirs of the actor, Macready; and
shreds and snatches may be picked up elsewhere by
those who care to look for them. I like especially
the account of Charlotte Cushman's experience,
when she returned to the stage after a prolonged
absence. "Just then the storm of applause burst
out afresh for a second 'call'; as Miss Cushman
heard it, she threw up her arms with a peculiar
gesture and cried out in a tone of indescribably
passionate eager ecstasy, ( Oh, how have I lived
without this through all these years P " 24

In the case of the actor and the athlete, how-
ever, the desire of glory and personal success is
openly the object Every one expects such per-
sons to live for applause and to admit it. The
case of the preacher or the social reformer is com-
plicated by his professing to eschew glory alto-

123

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

gether, to work for the benefit of others, and to
regard popularity and success as merely incidental
and only of importance as indicating that he is
doing his work and doing it well. It is just this
that makes the peculiar fascination of the problem.
Preachers are human. Applause and glory have
always appealed to them, and always will. "The
vanities of all others may die out, but the vanity of
a saint as regards his sainthood is hard indeed to
wear away/* says one who spoke from experience. 25
To disentangle such an obscure web of motives is
as delightful as it is difficult No lover of human
nature will turn from the task. As Sainte-Beuve
puts it, "Let us not be afraid to surprise the human
heart naked, in its incurable duplicity, even in the
saints." 2 *

Even in the saints ambition and the desire for
glory are evident enough, and sometimes admitted.
Have we not the confession of General Booth,
after he was converted? "Have you no ambition?
Because I have, I intend to do something great;
I don't mean to belong to the commonalty.' 127
And we can watch the cruder desire turning into
the subtler impulse, when he writes later: "I
wanted to be right with God. I wanted to be right

124

MOODY THE PREACHER

In myself. I wanted a life spent in putting other
people right 5 ' 2S

The saints are well enough aware of the danger
of this love of applause, excitement, and success.
"The charm of glory is so great, 55 says Pascal,
"that we love it no matter what it may attach itself
to, even to death. 5529 Saint Augustine feels the
doubt and the difficulty: "If praise is the nat-
ural adjunct of good life and good works, then
we should not avoid the adjunct any more than
the things themselves. 55 sa Whitefield proclaims
hardily and vividly the incurable passion for the
wandering preacher's life : "This itch after itiner-
ating I hope will never be cured till we come to
heaven. 55 S1 Again, "Let me enjoy myself in my
delightful itineracy. It is good both for my body
and soul. 55 32 Or the passion will display itself in
strange, inverted forms. After all, perhaps the
greatest testimony of the revivalist 5 s success is the
tumult he creates among the powers of evil. As
one of the early American workers delightfully
expresses it: "I knew in all probability hell was
in an uproar. 55 3S Even more delightful is the ex-
perience of Finney with the devil-possessed horse.
He asks the young man who is going to drive him

125

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

if the horse is safe. "Because, if the Lord wants
me to go to Stephentown, the devil will prevent it
if he can ; and if you have not a steady horse, he
will try to make him kill me." To complete the
narrative: "Strange to tell, before we got there, ,
the horse ran away twice, and came near killing
us. His owner expressed the greatest astonish-
ment, and said he had never known such a thing
before/ 7 34 Could you find a more charming illus-
tration of enlargement of the ego than measuring
its importance by the attentions of the devil?
"Let us not be afraid to surprise the human heart
naked, in its incurable duplicity, even in the
saints."

In considering Moody's career from this point
of view of applause, success, and popularity, we
must first of all establish the essential earnestness,
modesty, humility, and self-effacement of the man,
at any rate so far as his own consciousness was con-
cerned. No one knew better than he the insinuat-
ing) engrossing power of the I, its overmastering
dominance when allowed to have its way, and no
one fought it with more energy, in others and in
his own heart He once rebuked in a public meet-

126

MOODY THE PREACHER

Ing a brother evangelist who complained bitterly
of the opposition he had met "I can tell you, sir,
why they opposed you/' said Moody. "Why?"
"Because you spoke too much about yourself." 3S
He did not propose to speak or to think too much
about himself, if he could help it Again and
again he attacks the I, scourges it, declares that
it should be cast out relentlessly: "One of the
truest signs that a man is growing great is that
God increases and he decreases. Why, some peo-
ple will talk about themselves by the yard. 'I, I,
I, I.' There will be forty-nine I's in a speech five
minutes long." 36 And elsewhere: "This is the
age of boasting. It is the day of the great T." 8T
He gives a vivid picture of the struggle of the I
in himself, a passionate struggle in which he felt
that in the end the I was completely overcome:
"For four long months God seemed to be just
showing me myself. I found I was ambitious ; I
was not preaching for Christ; I was preaching for
ambition. I found everything in my heart that
ought not to be there. For four long months, a
wrestling, went on within me, and I was a miser-
able man." 38

The testimony of others to Moody's self-abne-
gation is more positive and of course far more

127

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

weighty, than his own. Among the innumerable
witnesses I do not know any more emphatic than
Dr. Torrey: "Oh, how he loved to put himself in
the background and put other men in the fore-
ground. How often he would stand on a platform
with some of us little fellows seated behind him
and as he spake he would say: 'There are better
men coming after me. . . .' I do not know how he
could believe it, but he really did believe that the
others that were coming after him were really
better than he was* He made no pretense to a
humility he did not possess. In his heart of hearts
he constantly underestimated himself and over-
estimated others. He really believed that God
would use other men in a larger measure than he
had been used." s0 There is no disputing Dr. Tor-
rey's absolute sincerity, nor Moody's. Yet such a
passage affords vast matter for curious reflection,
and it is permissible to suggest that some of the
greatest egotisms of the world have loved to put
others forward with the subtle sense underneath
that the putter- forward could do the work and do
it better, if he would, or at any rate that he was
the master of his substitutes.

Whatever Moody's attitude toward it may have
been, there is no doubt of the enormous admira-

128

MOODY THE PREACHER

tion, laudation, just plain glory that followed him
wherever he went. Great men bowed down to
him, learned men deferred to him, rich men
opened their purses freely. If he would, he
might have had a train of adoring women; but
it is one of the fine things about him that the
adulation of women did not appeal. As Mr.
Duffus puts it: "He never let gushing women
make a fool of him." 40 His success might have
been portrayed as vividly as in the words in which
Whitefield describes his own: "It was wonderful
to see how the people hung upon the rails of the
organ-loft, climbed upon the leads of the church,
and made the church itself so hot with their
breath that the steam would fall from the pillars
like drops of rain." 41 Moody indulges in no such
fatuous narrative, but there can be no doubt that
he was quite well aware what the success was.
It was something to have a man like Henry Dram-
mond announce in print your supremacy on this
earth: "Henry Drummond declared that Mr.
Moody was the greatest man this century had pro-
duced." 42 It was even more to have followers so
ecstatic that they could predict an equal suprem-
acy in heaven: "I want to say a word of Mr.
Moody's entrance into heaven. When he entered

129

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

into heaven there must have been an unusual com-
motion. . . . It was a triumphal entrance into
glory !"**

No doubt Moody dodged the extreme manifes-
tations of this devotion when he could. He was
altogether too big to enjoy being pawed over or
purred over, or to permit it. An enthusiast prom-
ised a great company of "our first ladies" that
they should shake hands with the evangelist after
a meeting. The evangelist took his hat and the
next cab that passed and disappeared. 44 He dis-
trusted flattery, detested it, shrank from it, knew
its undermining, debasing power, and was deter-
mined not to let it work its subtle way with him.
Just after his great triumph in Scotland in 1874,
he wrote to a friend: "Pray for me every day;
pray now that God will keep me humble." 45

The nature of the prayer and its earnestness
show an obscure and constant sense of the danger ;
but the man's external preoccupations were so con-
stant and his aversion to analysis so great that he
was probably hardly aware of the complicated
nature of the spiritual processes that agitated his
souL Of course he enjoyed freely, lavishly, the
stimulus, the intense and varied excitement that
his chosen calling afforded. Think of the con-

130

MOODY THE PREACHER

trast between what he began with and what he
became : a little, ignorant, neglected, routine shoe-
clerk, and then the absolute arbiter of thousands
of destinies for this world and another. To get up
before those vast audiences, take them in the hol-
low of your hand, and swing them up to heaven
by the mere power of your breath, what other de-
light in life could surpass It? He himself tells
us that "the richest hours I have ever had with
God have not been in great assemblies like this,
but sitting alone at the feet of Jesus." 48 I have
no doubt that he makes the statement with absolute
veracity, but I question its truth, all the same. Or
rather, if those hours were the richest, there were
others that were more magnificent Not receptive
quiet, but turbulent activity was his atmosphere:
"He seems to be always carried along on a sea of
inspiration. He passes his life tossing on its waves,
where he is as perfectly at home as the stormy
petrel on the ocean." 4T

It was not only that he had the excitement of
the ordinary established popular preacher, with
the same great city audience daily at his feet This
man roved over the world trailing crowds behind
him. Not for him were the drudgeries of the set-
tled pastor s the parish squabbles, the parish

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS
He had none of the burdens or obligations of the
minister regularly ordained. His share was none
of the labors and all the fun. There was a charm
in the very perpetual movement of it, new scenes,
new faces, new souls, new problems. Says the an-
cient analyst: "For peregrination charms our
senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety
that some count him unhappy that has never trav-
eled, a kind of prisoner, and pity his case, that
from his cradle to his old age beholds the same;
still, still, still the same." 48 But with the evan-
gelist the mere charm of peregrination was tripled
by the splendor of doing the will of God and
sweeping souls into his kingdom. The extraordi-
nary spiritual dangers involved in this are well
indicated by a sympathetic student of revivals
generally: "The proof is conclusive that the itin-
erant revivalist is in peculiar danger. As he nat-
urally soon leaves a place where he is unsuccess-
ful, he spends most of his time where his own
power over the minds of men is the most con-
spicuous object in his sight and where he is de-
lighted with the proofs of his own eminent in-
fluence. ... He has abundant reason to know
with Whitefield 'how difficult it is to meet success
and not be puffed up with it,' and to say with him,

MOODY THE PREACHER

corruptions are so strong and my employment
so dangerous that I am sometimes afraid. ? " 49

Moody's steady head and quiet heart through
all this turmoil are astonishing and indisputable.
But there is much to reflect upon in the account
of a little talk with him given by a friend: "On
the way to a prayer-meeting that I knew would be
crowded, though held in a large church, I re-
marked to him, 'You must experience great pleas-
ure in going from place to place, and reaching
and benefiting such multitudes as come to hear
you.' He seemed scarcely to know .what to say.
He could not deny that he was engaged in a de-
lightful work, but his whole mind seemed to be
upon the work rather than upon his personal re-
lations to it I cannot recall precisely his reply.
But the distinct impression left upon my mind was
that this man thinks of nothing, plans for noth-
ing but for Christ and souls." 50 The curious
analytical considerations that this suggests are best
supplemented and completed by the simple sen-
tence of Moody's biographer, "public services had
become a second nature to him.' 5 51

The keen and constant enjoyment of his daily
tasks was heightened in Moody's case by the sin-
gular absence of any real doubt or self-mistrust.

133

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

Not for him were the agonies of question that
afflicted a Pascal or even a Wesley or a Booth.
He tells of moments of discouragement, but they
are so rare that they prove the rule. Speaking
broadly, it may be said that from beginning to end
his career was one of joyous, exalted, exhilarated
success.

In other words, we have an ego so big, so ex-
pansive, that it could not be inflated to damage or
injury, but filled to its capacity with the sense of
creative power, the intensest intoxicant known
to man, and filled from the most inexhaustible
reservoir, the belief that God was behind it Can
there be on earth a more positive, enthralling
assertion of the ego than the "belief that God has
singled out D. L. Moody for a great work," 52
and that belief was always and steadily Moody's.
There is no evidence that long and yearning am-
bition was consciously prominent in him, because
he was not a widely imaginative man, and the
immense, unfailing fulfillment kept him well
ahead of anything he could dream of. But how
he did enjoy himself. When his son says of him
that he "lived solely for the glory of God and
for the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ," 6S
the proposition is in a sense perfectly true. But

134

MOODY THE PREACHER

living for God, as he did it, is surely about the
greatest amusement and self-satisfaction that life
can afford.

Yet no one can dwell with Moody long with-
out being convinced that he would have thrown
over all his glory and success in a moment, if
he had been convinced that God willed it. It is
said that in later years he deliberately changed his
methods, dividing his audiences in a way to yield
less personal triumph for himself, but greater re-
sults. 54 I have no doubt it is true. And we may
go further. I wrote once of Frances Willard that
if you could have persuaded her that it was her
duty to give up all her public activity and noto-
riety and devote herself to humble personal char-
itable work in some obscure corner, she would have
done it without a moment's hesitation. So there
is no doubt that if you could have persuaded
Moody that it was God's will that he should re-
linquish his larger labors and go as a missionary
to the Labrador fishermen or even settle down as
an insignificant pastor in a country parish, he
would have done it at once. But you would have
had to be something of a logical expert to per-
suade him.

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

One of the definite elements of Moody's tri-
umph and success was the contrast between his
eager and enthusiastic congregations and the luke-
warmness of the regular churches. No doubt this
was partly owing to the peculiar and temporary
nature of his appeal. But the lukewarmness was
already marked, even in his day, as compared with
a hundred years earlier, and it will hardly be de-
nied that it has much increased since. In spite
of intelligent and well-directed efforts in social
lines, philanthropic lines, and recently in lines of
so-called religious education, maintaining a
large body of those nominally affiliated with the
church, the general influence and power of Protest-
ant churches in the community is far different
from what it was in the eighteenth century or in
the early nineteenth. The various complicated
causes of this condition need hardly be analyzed
here. One of the most important was inherent
in Protestantism from the Reformation, the em-
phasis on individual judgment in religious matters.
The natural result of this emphasis was the ser-
mon, and the sermon has been the great blight
upon the Protestant church. A few brilliant
preachers can always hold large audiences in the

136

MOODY THE PREACHER

cities. But to expect the average minister to be
original in matter and attractive in delivery is
obviously to expect the impossible. As a conse-
quence, the hungry sheep look up and are not
fed, and they slink away to seek their nourish-
ment elsewhere.

Another most important cause of the deteriora-
tion of church influence, a cause which has already
grown up so insidiously and gradually that it is
generally overlooked, is the development of jour-
nalism. The newspaper^ in the popular sense, is
the child of the later nineteenth century, and it
has certainly changed the world, and most cer-
tainly the churches. In early New England the
minister was the ruling force in the community.
What his power was and how splendidly conscious
he was of it appears in the anecdote of a visitor
who called upon a country parson and found him
digging in his garden. The visitor, a little doubt-
ful as to the state of things, inquired timidly, "Do
you serve here?" The parson drew himself up
to his full august six feet, and answered, "I rule
here." * 5

It was not only that the minister guided his
flock religiously. The church was the intellectual
center. Men met there to learn by word of mouth

137

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

the doings of the great world. Now print has
changed all that Social life is not the source of
knowledge, but solitude. The newspaper links
together communities, but it separates individuals.
In the age of Shakespeare, or the age of Jonathan
Edwards, education and information were gath-
ered from human contact: if you wished to know
what had happened, you asked your neighbor.
To-day men ride to their business side by side, and,
instead of exchanging news, they both bury them-
selves in the sporting or the financial or the edi-
torial column. Most of all, in the last fifty years,
the Sunday newspaper has been the deadly enemy
of the church. It not only gives an excuse for stay-
ing at home; but, whereas a hundred years ago,
if you wanted to know the movement of politics
and finance and society, you had to go to church,
now, if you want to know these things, you have
to stay at home. Nothing marks this more clearly
than the altered position of the minister. He not
only no longer rules, he finds it difficult even to
serve. The average business man looks upon him
with amused patronage. Of course he is not ex-
pected to be any more than a child in practical
affairs ; but even his views on general subjects are

138

MOODY THE PREACHER

regarded as those of a cloudy idealist or a
woman.

Naturally at all times preachers of Moody's
genius and power will escape and override this
general deterioration, and will find their success
emphasized by it But it is most interesting to see
how quickly Moody's keen insight detected the
danger in the development of the newspaper and
how vigorously and constantly he attacked it As
with everything else, he knew how to use the news-
papers for his purpose, when the occasion came.
But he mistrusted the enemy, and he did not miss
a chance to express his opinion: "Good Chris-
tians are not going to live upon the New York
Ledger. . . . Do not let us feed upon this new
literature, this miserable stuff that is printed." 56

Especially does he dilate and declaim about the
Sunday paper. It is helping more than anything
else to undermine the Sabbath: "If you give up
the Sabbath, the church goes; if you give up
the church the home goes; and if the home goes
the nation goes. That is the direction in which
we are traveling." 57 He analyzes the Sunday
papers and points out their corrupting, debasing,
demoralizing influence. It is said that they re-

139

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

port sermons. Pooh! Report sermons! He takes
a group of seven papers and figures up the con-
tents : "Unclean personals, eight columns, think of
a Christian man putting that paper before his chil-
dren 1" etc., etc. And the total is, "Nine hundred
and eleven and a quarter columns, and only three
and a quarter columns of them religious. That
is Sunday reading! Gabriel himself couldn't hold
an audience whose heads were full of such stuff
as that" 5S When he is told that the fight is hope-
less, he replies that the fight of God is never hope-
less for him: "They tell me the Sunday paper has
come to stay, and I may as well let it alone.
Never! I believe it is a great evil, and I shall
fight it while I live. I never read a Sunday paper,
and wouldn't have one in my house. ... I will
have nothing to do with them. They do more
harm to religion than any other agency I know." 59
There is no more pathetic symptom of the fatally
losing war that he waged in so many respects than
the complete triumph of his journalistic adver-
saries. They had destiny so wholly on their side
that they did not have to notice his attacks.

Within very recent years, however, there has
come up another form of publicity which one feels
would have been curiously adapted to Moody's

140

MOODY THE PREACHER

purposes, and that Is broadcasting by radio. One
of the enthusiastic admirers of General Booth,
speaking of the eagerness with which he adopted
and adapted new instruments, says: "In our day
he would have been scouring the skies at the rate
of 100 miles an hour, and shouting sermons through
the megaphone as he sped. 7 ' 60 But the radio is a
vastly more effective instrument than any mega-
phone, and already the revivalists of to-day are
beginning to make use of it. One can see how it
would have appealed to Moody, and how he
would have employed it to hurl his "Are you a
Christian ?" in the faces of millions of idlers all
over the world. To be sure, there would have been
the loss of corporeal presence, of the stimulating
excitement of the visibly absorbed and listening
multitude. Yet, after all, Moody wanted to talk
to individuals. One can imagine tormented souls,
shut off in night and solitude, getting his urgent
and insistent appeal through the vibrating air, and
overcome with a passionate longing and terror and
hope more intense and irresistible than could ever
be conveyed in any crowded hall. But the whole
business of Moody's dealing with individuals and
of his appeal to them will furnish an interesting
and important theme for a later chapter.

141

CHAPTER IV

MOODY AND SANKEY

THE influence of music for salvation and damna-
tion both is worthy of careful study and is espe-
cially important in dealing with the career of
D. L. Moody. In his day the slow, subtle, dreamy
magic of the waltz was supposed to whirl thou-
sands of souls into the abyss. And surely he would
regard with even more horror the tangled clatter
of modern jazz-dancing, with its languid sway of
fantastic steps in the naked glare of sex and with
the stimulus of intertwining rhythmic motion.
Then there is the long enchanting lure of the love-
lay through all the ages, teasing restless spirits
out of sanity into despair :

"What is love? 'Tis not hereafter,
Present mirth hath present laughter,

What's to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty.
Then come kiss me, Sweet and Twenty,

Youth's a stuff will not endure.* 5

And there Is the tinkle of strings with the madden-
ing suggestion of desire and delight across the

142

MOODY AND SANKEY

moonlit waters, only giving place to the more dan-
gerous silence of the stars. Nor is it alone the
essentially erotic forms of music that undermine
and destroy. In its intensest moments there is
often a dissipating, dissolving passion, a haunt-
ing, exhilarating, exasperating ardor, which ele-
vates the spirit beyond hope, and then leaves it
pale, exhausted, discontented, skeptical, with a
grief for which it finds no obtainable remedy and
no specific cure.

Yet if music is a mighty agent for damnation,
its regenerating power is equally immense and
equally wayward and unaccountable. It is not
only with the unanimous resonance of great
choruses of faith and hope and love that the pos-
session comes, not only with the crash and thun-
der of huge organs in arched cathedral aisles,
though these are often efficacious and irresistible.
The song of a veery in a June thicket, the cry of
the song sparrow on misty April mornings, the
carol of the thrush in August twilights, may fill
the heart with a longing that only God can satisfy.
A man who is torn and fretted and maddened with
the hurrying tumult of the world, who is harassed
with the perplexities of business or sick with the
satiety of pleasure, may hear a strain of a long-

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

remembered air, perhaps a cadence of a hymn his
mother sang to him in childhood, and suddenly
the material pressure of the world about him may
melt into utter unreality, and he may stand for a
moment at least on the threshold of heaven. Now
in utilizing these moments and fixing them, in
profiting by their subtle secrets of musical associa-
tion, if not in probing them, Ira David Sankey
had a strange, an instinctive, but an undeniable
mastery. He did not perhaps adopt Moody's ever-
iterated, "Are you a Christian?" in words. But
he kept up a tap, tap, tap of melody on the heart
which was at times even more effective.

It must be confessed that he did not altogether
look the part of a spiritual stimulator, though he
looked it more than Moody did. In the case of
Moody, indeed, there was a certain charm about
the contrast between the heavy, material face and
figure and the spiritual message. One of Sankey's
enthusiastic admirers compares him to Orpheus. 1
If this is exact, Orpheus must have looked like
the average minister, of the less prepossessing
type. Sankey's figure was tall and bulky, though
dignified. He wore dark, unctuous side whiskers,
such as were fashionable in that day, but have now
gone out of the world. He was extremely neat and

MOODY AND SANKEY

careful as to his clothes, in amusing contrast to the
rough-and-ready uncouthness of Moody. Mr.
Duffus says that Sanfcey "looked like the honest
proprietor of a meat-market 55 2 Another observer
records more specifically: "Mr. Sankey weighs
about two hundred and twenty pounds avoirdu-
pois, and measures forty-four inches around the
chest. This is the weight and chest measure of
the basso prof undo in an opera troupe. 553 And
still another adds a few vivid touches: "An im-
mense, bilious man, with black hair, and eyes sur-
rounded by flaccid, pendent, baggy wrinkles, who
came forward with an unctuous gesture. 554 But
this latter observer, like many others, fell com-
pletely under the charm when the music began.
It seems that Sankey 5 s singing could transfigure
his appearance or make you forget it

What the man would have been without his
voice and without D. L. Moody it is easy to con-
jecture. He was born in 1840, in a small Penn-
sylvania town. He was of English and Scotch
extraction, but was thoroughly American in most
of his characteristics. One rather fatuous biog-
rapher informs us that "he was the finest little
fellow in the neighborhood. 55 5 He was probably
a boy like many other boys, fairly educated, held

D. Lu MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

under strict discipline, working when he had to,
and playing when he got the chance. He served
a term in the army during the Civil War and made
a success as a singer, If in no other way. After-
wards he was employed in the Government civil
service, and seems to have been a quiet, faithful
worker. He married a good woman who under-
stood him and he had three children. In short,
he was framed to be an average American busi-
ness man, of sufficiently narrow interests, narrow
duties, and narrow pleasures, who would have
lived out his sixty odd years in the usual petty
insignificance of most of us.

But he had a voice of considerable power,
moderate compass, and singularly appealing
quality, and he had an extraordinary dramatic
instinct in the managing of it Also, he ran into
D. L. Moody just at the fortunate moment. These
two things gave him an altogether different career.
They brought him out into the great world, trailed
him all over the United States and the British
Isles, introduced him as an equal and often as a
superior to the very greatest people, gave him and
his family ease, comfort, and luxury. We read
in the Boston Advertiser, during the revival in
that city: "Mr. Sankey and his family are stay-

146

MOODY AND SANKEY

ing at the Hotel Brunswick." s Most notable of
all, Ms singing and his coadjutor brought him
praise 5 admiration, adulation such as fall to few
artists of any type. One cannot but be impressed,
perhaps even more than with Moody, with what
the man might have been, would naturally have
been, and what he was. But one fact must be
made plain, right at the start: Sankey, like Moody,
absolutely refused to make money out of the
saving of souls. He was supported by the vol-
untary contributions of friends and admirers
and by moderate payments definitely and legiti-
mately earned. But he did not make any personal
gain from the enormous profits received from the
"Gospel Hymns." "Mr. Sankey . . . had given
up copyrights that would have brought him In a
large sum yearly and opportunities to hold mus-
ical institutes and conventions which would have
added largely to his income." 7 I do not know that
there is any much better test of sincerity and de-
votion.

Since Sankey sang for religion and therefore
mainly lived for it, it is interesting to know how
far religion entered into his own personal life.

147

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

Unfortunately with him, as with Moody, there Is
an irritating lack of really critical Information
from any competent, unprejudiced source. There
Is plenty of eulogy, mostly unintelligent, but little
scientific analysis. And apparently Sankey, like
Moody, was little disposed to analyze himself.
I suspect that the singer may have had rather
more natural disposition to such work than the
preacher. But Moody left a vast verbal outpour-
ing which could not be entirely without self -reve-
lation* Sankey was much less of a talker, at any
rate in print An observer slightly more discrim-
inating than most makes an Interesting comparison
of the two: "Moody was brusque, but so sincere
that any man forgave him. Sankey, on the other
hand, was polished, pleasant, sunshiny, in tem-
perament perhaps, after all, not so easy to fathom
as Moody." 8 I cannot make up my mind whether
there was less to fathom or whether it was less
fathomable.

In any case the man will not help us much. In
his autobiographical sketch and elsewhere he tells
us more or less of his early religious experiences,
not with the slightest suggestion of hypocrisy, but
you have the painful sense that he wishes to set a
good example to the young. In his childhood he

148

/ -,'.' ' ' . .>v,^),:: i :...^iH

',';;,;/ ..:. ;',,. . ;.-. ^v''^::t^f'^^;'%||f

&WUB

IRA D. SANKbY.

MOODY AND SANKEY

was subjected to severe religious discipline: "the
boys were not even allowed to whistle on a Sun-
day. 35 & But apparently he did not rebel, rebel-
lion was not In his nature. Even his definite con-
version, when It came, was not attended with any
unusual delay or recalcitrancy. When he was a
youth, a with some young companions he attended
a series of special meetings held in a little country
chapel, three miles from his father's home, and
while sitting in a state of heedlessness and levity,
the Spirit of God put it into the heart of an old
elder of the church to go and speak to him about
his soul. Evening after evening the old man would
search him out after the sermon and plead with
him to give his heart and consecrate his life to
Jesus. Fear of what his young associates would
say kept him long from coming to the Cross of
Christ But at last, after a struggle lasting seven
days, the experienced elder led him to Jesus." 10
From that time on his religious life seems to have
been as sunny and tranquil as could be expected.
Although Sankey's chief usefulness was as a
singer, he took more or less general part in the
services and as a speaker was by no means ineffec-
tive. His voice was pleasant and his manner was
easy. He sometimes made Impressive and tell-

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

Ing spiritual appeals and he had a humorous turn
which was effective In a lighter line of speaking.
On his last visit to England, he delivered a pleas-
ant farewell address. In which he told of a stranger
who Inquired of him what sort of people Moody
and Sankey were: "Just common folks like our-
selves, 55 was Sankey's answer. And he explained
his difficulties in making the man believe that he
was not dead. 11 Again, he had a most dramatic
fashion of introducing his hymns. If he was to
sing "The Ninety and Nine," he would tell the
actual story of a prodigal. 12 Here is another in-
stance: "Mr. Sankey said, 'Now is the time for
working. I saw on a tombstone at Stirling yes-
terday this word deeply carved In the stone
"Waiting! 9 There will be a time for waiting by
and by, but now is the time for working! He then
sang:

'Hark, the voice of Jesus crying, -

"Who will go and work to-day?" ' " 13

Also, Sankey had a good deal of gift for deal-
ing with individuals, and in the Inquiry Meet-
ings he was a useful and effective agent No doubt
his power in this way was much augmented by the
memory aad association of his singing. , There are

MOODY AND SANKEY

numerous stories of men who came to him and
were Influenced by him, for Instance, that of the
atheist lecturer who was converted, as Sankey him-
self relates in his autobiography," and he seems to
have been especially successful with women. In-
deed, It would appear that in this respect he sur-
passed Moody, whose robust and direct methods
were perhaps less appealing to the feminine tem-
per. The most severe satirical critic of the evan-
gelists even avers that when Moody took one In-
quiry room and Sankey the other, Moody had one
female out of just one hundred and Sankey ninety-
nine* 15 The numbers sound suspicious, but the
general proportion may be suggestive. It must
be Insisted, however, that Sankey, like Moody,
was scrupulously careful in such relations, and in
all the fierce hostility that prevailed in many quar-
ters I do not find one word of scandal about the
singer any more than about his greater friend.

Ill

It may be said in the main that Sankey's life
was In his music, and it is of extreme interest to
find out how music affected him if one only
could. He seems to have been fascinated by it
from his early days* "I was always fond of sing-

151

D. L. MOODY; A WORKER IN SOULS

ing it came naturally to me. I sang from child-
hood, and was literally full and running over
with music," he says/ 6 and he tells us that when
he was eight years old, he could sing correctly such
tunes as St Martin's, Belmont, Coronation, etc. 17
He had apparently very little training, either vo-
cally or instrumentally, but taught himself, by
instinct and observation. The influence of the
popular religious singer, Philip Phillips, first im-
pressed Sankey with the power and importance of
sacred music and Induced him to cultivate It with
all his energy. But as he had little gift of learning
from others, so he was not very skillful at teaching
them, and those who went to him In later years to
learn his secrets came away unsatisfied. 18

He had not only early a taste for singing, but
for composing. It is said that at "the age of fif-
teen years he began to compose tunes for his own
amusement" 1& Later he composed many of the
Gospel Songs, and sang his own music as well as
that of others. The general character of these
songs, as compared with that of earlier church
music, is of course their greater freedom and popu-
larity. The words are often intensely and vividly
significant for the singer's purpose, and the melody
has a variety, a lightness, sometimes to some ears

152

MOODY AND SANKEY

a flippancy and woridliness, which astonished and
shocked and appealed. Sankey often sang the
older hymns with power, but his great triumphs
were won with music of his own sort At the
same time, some of the most popular and effective
of all his pieces seern to have been the hymns of
Bliss, "Hold the Fort," "Watching and Waiting/ 7
"Pull for the Shore, Sailor." Sankey's own hymns
have a little less certainty, a little less poignant
directness. There is one exception, however, "The
Ninety and Nine," which was as telling as any
that he ever sang. Sankey's own story of the com-
position of this is so significant as to be well worth
quoting. He came across the words (by Eliza-
beth Clephane) in Scotland, but had made no
music for them. One day in a meeting Moody
called upon him to sing something appropriate
to the Good Shepherd, "The impression came
upon me, 'Sing the hymn and make the tune as
you go along.' It was almost as if I heard a voice,
so vivid was the sensation. I yielded to it, and,
taking the little newspaper slip and laying it upon
the organ before me, with a silent prayer to God
for help, I commenced to sing. Note by note,
the music was given to me clear through to the end
of the tune. After the first verse, I was very glad

IS3

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

I had got through, but overwhelmed with fear
that the tune for the next verse would be greatly
different from the first But again looking up to
the Lord for help in this most trying moment, He
gave me again the same tune for all the remain-
ing verses, note for note. The impression made
upon the audience was very deep ; hundreds were
in tears." 20 This is interesting as showing that, in
his composition, as in his singing, Sankey relied
less upon scholarly technique or trained discipline,
than upon improvisation and inspiration, although
he was apt and quick at taking hints from others.
With this evident susceptibility to musical im-
pressions, it would be curious to know how far
Sankey was influenced by the greater music of the
world, but we get no light at all upon the point
If he ever heard Bach and Mozart and Beethoven
and Wagner, or heard of them, we are not told
of it Even oratorio is never mentioned in con-
nection with him. As for opera in any shape,
it was of course tabooed with the other iniquities
of the theater. Yet closely contemporaneous with
Sankey's own triumphs came the equal, if very
different triumphs, of Gilbert and Sullivan. One
would think that the choruses of the "Pirates"
and "Pinafore" and the subtle, passionate melodies

154

MOODY AND SANKEY

of "Patience' 5 and "lolanthe" would have set the
man's heart on fire. Did he hear them? Did he
feel them? Who knows? Yet music was always
his solace and delight, and In the blindness which
came upon him In later days, his refuge and con-
solation.

Also, he had definite Ideas about the use of
music for his religious purpose and he very often
and very clearly expounded them. Not unna-
turally he preferred the voice to instruments. The
organ might do well in its place, might have its
effect But he liked a simple reed instrument that
could be perfectly subordinated ; "I would prefer
a small organ near the pulpit and have it played
just simply so as not to drown the people's voice,
but support them and keep them in tune. It Is
the human voice we want instead of the playing,
for there is nothing equal to the human voice in
the world." 21 He believed in solo singing, be-
lieved that the words should be made important,
significant, and that the tune should be used to wing
them to the people's hearts. He wanted the hymn
to be adapted to the occasion. He wanted the sing-
ers, if they were professional, to be Christians also,
to feel what they sang, and not to be mere hired
entertainers, who would pass indifferently from

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

the choir-loft, which he disliked^ to the opera or

concert-stage.

With these views as to religious music, with
his native musical ardor, and with his voice, it

was fortunate that he found Moody, or that Moody
found him.

The value of music for religious services gen-
erally and especially for revivals had always been
appreciated, but the prominence of solo singing
was novel and still more so was the intimate
cooperation of preacher and singer. Nothing like
it had been known before Moody and Sankey and
nothing since has quite equaled their popular
reputation. When they came together in 1870,
each was feeling his way. Sankey was singing
here and there, but was hardly known. Moody
was doing his evangelistic work and had all his
native gifts, but had still much to learn in prac-
tical management. Sankey drifted into a meet-
ing. There was no one to lead the singing, and
he took charge. Moody was delighted with his
voice and manner and at once seized upon him
with characteristic bluntness. "Where do you
live? 9 ' "In Newcastle, Pennsylvania." "Are you

MOODY AND SANKEY

married?" "Yes." "How many children have
you? 15 "One." "What are you In business?" "A
revenue officer." "Well, you'll have to give that
up. You are the man I have been looking for this
last eight years. You must give up your business
in Newcastle and come to Chicago. I want you
to help me in my work." 22 The call of Jesus could
hardly have been more arbitrary and more com-
pelling. And Sankey was gently compelled.
After a brief period of hesitation he gave up all
and followed his leader. They worked together
with more and more understanding and effect,
until, in 1873, ^ey departed on the triumphant
progress through the British Isles which estab-
lished their fame.

It is evident everywhere that Moody was the
bigger and stronger man and dominated Sankey,
as he dominated every one else that came into con-
tact with him, not by violence, but by innate power.
At the very beginning Sankey had an invitation
to go to the Pacific coast with his original model,
Philip Phillips. He hesitated, but Moody pre-
vailed, and Sankey had the insight to choose the
larger spirit with the larger future. 23 He felt the
force and assurance of Moody's guiding genius,
even in matters that pertained more peculiarly to

157

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

himself; "Mr. Moody has always been an inspira-
tion to me in preparing hymns for gospel work;
not that he was a musician or claimed to be, but
I soon learned to prize his judgment as to the
value and usefulness of a hymn for our work.
What moved him was sure to move others, and
what failed to do so could be safely omitted." 24
If Moody said, "You can do it," Sankey felt that
he could do it, and he did. In Scotland Moody
urged him to use the Scotch dialect "I realized
it was rather a hazardous proceeding to sing a
hymn in the vernacular, but Mr, Moody, though
he knew he had put me in a tight place, said,
c Go ahead, Sankey.' I did go ahead, and that was
one of the reasons why I and Mr. Moody got on
so well during our thirty years' work together." 25
It is even said that it was Moody who persuaded
Sankey to give up his royalty on the Hymn Books.
However this may be, the influence of the older
man in everything is unquestionable. And Sankey
not only followed, he loved. After hearing the
Moody sermons over and over, with all their un-
avoidable repetitions, he could say, "I never
tired of hearing Mr. Moody speak." 26 In one
of his sermons the preacher described the death
bed of the unrepentant sinner, Sankey must have

MOODY AND SANKEY

heard this many times before l yet he "was visibly
affected by the picture, and when he raised his
head at the close of the address his eyes were red
from weeping. 1527 There is surely some test of
power in that.

For all his submission, there were times when
Sankey could and did assert himself, and it is one
of the surest marks of Moody's greatness that he
could instantly accept and adopt the suggestions
of others when they appealed to his common-sense.
On one occasion in a large music-hall Sankey
was to sing, but hesitated because he had no organ
for his accompaniment "Isn't that organ enough
for you?" asked Moody, pointing to the huge in-
strument at the back of the platform. Sankey
said it was too large and that he could not sing
with his back to the audience any more than
Moody could preach to them in that way. Moody
saw the point, and allowed Sankey to leave the
organ out and sing with no accompaniment at all,
which he did with his usual success. 28 Sankey
also tells us of Moody's prejudice against certain
hymns and of the tact necessary to conquer It. 29

So the two worked along together, overcom-
ing obstacles, pulling through tight places, aston-
ishing vast multitudes, and winning souls. Some-

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

times Moody's titanic energy was too much for
Sankey's more sensitive temperament, and he was
forced to trail behind, but in the main he kept
going with extraordinary perseverance and suc-
cess. Not the least attractive part of their inter-
course is the exchange of pleasant little jests and
quips with which they both diversified even the
tumultuous progress of salvation. Speaking in a
sermon of Paul's creed. Moody said, "I don't know
what Paul's persuasion was. All persuasions
claim him, Sankey says he is a Methodist" 30
When Sanfcey was publicly asked if the leader of
a meeting should lead the singing, he replied:
"If a singer, he could do it, but of course the
man who leads is not always a singer. I think
we would have a hard time if I should ask Brother
Moody to lead the singing here to-day." A few
minutes later he was asked if he recommended
solo singing. He answered, "Not as a rule," and
Moody interjected, "I would if I had Sankey." sl
And Moody liked to play on Sankey, as on others,
the rather primitive sort of practical joke which
was mainly his idea of humor. When they were
crossing the ferry at Northfield, Moody was help-
ing the ferryman and begged Sankey to sing.
"We all thought the crossing very slow. After

1 60

MOODY SANKBY

the third or fourth song Sankey looked around
and discovered Moody holding on to the wire
and pulling back while the ferryman pulled for-
ward ; his object being to get In a good many songs,
not only for his own enjoyment, but for the good
of the ferryman, a boyhood friend for whose con-
version he was interested." S2

As the years went on, the two friends appeared
less frequently together and the association of their
names became more a tradition than a reality.
Moody had somewhat changed his methods of
work. Sankey grew older, and though he still
sang for the Lord, he lived more quietly. Per-
haps his voice had not quite its original power,
and his flow of composition may have been less
abundant I have sometimes wondered whether
the striking words of Dr. Atkins's comment on
Moody's use and disuse of the men who served
him had any remote application to Sankey's case:
"He was the servant of a greater than himself, in
desperate haste about his Master's business; and
the men whom he thrust aside as ill tools knew that
nothing selfish or personal ever directed his action.
They had In his judgment, simply ceased to profit
his Master's cause, and they were willing to be
used by him or discarded by him, because they

161

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

had been fired with a like love for the same
cause. 31 M In any case, I find no hint whatever
of any direct disagreement, or friction, or jealousy
between these two ardent workers. They held
meetings together occasionally till the end and
after Moody's death Sankey spoke of him with the
warmest affection and admiration. He repeatedly
referred to their laboring together for nearly
thirty years, and in the tenderest and most earnest
words he repudiated any suggestion that they had
ever separated to any degree whatever: "It is said
we parted; but, no, we never parted until death
parted us at Northfield." 3 *

It is one of the signs of Moody's genius for
adapting all sorts of means to his ends that he
made such mighty use of music, for he personally
had little feeling for It It Is true that he some-
times insisted, with a touch of humor, that he had
music in his heart, and declared that he expected
to join in the celestial choruses with all his natural
vigor and enthusiasm. "Well, I don't understand
music ? but I can sing as well as Mr. Sankey can.
I can sing from my heart." 35 And more elab-
orately: "I cannot sing. I could not start 'Rock

162

MOODY SANKEY

of Ages/ but I suppose I have heard It once a
day for six years, I cannot sing with my lips.
I cannot get It out of these thick lips of mine,
but way down in my heart I sing just as well as
Mr. Sankey, and it is just as acceptable to God.
But when we all get to heaven, I expect to sing
with Moses and the Lamb." 3e But his own admis-
sion that music In itself meant little or nothing
to him is amply confirmed by those who knew him
best: "He had absolutely no knowledge of music
and could not even sing a note. Just what pleas-
ure singing gave him personally is an unsolved
problem, and insoluble. It has sometimes seemed
to those who observed him carefully that his pleas-
ure was an indirect one, and came from seeing Its
influence upon others." 3T And his son says of
him: "Mr. Moody frequently showed his high
appreciation of music, especially vocal music, and
the prominence given to praise in all his services
was an evidence of this. Few people knew, how-
ever, that he had absolutely no musical ear, being
unable to distinguish one tune from another.
Paradoxical as It may appear, no one more readily
detected any difficulty In the singing or appre-
ciated more highly a well-trained chorus." ss
In other words, though his esthetic apprecia-

163

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

tion was Imperfect, his psychological appreciation
was keen and constant, and no man ever knew
better the value of music for religious excitement
and stimulation, or applied it with more intelli-
gent care. Of course this stimulant of song, even
with rhythmic motion, has been a feature of re-
vival activity in all ages. The old Testament
understood it as well as the New. It is habitual
in all the religions of the East. Of the Buddhist
use of it is written: "It was a frequent thing dur-
ing this enthusiastic singing in chorus, for the
singers to exhibit many external signs of deep emo-
tion. Some would swoon away in rapture and roll
on the ground ; others would embrace one another
and laugh and cry alternately. ... As the tide
of feeling rose higher, the singers, in the contagion
of their joy and rapture, would imagine that
Krishna himself was with them and all would
become 'immersed in a sea of divine bhakti.'"**
Even the American Indians are agitated by a sim-
ilar rapture: "The Navajo feel that only through
the ecstasy of singing can contact with the holy
ones be gained for any desired end. * , . The
effect of one of their long ceremonies is that of a
slow rise, day by day, and hour by hour, to a tre-
mendous crisis in which, all night, the air is shat-

164

MOODY AND SANKEY

tered by continuous long singing*" 4a In Chris-
tian revivals, the Wesleys, who were skillful
musicians and composers, perhaps made the most
effective employment of the art Wesley's re-
mark, that he "did not want the devil to have all
the good tunes/ 3 is classic. His advice to his fol-
lowers as to the employment of music shows how
much attention he gave to the matter: "Suit the
tune to the words. Avoid complex tunes, which
it is scarcely possible to sing with devotion. . . .
Do not suffer the people to sing too slow. . * . In
every society let them learn to sing; and let them
always learn our own tunes first" 41

Unmusical as he was, Moody had reflected on
the subject perhaps as carefully as Wesley, and
while he never proposed to let the singing get
away from him or become the chief feature, he
set himself to get out of it every ounce of possible
power and glory. If an audience was dull and
sleepy, music would arouse it and make it atten-
tive. If an audience was tumultuous and unruly,
music would quiet it and make it attentive* He
studied the tunes not for their musical value, but
for their practical use to him. He had always an
eye out for new tunes, for their rhythm, for their
swing, for their significance, and when the tunes

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

were growing a trifle threadbare, he would dis-
card them for the time and turn to others. Again,
he wholly and entirely reprobated the commer-
cial side of music. An organist might be a great
artist, a choir might be highly trained and skillful.
If they were not convinced and earnest Chris-
tians, he wanted nothing to do with them. "The
world has come into the church like a flood, and
how often you find an ungodly choir employed to
do the singing for the whole congregation ; the idea
that we need an ungodly man to sing praises to
God! It was not long ago I heard of a church
where they had an unconverted choir, and the
minister saw something about the choir he didn't
like, and he spoke to the chorister, but the chorister
replied: 'You attend to your end of the church,
and I will attend to mine*' You cannot expect
the Spirit of God to work in a church in such a
state as that 57 42

As in everything else, Moody was extraordi-
narily quick with music to take advantage of every
accident of time, place, or circumstance which
would heighten and intensify the effect He him-
self was always emphasizing the possibilities in
this direction: "Give out 'Rock of Ages, Cleft

166

MOODY AND SANKEY

for Me,' and it won't be long before the hats will
be coming off, and hey will remember how their
mothers sung that to them once when they were
In bed, and the tears will begin to run down their
cheeks, and it won't be long before they will want
you to read a few verses out of the Bible, and then
they will ask you to pray with them, and you will
be having a prayer meeting there before you know
it" 43 Or he tells the story of the hymn, (C Oh,
come to me/ 5 which got hold of a hardened sinner,
worked into his brain or his heart, haunted him
day and night, "Oh, come to me," "Oh, come to
me," and at last he came. And you ought to have
heard Moody tell it 44 Or there is the incident
which captured Dr. Grenfell, when he had
strolled into a meeting, to hear what the evangelist
had to say, A long-winded old parson was string-
ing together the usual petitions, when Moody,
who never loved long prayers and never made
them, got impatient: "While Brother Jones is
finishing his prayer, let us all join in singing."
And Grenfell said, "Something here worth a
man's attention."

Also, Moody made his people sing, even if he
couldn't sing himself. He didn't merely ask them

167

D. L. MOODY; A WORKER IN SOULS
to sing; he didn't sit by and listen. They were
there to do their part and he saw that they did
it One day he had an audience of nine thousand
and set them to the ringing splendor of "Joy to
the World." But at first they did not get hold
of it He had one gallery sing it, then another.
Then he had the women sing, then the men.
Finally he let the whole, vast, mad throng take
it up, and "probably never before have nine thou-
sand men and women sung under one roof with
such unison and such enthusiasm." 45 One ad-
mirable passage sums up his skill, his efforts, and
his results: "He would have nothing whatever to
do with a piece of music which only appealed to
the sense of beauty. He could form no judgment
of its value by hearing it played or sung in private.
He must see it tried in a crowd, and could dis-
cover in an instant its adaptation to awaken the
feelings which he needed to have in action. If it
had the right ring he used it for all it was worth.
*Let the people sing,' he would shout 'let all the
people sing. Sing that verse again. There's an
old man over there who is not singing at all, let
him sing/ No matter how long it took, he would
keep the people at work until they were fused
and melted." 48

168

MOODY AND

Sankey's voice, considered abstractly as a mere
musical instrument, does not appear to have been
anything phenomenal. Satirical critics even
sometimes spoke of it with severity: "When I see
humanity, Boston humanity most musical of all
humanity sit and be tortured with this astound-
ing discord, I do not doubt humanity's de-
votion to the gospel." 47 A more discerning and
sympathetic observer, who recognized the power
and the effect, also expresses the indisputable
limitations: "A very erroneous opinion seems to
exist among some people that this gentleman is
an accomplished singer* Nothing can be fur-
ther from the truth. Mr. Sankey has no preten-
sions of the kind and we question if he could
vocalize properly the simplest exercise in the in-
struction book. He has possibly never had a sing-
ing lesson in his life. His voice is a powerful
baritone of small compass. He touches E flat with
considerable difficulty and even E strains his voice.
He sings from the chest register and his intonation
is far from perfect" 4S

But this same observer goes on to point out that
the force of Sankey's performance did not lie in
mere technical skill, but in other characteristics

169

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

so remarkable that "In many respects professional
singers might take a lesson from him." To begin
with, he himself felt profoundly what he sang.
He prepared himself with prayer and his sensi-
tive and nervous temperament responded to the
spirit of the hymn and the stimulus of the sur-
roundings often to the point of tears. As one
observer vividly puts it: "Mr. Sankey sings with
the conviction that Souls are receiving Jesus be-
tween one note and the next." 40 Also, as he felt
the music, he was determined to make the people
feel it The first means for doing this was to
sing so as to be understood, and it was his con-
stant care to bring out the words with the utmost
distinctness and intelligibility. The music was
not the first thing, nor the only thing. Words
and music must be involved together in an inex-
tricable and Impressive harmony. "Singing the
Gospel" was his favorite expression. For mere
purposes of praise it was not perhaps necessary
that the people should understand, provided they
heard. But to convince, as well as move, every
word of the hymns had to carry its full meaning
to every member of those vast audiences. He made
the words do it It was for this purpose that he re-
quired and contrived and obtained absolute sym-

170

MOODY AND SANKEY

pathetic silence, for this purpose that he rejected
great organs and obstruslve accompaniments, and
contented himself simply with the small reed In-
strument to carry the tune. His Scotch hearers
objected at first to his "kistful o' whistles"; but
he knew Its value, and he stuck to It.

And there was far more In his method than the
mere enunciation of words. Moody himself did
not better understand the right moment ? did not
better appreciate just what tune would be effective
In particular circumstances than Sankey did. If
he wanted to arouse and stimulate, to Inspire ardor
and courage^ he would sing "Hold the Fort"
If he wanted to bring tears and tender emo-
tions, he would turn to "The Ninety and Nine"
or to "Watching and Waiting." As one writer
expresses it, "He usually selects hymns for the
opening praise with a light, joyous melody, which
soon brings all hearts into sympathy, so that, as
the services proceed, the majestic movement and
grand harmonies of familiar long-meter hymns
do not roll ineffectively around souls still Insen-
sible from worldly influence." 50 The most in-
tense effects of dramatic management and climax
were at the disposal of this Instinctive artist, but
he did not use them in cold blood, but gave them

171

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS
their full power because he himself was passion-
ately In sympathy with their impulse.

And there is no doubt but that he touched and
conquered his audiences everywhere. A. C.
Benson, whom I have before quoted in a critical
connection, and who was keenly alive to the weak
points, as shown in the first touches of the follow-
ing passage, succumbed completely to the charm :
Sankey "took his place at a small harmonium,
placed so near to the front of the platform that it
looked as if both player and instrument must in-
evitably topple over; it was inexpressibly ludi-
crous to behold. Rolling his eyes in an affected
manner, he touched a few simple chords, and then
a marvelous transformation came over the room.
In a sweet, powerful voice, with an exquisite sim-
plicity combined with irresistible emotion, he sang,
*There were Ninety and NineP The man was
transfigured. A deathly hush came over the room,
and I felt my eyes fill with tears." 51 Mrs* Barbour
says of the singing of the same hymn: "When you
hear *The Ninety and Nine 5 sung, you know of
a truth that down in this corner, up in that gallery,
behind that pillar which hides the singer's face
from the listener, the hand of Jesus has been find-
ing this and that and yonder lost one to place them
in his fold." 52

172

MOODY AND SANKEY

It would be easy to multiply Instances of the
effect of these penetrating and soul-stirring melo-
dies, so sung, upon temperaments naturally sus-
ceptible to them. Sankey himself relates many
such instances, in his interesting commentary upon
the Gospel Songs 53 and elsewhere, and his bi-
ographers abound with more. The effect may
not have been always very permanent, but some-
times it was, and It was intense while It lasted.
Young, careless, dissipated hearts were sobered
and purified. Old, dry, worn, and withered hearts
were warmed and cheered. The cynical and the
Indifferent may sneer, but it means something in
a man's life to have accomplished such transfor-
mations as the following passage Indicates, and
Sankey accomplished scores of them: " { I was in
great darkness and trouble for some days, 5 said a
poor woman, rejoicing and yet weeping; 'and just
a little time ago when Mr. Sankey was singing
these words (pointing to them with her finger)
"And Jesus bids me come, 55 my bonds were broken
In a moment and now I am safe in his arms. 7 " 54

What interests the psychological observer in all
this, as with Moody, is the effect of it upon the
singer himself. Here was a man born In com-
parative obscurity, who passed his early years in
the weary drudgery of a small government office.

173

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

Suddenly he finds himself swept Into one of the
most conspicuous positions of the world. Dis-
tinguished ministers recognize him and turn to
him. Men and women of rank and wealth salute
him humbly, and attribute to his agency the great-
est comfort and contentment of their lives. The
papers feature him. Crowds throng about him,
wherever he goes, with eager adulation, or with
noisy mockery almost as stimulating and delight-
ful. He is a great man and knows he is, cannot
help knowing. No triumphant actor, or opera-
tenor, or public orator, ever had more enthusiastic
audiences or more praise and flattery. What did
it do to him and how did he take it? Was he
eager, anxious, sensitive to admiration, sensitive
to criticism? Did the comparative falling off of
his later years distress him, or was the shadow
of past glory enough for any man to live on?
There Is no light as to all this, even less than with
Moody, because there is no obvious or obtain-
able self-analysis In the man whatever. Even the
formula of such analysis as I have suggested above
would have been rejected with indignation. All
thought of worldly glory and success was assumed
to be Indifferent and forgotten. These men were
about their Master's service, and personal con-

174

MOODY SANKEY

siderations dropped completely out of sight. And
so we hear over and over again that they had no
thought of self, and were only anxious to do some-
thing for the glory of the Lord. It may be so.
Very likely they believed it was entirely so. All
I can say is } if It was entirely so ? they were differ-
ent from all the men I have been familiar with
and profoundly different from me.

VII

As one thinks to-day of Sankey's music and his
methods, of his power of reaching vast audiences
and singing at them as well as to them, one dwells
upon the process of manifolding which he could
have accomplished by the aid of wireless, and the
topic suggests some reflections upon music as the
characteristic art of the modern world and espe-
cially of democracy. Though music in some form
dates from the earliest spiritual development of
mankind, people do not often appreciate how enor-
mously it has evolved within the last two hundred
years and with what rapidity as compared with all
the other arts. The growth of mechanical inven-
tion has facilitated the development of all sorts of
instrumental music; but far more than this is the
evolution of music itself from the pure harmonic

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

and melodic treatment of Bach and Handel to the
subtle spiritual suggestion and interpretation of
Wagner, of Richard Strauss, of the more recent
Frenchmen and Russians. How this process of
evolution can continue is as difficult to predict as
how it can stop.

But for the people, for the mass of mankind,
there is an essential quality in music which makes
it peculiarly significant as a democratic art I
have already pointed out in chapter one that
the varied accumulation of possible knowledge
makes our enlightened era distinctively an age of
ignorance. Now music Is above all the art of
Ignorance. The great productions of literature,
even in a less degree the plastic arts, require
for the full enjoyment of them some background
of knowledge of past history in general, of the
history of art, of the subtleties and complications
of the human spirit. Music appeals primarily
to the emotions and sensibilities and requires only
a certain aptitude of temperament in regard to
these. I am not of course speaking of musical
composition, which demands special training and
experience of a high and difficult order. Yet all
who are at all conversant with musical people
must realize how peculiarly they move in a re-
mote world of their own, in which the larger ex~

176

MOODY AND SANKEY

perlences and Interests of human life count for
less than with ordinary mortals. And It Is safe
to say that the average person, to be thrilled,
absorbed, carried away by musical excitement,
requires no education, no broader knowledge, no
intellectual equipment of any kind. It is for this
reason that millions can listen for hours to their
radios or victrolas when they would make no
response whatever to the reading of a play of
Shakespeare or the sight of a picture of Titian.
It is this singular correspondence to the intellec-
tual obfuscation of the world 3 that makes music
the art of democracy and gives it the best chance
of being the art of the future.

The limit lies in the fact that so many persons
are physiologically or psychologically incapable of
responding to musical stimuli at all. We have seen
that Moody did not know one tune from another
and did not care for any. Millions, especially
men, are like Moody in this respect Either their
hearing, otherwise keen and sensitive enough, re-
mains Insusceptible to the contrasts and differen-
tiations of melody and harmony; or the intense
excitement of rhythmic progression Is completely
lost upon them; or their processes of association
and suggestion are untouched by the thrills and
throbs which stir others almost to madness. And

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

this limitation is in no way confined to the ignorant
or the primitive. Some of the most intensely
esthetic temperaments in the world are destitute
of musical ardor. Indeed, it sometimes seems as
if great writers, so peculiarly sensitive to the
rhythmic and melodic charm of words, were more
indifferent or even hostile than other people to
the distinctive and compelling rapture of music.
So it seems likely that mankind will always be di-
vided into those for whom music may open the
deepest secrets of the soul and those to whom it
opens nothing whatever.

But there can be no question as to the enormous
influence of music for people, and they are per-
haps a majority, who really feel its power. The
very vagueness, the very absence of dry, intellec-
tual, logical requirement, the immediate, intense
appeal to association and emotion, tease us out of
thought, involve us, dissolve us in a region of vast,
unsatisfied desire, of eternal, tantalizing, trans-
figuring question, of inexplicable hope. Emerson,
who was himself quite indifferent to music, was
at least able to seize this quality in it:

"And music pours on mortals
Its beautiful disdain." 5B

I 7 8

MOODY AND

And he quotes the passionate exclamation of
Richter in regard to it: "Away! Away! thou
speakest to me of things which in all my endless
life I have not found and shall not Bnd." m

It is unnecessary to point out that these funda-
mental musical emotions are not essentially or ex-
clusively religious. A large part of them are not
religious at all; but on the contrary, as I have
made plain at the beginning of this chapter, they
tend constantly to sweep us into regions altogether
alien to the religious life. Long ago the Greeks,
so sensitive to spiritual distinctions and so quick
to analyze them, recognized that certain forms of
music were antipathetic to serious and elevated
thought and even to elementary morality and did
their best to discourage or prohibit them. How
intense and earnest Christian feeling must view
the matter is well indicated in a very remarkable
passage from the letters of William Cowper,
though to most average people, even Christians,
Cowper's attitude will seem extreme, if not ab-
normal: "The lawfulness of music, when used in
moderation and in its proper place, is unquestion-
able ; but I believe that wine itself, though a man
be guilty of habitual intoxication, does not more
debauch and befool the natural understanding than

179

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

music, always music, music in season and out of
season, weakens and destroys the spiritual dis-
cernment If it is not used with an unfeigned
reference to the worship of God, and with a de-
sign to assist the soul in the performance of it,
which cannot be the case when it is the only occu-
pation, it degenerates into a sensual delight and be-
comes a most powerful advocate for the admission
of other pleasures, grosser perhaps in degree,
but in their kind the same." 57 This is being a little
severe on the thousands who pass evening after
evening with the apparently mild and harmless
delights of the radio. But those who look a little
more subtly into the wild exhilaration of the dance,
the dissipating, dissolving suggestion of passion-
ate popular song, even the questioning, despair-
ing, insatiable moods that come with much great
orchestral and vocal music, will have no difficulty
in understanding what Cowper means, I have al-
ready quoted the song of Feste in "Twelfth
Night,"

"What is love? Tis not hereafter."
If we are to let our ideal Shakespearean clown
run through all these varying chapters as the coun-
ter-type of everything that Moody stands for ia

1 80

MOODY AND SANKEY

the world, surely there Is nothing like the ecstasy
of the love-song and the mad rapture that goes
with it to embody the grace and the charm and the
enthralling magic and the wickedness of the prim-
rose way that leads to the everlasting bonfire.

And then there is the music that leads the other
way, to heaven. No one can deny the rapture
and the absorbing, fulfilling ecstasy of that. What
it must be for the believer, the regenerate, the sanc-
tified, naturally no one but the sanctified can
wholly convey, as not even the sanctified can ex-
plain it But perhaps the record of one of the pro-
fane, who has found in religious music some of
the intensest, though certainly not the happiest ex-
periences of life, may have a certain interest for
those who have gone through the same and even
for those who have not. From my earliest child-
hood I was accustomed to having the family gather
about the piano on Sunday evenings and sing
hymns of all sorts. No words of mine can ex-
press the misery that those hymns caused me. The
nature of it I cannot analyze and the cause of it I
cannot explain. It may have been that I had a
sense that I should be a Christian and was not, but
I do not think it had any such definite origin as
that and I imagine it went far deeper. Never,

181

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

never will there pass from my soul the memory
of youthful prayer-meetings In a little dreary
church vestry. The place was dreary, the people
were dreary, the prayers and the discourses were
ineffably dreary. And then, to the harsh accom-
paniment of the little reed organ, would come the
swell of voices carrying on those indescribable,
incomparable hymns, and my heart would over-
flow with an unearthly blending of rapture and
question and despair. For years, indeed for
nearly all my life, the impression persisted in just
this form, and the distress associated with them
made me fly like the plague the singing of hymns
in any shape. Oddly enough, with the approach
of age, with the depressing, withering blight of
illness settling down upon me, with the deadly
imminence of the grave, my feeling has changed
and of late I have been imploring my wife to sing
to me the very hymns that up to five years ago
I could not endure. And again the feeling that
comes with them is so complicated and entangled
that I cannot analyze it. There is as much of
grief and despair in it as of ecstasy. But what I
once detested now becomes comforting with a
tortured mixture of desire and delight.

If others have not felt something of what I have

182

MOODY AND SANKEY

described above, my words are wasted. But if,
as I feel sure, they have, It simply shows the im-
mense, Inestimable power which music has, or
may have, to overcome men's souls.

VIII

And there Is no question but that Moody and
Sankey handled this powerful and subtle spir-
itual agency with extraordinary skill. They
might not have affected the audience of a sym-
phony concert^ and again they might They cer-
tainly produced a prodigious effect upon the
audiences with which they had to deal, and exactly
the effect they wished to produce. This effect
In general Is well described by the critic of a
London musical paper, who was not especially
In sympathy with the religious effort of the evan-
gelists, but who appreciated perfectly when peo-
ple were being carried away: "Even the critical
musician will allow Its prodigious grandeur a
grandeur far different from that of a Handel
Festival, but more Impressive, as It Is natural,
spontaneous, and enthusiastic. No puerility in
the words, no consecutive fifths or solecisms in the
music, affects those who sing; and the infantile
tune becomes magnificent in the surge of ten thon-

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

sand voices." 5S And the power of Bankers hymns
extended far beyond even the limits of the mon-
ster meetings. There is the old saying: "Let me
make the songs of a country, and I care not who
makes the laws." The hymns got out Into the
streets and were sung and whistled and murmured
by thousands who did not know or care where
they came from, but who felt their power all the
same. When you think how many million lips
"Sweet By and By" and "Watching and Wait-
ing" have passed over, surely their significance is
enormously increased for any one.

In the various, vague, baffling, confused, un-
satisfying portrayals of heaven it is interesting to
see how constantly music bears a conspicuous part,
and on the whole this is explicable enough. Cer-
tainly one can not picture heaven as a revival
meeting, with Moody's God the central figure on
the platform, flanked by a beatific assemblage of
the clergy, the very sight of whom would elicit
groans from the profane, who, to be sure, are not
expected to be present Nor would a symphony
concert altogether answer. It suggests too many
women who come to see and to be seen and to wear
apparel which is in no way appropriate to celes-
tial surroundings. But perhaps the most adequate

184

MOODY AND SANKEY

conception, where all are forlornly inadequate, Is
that of the eternity of one rapturous instant, such
as in this world are too transitory almost to be
registered and too exhausting for mortal endur-
ance. The Mohammedans are supposed to have
asserted such a conception in its grossest form.
But of the finer spiritual raptures, which envelop
and enthrall us with an unutterable transport of
oblivion, none surely are more intense for those
who are susceptible of them, as none are more
wayward, more elusive, more intangible, than the
rapture music brings. The supreme moment
may come with the performance of a Beethoven
symphony. It may come with one's own solitary,
imperfect rendering of a prelude of Bach or a
waltz of Chopin. It may come with the singing
of a bird in a spring morning or a summer twi-
light. It may come when a thousand voices are
ringing out the chorus of a Gospel Hymn. It
comes and goes in this world with celestial evan-
escence. But when it comes, it brings heaven with
it, and rendered permanent in its supreme inten-
sity, it becomes a type of heaven not wholly un-
worthy.

CHAPTER V

MOODY THE MAN
I

HENRY DRUMMOND Is said to have remarked that
Moody was "the greatest human he had ever met."
It is impossible to live long with Moody and not
realize what Drummond meant The evangelist
may have had the fundamentals of saintliness, he
may have lived intimately with the thought of the
other world, but he was also splendidly constituted
to exist in this. He was human not only by the
ample solid vigor of his bodily frame, but by his
large interest in men, women, and children, his
quick insight into their motives, passions, and
characters, his tender and sympathetic soul.

It appears that, until towards the end, when
his heart began to fail him, Moody had constant,
magnificent health. The robust material frame,
sustained by clean and temperate living, was al-
ways equal to any strain he might choose to put
upon it In a sense he took good care of himself,
but he did not need to take the care that most
men do. He wanted little sleep, and that little he

1 86

MOODY

could take anywhere at any time. His rare refer-
ences to 111 health only prove what an insignifi-
cant thing it was In his life. When he was in
Chicago, he tells us, he saw an advertisement of
"Pain-Killer." He did not pay much attention.
He had no pain and needed nothing to kill it.
"But one morning when spring came, I had a head-
ache, and when I saw that this Pain-Killer would
cure headache, I bought a bottle. 151 He had to
buy precious few bottles of that kind. His health
was not only sufficient, It was exuberant, the kind
that of itself breeds hope and confidence and joy.
There was In him a riotous abundance of life,
such as forms the securest basis of optimism. It
is chiefly to vigor like his that Emerson's sentence
applies: "Give me health and a day and I will
make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.'*

And his health was at the bottom of that un-
failing activity and rush which were the admira-
tion and the despair of all Moody's fellow-
workers. He could not only set a dozen men at
work, but he could outwork them* Here again
there are occasional references to fatigue which
serve only to show how tremendous the energy
was. When he had engaged to speak to a vast
audience at Aberdeen, he suddenly found that his

D. L* MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

voice had almost gone with a cold. But he began
to speak just the same and spoke and spoke, till
he had worked the hoarseness all out of it As
one observer expressed it: "When a man gets a
bad cold, and goes on with such colossal work
without intermission, one comes to ask, 'Is he
made of iron only in figure, or is he really so?' " 2
In one instance, after incredible exertion, Moody
himself gave up, and said to his associate, "It is
no use: I am too tired. You must take the ser-
vice." The friend assented. But when the hour
came, there was Moody, and he took charge of
the meeting with more effect than usual. 8

The magnificent vitality persisted till death.
Indeed, one cannot help feeling that it was the
vitality more than anything that seemed to sweep
Moody right on into another world. Doubts
about a future life belong to the pale, the anemic,
the discouraged, in this. He could not die : there
was no die to him. There is something triumph-
ant, exultant, about the whole description of his
departure. When he was at death's door, he sud-
denly seemed to revive: "I'm going to get up.
If God wants to heal me by a miracle that way,
all right; and if not, I can meet death in my chair
as well as here." * When he did go, it was with a

1 88

MOODY THE MAN

calm, assured confidence that It was only to a
change, and to a glorious change.

His solid frame, running In his later years to
over two hundred and fifty pounds, of course re-
quired large and substantial nourishment. In this
respect he was like Phillips Brooks, who is said
to have shunned private tables and preferred a
hotel where he could eat all he wanted. Moody's
superb digestion scorned ordinary rules. He ate
what he pleased when he pleased and apparently
never suffered for it Dr. Goss gives a vivid, sym-
pathetic description of the process: "Dashing into
my house one evening after a day of terrific effort,
he exclaimed, 'Have you got anything to eat? 5
A large dish of pork and beans (of which he was
very fond) was placed before him. He sat down,
murmured a silent prayer, and, without interrupt-
ing his repast by a word, emptied the entire dish
as fast as he could carry the food to his mouth.
And yet this was done with a certain indefinable
grace. He often ate voraciously, but never like
an animal nor ever like an epicure." 5 His drink
was proportioned to his eating; but It is doubtful
whether he ever even tasted alcohol, unless for
some medicinal purpose.

Moody was as human In all his relations with

180

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

his fellows as in his person. He was adored by
his family and thoroughly deserved it He was a
great lover of home, and perhaps the love was
not diminished by very frequent absence. I wish
there was some suggestion of early affairs of the
heart With so warm and impulsive a tempera-
ment one feels that there must have been such ; but
there is only the vaguest trace of them, and no
allusion anywhere in Moody's own writing to in-
dicate anything of the kind. He is said to have
been very reticent about his own concerns, 6 and on
this point he certainly was so. Even of the love-
affair which led to his marriage and which one
would imagine must have been charming there is
no account whatever, nothing at all resembling the
delightful narrative of General Booth's wooing of
his Catharine.

Yet it is certain that the love was most satisfac-
tory in its results. Mrs. Moody seems to have been
just the woman for an evangelist's wife. Her path
cannot always have been smooth. To be sure, she
had few difficulties of temper to contend with.
Her husband speaks of having had a temper in his
youth and one can easily imagine some manifes-
tations of it But the universal testimony is that
in his home he was sunny and sweet. On the other

190

MR. AND MRS. MOODY WITH GRANDCHILDREN.

MARQUAND HAI.L, NORTHFIELD SEMINARY.

NORTHFIELD SEMINARY BUILDINGS AND CAMPUS FROM THE EAST.

THE CONNECTICUT RIVER, WITH NORTHFIELD SEMINARY IN THE DISTANCE,
Showing road to South Vernon,

MOODY THE MAN

land, he was unexpected, always surging in and
sweeping out, bringing the most astonishing things
and people in his train. But apparently he could
riot disconcert Mrs. Moody. She took the unex-
pectedness with admirable adaptability and calm.
Moody's own references to her are always charm-
ing, and he brings her into his sermons with a
sweet natural reminiscence: "My wife, I think,
would think it a very strange feeling if I should
tell how I loved her the first year we were mar-
ried and how happy I was then. It would break
her heart 5 ' T Again : "If my wife were in a foreign
country, and I had a beautiful mansion all ready
for her, she would a good deal rather I should
come and take her unto it than to have me send
some one else to bring her*" 8 His trust in her,
his dependence upon her, seem to have been un-
limited. He felt that she could do even his own
work better than he : "When I have an especially
hard case, I turn him over to my wife; she can
bring a man to a decision for Christ where I can-
not touch him." And her place and value in
the household are well indicated in the remark
of her son Paul: "My mother was the buffer be-
tween himself and the world. She was the 'shock-
absorber/ She stood between him and things." x *

191

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS
Nothing Is more attractive about Moody per-
sonally than his relations with his children. He
was a great lover of children in general, liked to
play with them and tease them and comfort them
and watch them. When people objected to babies
In church, he said let them come. It is better that
the mother should be In church with the baby
than stay at home to take care of it His sermons
are full of stories about children and of Illus-
trations drawn from them, and he was Interested
not only in their religious welfare but in their hav-
ing a good time right here in this world.

When it came to his own children, he was in-
exhaustible In interest, attention, and ingenuity.
Here again was material for his sermons, and the
boys and girls are constantly introduced, not
tediously, he was far too wise for that, but with
apt and pointed suggestion. He uses their child
hopes and child tears, their wayward fancies and
petulant insistence, their dependence, their pitiful-
ness, their affection. It is evident that his methods
of discipline were steady, thoughtful, severe when
necessary, but always intelligent and directed
rather to permanent improvement than to imme-
diate convenience. Take the story of his little
daughter Emma and her own willful choice of the

192

MOODY THE

dolL "Ooe day," he says, "I had a good streak
come over me and I took her to a toy shop to get
her a doll." Emma's fancy was taken by a cheap
affair near the door and, after protesting, her
father bought It for her for a nickel. The doll
was soon f orgotten, and when the father pointed
out that he meant to buy a big one that would have
been more costly ? the child said, "Why didn't
you?" "Because you wouldn't let me. You re-
member you wanted that little doll and you would
have it" "The little thing saw the point and she
bit her lips and did not say any more. From that
day to this I cannot get her to say what she wants.
When I was going to Europe the last time I asked
her what she wanted me to bring her, and she said,
'Anything you like!'" And then the moral: "It
is far better to let God choose for us than to choose
for ourselves." 1X Thus the family affections, like
everything else, served to forward the work of
God.

Like all parents, but perhaps more intelligently
than most, he looked forward to the future of his
children, made plans for them and tried to shape
their lives in the way that would be most profit-
able for themselves and for the world. He con-
sidered not only their religious welfare, but was

D. L. MOODY: r A WORKER IN SOULS

anxious that they should have the best possible
education 3 with the view that it would make them
both happier and more serviceable. But the ser-
vice was the thing that he chiefly thought of, and
in nobly defining his own aim in life he clearly
outlined his conception of theirs: "I have always
been an ambitious man, ambitious to leave no
wealth or possessions, but to leave lots of work for
you to do." 12

Independent of all ambition or aspiration, how-
ever, he simply enjoyed his children, and it seems
that few parents could enjoy them more. How
delightful is this glimpse creeping right into the
midst of a formal talk : "I remember once I was
very busy getting up a sermon, and my little boy
came into the room. I wanted to get rid of him
just as quickly as possible. And I said to him,
'My son, what do you want?' He threw his arms
around my neck and kissed me and said, *I don't
want anything, I just love you/ I couldn't send
him away, and I got down all his toys for him and
let him stay in the room with me ; and every once
in a while I looked over my book and seen him
just as happy as he could be." 13 He would romp
with the children, enter wildly into their plays,
and if a solemn and distinguished stranger entered,

194

MOODY

he was Invited to ]oin 3 and the romp grew only
wilder. Then la a moment some scriptural sug-
gestion would enter the father's head. He would
reach for the Bible and the whole family was
turned with due decorum into a Bible class, but
I am inclined to think he felt in his heart that God
would have enjoyed the romping too. And under
the playful affection and tenderness the deeper
thought was always hidden. These young lives
were confided to his care ? and he was going to keep
them turned heavenward. If he could: "I have
two sons, and no one but God knows how I love
them; but I would see their eyes dug out of their
heads rather than see them grow up to manhood
and go down to the grave without Christ and
without hope." 14 His grandchildren were almost
dearer to him than his children and the deaths
among them wrung his heart

To bring up and educate three children and to
maintain a moderate but most comfortable home
and establishment It Is evident that money was
needed in pretty constant supply, and the nature
of this supply in Moody 7 s case Is rather obscure.
He had a natural aptitude for business, when he
left it he had already amassed a tidy sum, and
would no doubt SQQS have made a fortune.

I9S

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

when he gave himself up to religious work, he
threw this world's fortune all aside and placed his
dependence entirely upon the Lord. It appears
that from that time to the end he was supported
by voluntary contributions of one sort or another
from his friends and admirers. Sometimes there
must have been very tight pinches. Sometimes
when the supply was scanty the only resort seemed
to be to prayer, and prayer was almost always
found effective. One thing that must above all
be emphasized was that in this matter of money,
as in everything else, Moody's sincerity and hon-
esty were above question and above reproach. As
we have seen^ he utterly renounced the profit from
the Gospel Hymns and persuaded Sankey to do
the same. "He told me during the World's Fair,"
says Dr. Torrey, "that if he had taken, for himself,
the royalties on the hymn books which he had pub-
lished they would have amounted, at that time, to
a million dollars." 15 Even as to direct gifts, he
was often hesitating and inclined to refuse them,
saying that he could get along without "Millions
of dollars passed into Mr. Moody's hands," says
Dr* Torrey again, "but they passed through; they
did not stick to his fingers." 1S Nothing hurt him
more than the suggestion, too often made, that he

196

MOODY THE

was using his great ministry for private profit, and
no suggestion certainly could have been more un-
just His Innumerable wealthy friends would
have been glad to do far more for him than they
did. Bet he asked only security for himself and
his family, so that his hands might be free.

The result seems to have been a rather queerly
mixed economic establishment, and there must
have been some problems distinctly perplexing to
a good housewife. The husband was a splendid
financier on the larger scale, but he was too ab-
sorbed for details. One morning in the early days
the wife asked him to send up a barrel of flour.
In the evening she thanked him for its arrival.
"Flour ?" said he. "I ordered no flour, forgot all
about it" 1T He had not provided, but the Lord
had. Nevertheless, the Lord's provision was
pretty constantly generous. When one thinks of
Moody's start in the world and of the prospects
of the petty shoe-clerk, one is rather overcome with
the prosperity and comfort of his later years.
When he traveled, he stayed in luxurious hotels,
or in still more luxurious private houses. When
he was at home, his house, if not luxurious, had
certainly every accommodation that the roost exact-
ing could require. Nobody could say that in his

197

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

case the service of the Lord Involved any very
Irksome sacrifice. Yet at the same time the money
went as it came, and when he died he told his
children that he had not a penny to leave them, ex-
cept their immortal hope and an infinite possibility
of service.

Moody not only had a comfortable home, but a
farm at Northfield, and got infinite amusement
out of it, indeed more amusement than profit He
was a practical farmer both from boyhood experi-
ence and from wide observation. No doubt he
would have been quite capable of the remark of
old Dr. Ripley, when asked to pray for a certain
field: "This field don't need prayer, it needs ma-
nure." When he was abroad, he liked to pick up
rare and valuable seeds for home experimenta-
tion. 18 He liked to raise poultry and to watch
them. Above all, he had the proverbial minister's
fancy for good horseflesh. Scandalous and wholly
unfounded stories were told of the prices he paid
for thoroughbred horses. But he liked a horse
that would go and was willing to pay for him.

Such a domestic establishment, however simple,
evidently required servants, both indoors and out
I do not find much light on Moody's relations
with these; but what there is, together with the

198

MAN

character of the man, makes It clear that he treated
them as human helpers and not In any way as In-
feriors. There is the pretty story of the man who
was working in the fields on a hot day, as his em-
ployer drove by. "Bigelow," said Moody, "it's
too hot for you to work much ; half a day's work
for a day's pay, you know, while this heat lasts." 19
That was the spirit Or as he put it more gen-
erally; "A good many have trouble with servants.
Did you ever think that the trouble lies with you
instead of the servants?" 20

The truth was, he felt that he was a servant,
servant of men, servant of God. Life took its true
significance from service, and the only thing that
could possibly make service degrading was to be
ill done. Moreover, he was apter to serve him-
self in everything than any one else could be.
What is most notable about him in these domestic
and in all practical matters is his quickness in
doing the proper, suitable, important thing, and
doing it right He had the Yankee skill with his
hands. He had more than the Yankee instinct for
meeting all sorts of situations, for seizing the ap-
propriate and perhaps even more for shunning the
inappropriate. In the mad confusion of the Chi-
cago fire, when all his household goods were per-

199

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

ishing, his wife, usually a practical woman enough,
put into his hands to carry away the oil painting
of himself, which she above all wanted to save.
He laughed at her: "How would I look carrying
a picture of myself through the Chicago streets ?"
Just so he met all the problems of life and solved
them or avoided them deftly, with that supreme
gift of tact which most ensures success and which
is most envied by those who hesitate and stumble
and blunder and think of the right word and deed
only when it is too late.

The ample humanity of Moody was equally in-
teresting and engaging when he crossed his own
threshold and entered into the larger social rela-
tions of the world. Few men have met a greater
number of their fellows than he. He saw all sorts
of people in all sorts of places, and he was cordial
and friendly with them all, and treated each after
his own fashion and in his own spirit He remem-
bered names and faces with astonishing accuracy,
considering the multitudes with whom he came
into contact. I doubt whether he had very inti-
mate friends, to whom he opened himself with en-
tire unreserve. There is no sign of such friends

200

holding over from boyhood, and they rarely ap-
pear in a man's later life. Too vast general ac-
quaintance Is hardly favorable to the development
of them. But it Is obvious that Moody was sin-
gularly beloved by many people. The delicate
sensibility and high Intelligence of a Henry Dnim-
mond responded to Ms winning qualities just as
readily as the simpler heart of a laborer about his
Northfield home. One of the teachers In the
Mount Heraion school, who had known him in-
timately and loved him, counted It among the
promises of heaven, as she lay upon her deathbed,
that she should see Mr. Moody. And In the same
way his own warm heart poured forth an Infinite
tenderness over those to whom he had become at-
tached. When Drummond } s death was announced
to him, "that evening at my table/ 5 says Dr. Goss,
"he laid his knife and fork down and cried like
a child : *He was the most Christllke man I ever
met, I never saw a fault In him,' he said over and
over again through his sobs." 21 He is reported to
have burst Into tears in a public meeting over the
death of the gospel-singer Bliss.

He was indeed by nature thoroughly social, and
liked to have people about him, to see and talk
with them and eater into their interests, and espe-

20 1

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

daily to save their souls. It could not be said that
he was averse to solitude. He had always God
with him, and the Bible, and a tumult of thoughts.
Nevertheless, human faces and voices were accept-
able and diverting, and he warmed to them with
a singular, spontaneous tenderness, which no one
could resist or fail to feel. "Tears start to the eyes
of those who knew Mr. Moody well," says Dr.
Goss, "at the thought of the absolutely inexhaust-
ible depths of his love for all living things.
Horses, dogs, cows, animals, and birds all ex-
cited the emotions of his heart. In the realm of
human life, love for all classes was a master pas-
sion." 22 The love was indeed perfectly demo-
cratic and knew no difference between rich and
poor, gentle and simple. The common human
touch was all that was needed. Moody lived a
good deal with the wealthy, in England he lived
with rank and titles. But these things meant noth-
ing to him. One evening at a great meeting in
London, a certain peer was introduced. "Glad to
meet you. Lord. Just get two chairs for those
old ladies over there, will you?" That was the
spirit You might be an emperor, you might be
a clown. You had a soul to save, and in any case
it was worth saving. Beyond that it was all one
to Moody.

202

MOODY THE MAN

And as he met people easily in the wider world,
so he was always anxious to have them come to
him. His doors stood open with the freest hos-
pitality and there was a warm welcome at all times
for everybody. "No man ever surpassed Mr.
Moody in hospitality. Introduce a stranger to
him, and after the first salutation he would say,
'Come and dine with me/ or, if it was evening,
'Come and take supper and spend the night at my
house/ His house, which was large and commo-
dious, was usually full of guests, and his table was
often crowded." 2S

Whatever guests came were sure to be amply
entertained, not only materially, but intellectually
and spiritually. They saw that their entertainer
was heartily enjoying himself, and they also en-
joyed themselves. "Who that ever sat about his
table can forget his laugh? It was as hearty a
laugh as one has ever heard. He knew just how
to put every man at his best. His questions always
brought forth that which would make a man ap-
pear to his best advantage before his hearers." 24
Could any social gifts be more attractive? Then
there were the stories. Moody himself was an in-
exhaustible, a riotous story teller, and he had, what
some story tellers have not, an almost equal delight
in the stories of others. What a vivid picture does

203

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

Dr. Stebbins give of a day's entertainment In this
kind : "There was one day stands out in my mem-
ory when the stories began, one following another,
causing roars of laughter that continued until it
seemed as if we no longer had strength to endure
it. Mr. Sankey went to one side of the room and,
with his head on his arms, leaned against the win-
dow, and I to another room suffering with pain,
each laughing immoderately at the veritable side-
splitting incidents that were related." 25 This does
not exactly suggest an atmosphere of pervading
Puritanic gloom.

And Moody had wit too, a surprising, unfail-
ing aptitude for quick retort, which I have al-
ready more than once illustrated. Sometimes this
manifested itself in mere badinage, the rapid
thrust and exchange of the verbal duelist who
darts his weapon hither and thither for the mere
delight of dexterity and practice. But the wit
was just as ready and effective in serious crises and
served to bring out the deepest points of argument
with an agility as dazzling as it was simple. When
the ministers of London questioned the evangelist
upon points of creed and doctrine, he answered
them with a speed and spirit so noble and ade-
quate that they could not resist him. 26 Again,

204

MOODY THE MAN

when a man asked him the pointed question,
"How can I get the speakers to be short in the
prayer-meetings?" he replied, "Be short yourself,
and set a good example." 2T A lesson that is driven
home like that is not forgotten.

Moody not only liked wit, quick retorts, jolly
and side-splitting stories, but, in spite of his serious
and passionate pursuits, he was always more or less
addicted to the practical jokes that had delighted
his youth. In later years he perhaps did not carry
these quite so far as in the story of the cobbler
under whose leather seat the joker placed a pan
of water, so that every time his victim sat down
he settled into the water, while when he rose, the
elastic seat sprang up and concealed the trap. 28
But as the staid father of a family he liked to come
down to breakfast and after the blessing had been
decorously asked, slyly squirt water with his spoon
over the children assembled. We have seen that
when he and Sankey were being ferried across
the Connecticut River, Moody surreptitiously
pulled back while the ferryman pulled forward,
so as to prolong the trip. In the same way, when
the Mount Hermon boys got him to take part in
a tug-of-war, he managed to act as "anchor" and
then to tie his end of the rope around a convenient

205

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

tree, so that his opponents were trying to uproot a
solid oak.

Unlike some confirmed jesters of this order,
Moody was always good-naturedly ready to accept
an exchange. As he himself put it, "No man has
a right to play a joke unless he's willing to take
one." 29 One day he leaned out of the window of
his train, as it stopped at a country station, and
said eagerly to a farmer who looked like a prom-
ising subject, "Do you know that President Lin-
coln is on this train?" The farmer bit at once,
and exclaimed, "Is he?" "I don't know that he
is," was the calm answer, "but I thought you
might" The farmer turned away and resumed
his walk on the platform. Pretty soon he came
back. "We've had quite a little excitement here
lately," he remarked. "What's the matter?" asked
Moody. "The authorities wouldn't let some folks
bury a woman," replied the farmer. "Why not?"
"Because she wasn't dead," was the adequate an-
swer. 30 And Moody enjoyed it as much as the
farmer did. Also he enjoyed the comment of a
caustic neighbor who assured him that there was
one thing he and Sankey might do which would
create a tremendous, beneficent stir, if they would
only do it, but he was sure they never could. "Dg

206

MR. MOODY HAILING A FRIEND.

A snap shot.

MR. MOODY AS HIS TOWNSFOLK KNEW HIM,

MOODY THE MAN

tell us what It Is; we want to know." "If you
and Sanfcey would mind your own business." sl

Obviously this Is all rather crude, and for the
subtler forms of humor, such as appealed to spirits
like Lincoln and Charles Lamb, Moody would
have had little appreciation and little liking.
Humor of this kind Is always closely allied to mel-
ancholy, being partly a relief from it and partly
closely blended with it, and melancholy was utterly
remote from Moody's solid nerves and buoyant
temper. Humor of the higher Intellectual type
rests upon a pervading sense of the Insignificance
of life, not only of the life of this world, which
Moody too despised, but of the life of any world,
the Insignificance of joy and grief alike in face of
the vast blank of eternity, most of all the insignifi-
cance of self. Such humor is a universal dissolv-
ent, dissolves life and death and even God.
Moody's tremendous affirmation did not dissolve,
but crystallized the swift fluidity of life around one
immense, all-absorbing, endlessly active ego. And
again we have the opposite type In the Shakespear-
ean clown, embodying as we may suppose the
deepest humorous instinct of Shakespeare himself*

"A foolish thing Is but a toy,

For the rain it ralneth every day."

207

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

In spite of his strong social instinct and unfail-
ing interest in the pursuits and activities of men,
Moody seems to have cared little for the ordinary
diversions and amusements of life. We have seen
that esthetic pleasures did not mean much to him :
music, painting, poetry; perhaps these can hardly
be classed as social. But there is little sign of his
taking any interest in outdoor sports of any kind,
unless his love for driving good horses may be
called such, and I do not remember any mention
of his riding, except as matter of necessity. He
encouraged athletic sports at Mount Hermon
School, probably because he thought they fostered
some elements of manliness. But there is no record
of his hunting or fishing or taking any conspicu-
ous part in games of strength or agility, though
his quickness of practical intelligence might well
have enabled him to excel in them. There is, of
course, no possible reason to imagine that he
lacked physical courage any more than physical
strength. It is indeed always something of a puz-
zle why he did not enlist in the Civil War, as
Sankey did; but it is said, no doubt with truth,
that he was extremely averse to the idea of slaugh-
tering his fellow creatures.

At any rate, he showed himself physically brave

208

MOODY THE MAN

enough In all sorts of critical situations, and he
had that most valuable element of courage, the
gift of keeping your wits about you and being apt
to act as well as to endure. When the big unruly
boys in his classes bothered him, he usually sub-
dued them by reason or by kindness or by prayer.
But if the occasion seemed to call for it, he did
not hesitate to subdue them by the plain use of his
fists, and he could do it effectively. When he was
exposed to peril by sea, his self-control and con-
fidence were an example to every one. When a
portion of the roof fell in at one of his great meet-
ings, nothing but his coolness prevented a disas-
trous panic, and an ex-Confederate general, who
knew what courage was, remarked to a bystander:
"I have seen many brave men in my life put into
positions of great personal danger, and I believe
I know a brave man when I see him tested. I
want to say to you that I have never seen a braver
man than D. L. Moody. 7 ' 32 But the courage and
the coolness were not preferably displayed in
athletic contests of physical strength.

Naturally this indifference to sports became
vigorous hostility when they tended to infringe
upon the Sabbath. We have seen how Moody
hated Sunday papers. He was equally bitter

209

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS
against racing or baseball or any other outdoor
contest that encroached upon the Lord's Day.
Nor was he in the least disposed to be friendly
to attempts to make the churches popular by asso-
ciating amusement with them. Such attempts
seemed to him insidious, dissipating, and in the
end destructive. "Oh, I got so sick of such parties
that I left years ago ; I would not think of spend-
ing a night that way; It is a waste of time; there
is hardly a chance to say a word for the Master.
If you talk of a personal Christ, your company
becomes offensive ; they don't like it; they want you
to talk about the world, about a popular minister,
a popular church, a good organ, a good choir, and
they say, c Oh, we have a grand organ, and a superb
choir/ and all that, and it suits them, but that
doesn't warm the Christian heart" 3S He would
have warmly endorsed the remark of William
James: " 'When a church has to be run by oysters,
ice-cream and fun,' I read in an American reli-
gious paper, c you may be sure that it is running
away from Christ' Such, if one may judge by
appearances, is the present plight of many of our
churches." 84

The objections on account of Sunday of course
applied with as much force to indoor games and

210

MOODY THE MAN

pastimes as to outdoor, and I have no evidence that
Moody was more friendly to the former than to
those of an athletic order. In the early enthusiasm
of conversion he came one night upon a harmless
game of checkers. "In an Instant he seized the
board, dashed it to pieces, and before a word could
be spoken, dropped upon his knees and began to
pray." 35 No doubt in later years he grew out-
wardly more tolerant; but it is by no means certain
that he would not have liked to adopt the same
methods to the end of his life. Cards were
anathema to him, and billiards were almost iden-
tical with alcohol and tobacco, both of which he
hated and pursued with the utmost virulence.
When he was asked if he could cite any verse of
the Bible that condemned smoking, he answered,
"No, I can give you no verses in the Bible against
the habit of smoking, but I can give you a verse
in favor of it; 'He that is filthy, let him be filthy
still.' " 3S

Dancing he does not frequently refer to, prob-
ably because he regarded it as too far outside the
pale even for discussion. When a young lady sug-
gested that it might be permissible among family
friends, he said to her: "My dear girl, I would a
thousand times rather have you get more grace in

211

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

your heart and less in your heels." 3T The theater
he introduces often, and always to condemn it
If he had known Pascal's vivid words about it,
he would certainly have approved them : "All the
great diversions are dangerous for Christian life;
but among all those that the world has invented
none is more to be feared than the theater. It
represents the passions so naturally and so delight-
fully that it begets them in our hearts, above all
that of love, and chiefly when love is represented
as chaste and above reproach." 3S But he has
words of his own about the theater, which, if less
subtle than Pascal's, are quite as scathing: "I don't
know of a theater, from Maine to California, that
hasn't a bar connected with it, or near by. What
is that bar there for? Fallen women go to the
theaters, and for no good purpose, whenever they
can. You say it is part of one's education to see
good plays. Let that kind of education go to the
four winds. For a child of God to help build
up such an institution as the theater of the present
day is iniquitous." And he adds the appalling
story of a wealthy elder of the church who used
to call him bigoted in his ideas on these subjects.
Soon after, the said elder's son, a married man, fell
in love with a wicked woman, who shot him

212

MOODY THE MAN

through the heart "He had got acquainted with
her at the theater and she claimed him." 39 You
see how logical it is.
As regards all these matters of amusement, the

reflection that suggests itself Is simply that Moody
required no diversion, no distraction, no intoxi-
cation, because he lived all the time with the great-
est of intoxications, that of saving men's souls
and making their bodies do his bidding.

Ill

Moody's attitude towards the larger serious hu-
man interests of this world is exceedingly interest-
ing as are also the motives for that attitude.
Wherever he came into immediate personal con-
tact, his natural warmth and tenderness of heart
took right hold of the human side and responded
to it. It appears that in his home town of North-
field he was greatly and generally beloved. Prob-
ably there were cases of minor hostility and
grudge. If there were not, it would be very un-
usual, since the greater the man, the greater the
local envy as well as the local pride is apt to be.
But if there were such cases, not a trace of them
has drifted into my reading anywhere. Moody
knew the farmers and their wives, and they knew

213

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

him. They took an Interest in his doings and a
pride in them, even if they occasionally criticized.
He is said to have been always active in move-
ments to improve the town, and he subscribed
money liberally, being among the first to respond
to an appeal for the building of a Catholic Church.
When the Village Improvement Society was
formed, "he subscribed $100.00 to improve the
street, knowing it would be expended in a part of
the village remote from the school and from his
residence." 40 So far as Northfield was concerned,
he was certainly a public-spirited citizen, and the
building and development of his educational insti-
tutions gave the town an inward activity and an
external reputation which it would otherwise
hardly have acquired.

In the same way his personal kindness and con-
sideration for others were unlimited. He was al-
ways on the lookout for those smaller helpful-
nesses to friends and neighbors which go so far*
His mother, even in her narrow circumstances,
had brought up her children to be kind to those
whose circumstances were still narrower, 41 and the
son never forgot the mother's lessons. It is said
that he encouraged his wife and daughter to in-
terest themselves in helping the sick and needy

214

MOODY THE MAN

In all parts of the town. 42 Where money would
answer he gave It readily, and where money failed,
he was equally ready with advice and comfort.
A pretty instance of the quick response of his ener-
getic sympathy Is told by his son. One day In
later years, when Moody had settled himself for
a morning's uninterrupted work, he chanced to
look out of the window and saw a student evi-
dently leaving the Conferences for the station and
trudging along with an Immensely heavy bag.
Moody put the matter out of his head, but some-
how when he tried to fix his thoughts upon the
Bible, always that boy with the heavy bag kept
getting in the way. Finally, he says, "I couldn't
stand It any longer. I went to the barn and hur-
riedly had my horse hitched up, overtook the
young man, and carried him and his baggage to
the station. When I returned to the house I had
no further difficulty in fixing my attention on the
subject" 43 It Is said that in the same way, partly
through kindness and partly for fun, he used often
to present himself at the train to meet guests,
dressed In rough farmer's garb, and posing at first
as a local driver with no other function.

When we go Into the outside world, however,
and deal with the great practical matters of life,

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS
the situation is oddly changed, and all at once
Moody seems very far off. Take business. He
recognizes the importance of business in the
world, and heaven knows few were more expert
at it than he. Yet his relation to necessary busi-
ness was, perhaps not unnaturally, one of a certain
amount of protest: "When a man will drive like
Jehu all the week and like a snail on Sunday,
isn't there something wrong with him?" 44 When
it comes to politics, the remoteness is vastly accen-
tuated. It is indeed said that in his youth, before
he had settled to harness, as it were, he showed
symptoms of turning his immense activity in po-
litical directions. In 1856 he was strongly in favor
of abolition and took an energetic, if petty, part in
the campaign for the election of Fremont. 45 In
his very last years he was a hearty advocate and
admirer of McKinley and was greatly concerned
about the progress of the Spanish War. 46 Also,
he occasionally lays some emphasis upon patriot-
ism. He commends the prophet Daniel, because
"he not only loved his God, but he loved his
country. I like to see a patriotic man." 4T No
doubt he himself was in the abstract honestly and
earnestly patriotic and would have responded to

216

MOODY THE MAN

any compelling public appeal. In general, how-
ever, it is astonishing how little public matters
appear in his pages and how little record
there is of his taking any active part or even any
interest in them. Government questions, all the
eager agitation for this and that political change
or improvement, these were not his affair. Prob-
ably he would have felt with Dr. Johnson that
individual happiness or unhappiness, and still
more individual sin and salvation, remained about
the same under any and all governments. It does
not appear that he identified himself ever very
seriously with any political party. No doubt he
voted dutifully, but in general he did little more.
When you think of the active political part played
by many prominent preachers, Theodore Parker,
Phillips Brooks, Edward Hale, Henry Ward
Beecher, you cannot fail to find Moody's complete
abstinence and indifference somewhat curious.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that his gen-
eral detachment from political partisanship made
his revival work more acceptable everywhere, and
it is probable that, with his unfailing acuteness, he
was quite well aware of this. Thus he could go
into the South very soon after the Civil War and
be well received.

217

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

Again, there Is theoretical philanthropy. One
phase of this, the temperance movement, appealed
to Moody very much, because of its intimate con-
nection with general moral questions, and because
it so often afforded dramatic illustrations of the
power of regenerating religion. "I have an idea
that this rum devil is the worst we have nowadays,
and it takes just as much power to cast them out
as it took to cast the devil out of this man. I think
no other power will do it." 4S And elsewhere he
says: "Once I got into a place where I had to get
up and leave. I was invited into a home in the
old country, and they had a late supper, and there
were seven kinds of liquor on the table. I am
ashamed to say they were Christian people. A
deacon urged a young lady to drink until her face
flushed. I got up from the table and went out
I felt that it was no place for me." 4g These
passages are merely examples of Moody's con-
stant outcry upon the subject.

Frances Willard's energy of protest could not
go further. Yet even in regard to temperance
Moody's fundamental attitude was far different
from that of Frances Willard. Read the whole
striking account which Frances gives of her at-
tempt to work with him. To her, temperance was

218

MOODY THE MAN

religion, or at least it was the phase of religion
in which she was wrapped up. To Moody the
Christian religion was far more than even tem-
perance. So long as Frances worked with him
and according to his ideas, he welcomed her. But
she was perfectly ready, for the sake of her cause,
to go on to the same platform with those who de-
nied the divinity of Christ. There Moody would
not follow her. No matter how good the cause,
It could not prosper with such advocates. And,
says Frances, "Brother Moody's Scripture inter-
pretations concerning religious toleration were too
literal for me; the jacket was too Strait I could
not wear it" 50

When you come to more general philanthropy,
where the moral connection is less obvious,
Moody's detachment is much more marked. Even
as to the actual relief of suffering, tender and
sympathetic as he naturally was, the misery of
the soul was so much more important than that
of the body, that the latter was apt to be neglected,
at least postponed. When he was most actively
concerned with the hospital relief of the Civil
War, this distinction in his conduct was marked.
"Mr. Moody, full of the idea of saving souls,
urged that the very first business in every case was

219

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

to find out whether the sick or dying man were a
child of God; if so, then it was not necessary to
spend much time on him he being safe enough
already. If not, he was to be pointed at once to
the Saviour." 51 No doubt this in itself did not
mean the neglect of physical attendance, but evi-
dently that was not the prime concern, as to some
of us it would seem to be.

With reforms of a purely sociological nature,
or where the material benefit is indirect and^re-
mote, that is, with general idealistic efforts to make
a better and more habitable world, Moody has
little sympathy and even little patience. He does
not hesitate to find fault with abstract charity:
"There is a good deal that we think is charity, that
is really doing a great deal of mischief." C2 When
the question of Woman's Suffrage intrudes, he ex-
presses himself with decided bitterness: "Now,
perhaps you women who belong to the Women's
Christian Temperance Union may feel hurt, but
I do think it is a master stroke of the devil when
he gets you to stop to discuss women's rights." 63
And when the occasion demands, he does not hesi-
tate to extend his protest much more widely: "I
have heard of reform, reform, until I am tired

220

MOODY THE MAN

and sick of the whole thing. It is regeneration
by the power of the Holy Ghost that we need." 5 *
In all this indifference and even antipathy to
the reforming movements of this world there is no
doubt fundamentally in Moody much the feeling
suggested in Sainte-Beuve's remark as to the "in-
vasion of philanthropy side by side with indus-
trialism, which has secularized charity more and
more and reduced it to material well-being for
others and for oneself: which is not even the
shadow of spiritual charity in the Christian
sense." 55 But in Moody's case there were per-
sonal reasons added to the general attitude. To
begin with, in spite of his sympathetic treatment
of suffering that came close to him, his own rude
and vigorous health rendered him, as so many
others, but imperfectly sensitive to the subtler and
more chronic forms of physical misery* His re-
mark when some one fainted in a large meeting,
though of course tactful and appropriate to the
occasion, was not generally uncharacteristic:
"Never mind that person who has fainted. Let
us attend to the interests of our souls to-night" 56
In connection with this matter of physical suffer-
ing it is most notable that Moody's effort and in-

221

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

fluence never took the form of attempts to heal the
sick. He performed no miracles along this line,
and did not try to perform any.

Moreover, it is undeniable and natural that
such Intense preoccupation with the other world
tends to undermine one's interest and one's useful
activity in this. What happens here is utterly
insignificant compared to what happens or will
happen in heaven, and the effort to remedy merely
temporary evils is too temporary and too trifling
much to agitate a soul fixed upon the joys and
sorrows of eternity. And with Moody there was
this still further, most important point to be re-
membered. He lived in the constant hope and ex-
pectation of the end of the world. The Bible
sayings as to the second coming of Christ were
deeply registered in his memory, and if he did
not cherish any definite creed of Second Advent-
ism, there can be no doubt that he felt the desper-
ate imminence of a convulsion in which all the
things that most matter to man here would become
of no moment and be utterly wiped out The
world was bad and irretrievably, inevitably get-
ting worse. Why bother to dream of a pitiable
botching of a bad job? Man, from a this-worldly
point of view, was hopeless: "Man was a failure

222

MOODY THE MAN

under the judges, a failure under the prophets, and
now for two thousand years under grace he has
been a most stupendous failure. 5 ' 57 In a very
striking record of a conversation with Moody,
Beecher represents this point of view: "I thought
I saw the secret of his working and plans. He is
a believer in the second advent of Christ, and in
our own time. He thinks it is no use to attempt to
work for this world. In his opinion it is blasted
a wreck bound to sink and the only thing that
is worth doing is to get as many of the crew off
as you can, and let her go." 58 When you look at
things thus, when you feel that this world is pre-
destined to destruction and to a speedy end, you
naturally take little interest in the improvement of
it. Furthermore, it must be always remembered
that in an ideally perfect world there would have
been little occupation for Moody.

So it is clear that, in spite of his humanity.
Moody was by habit and surroundings and by
natural taste a minister, a priest As we look back
through the centuries, it is impossible to avoid the
feeling that the priest everywhere forms a caste
by himself, shut off from the rest of humanity

223

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

by his office, his preoccupations, his mental at-
titude, and this separation continues to prevail
to-day, if less externally obvious than in some cen-
turies past The minister may mingle freely with
the world, he may make it his business to know the
ways of men, to be, as he fondly imagines, all
things to all of them. But they treat him as some-
thing remote, and with all his efforts, he feels
himself to be so. As we have seen, in this coun-
try a hundred and fifty years ago the remoteness
largely consisted in a vast sense of superiority
tacitly assumed and recognized. The superiority
has utterly vanished, but the remoteness remains.,
It is most interesting in the variety of ministers
to see the way in which two extreme types deal
with this remoteness. One type, now rather rap-
idly vanishing, accepts the distance and almost
takes comfort in it There is the quiet, saintly
pastor, chiefly in the country districts, who is set
apart from his flock by his thought as much as
by his garb, and who looks upon the wild doings
of the twentieth century with a tender astonish-
ment and a more or less desperate effort to remedy
ills which he does not in the least understand.
Then, on the other side, there is the quick jaunty
man of the world, who makes his dress that of

224

MOODY'S MOTHER, DIED 1896, IN HER NINETY-FIRST YEAR.

MOODY THE MAN

trivial everyday life, and tries to make his spir-
itual attitude as much as possible the same. He
jokes and tells stories, smokes and plays cards, cul-
tivates always an air of polite, jovial ease and im-
mense familiarity with the wicked world which he
is supposed to be endeavoring to save. Nobody
would ever take him for a minister, he feels, un-
less when he himself thinks proper solemnly to
assert the fact, Alas, he is quite mistaken. Every-
body knows him, everybody who has to meet him
treats him as exactly what he is. I take the fol-
lowing striking words from the "Confessions
of a Conf essor," written some years ago, by a min-
ister who fully realized the nature and the width
of the unbridgeable gap : "He cannot associate on
terms of equality with his fellows; they refuse to
have it so. They refuse either to meet him on his
own ground or to let him meet them on theirs.
The great majority of people either look up to
him, or look down on him ; and both attitudes alike
must cause him pain." 59

Now it will naturally be said that Moody, by
his immense and splendid humanity, and by his
lack of formal consecration, should escape this
ministerial remoteness altogether. He does not;
to my feeling he does not escape it at all. He is

225

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

a priest all the time, and as a man among men you
cannot touch him, or only imperfectly* I feel the
ministerial atmosphere about him. The jokes, no
matter how boisterous, are those of ministers. The
faces are those of ministers, as I see them arrayed
in volume after volume, long faces, round faces,
whiskered faces, smooth faces, solemn faces, jovial
faces, always those of ministers, till the type has
somehow grown to be an obsession to me. Moody's
own face has the soul-saver stamped all over it
I know that I should never have felt at ease with
him. It would have been a shock like a shower-
bath, to have a cordial, courteous, assiduous host
suddenly drop on his knees, with a stentorian "let
us pray, n or assail me in the most genial moment
with the staggering interrogatory, "Are you a
Christian?"

All the same, it is true, as Drummond said,
that Moody was a tremendous human, as he was
tremendous every way. And by his humanity he
won and retained a tremendous power for his pur-
poses over other human beings, a power which will
furnish matter for the next chapter.

226

CHAPTER VI

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

IT Is evident that from an early stage of his activ-
ity Moody was a great leader of men* He could
guide them, inspire them, control them. When-
ever he had a practical object to accomplish in
this world, he could secure helpers and followers,
who would support and sustain him with energy,
enthusiasm, money, to an almost unlimited extent
He had an extraordinary power of finding, se-
lecting, and winning the men who would answer
his purposes, who were adapted to understand and
execute them. As Dr. Goss says, "He instantly
summoned men to assume grave responsibilities
with no other knowledge of their fitness than his
own unaided intuitions, the confidence which he
reposed in these intuitions being as unquestioning,
apparently, as that of an animal in its instincts." *
A notable example of this instantaneous apprecia-
tion and selection we have already observed in the
case of Sankey, but the same thing happened over

227

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

and over again, perhaps not always with fortu-
nate results, but often enough amply to prove the
gift of the selector. No doubt the process of
selection was an instinctive one, as Dr. Goss sug-
gests, but the instinct sometimes formulated itself
in slight but significant guiding principles.
"When you shake hands with a man, look out for
him if his hand is as limp as a dead fish." 2 Again,
he warned against those who "tell all they know at
first acquaintance." 8 Students of character know
well that such principles are not absolute, but they
know also that a fair amount of reliance can be
placed upon them.

In the management of men, after they had been
selected, Moody also worked by instinct, as the
great masters do, and he worked with an admi-
rable and almost unerring skill. When it was
necessary to use tact, his supply of it was limit-
less. Take his own comment upon such methods.
He was once asked how it was possible to get
along in a church where there were two Scotch
elders who were at odds, so that one wouldn't take
part if the other did. His answer was "Ask them
to tea with you, and if there is any difference get
it out of the way. . . . The best man you can
have in a church is a Scotchman, if he is headed

228

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

right, and you can afford to spend some time to
get him right if he is wrong." 4

He not only recommended the methods, he ap-
plied them, with a gentle suavity and winning
grace, which made men feel that they were above
all things anxious to do what he wished, that what
he wished was Inevitably the best thing to do.
Read the account by Dr. Grenfell of his brief
interview with the evangelist, who Inquired about
his experiences in Labrador. Then Moody asked :
"Could you come and tell them at the afternoon
service In the Tremont Temple in three minutes?"
And Grenfell smiled, but answered: "I can try."
"Then I'll be grateful if you'll do so. Side door
at three-thirty. Good-by. Ever so many thanks
for dropping in." And Grenfell adds: "There
was no unctuousness, no snobbery, no cant; and
yet again he had moved my heart to want to do
things more than ever." 5 Even with men who
differed from him, who did not take any great
interest in his religious views and arguments, the
power was much the same. If he undertook to
show them that something must be done and that
they could help do it, they helped gladly.

When it was a question not of tact, but of
straight persuasion by argument, he was equally

229

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

ready and successful. The most noted Instance
of this Is perhaps the session of ministers in Lon-
don, who examined him thoroughly as to his doc-
trines and views, to see if they were willing to
give him their support. His answers were quiet
and respectful; but they were so alert and cogent
that even the most lukewarm found it difficult to
resist them.

And as he was gentle and persuasive in winning
men, so he was equally gentle and considerate
in using them. With all his own enormous, in-
exhaustible power of work, he appreciated that
others were not so solidly built, and he was ready
to relax the tension at any time, when he felt that
they might not hold out As Dr. Stebbins puts
It: "He was ever thoughtful of those helping him,
however, as it is my pleasure to testify, for he
would say to me at the close of a heavy day's work
just before beginning his last sermon for the day:
'You slip out and go home, for I want you to be
fresh for to-morrow.' " 6

But if Moody could employ tact and argument,
he could also be immensely and even roughly
arbitrary, if the occasion required it When he
was told that there might be resistance to some
of his projects and that argument would not an-

230

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

swer, his favorite phrase was, "Then we must
roll them oven" He rolled them over without
hesitation. A satirist gives a vivid picture of some
of his methods with his subordinates: "He came
and looked over the Tabernacle with the eye of an
expert In stage properties. He heard of Brother
Webb's little envelope trick and said peremptorily,
'Stop it! 5 Then he whispered In Brother Pente-
cost's ear, 'GitF And Pentecost put on his sea
boots and walked. He wanted to take up another
collection first, but Moody would have none of
it" 7 Equally striking accounts come from more
friendly sources* In the very early days, Moody
arranged with an agent for a series of meetings In
a certain school house. "All very well," said the
man, "but who Is to conduct them?" "You
are." "I?" said the man. "I never did such a
thing in my life." "Then it is time you did," was
Moody's answer. The man conducted the meet-
ings and successfully. 8 Again, in later years Dr.
Torrey ventured to remonstrate at some arrange-
ment which seemed to him ill-judged. Moody
simply replied : " 'You do as you are told/ and I
did as I was told ; that is the way I kept my job." 9
If it seems matter for surprise that men submit-
ted to such arbitrary treatment, the answer is, first

231

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

that they were convinced of Moody's absolute sin-
cerity and unselfishness, second, that he had the
supreme gift of inspiring a belief in his success.
No doubt this was in part bred and strengthened
by the fact that he did succeed and go on succeed-
ing. But more than that, there was the sense of
power which made men lean back upon him.
Where he led they were willing to go, and they
obeyed his orders, because they were confident that
the orders were right In commenting upon this
remarkable influence, Dr. Goss almost wonders
whether there was not something hypnotic about
it He even asks Moody the question, to be re-
ceived with scorn, as might have been expected.
"Not if I know myself. If I thought my influence
was owing to that, I would quit preaching to-mor-
row. Any power I have comes from the Spirit of
God." 10

As Moody could win men, so he could make
them work. This is perhaps the greatest secret of
executive genius. So many men of excellent abil-
ity can do things themselves, but cannot ensure
their being done by others or in the right way, and
so do not trust others to undertake them. Moody
had the instinct of judging a man's powers and set-
ting him to the task for which he was fitted. As

232

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

we saw above. in the case of one who had never
conducted a meeting, he made men discover them-
selves, find out In their own natures powers they
had never suspected. Nothing increases a man's
respect for himself or his usefulness like that
Moreover, ardently intent as Moody was on his
own plans and purposes, he was always remark-
ably ready to let others do their tasks In their own
way, and he was eager to get suggestions from
them as to a better way than his. Says one of his
followers : "It was this openness to new ideas and
responsiveness to new plans which did much to
give him such a strong hold on growing, studying,
ambitious young men." 1X Perhaps also he was not
wholly Insensible to the practical advantage of
having your plans carried out by others, in that if
the plans fail, others often get the blame, and if
they succeed, the credit comes to you. But there
is no evidence that this advantage was ever abused
by Moody,

In the gift of far-seeing organization and
preparation Moody was notable. True, he said of
himself that he was a creature of impulse, 12 but
his impulses were the product of an intuition and
a broad grasp which were as comprehensive as
they were unerring. He could tear his way

2 33

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

through red tape and long-established conven-
tions; but when these things served his turn, no-
body could make better use of them. One thing
that shows his strong executive instinct was his
contempt for the mania for committees, that device
for halving both responsibility and efficiency,
which is the curse of American politics. "We
don't want committees, 57 he said. "When you want
anything done, tell Mr. So-and-so to do it, and
you will accomplish something. One is enough to
constitute any committee. If there had been a
committee appointed, Noah's ark would never
have been built" 1S

Impulsive as he was, when he had a far-reach-
ing project to carry out, he could wait and consult
and deliberate, get the best plans from others that
they were capable of, and then out of them form a
better of his own. His revivals were successful
because they were carefully engineered, and every
detail considered before a step was taken. As a
contemporary observer, quoted by Mr. Duffus,
describes it: "The Hippodrome work is a vast
business enterprise, organized and conducted by
business men, who put their money into it on busi-
ness principles, for the purpose of saving souls," 14
George Adam Smith's record of what Moody him-

234

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

self told him of the preparation for Ms first great
English campaign well illustrates the care, the sys-
tem, the forethought with which all his great tri-
umphs were achieved : "He himself told me a won-
derful thing. He had made, I think, at least two
visits to our country in order to study the situation.
He had come to hear our preachers and to watch
their effects. He had made himself familiar with
the salient tendencies of our popular religion and
with the wants of the people outside the
churches." 15 When impulse is supplemented by
intelligent, disciplined effort like that, it gets
somewhere.

It is sometimes said that in using human agents
for his purposes, Moody was inclined to treat
them as agents merely, to take them up when he
needed them and to drop them with equal readi-
ness, and I have quoted a passage to this effect in
\ ___

connection with Sankey. The same is true of all
really great executive spirits. They have a task
to perform which is more than any man's suscep-
tibilities. As was well said of Moody's predeces-
sor, Wesley, he "had extensive and well-defined
plans for doing good; and he had a heart which

235

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

could deliberately sacrifice every interest and
every feeling, either of himself or his friends, that
stood in the way of their accomplishment" 16
Moody's profound personal loyalty to those he
loved is indisputable. Further, no criticism from
outside sources could shake his persistent use of
those in whom he believed. The cardinal illustra-
tion of this is Drumrnond. Drummond's views in
some respects were far different from Moody's, so
different that many persons objected to his appear-
ance on the Northfield platform at all. Moody
felt that Drummond had more of Christ's spirit
than all the critics put together, and he paid no
attention to their remonstrances. There were nu-
merous similar examples. At the same time, there
is Dr. Goss's hardly disputed charge that "when he
dropped men it was as if they were 'hot coals' and
it was impossible for those from whom he had re-
ceived such loyal and almost passionate devotion
at one time not to feel as if he were unkind and
untrue when he turned away." 1T Yet, Dr. Goss
also supplies the explanation, which is as with
Wesley. The man was serving a cause, which was
above all human considerations, and, as Dr. At-
kins points out, most of those who were discarded
were ready to perceive this ; "and they were will-

236

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

ing to be used by him or discarded by him, be-
cause they had been fired with a like love for the

same cause." 18

But, though Moody could usually have his own
way and could dominate most men, it was inevi-
table that he should at times meet friction and op-
position. How did he take it? It appears that in
the main his spirit was singularly large, sweet,
and conciliatory. There is none of the bitterness
of Wesley's quarrels with Whitefield, nothing of
Wesley's bitter outcry against his fellow-workers ;
"I have not one preacher with me and not six in
England whose wills are broken to serve me
thus." 19 Kindly and large-minded' as General
Booth was, he could declare in a moment of tem-
per: "I will never forgive the Baptists, neither
in this world nor the world to come." 2a Moody
had his own good hot temper to fight with, in his
youth, at any rate, but there is no mention in his
case of any such outbreak as this. Nor does he
seem ever to have developed the tendency to sus-
picion or querulousness that appears in the com-
plaint of Finney: "I learned from various sources
that a system of espionage was being carried on
that was destined to result in an extensive union
of ministers and churches to hedge me in and pre-
237

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

vent the spread of the revivals in connection with
my labors." 21 Moody was far too broad, too
genial, too wise ever to become the victim of ob-
sessions of this nature.

It is indeed said by some that with years he grew
a trifle overbearing and disposed to lecture instead
of persuade, and in some of his later evangelistic
campaigns this tendency is believed to have ham-
pered his usefulness. But I imagine that if such
a tendency existed, it was the result of his mistrust
of the so-called liberalizing movement in the
church which to him seemed insidious and disas-
trous and totally opposed to the fundamental prin-~
ciples of salvation. At any rate, through all his
life from beginning to end there was a desire to
conciliate, a passionate effort for harmony, and a
sense of the utter necessity of it in face of the en-
croaching dominion of evil, which are as gentle
and tender as they are noble and disarming. Over
and over again instances are recorded like the fol-
lowing: "At a certain meeting for the promotion
of a revival, one good brother rose and criticised
him severely for his uncharitableness, when Mr.
Moody said with deep emotion, 'From my heart I
thank that brother, I deserved it. Will you, my
brother, pray for me? 5 " 22 There is no trace of

238

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

cant in this: it is the self-reproach and self-con-
fession of a great spirit And at the bottom of it
is the underlying feeling which is so apt to be ab-
sent in promoters and creators and which appears
so fully in Moody's remark, after listening to sev-
eral hours of futile wrangling: "Mac, the world
is in great need of peace-makers." 23 He felt it to
be so, and for all he was a magnificent fighter, he
was minded to be a peace-maker himself.

The interesting question as to Moody's power
over men is, how far he was conscious of it and
how far he deliberately enjoyed it. There is no
real evidence that the power puffed him up or
made him vain. As in so many other connections,
there is no sign whatever of self-analysis on the
point, of his interrogating himself as to what the
nature of his power was or as to the satisfaction it
might give or any dangers involved in that satis-
faction. If you asked him, he would instantly
have asserted that such power as he had was
wholly God's gift and would abandon him in a
moment if he ceased to use it for God's service.
Yet it is well known that there is no higher intoxi-
cation in the world than just this power over men
and the sense that you can lead them as you will,
when you will, whither you will. There can be

239

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS
no doubt that Moody felt the intoxication and that
it was the breath of life to him. The world, his
world, and his was a big world, came and went as
he told it to, men took their orders from him and
obeyed them without question. Those who man-
aged and arranged his meetings and carried on
his institutions were under his direction, and from
top to bottom his guiding hand was felt in every-
thing. Who that was equal to such power could
have failed to enjoy it? Probably few men have
ever enjoyed it more than D. L. Moody.

And then one asks oneself about the converse of
the proposition : did this master of command ever
learn to obey? As to obedience to other men the
question hardly arises. All his life he was a leader
and a law unto himself. He planned, arranged,
decided; it was for others to execute. The mere
conception of taking orders unhesitatingly, of sur-
rendering his will without dispute to the will of
another, would have been so utterly foreign to him
that it is doubtful whether it would have had any
meaning. It is, to be sure, urged that in his youth-
ful service with his uncle, he was found obedient ;
but I imagine that even then there was more adap-
tation verging into dictation than unarguing obe-
dience. It is urged that in his relations with others

240

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

he was supremely humble, recognized the direc-
tions in which he was inferior and was apt and
eager to learn. It is, as we have seen, repeatedly
urged that he was willing to stand aside and put
others forward when he felt that they could do the
work better than he. All this is true enough. But
in every bit of it he retained control of himself,
of his purposes, of his agents, and the apparent
resignation of power only made the fundamental
retention of it all the sweeter. No : if he had ever
met a man whom he really felt to be bigger than
himself, he might have been prepared to obey him
unhesitatingly. But I do not think he ever met
such a man, and he would have had to go some
way to find one.

There remains something very different from
obedience to man, and that is obedience to God.
On the surface it appears that Moody was one
who obeyed the will of God so absolutely that he
had no existence independent of that motive force.
This is most emphatically insisted upon by others.
"H e <was a fully surrendered man" says Dr. Tor-
rey ; "every ounce of that two-hundred-and-eighty-
pound body of his belonged to God." 2 * Moody
himself is equally positive. Of one of the great
struggles of his life he declared: "The best thing

241

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

I ever did was when I surrendered my will, and
let the will of God be done in me." 25 And again,
more generally, and more vigorously: "If I know
my own mind, if an angel should come from the
throne of God and tell me that I could have my
will done the rest of my days on earth, and that
everything I wished should be carried out, or that
I might refer it back to God, and let God's will
be done in me and through me, I think in an in-
stant I would say: 'Let the will of God be
done.' " 26

Yet one wonders. Was the Will of God ever
distinct from the will of D. L. Moody? God's
will was mysterious, obscure* The will of Moody
was always crisply definite, all-engrossing. Might
it not be strangely, perilously easy, to substitute one
for the other, so that a convenient, overmastering
exchange was taking place all the time? There is
a profound sentence which Fenelon wrote to
Madame de Maintenon and which may find its
place here: "The I, of which I have so often writ-
ten to you, is an idol which you have not broken.
You desire with all your heart to enter into God,
but not by the gate of the I ; on the contrary, you
seek in God to find your I." 27 The I is so intru-
sive, so insinuating, so insidious, so enormous!

242

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

And the strands of obedience and domination, of
arrogance and humility, of self-assertion and self-
surrender are so strangely interwoven in the com-
plex fabric of the human heart!

Ill

As Moody was a master of men, so he was a
magnificent master of money. Again and again
you feel in him the thorough-going, solid, com-
mercial instinct of the Anglo-Saxon man of busi-
ness and affairs. It is even undeniable that a cer-
tain suggestion of this attitude enters into his re-
ligion. To be sure, he tries to be on his guard:
"Let us make no bargains with the Lord, but be
ready to go out and do whatever he appoints." 28
Yet the Lord will appear as a man of business and
it is your business to make the best bargain with
him you can, or let Moody do it for you: "If a
lady goes shopping, she wants to get the best rib-
bon she can for the money. If a man wants a coat
he wants to get the best coat he can for the money.
This is the law the world around. If we show
men that religion is better than anything else, we
shall win the world." 2d It is the dialect of the
shoe-trade, and there is no doubt that it is mighty
and prevailing.

243

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

Moody was skilled in large financial organiza-
tion. Here, as in everything, he was a systema-
tizer, looked far ahead both to needs and resources,
planned to adapt them to each other, and saw
to it that his plans would and did work out Per-
haps he lacked the advantage of early experi-
ence in minute detail of personal accounts, and
sometimes let minor matters slip. Frances Wil-
lard gives an amusing description of his utterly
neglecting to provide for her expenses and leav-
ing her to shift for herself after he had expressly
engaged her. 3a But in the larger conception of
problems and methods his command was perfect
and really astonishing. He would attempt what
others did not dream of and carry out what others
dared not attempt.

It must be admitted that he was a shrewd, keen,
careful, and successful bargainer. Here, as al-
ways, the first emphasis must be placed upon his
scrupulous honesty. It is unfortunately true that
In the business world there is a certain prejudice
against persons of religious affiliation, and the
prejudice may not be wholly without grounds.
We may assume that lack of practical training
enters into the matter. But there have been too
many cases of men who stood eminently well with

244

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

God, at least In their own opinion, but whose
financial methods were somewhat shady. There is
no trace of evidence associating Moody with any
such methods whatever. On the contrary, he
seems to have been always anxious to avoid mis-
representation or fraud and to stand behind any
transaction that he was involved in with all the
money and all the credit he had.

But he had the Yankee love for a good bargain.
In his early Sunday School days, he said to his
teacher: "Moses was smart, wasn't he?" You
couldn't say more for Moses. When Moody was
young and in the shoe trade, it is said that it was
the custom if "sharp or unmanageable men or
women came in to buy, to turn them over to
Moody, who took great delight in dealing with
them on that very account." sl And they did not
get ahead of him, far from it. "Nothing was ever
misrepresented in the smallest particular; but
when it came to a question of sharpness of wit be-
tween buyer and seller, Moody generally had the
best of it." 82 He had that inimitable bargainer's
instinct, which is the root of all successful trading,
of knowing just exactly how far to go yourself,
and divining exactly how far the other fellow can
be made to go. The instinct never failed him till

245

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

death and he enjoyed a good trade, quite inde-
pendent of its helping on the Kingdom of Heaven,
although he was always careful to see that it turned
that way*

This financial instinct naturally brought Moody
into close relations with the other great masters of
money. Big men on Wall Street and in the Eng-
lish financial centers appreciated him, admired
him, liked him, trusted him. He met them as an
equal, and dictated to them when he saw fit. A
certain great financier was asked : "How is it that
while you and other like men are all but inacces-
sible, fenced in by closed doors and guarded by
polite but immovable private secretaries, Dwight
L. Moody sees you at any time?" "He is one
of us," was the reply. 33 Obviously such an inti-
macy had its dangers. One of them lay in the
charge that was frequently brought in connec-
tion with Billy Sunday. It was said that these
financiers were glad to subsidize religion like
Moody's because it made the poor contented in
this world and allowed the rich to go on pillag-
ing and plundering undisturbed. Of course
Moody would have resented such an insinuation
instantly. At the same time, his peculiar indiffer-
ence to this-worldly conditions made him in some
respects exceptionally liable to it And there is

246

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

the further suggestion that the millionaire was
buying his way into heaven, and that he could ob-
tain from the evangelist a sweet security as to his
future by atoning for his misdeeds with large cash
payments here. On this point also one anticipates
Moody's protest What were financiers to him but
sinners fleeing damnation like all others? Could
any one suppose for a moment that he would flat-
ter them or truckle to them any more than to other
sinners? Probably he did nothing of the kind.
Yet the danger was there, and I cannot help recall-
ing the remark of General Booth: "I have been
trying all my life to stretch out my arms so as to
reach with one hand the poor and at the same
time to keep the other in touch with the rich. But
my arms are not long enough. I find that when
I am in touch with the poor I lose my hold upon
the rich, and when I reach up to the rich I let
go of the poor." B4> The cry of tainted money was
perhaps not quite so prominent in Moody's day
as it became a little later. No doubt in that day
and in all days he would have refused absolutely
to have anything to do with money or anything
else that seemed to him tainted. But he had un-
limited confidence in his reasoning powers, and
reason brings about some astonishing results.
In any case, Moody had vast ingenuity in get-

247

D. L. MOODY: "A WORKER IN SOULS

ting money for his own causes and also for those
of others. His ingenuity was so inexhaustible,
his shrewdness, his keenness, his adaptability, so
varied and so surprising, that one is almost
tempted to say that if Moody's God had been half
so clever as Moody, we should be living in a bet-
ter world* Again it is necessary to repeat the in-
sistence upon the man's perfect honesty and sin-
cerity. There was never any misrepresentation,
any pretense of doing things that could not be done
and never were done. It was precisely because
of the universal confidence in his integrity and
straightforwardness that men were ready to help ;
so that one authority justly points out that he could
get a million dollars where others could not get a
thousand. 35

In money-getting there was first the tireless
activity that appeared in everything else. Money
must be had: "We must ask for money, money,
MORE MONEY, at every meeting; not for the sup-
port of the Association as it now is but to en-
large its operations." se Very well, if money was
needed, go out and seek it. It would not come to
you, you must go to it, and keep going, with an
insistence that knew no fatigue and no discourage-
ment.

But the energy would go but little way without

248

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

the help of God. When the undertaking was wise
and worth while, God would surely help, if you
asked Him, and the way was to ask earnestly, re-
peatedly, and hopefully. Sometimes the results
were astonishing. On one occasion twenty thou-
sand dollars were needed for the Northfield
Schools. Moody did not tell a soul who could
possibly assist him about the matter. "But," says
Dr. Torrey, "he looked right to God and said:
'I need twenty thousand dollars for my work;
send me that money in such a way that I will
know it comes straight from Thee.' And God
heard that prayer. The money came in such a
way that it was clear that it came from God, in
direct answer to prayer." 37

Besides work and prayer, Moody had methods
of his own that no one else thought of or prac-
ticed so successfully. When others considered that
they had been working and had done their little
best, he would take hold and make their results
seem petty enough. There was a Scotch minis-
ter, an able and prominent man, who was labor-
ing industriously but modestly to get money for
some special purpose. Moody came along and
was impatient It would take all winter to do
anything that way, he said. He started one day
with the minister to visit a certain rich woman.

249

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

"How much will you ask for?" said Moody. "Oh,
perhaps fifty pounds." Moody made no com-
ment, but when they reached the house, he pushed
forward and said to the lady: "Madam, we have
come to ask you for two thousand pounds to help
build the new Mission." She threw up her hands
in horror. "Oh, Mr. Moody, I cannot possibly
give you more than one thousand." 38 That was
the way he did it

He would not take no, he would not give up.
When he was starting with Sankey for England,
there was no money, but he went ahead with all
his preparations, and the money came. Endless,
unfailing, unconquerable persistence was his asset,
one of them, and we all know that few forms of
capital bear better interest. Read how he alone
turned a Sunday School Convention, which had
been a palpable failure, into a success, simply
by passionate urging that failure was impossible. 89
And his own fruitful comment on such matters
was : "What we want is to turn defeat into victory.
If a man can't do that, he is a failure." 40

Moody lived in the age which invented Amer-
ican publicity, and he was a close contemporary
of Barnum, who may be said to have been as much

250

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

the inventor of publicity as any one man. It was
not newspaper publicity alone, which made Bar-
num's reputation and success, but the further at-
tempt, doubtless suggested by the vogue of the
newspaper, to arouse and stimulate and sharpen
public interest and curiosity in every possible way.
Barnum's methods of advertising were no doubt
often open to question. So the appeal was effec-
tive, he was not always too scrupulous as to Its
truth. No human being could charge that Moody,
in his efforts to advertise, was any more unscrup-
ulous or dishonest than in any other branch of
activity. It is true that his enemies sometimes
made capital of these efforts, and pushed the anal-
ogy with Barnum as far as possible. "Do you
want to know the secret of Moody's success?"
writes one critic. "Well, read Barnum's 'Hum-
bugs of the World. 5 Moody is perfect master of
the philosophy of that book." 41 And a much more
kindly and sympathetic observer protests to some
extent: "That Mr. Moody's keen business sense
should have effectively arranged and advertised
the movement is creditable to his religious purpose
as well as to his sagacity. The advertising has
certainly been very thorough and in some respects
distasteful and oppressive to us; but Mr. Moody's
work could not begin until attention was drawn

251

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

to it, and to say that he succeeds is to say that he
is not fastidious." 42

These strictures did not disturb Moody in the
least He had the greatest thing in the world,
not to sell, but to give away, and he was deter-
mined by every honest means to let the world know
its opportunity. Everything that print and paint
and light and noise would do was legitimate, if
only it really served its object I have quoted in
an earlier chapter his device of having thousands
of handbills printed and getting his young men to
circulate them about the streets. One should read
further his account of the foreigner who could not
speak a word of English and to whom the bills
were givea for distribution. He had to be dealt
with by an interpreter. "But when the Lord con-
verted him, the man was so happy! His face was
just lit up, and to every man that went by and
there were some pretty hard cases he just gave
a handbill. And some thanked him and some
swore at him, but he kept smiling all the time.
He couldn't tell the difference between thanks and

curses." 4S

Later imitators and emulators have so far out-
gone Moody in this matter of publicity for sal-
vation that his methods seem comparatively tame.
But his energetic defense and explanation of them

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

Is too characteristic and significant to be missed.
When he was asked if he believed in advertis-
ing, his answer was: "Certainly I do. Why not?
I don't see why we shouldn't learn something from
the world. They advertise very extensively. A
man comes into town from the country or from
some other city, and he don't know anything about
the meetings, and if he sees a notice of them he
may attend them. I don't see why the walls should
not be placarded also. Many a man has been blest
in that way. Some people are sensitive about it,
I know ; but it seems to me it is a good deal better
to advertise and have a full house than to preach
to empty pews. I don't see why not. Bills are
stuck up everywhere for people to go to theaters
and places of amusement, and I don't see why we
shouldn't give the Gospel a chance." 44

Moody's relation to the newspaper as a special
form of publicity is peculiarly interesting. We
have seen how bitter was his dislike of the Sunday
papers, and in the same way the daily papers
printed much that he could not possibly approve.
Moreover, while on the whole the more intelligent
journals treated him usually with forbearance and
often with active and helpful support, giving
largely of their space to his discourses, and adding
comment of a nature to enlist the attention of their

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

readers, he had also to endure a good deal of rough
satire and even slanderous abuse. When the at-
tacks were confined to his personality, his un-
couthness, his lack of education and manners, he
was quite indifferent But when the purity of his
motives was questioned, he was sometimes an-
noyed, and more often grieved and seriously trou-
bled. Yet, after all, he knew well what the power
of the newspapers was, knew how much they could
help him and how much they had helped him,
and as late as 1897 he had an enthusiastic word
about them: "I want to speak a word for the
papers. They are a great help to us. Buy papers.
Buy lots of them. They are for sale. Religious
people grumble about the newspapers and say they
don't give enough space to sermons. When a good
sermon is printed, buy that paper. Buy them by
the hundred, and scatter them broadcast." 45

With the human embodiment of journalism, the
reporter, Moody's attitude was much the same as
with the newspaper in the abstract. He realized
the reporter's power, and was good-natured,
friendly, and conciliating with him where it was
possible to be so. Also, the reporter had a soul
to be saved like anybody else, and it was desirable
to save it, if one could. But it was so thoroughly
wrapped up in newspaper that it was difficult to

254

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

get at. And any way, the fellows were so critical,
so impersonal, and so everlastingly curious, merely
curious, that you could not get a hold upon them,
while their deplorable taste for sensationalism and
excitement, even at the expense of veracity, made
it necessary to be on one's guard. People accuse
us revivalists of working by excitement, he says,
but we are not the only ones: "Newspapers can
say nothing. If there is anybody under the sun
that tries to get up sensations, it is the reporter.
If there isn't any sensation in sight, he makes one.
He is the last that should throw stones *at us." 4S

With the more personal aspect of publicity, the
inclination to put oneself and one's own affairs be-
fore the community at large, Moody had little
patience. Many notable people profess to shrink
from this, but I really think his shrinking was sin-
cere. When Dr. Goss asked him why he refused
to have his name connected with a particular
church, he replied: "Why? Because I am
no more than any other man. And besides, who
knows but that I may do something to disgrace
it?" 4T Again, as to the writing of his biography
he said: "I do not know of anything that can be
said of my life that would interest people." "And
yet," adds Dr. Goss, "within two years after that
letter was written, he told me with his own lips

255

IX L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

that he could sell his biography at any moment
for $25,000, and that when he was in New York
he was offered $10,000 for a two hours' interview
by an agent of one of the great newspapers." 48 In
the same way he fled the camera, so zealously that
it was often difficult to get photographs for proper
purposes of illustration. When his pictures and
Sankey's were hawked about the streets, he pro-
tested: "I don't know that anything is hindering
the work more than these men that are making
money out of us. If you want hymnbooks, go into
some bookstore and buy them. Don't buy these
photographs. They are no more photographs of
us than they are of you." 49 The truth is, he was
too big for petty vanity, and really to shun news-
paper prominence a man has to be very big indeed.

With this immense and solid grasp on human
action and the practical agencies of this world,
one sometimes wonders why Moody did not leave
behind him a much more definite and tangible
impress. Preachers of less power than, he have
founded sects to bear their names. He left no
sect and no distinctive body of followers. Neither
did he leave any world-wide, permanent organi-
zation to be his monument, as the Salvation Army

256

CROSSLEY HALL MOUNT

MOUNT HERMON SCHOOL COTTAGES

*>*fy>$

i' 1 * I* ^ S'a^^'tvl^uVulu^'.' a ' V " '' lhBM ' n *i/M/'-
V V " * 1 ^ ""' K n>l ' JV ,!'" f f ( Si . i^'-'/tk '? 1** i * *** ""

Iv '/ '': ^v ^W^'*^ ) Y", 1 *'" s <t ' *J,j {Vim *!* $$'

H:, t;, fritWM ^ j

ff r I ^ * JIo^i'i 1 ^i < r<Vfjt<: ^J^rlJ'*^*^.

th'. r
jn frf-l

ii Tbf*s' <ft tttitill lriv fi.rth fr*;f ;.^..u|
t tlH-r *liftt; I* fat . } St'-mjkJuf;' 1

ilk' *V mj rt't f * itu i /'-tw u ^rtjyit^hu,}

awtif **' ift ' J '," ! r .^"T^T ""*"""'* "'"~*"*****' > r

OIK? J^'KJ* mrws).*; *v& \$ ^}i>t\

t\t ', t!w wtVi i ni^> is KULMntC Us4' ! 'j$
3 Thy thf'<;ic' ?* i^^Ui^h^i *<iif f,i,i f

;\Wmi'>! fhf wi< - KL

1 i}* nwlw vf nsurtj v,'.t't-y,%
-- " ffi'K- '

s n'i. ;!<v ?"; tJf'Vlu' f'i'i. "''''* ' w
; ; 'j\v iv,tintwH 4s'.' nty Wt v h^.
*,yw* 1* (.-...ilh th..' Iwu^ Xnw*,
; ] Ji'tK'Jrtf" HMJi nyevHot:iM turf, "< -, ,i, i . , i<_f m'A ^,. ,,<,,

>!. tiottf r^M^a wgh^Jjf thw'U,flir. ^, Ww A . /At , ,-v J /?H* P x< , (V *

v t fe^ he UI w te ttflf*-'-* > t(re. i' S ,K>. i, -M T.OUD 'Hu^l, <-> ttlHrtMi 1 nwitn.-H
*. .. * t.,.-.. 4,,^ r* <>. .irj s 'W-wttMui O lvL | tvho'A ffti-j"ut

;Mn'tti Mv*il>t.<!C * "

j i Kifr ?5p tHj^t'.' Uiua }jd(w nf tU
; s ,irth ; f*rnii?r a r.^stw Jo th? pwtui,
Ko!s j b ; jp Jk*\'* vhdlli th mirlfti.
"* "'""" >''''-" -'- ' jttjtitt}^ |>

owf v ft}| jh Wrkg ttf im*
a^ t o

A PAGE FROM MR. MOODY'S BIBLE.

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

Is the monument of General Booth. Perhaps
Booth, while he had a no more puissant person-
ality than Moody, was an even more systematic
and especially a more definitely persistent organ-
izer. But it Is justly urged in Moody's favor that
his natural breadth and tolerance made him wholly
unwilling to confine his teaching or his influence
within the narrow limits of a sect or an or-
ganization. Moreover, it is not at all certain that
the depth of his spiritual influence was not
more permeating and more permanent, If less in-
tensely personal, than if he\had associated it with
a peculiar religious body.

He did, however, leave behind him a group of
institutions which have perpetuated his memory
with a significant and far-reaching influence, the
educational institutions to which he gave so much
of his time and thought during the latter portion
of his life. The Boys' School at Mount Hermon,
just across the river from Moody's home in North-
field, the Girls' School in Northfield itself, the
Bible Institute in Chicago, and the Northfield
yearly summer Conferences, are surely, each and
all of them monuments by which any man might
be proud to have his name transmitted to posterity.
The schools were intended by Moody to furnish
intellectual; practical, and above all spiritual

257

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

training for boys and girls, often young men and
women, to whom, for various reasons, the ordi-
nary forms of education were less easily accessible.
The Bible Institute was primarily established for
the more thorough training of lay religious
workers. And the Northfield Conferences gath-
ered and still gather together men of distinction
from America and Europe to study and discuss
the great religious problems of the world in the
largest and freest spirit It was especially in con-
nection with these that Moody's broad tolerance
was manifest. If a man was earnestly working
for the Lord, no matter whether his way was
Moody's way or not, he was eagerly invited to
Northfield to tell them about it.

In all respects Moody devoted his splendid
powers of inspiration and management to the es-
tablishing and maintaining of these institutions.
The schools especially, being run right at his own
door, were his pet interest and he could not do
enough for them. Money? He could get un-
limited money. All he had to do, in America or
England, was to go out and ask for it, and it came.
Teachers? Courses of study? Athletics? He
watched all these with intense interest, and was
always ready with suggestions, which were often

258

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

novel and useful, sometimes surprisingly so, con-
sidering how little educational experience he had
had himself. And yet the distinct testimony is,
that, in spite of his constant interest, he did not
interfere or hamper his subordinates in any way.
Oh, he would occasionally telephone and suggest
that it was a fine day and he might look in and
mightn't the boys and girls celebrate by having a
holiday. But in general, as with everything, his
habit was to get helpers whom he could trust, men
and women who knew their business thoroughly,
and then leave them to do it, with none of that nag-
ging criticism and suspicion which make execu-
tive efficiency so difficult, if not impossible.

What is most interesting about his attitude is his
enthusiasm for education generally. We have
seen that he himself had little of a formal nature.
We have seen that in some respects he mistrusted
it It is then rather fine and striking and indic-
ative of largeness of spirit that he should have
made it one of the chief efforts of his life to prop-
agate in others what had been so emphatically
omitted in himself. To be sure, it has often been
noted that those have generally most enthusiasm
for education who know least about it, while those
whose contact with it has been most solid and ex~

2 59

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

tensive come most to realize how little it can im-
prove natural ability or sharpen natural dullness.
Still, there is no question but that Moody's zeal
was tempered with intelligence and directed with
sure persistence to wise and worthy ends,

Also, perhaps he was as much interested, all the
time, in the corrective or even the antidote for
education, as in the thing itself. He felt strongly
that in many modern schools and colleges mere
knowledge was more and more sought after, to
the utter neglect of what was to him the one thing
needful. His schools were to supply the best of
modern thought, to be thoroughly up-to-date in
all modern methods and equipment, to have
teachers who should be trustworthy guides through
all the complicated mazes. But above all the
things of God should be taught, the Word of God
should be the foundation, and the men and women
who went out from his portals should maintain
and spread through the world the doctrines which
he had given his whole passionate life to propa-
gate. It is said that "his prayer at the laying of
the cornerstone of one of the buildings was that
God would wipe the school from the face of the
earth if anything was taught here contrary to the
Word of God." 60 Such an attitude is of course
susceptible of many interpretations, and how far

260

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

it can be permanently carried out depends upon
the vitality of the doctrines to which Moody clung
with his whole soul.

It is possible, however, that his insight into the
real problems of education was deeper than many
might suppose. In an earlier chapter I have de-
veloped at some length the view that our age is
an age of ignorance. Naturally this blight of
ignorance has made itself felt in the world of edu-
cation more than anywhere else. The old idea
of a liberal education, of a simple, solid body of
knowledge which must be infused into all edu-
cated people and which forms a common basis for
their communication with each other, has van-
ished, never to return. Familiarity with the Greek
and Latin classics now merely isolates the few who
possess it. But when it comes to a substitute for
the older idea, we flounder in chaos, hopelessly
astray. Before we decide how we are to get an
education, we must decide what it is, and that no
man at present knows. In despair over ignorance,
over the utter failure and incompleteness of the
intellectual side, many of us are turning for the
solution to the practical. In default of the know-
ing, which is beyond us, we are looking to the
doing, which is essential if we are to live at all.

In many respects this would seem to be the sim-

261

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

pie, sane way of dealing with the problem. Only,
doing in itself is so apt to degenerate into the
merely practical, the material, which looks to the
immediate satisfactions of life, which substitutes
bread and butter and automobiles altogether for
the things of the spirit Long ago Mary Lyon,
when she founded Mount Holyoke, foresaw this
difficulty. Though she was an educator, she was
not a scholar any more than Moody was, and the
mere hopeless labor of indefinite intellectual ac-
quisition did not appeal to her. She did not want
her girls to be scholars only, to accumulate vain
learning for their own glorification. Neither did
she want them to be mere practical drudges or
material enjoyers. Her solution of the problem
has a certain splendor from its very vagueness,
and perhaps just because of that vagueness, it has
a stimulating value which is lacking in more pre-
cise formulas. Her ideal, she said, was that her
girls "should live for God and do something." 5X
I think that Moody would have been perfectly
content to inscribe that motto over the doors of
his schools, and I do not know that he could have
found a better one.

After this minute examination, in which we
have seen Moody' s mighty and magnificent powers

262

MOODY THE MAN OF BUSINESS

in the management of his fellow human beings,
one is tempted to wonder what he could have done
if he had used those powers in the things of this
world. In business, in politics, in administration
of any kind, it seems as if insight into character
like his, power of organization like his, above all
the supreme gift of making men do what you
wanted them to do and do it with the best that
was in them, might have brought him to the very
top. But he cared for nothing of the sort, and so
we shall never know what his achievement might
have been. After all, when our life here seems
nothing but a bubble, a dream, a shadow, it is na-
tural that one's ambition should concentrate less
upon governing and managing men in this world
than upon leading them into another. It is time
now to turn our attention in more detail to
Moody's methods of asserting and applying such
leadership.

26 3

CHAPTER VII

THE HOLDER OF SOULS

THE power of molding souls is the greatest power
in the world. In the preceding chapter we have
seen how richly Moody possessed this power and
how he used it to accomplish his purposes, so far
as this world is concerned. But to use the power
over others to influence them directly and for their
own good is a subtler and more delicate task, and
in performing this also Moody was a master.

In the chapter on "The Preacher" we dealt with
Moody's influence over others in the mass. But
even the mass was made up of individuals, and
everywhere and at all times the individual was
what preeminently interested him. As we have
seen, his preaching was apt to be addressed to in-
dividuals, and he would pick out this or the other
person in the audience, and fire his quick words
right at him. This was carried so far that it has
been suggested that the victims were sometimes
prearranged beforehand and were special sub-

264

THE HOLDER OF SOULS

jects for dramatic appeal/ I have found no evi-
dence to show this in regard to Moody, and it is
at any rate certain that he descended to no such
cheap management of effect as has been practiced
by some of his successors. But he did have in
high degree the power of making individuals in
his audience feel that he was speaking to them as
if they were alone and as if he knew every inmost
secret of their hearts. He could produce exactly
the effect that Finney aimed at when he cried:
"Do not think I am talking about anybody else;
but I mean you, and you, and you." 2

At the same time Moody never leaned very
heavily upon public confession and testimony. In
the older revivals one of the most striking features
was the "Anxious Seat," a portion of the audi-
torium set apart for those who were in peculiar
distress about their souls' condition and were
peculiarly apt and ready to seize the proffered
means of mercy. The psychological pressure
exerted upon these conspicuous candidates for
salvation was obviously as intense as it was arti-
ficial, and it was extremely difficult to resist In
consequence the confessions and conversions ob-
tained though often dramatic enough, were less

265

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

likely to be permanent than those brought about
by a quieter, more direct, and more personal
handling.

At any rate, this was Moody's view, and few
men have had a more unerring instinct in such
matters than he. He did not for a moment under-
rate the force of mass influence, nor ever cease to
work upon individuals collectively with all the
means which he so well knew how to use. But
the deep and enduring results were obtained by
getting a man where you could look into his eyes
and lay a quiet, controlling finger upon his arm,
and so upon his heart.

In early New England revival effort, house to
house visitation was a very marked feature.
Where the power of the Church and the ministers
was so great, such visitation assumed almost in-
quisitorial proportions. According to Dewey's
account: The women of the house being got to-
gether "their inquisitors open with the most
pointed questions, put in the most awful manner,
concerning their most secret, solemn, and delicate
feelings. ... I have heard even intelligent fe-
males declare that they never met with anything
so horrifying as one of these visitations. And yet
to resist one of them would mark out the family

266

THE HOLDER OF SOULS

that did it with the most signal reprobation." 3
Of course nothing of this extreme character could
be carried out in any such fashion in Moody's day.
Still, I find the Saturday Review's comment on
what it calls "pious picketing" at the time of his
first visit to London almost as severe: "The pickets
are sometimes men, but as might be expected, more
commonly women. . . . They knock at the door
and ask to see the master or mistress . . . and on
any member of the family appearing, they are
assailed with questions which imply, and indeed
almost explicitly proclaim, a strong conviction on
the part of the visitor that those whom they are
addressing are altogether destitute of anything in
the nature of religion and probably doomed to
eternal perdition." 4

I do not find Moody at any time energetically
practicing or instigating such methods as this,
though no doubt visitation in some form was and
is associated with revival effort, and there was al-
ways the unfailing formula, "Are you a Chris-
tian?" ready to hurl at any promising subject
What he preferred, insisted on, and developed, was
the "Inquiry Room," the separate meeting-place in
which he could deal with those who had first been
stirred and affected by the sermon before the mul-

267

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

titude and could then be reached and touched when
they were in a condition of intense susceptibility.
He urges emphatically the value of this personal
element: "Personal dealing is of the most vital im-
portance. No one can tell how many souls have
been lost through lack of following up the preach-
ing of the Gospel by personal work. . . . People
are not usually converted under the preaching of
the minister. It is in the inquiry-meeting that they
are most likely to be brought to Christ." 5 And
this dealing must be man to man, soul to souL
There may be others about, but they must be at-
tending to their own separate affairs, and the anx-
ious convert must feel that he is opening his secrets
to one other understanding heart and to that only.
And Moody ridicules the mild suggestion of an in-
competent minister that those who were troubled
about their condition could appear before the
church-committee: "Why, he might as well have
asked them to go before a justice of the peace.
Asking an awakened soul to go before the whole
session! If you want to get these people to talk
with you, put yourself in their way, and make it
easy for them. 5 ' 6 So for forty years, with ever-
increasing experience, sureness, and skill he prac-
ticed the subtle science of reading and understand-

268

THE MOLDER OF SOULS

Ing men's souls and the exquisite art of guiding,
and influencing them.

It is evident that the understanding and the in-
fluencing are two entirely different matters. For
centuries legions of scholars and thinkers have de-
voted themselves to the business of understanding,
without the slightest thought of any effort to in-
fluence. Modern psychology, with all its exten-
sive apparatus of laboratories and measurements
and questionnaires, is daily occupied with the ef-
fort to learn the nature and working of man's inner
life, the origins and methods and objects of it But
before either the name or the practice of psychol-
ogy was invented, the wisest of mankind had ap-
plied the utmost patience and the finest insight to
the same object, and at times it seems with deplor-
ably little result, a conclusion which some are dis-
posed to echo in regard to even the achievements
of recent psychology. Although it is not often
appreciated, some of the chief masters of this
science of soul have been the world's great drama-
tists and poets and novelists. They do not for-
mulate their conclusions with the technical ter-
minology of the laboratory, but for that very reason

269

D. L, MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

the conclusions are often less apt to be misleading;
and the most delicate lessons of psychological ob-
servation are to be learned from Sophocles and
Shakespeare, from Thackeray and Flaubert and
Tolstoi and Anatole France. Again, the finest il-
lustrations of soul-study may be derived from the
great school of French critics of whom Sainte-
Beuve was the acknowledged master and chief.
Sainte-Beuve called himself a "Naturalist of
Souls." In books and in life the thing above all
others that interested him was the investigation of
men's motives, the study of their hopes and aspira-
tions and despairs. And if it seems far-fetched
to associate such study as Sainte-Beuve's with such
practice as Moody's, it must be remembered that
some basis of instinctive study was the essential
preliminary for Moody to obtain his results.

To Sainte-Beuve, however, the study was all.
He never dreamed of influencing a single individ-
ual in any direction. The immense, the inexhaust-
ible fascination of understanding was quite
enough for him and others like him. But those
who have the instinct for guidance, for control,
find the understanding a mere basis for their work.
Indeed, they are apt to be impatient of the intru-
sion of what seems to them mere curiosity in what

270

THE HOLDER OF SOULS

they feel to be the deepest and most Important con-
cern of human life. With how much scorn does
Saint Francis of Sales brand the indecent inquisi-
tion of these investigators who probe for their own
amusement: "Many indulge in rash judgments for
the pleasure of philosophizing and divining the
characters of people as a mere intellectual exercise.
If, by chance, they manage to hit the truth, their
audacity and appetite for more increase so much,
that it is almost impossible to turn them from the
pursuit" Which would seem to dispose once for
all of the passion of the biographer and psychog-
rapher. The real practitioners, the real artists in
this kind, examine and analyze without end, but
at every moment their analysis is turned to fruit-
ful use in modifying, developing, almost creating
human life.

In the Catholic Church the Confessional is of
course the supreme agency by which this manip-
ulation of souls is carried on. The Confessional
had its inception in the early stages of Church dis-
cipline, but it was only by degrees and through
centuries of discussion, and controversy that it be-
came the highly developed instrument which is
to-day, as it has so long been, at work affecting
millions of souls. The skill, the tact, the infinite

271

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

power of adaptation, which have been acquired in
the long development of this spiritual agency are
well suggested in the comment of a modern psy-
chologist upon his conversation with one who
understood and used it: "I once asked a Catholic
priest how he dealt with certain adolescent reli-
gious difficulties. His reply showed that he had
studied the whole question from the standpoint of
physiology, psychology, and heredity, as well as
theology, and that he varied his treatment of the
cases according to the individual's symptoms.
Some persons he controlled simply by authority;
others he comforted as a mother soothes a restless
infant; still others he sent to a physician. There,
thought I, is one who has beheld the ideal of an art
of religious culture drawn directly from scientific
knowledge. How different is this from the ready-
made methods that ignore differences of sex, of
age, of disposition, and of physical condition." 7

It is not necessary here to dwell upon the obvious
dangers which have been so much emphasized in
connection with the Confessional. The most
prominent of these is the subjection of female peni-
tents to a male confessor, and while the evils of this
practice may have been exaggerated, they are un-
deniably very reaL Almost as serious is the danger

272

THE HOLDER OF SOULS

of turning over sensitive, anxious souls to manage-
ment which is clumsy, tactless, and inadequate, and
even with the best of training such a process is too
often attended with disastrous results. But the su-
preme danger, as well as the supreme strength, of
the Confessional lies in the fact that it appeals to an
instinct of human nature so wide-spread, so deep-
rooted, and so overwhelming, that not only the wise
and the unselfish but the unscrupulous and the
cunning too readily take advantage of it

We all of us, in different degrees and in different
fashions, long to confide our secrets to some one, if
we could only find the right one. As Newman
puts it: "How many souls are there in distress,
anxiety, and loneliness, whose one need is to find
a being to whom they can pour out their feelings
unheard by the world. They want to tell them and
not to tell them ; they wish to tell them to one who
is strong enough to hear them and yet not too
strong to despise them." 8 How charmingly does
Hawthorne make his Hilda, in "The Marble
Faun," Hilda, the Puritan child of New Eng-
land, in whom the horror of everything Catholic
is inborn, turn in her distress to the Catholic Con-
fessional in Saint Peter's and find soothing relief.
It is perfectly well known that criminals ache with

273

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS
the longing to reveal what they have done, and that
long-hidden evil deeds are finally uncovered in
that way. Well, there are times when we are all
criminals and know it Again, we are just as eager
to confide our good deeds as our naughty ones, to
be praised for the former and comforted for the
latter. The instinct of self-confession is funda-
mentally and universally human. Some persons
who could never satisfy it by word of mouth will
do it by letter, and will write long pages of inti-
mate revelation to those with whom in actual pres-
ence such intimacy would be impossible. It is the
same instinct that is at the bottom of much writing
of journals and of elaborate autobiographies like
Rousseau's and many another. The life which has
been sternly repressed and hidden away during the
earthly existence still longs somehow to leave a
record of itself which some day some sympathetic
soul may understand. In short, this impulse to
confession is all a part of the unfailing, uncon-
querable, incurable, if utterly hopeless desire to
escape from the eternally binding prison of our-
selves.

It is not the Catholic priest alone who has to
meet and deal with this self-confessing instinct.
No priest of any creed has ever lived who has not

274

THE MOLDER OF SOULS

had multitudes of sinners and sufferers beating at
his doors in instant solicitation of the help and
comfort which he is supposed to be able to admin-
ister. In Protestant countries, and especially in
America, where the decay of priestly influence
which I have insisted on has been so marked, a
curious modification of this confessional recourse
has taken place and the role of the priest has been
largely assumed by the family physician. How
many, many strange, pitiful, and terrible secrets
have been poured into the country doctor's ears,
and how many people have received from him not
only the relief of confession but the further bene-
fit of wise and strengthening guidance. It is one of
the various unfortunate phases of the banishing of
the old general practitioner by the specialist that
this advantage of confessional comfort has largely
disappeared. The busy, hurried, fashionable spe-
cialist, giving a few brief consultations by appoint-
ment, with a dozen other appointments crowding
upon him, can never furnish that leisurely com-
fort and advice which were among the most useful
functions of the medical profession. And yet I
have had even specialists tell me that many a pa-
tient insisted upon confiding to them the most in-
timate personal matters entirely unconnected with

275

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

the special malady which was supposed to be dealt
with. And we have to remember always that the
human desire for confession is immensely increased
by pain and helplessness. As the lively lady in the
comedy puts it: "When I am well, I don't go about
telling the inmost longings of my soul, but when I
am sick you can pick secrets out of my heart, as a
child picks nut meat"

With the instinct for confession and the prac-
tice of it goes the more or less highly developed art
of spiritual advice and guidance, of "direction,"
to use the technical Catholic phrase. As a modern
psychologist expresses it: "Why should not the
care of souls become an art a system of organ-
ized and proportioned methods based upon defi-
nite knowledge of the material to be wrought upon,
the ends to be attained, and the means and instru-
ments for attaining them?" 9 This sounds a little
too much like the formal procedure of the modern
laboratory, which so often defeats its end by taking
too great pains to achieve it. But the art of direct-
ing souls is almost as old as the world, as old as the
impulse of defeat and weakness to lean upon what
appears to be others' strength. There are plenty
of gleams of such appeal and response in the his-
tory of Jesus and of Buddha. The whole career

276

THE MOLDER OF SOULS

of Socrates, while it shows perhaps mainly an im-
mense curiosity as to the working of men's souls,
shows also a constant disposition to help them and
mend them, and the relation of his disciples to him
was much that of the Catholic dependents to their
spiritual adviser in later centuries. The appeal of
the philosopher Apollodorus to one of his fol-
lowers is not unlike the appeal of Moody, though
it lacks the passion : "Declare, young man, what-
ever good or evil you have done, so that you may
obtain forgiveness by my ministry and give your-
self up to philosophy with my disciples/' 10 And
the letters of Seneca indicate a close and careful
observation, penetration, and manipulation of the
souls of those who turned to him, strangely resem-
bling the treatment administered by the doctors
and artists of the Christian Church.

But it is of course under Christian belief and
discipline, which set so high a value upon the in-
dividual soul and the treatment of it and the sal-
vation of it, that the art of dealing with it has
reached supreme perfection. Thousands and
thousands of priests, both Catholic and Protestant,
have displayed and are displaying the most deli-
cate sympathy and the subtlest tact in guiding and
advising those who turn to them for help not only

277

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

in regard to the hope of another world but as to
daily conduct in this. Here and there we get an
illuminating glimpse of such activity; but few
records are fuller or more winning than those left
by the two great Catholic teachers, Francis of
Sales and Fenelon. There are hundreds of let-
ters extant, addressed by these two to their spir-
itual clients, and no documents give a more com-
plete and more instructive education in the art
of molding human hearts. For years these two
profound and sympathetic analysts had studied the
nature of those hearts, the storms that agitated
them, the motives that impelled them, the advice
and comfort that would relieve them, and both
Fenelon and Saint Francis applied their knowl-
edge with infinite variety and boundless success.

Sometimes it is a question of argument The
reason must be moved and enlightened. There
are minds that cannot be helped and guided in any
other way. "Thus we see," says Saint Francis,
"that it is very natural to be subject to and guided
by reasoning and opinion." And he plies such
tempers with the closest logical discipline. Only,
he adds with fine analysis : "melancholy people are
ordinarily more attached to their opinions than
those of a gay and jovial humor ; for the latter are

278

THE MOLDER OF SOULS

easily turned in any direction you please and are
inclined to believe what one tells them." n Some-
times it appears that argument will not answer:
some persons are not open to it or affected by it,
have not the capacity for following logical trains
of thought Pure authority is needed here. Such
persons must be told what to do without explana-
tion. Or perhaps they may be puffed up with their
own excellence, and a little sharp discipline or
reprimand goes further than any argument Thus
Fenelon writes to one penitent: "Renounce your-
self, do not love your own wit or your own cour-
age ... It is not even enough to relinquish one-
self, one must make oneself infinitely little. Giv-
ing up is too apt to deal only with exterior things ;
in becoming as a little child one renounces oneself.
One must learn to be little in everything and re-
member that one's own self counts for nothing, and
one's own virtue and one's own courage for least
of all." 12 And again, there are other cases in
which authority, command, dictation are quite out
of place, where nothing appeals or helps but ten-
derness, suavity, love, and in applying these and
applying them rightly none before or since have
ever surpassed these two great masters of the Cath-
olic Church. With what delicate, insinuating

279

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

magic does Fenelon murmur the cardinal doctrine
without which neither he nor any other could
really and permanently bring souls to Christ : "All
the maddest passions that transport mankind are
only the true love gone astray from what should be
its eternal center. God made us to live by Him
and by His love. We were born to be both burned
and nourished by this love, as a torch is consumed
by the very light it flings abroad." 13

And Saint Francis sums up admirably the skill,
the experience, and the natural gift required to
practice the director's art in its perfection: "Those
who govern souls must make themselves all things
to all men. In order to win all men, they must be
gentle with some, severe with others, a child with
children, a hero with heroes, a weakling with
weaklings: in short, an infinite discretion is re-
quired if one is to be fit to meet the needs of all."

Ill

Obviously it is subjecting Moody to a hard test
to compare him with masters of such training and
such intellectual and spiritual quality as Fenelon
and Saint Francis of Sales. Yet he comes out of
it surprisingly well. Certainly neither they nor
any one else ever had the passion for mending souls

280

THE MOLDER OF SOULS

more than he. His universal cry, "Are you a
Christian?" was supplemented by the most varied
and ingenious study and the most patient effort.
He says that in his early years of work he estab-
lished a rule : "I made it a rule that I wouldn't let
a day pass without speaking to some one about their
soul's salvation, and if they didn't hear the Gospel
from the lips of others, there will be 365 in a year
that shall hear the Gospel from my lips." 14 With
such ardor you must get somewhere.

It is true that we have to recognize, perhaps most
of all here, the limits that were hampering always.
To deal with spirits of the quality largely handled
by Fenelon and Saint Francis you have to have a
somewhat different intellectual and spiritual
equipment from Moody's and one can imagine
persons tormented by difficulties of thought and
difficulties of passion quite out of his range of ex-
perience. Sometimes also it is hard to associate'
such a robust physique as his with the deepest in-
sight into the suffering of unbalanced nerves and
abnormal physical organizations. Yet even in
these lines he appears to have made up by inten-
sity of sympathy what he lacked in breadth of it.
That huge, solid bulk of human flesh had at times

281

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

a lightness, a delicacy of spiritual touch as apt, as
tender, as varied as a woman's.

And he himself was conscious of the limitations.
Eager as he was, ready as he was to cast "Are you
a Christian ?" in every direction, he did not cast it
without thought He selected his subjects, selected
the right moment for dealing with his subjects,
approached them carefully, adapted his methods
to the needs of the case before him. Over and over
he has most admirably intelligent comments upon
what he was aiming at and the care and skill neces-
sary to obtain it "We want to show people that
we are really interested," he says. "We want to
take an interest in people to show that we love
them, that we desire to take them to God, and if
men find that our motives are pure and that we
have no selfish ends in view why, they will be-
lieve in us." 15 He held that it was necessary to
study each case as a physician studies his patients:
"One may have ague, another typhoid fever, and
another may have consumption. What a man
wants is to be able to read his Bible and to read
human nature too!" 16 He insisted constantly
upon the fundamental principle in such matters,
the power and the necessity of putting yourself in
other people's places. Only so could you get at

282

THE HOLDER OF SOULS

their troubles and remedy them. "If we are going
to reach men, we must make them believe we are
their brothers. I will tell you how to get there.
You must put yourself in their places. I tell you,
if we only put ourselves in their places, we can
succeed in bringing souls to Christ" 17

But beyond any definite analysis, there was un-
questionably in Moody a power that took hold of
individual men, and made them over by an almost
instinctive process. I do not know any more strik-
ing illustration of this than the late President
Wilson's story of going into a barber's shop one day
where Moody was being attended to and inciden-
tally was talking to the barbers. There was noth-
ing of cant about it, Wilson says, nothing didactic
in any way. Yet the influence was extraordinary.
"I purposely lingered in the room after he left and
noted the singular effect his visit had upon the
barbers in that shop. They talked in undertones.
They did not know his name, but they knew that
something had elevated their thought. And I felt
that I left that place as I should have left a place
of worship." 1S It may be that this man could not
have influenced the gay gallants and court ladies
with whom Fenelon dealt, though even this is by
no means certain. In any case he was the very man

283

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

to influence thousands of his average American
fellow countrymen, like you and me.

But let us examine more in detail Moody's
methods of working with souls who came to him or
whom he went out to seek and of securing the con-
version which was his constant and final aim.
Sometimes he resorted to direct, quick, energetic
argument, when he thought such argument would
bowl over the last barrier and leave the Spirit free
to pour itself in. A man came to him and said he
could not believe. "Whom?" asked Moody. The
man stammered and repeated, "I cannot believe."
Again, there came the query, "Whom?" And
again there was the hesitating answer, "I cannot
believe, I cannot believe myself.' 5 And there
flashed out the quick retort: "Well, you don't
need to. You do not need to put any confidence in
yourself. The less you believe in yourself the bet-
ter." 19 And he pushed the doubter, and he urged
him, till there seemed no refuge but the acceptance
of the one solution for all his doubts. Or, there
would be times when he would decline entirely to
argue, when he saw that some clever logician was
aching to lead him into all sorts of traps, and in-
stead of complying he would resort to apt illus-
tration or suggestion or emotional appeal that

284

THE MOLDER OF SOULS

would make argument seem pale and out of place.
Again he felt that there were occasions when the
need was rather for straight authority, when the
patient was in want of discipline, or energetic con-
trol, only required to be told definitely what must
be done and how it must be done. Read the strik-
ing and beautiful account of one young man who
came to him with the complaint that he wanted to
believe, but could not Moody bade him turn to
John 5 : 24 and read : " Verily, verily, I say unto
you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on
Him that sent me hath everlasting life," The
young man read, but still hesitated. He was bid-
den to read it again, and yet again, and all the time,
back of the bidding, was the commanding, con-
trolling, persuading gaze and tone of the bidder,
and at the end the doubts were swept away. To
the gentle question, "Do you believe this?" the
reply came, "Yes, indeed I do," and to the further
question, "Are you a Christian?" "Yes, Mr.
Moody, I am." And the convert added, in telling
the story: "From that day I have never questioned
my acceptance by God." 20 Sometimes in this use
of authority Moody felt that he had to deal with
those who were abject, despairing, to whom it
seemed that there was no refuge and no escape

285

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

from the black weight of sin that enveloped them.
Argument had no effect. You could only insist
that they must give up themselves and the thought
of themselves and surrender totally to the infinite
salvation. Or, on the other hand, there were those
who thought themselves above the need of help,
whose position In the world was so lofty or whose
confidence in their own conduct was so great that
it was difficult to bring them to a sense of their
spiritual deficiencies at all. With these the high
tone was the only tone, and no one could take it
more austerely and more powerfully than Moody
could. "Mr. Moody," said a lady of rank to him
one day, "no one ever talked to me like this be-
fore." "Then it was quite time somebody did so,"
was the serene, and effective answer. 21

In still other cases it was not a question of either
argument or authority, but just of tenderness, in-
finite receptive comprehension of the struggles
and difficulties of a sick and suffering soul. And it
is in this point above all that one is sometimes as-
tonished at the capacity of this apparently robust,
hearty, almost grossly material creature to become
gentle, sympathetic, tenderly responsive to every
appeal and every inarticulate longing. Love was
what came home to him and went out from him,

286

THE HOLDER OF SOULS

love was what touched him in the thought of
Christ and in the words of Christ, and it was
through love after all that the greatest triumphs
were to be wrought The mightiest agency for the
conversion he was seeking was not reasoning, was
not arbitrary dictation, but the searching, uplift-
ing, dissolving, transforming potency of prayer,
and when he got his patients really to pray, he felt
that his task was done. This must not be urged
too soon. Prayer that is artificial and mechanical
does no good. "It is a good thing to get a man on
his knees (if convenient), but don't get him there
before he is ready. You may have to talk with him
two hours before you can get him that far along." 22
But in the final conviction and transfiguration
prayer is the one medium that effects most and
most surely. And in describing the process by
which he leads to his results, he has words of a
singular, winning tenderness, which let you see
how rich he was in the varied suggestion of relief
and comfort: "In talking to an unconverted per-
son, make it as plain as you can. Sometimes I
talk this way: c "Come," is the first thing a mother
says to her little child. When she wants it to
learn to walk, she places it beside a chair, goes off
a little distance and. then says "Come," and the

287

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

little thing lets go of the chair and runs to its
mother. That is what coming means. If you can't
come as a saint, come as a sinner. If you feel that
your heart is so hard you are not fit to come, God
wants you just as you are. He can soften your hard
heart. If you are weary and heavy laden, come,
and the Lord will bless you. 5 " 23

There are various interesting and curious phases
of Moody's elaborate, long-developed, and pas-
sionate dealing with souls that well repay study.
There is the question of his attack. To begin
with, he centered his attention upon the will. It
was the man's will that counted, that you had to
mold, to bend, to break, and that once broken, the
remaining barriers, whatever they might be,
crumbled easily enough. As he himself puts it,
"It is when the man says, ( I will. 5 It is the sur-
render of the will. The battle is fought on the
will. Very often the act of getting on his knees has
an effect on the man's will ; but generally the will
is given up before he gets there. There should be
more preaching on the will." 2 *

Often his methods of assailing his victims
(that word has been haunting me and finally had

THE MOLDER OF SOULS

to come out) seem violent and abrupt Yet there
was more instinctive tact and judgment in them
than might be supposed. There is the story of the
man and the lamp-post One night Moody was
going home very late and it occurred to him that
on that day he had not broached the great ques-
tion to a single souL He saw a perfect stranger
standing under a lamp -post, and went up to him:
"Are you a Christian?" The man was indignant,
and Moody after a few earnest words went on his
way. Weeks passed, but finally in the middle of a
winter night there was a tremendous pounding on
Moody's front door. Moody hurried to open, and
there was the man of the lamp-post The few
words had rankled in his soul ever since, and he
was determined to be saved, and he was. 25 Or
there was the man with the umbrella, who took
Moody under it in a hard shower. Umbrellas are
useful, but had the man any shelter against the
storms of hell? It seemed he had not, and his new
friend was glad to furnish him with one. 28

No doubt there were plenty of failures in the
long list of varied attempts. The biographers nat-
urally do not dwell upon these, just as the French
historical painters at Versailles do not depict the
French defeats. Moody himself occasionally,

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

with characteristic frankness, brings up cases in
which his best efforts were of no avail. There is
the dying man, whose wife tried to save him, and
Moody tried to save him, but it was no use. He
was headed for hell, and it must be supposed that
he went there: "My damnation is sealed, and I
will be in hell in a little while." Moody labored
through the last hours with passionate endeavor,
but it was hopeless: "He lived a Christless life;
he died a Christless death; we wrapped him in a
Christless shroud, and bore him away to a Christ-
less grave." 27 But if the failures were not un-
known, and were even numerous, the list of suc-
cesses is so extensive that the negative side sinks
out of sight.

Moody seems to have had a remarkable gift
of getting all sorts of confessions from all sorts of
people. It was not that he was in the least curious
or prying or anxious to entice people into the
revelation of secrets which they intended to keep
hid* But his large sympathy, his quick response,
his faculty of making apt and helpful suggestions,
drew confidences that were as abundant as they
were surprising. As Dr. Abbott puts it, "Rarely,
if ever, did priest, Anglican or Catholic, hear more
vital confessions." 28 I think, however, that Dr.

290

THE MOLDER OF SOULS

Abbott's further comment Is a little misleading.
He says that "never did a High Church priest of
the Anglican Church believe more profoundly that
to him had been given authority to promise the
absolution and remission of sins than did Mr.
Moody believe that he possessed such authority." 29
It is true that Moody felt perfectly competent to
assure his penitents that salvation could be ob-
tained and to tell them how it could be obtained.
But I do not think he ever professed to grant It to
them. On the contrary, he was careful to empha-
size that everything depended on the sinner him-
self, and he declares explicitly against any definite
assurance from without. When asked if he would
tell inquirers that they were saved, he replied:
"No, let God tell them. That record is kept on
high. I think it is very wrong to tell inquirers
they are saved. They can be saved by putting their
trust in the Lord God In Heaven." 30 He was far
too wise, too shrewd, to pretend that any human
being can take upon himself the entire burden of
the soul of another.

A most Interesting aspect of this confession side
of Moody' s work is his relations with women. We
have seen before that he was anything but a wo-
man's man. Indeed, it is very striking how pe-

291

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

culiarly powerful his influence was with men. The
great Catholic confessors I have referred to above
largely dealt with women, and their hold upon
men seems to have been much less substantial ; but
the men flocked to Moody and he had the secret of
touching them by his infinite manliness. In his
excellent advice as to dealing with inquiring souls
he insists upon the wisdom of keeping out of sex
complications: "Don't take those in a position in
life above your own, but as a rule, take those on
the same footing. Don't deal with a person of the
opposite sex, if it can be otherwise arranged." 81
He would no doubt readily have endorsed the ad-
vice of the Imitation: "Be not a friend to any one
woman in particular, but commend all good wo-
men in general to God." His infinite practical
skill and tact showed themselves occasionally in
dealing with those situations in which scheming
women endeavor to take advantage of ministerial
simplicity and candor. 82 And never in one single
instance did the slightest taint of reproach or
scandal attach itself to him, even from his bitterest
critics.

Yet he had a profound admiration and respect
for women and used their advice and assistance in
ways which a, Catholic priest could hardly have

292

THE MOLDER OF SOULS

accepted. He never Indulges In such mild sarcasm
about them as Saint Jerome's, "What shall we do
with these wretched little women, saturated with
petty sins, who veer with every breeze of doctrine,
who are always asking questions, and never learn
anything from the answers?" 33 or even that of the
gentle Saint Francis, "To tell the truth, the sex is
marvelously inclined to pity themselves and to ex-
pect others to pity them." 3 * We have seen
Moody's high opinion of his wife's gift at con-
version, and he felt that women generally could
do things In that line that men could not Also, as
you look through his sermons you find many inter-
esting and curious cases in which women evidently
came to him about their deepest secrets and re-
ceived help and comfort even as did the men. And
the sermon especially addressed to fallen women is
well worth consideration for tact and dignity in
dealing with a difficult subject 35

Another important phase of Moody's work with
souls is the intensely practical side of it He was
determined that those whom he helped should not
only feel salvation but should live it: "Christianity
isn't worth a snap of your finger if it doesn't
straighten out your characters. I have got tired of
all your mere gush and sentiment" 86 Life was to

293

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

be made over, not only inwardly but outwardly,
and the spiritual grace was to show everywhere
and always in the practical conduct Fundamental
as faith was, works were the crowning glory of it
He did not indeed insist upon penance in the
Catholic sense, the difficult and dangerous doctrine
that later self-inflicted discomfort can make up for
earlier sin. But he did demand, as an essential
preliminary to any claim upon the Kingdom of
Heaven, not only that there should be profound
repentence and regret for past misdoing, but that
wrong that had been done should be remedied so
far as possible. He recounts some extraordinary
cases of men and women who had come to him de-
claring their passionate desire to be reconciled with
God, but admitting that in the past they had done
some one a wrong which they were unwilling or
thought themselves unable to remedy. With such
people his insistence was iron. Restitution, repa-
ration, must be made, before he would have any-
thing to do with them. Sometimes, to be sure, he
recognizes the infinite bitterness of the struggle,
sometimes confesses frankly how hard it would be
for himself to meet it But it has to be met, all the
same. Only so can there be any assurance that God
will forgive and accept

294

THE HOLDER OF SOULS

And again, there is bitterness, enmity, hard feel-
ing. If people are to find salvation under his
guidance, there must be absolute forgiveness, no
cherishing of grudges, no putting them on one side
and conveniently burying them. There must be
open reconciliation and penitence coming obvi-
ously and full from the heart He gives interesting
illustrations of this, most often with women, as in
the case of the young ladies, who were eager to be
set right, but could not possibly get over their dis-
like to each other. They got over it, under
Moody's insistence: "It so happened that they
started about the same time to ask each other's for-
giveness. They met in the middle of the room, one
of the most joyous meetings I ever witnessed, threw
their arms around each other, and both speaking
at the same time, said, *I want you to forgive me.'
The Lord met them right there." 37 On the other
hand, there is the lamentable case of the woman
who would never forgive : if that was essential, she
would never become a Christian. "And the last
I heard of her she had gone out of her mind, and
some infidels say religion drove her out of her
mind, but it was the want of it, that is what it

was." 8S

One element of the work of the great Catholic

295

D. L. MOODY; A WORKER IN SOULS

directors I miss in Moody, that is the element of
continued guidance. He was no letter writer, and
he was too busy to write letters any way. When
the first stroke was achieved, he necessarily passed
on, to convert thousands more. The steady, daily
pressure had in most cases to be left to others.
At the same time, this does not mean that his work
was not permanent in a vast number of cases.
Again and again we read of those who had been
converted by him coming to him in later years and
expressing their steadfast hold upon the supreme
gift that he had given them, and I do not know
how there could be a finer statement of this perma-
nence than the remark of Drummond: "I have
never heard him quoted as a theologian. But I
know of large numbers of men and women of all
churches and creeds, of many countries and ranks,
from the poorest to the richest, and from the most
ignorant to the most wise, upon whom he has
placed an ineffaceable moral mark.' 7 39

It is needless to enlarge upon the delight that
came to converter, as well as to converted, when
these spiritual miracles were performed. To a
heart eager and passionate as Moody's, the de-
velopment of life and light and ecstasy in each new
case of salvation was almost like repeating your

296

1899

The Autobiography of
DWIGHT L. MOODY

JOME day you will read in
the papers that D. L. Moody,
of East Northfield, is dead.
Don't you believe a word of it i At
that moment I shall be more alive
than I am now, I shall have gone up
higher, that is all; out of this old clay
tenement into a house that is immor-
tal a body that death cannot touch;
that sin cannot taint ; a body fash-
ioned like unto His glorious body.
I was born of the flesh in 1837.
I was born of the Spirit in 1856.
That which is born of the flesh
may die. That which is born
of the Spirit will live forever.

THE MOLDER OF SOULS

own salvation over and over. I do not know how
I can better illustrate the whole process that the
newly regenerate went through than by quoting the
long account given by one subject who had trav-
ersed it from beginning to end: "I went to hear
him speak out of curiosity at first After a while
I began to feel troubled in my mind. Then I grew
irritated, when I fancied that he had singled me
out and was talking at me, pointing out my sins
and asking me to repent. I didn't like it I
wanted him to leave me alone. I didn't dare to
look up for fear that every one in the church was
looking at me with pity. If I had been near the
door, I would have slipped out I wondered how
he had found out all the little mean things I had
ever done. Then I began to grow ashamed of
myself, tried not to listen to what he was saying.
But he kept right on talking to me. He paid no at-
tention to anybody else there, though I knew some
of them were worse than I was and all the time
I was growing more sorry and ashamed. Then all
at once he stopped talking and asked everybody to
sing. They sang, What a Friend We Have in
Jesus/ and it seemed to lift me right out of my seat
and. carry me down the aisle ; and I couldn't stop
till I was on my knees in front of the platform,

297

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

with the tears running down my face. . , . He
took my hand In his and told me that if I felt con-
victed of my sins and just surrendered completely
to the Lord Jesus Christ, I would be saved. I
asked him how I could feel sure of salvation, what
evidence I had. He looked at me for a moment
in that gentle way as only Moody could look.
'Your own soul tells you that/ he said tenderly and
sympathetically. It was a supreme moment of my
life." 40 As it would surely be of any one's.

So we see that Moody enjoyed three of the in-
tensest excitements and intoxications known to
man: that of stirring a vast audience by his own
unaided power, that of moving men to do his bid-
ding in the practical affairs of this world, and
that of saving souls; but of the three the latter,
though perhaps not the most immediately intense,
is assuredly the most varied and the most endur-
ing. And again, as with the other intoxicants, there
is always the danger that such power will turn a
man's head, will make him arrogant and unduly
arbitrary in his dealings with others. How
immense the power is appears admirably in the
comment of Henry Ward Beecher upon it: "I am

THE MOLDER OF SOULS

ashamed of myself positively to be an object of
more faith than my Savior ; yet I have persons com-
ing to me every day of my life with their wants and
troubles, and when I think of the injustice of
coming to me thus instead of going to Christ, I
feel just like pushing them, away* How eagerly
they believe every statement I make; how they
hang upon my sympathy and hope I will let them
come again tomorrow. 3 ' 41 It is safe to say that
Moody was quite as much haunted by such per-
sons as Beecher was. Yet there is no evidence
whatever that his head was turned or that in his
later years he treated them with any less humility
or self-forgetfulness than in his youth. But he
did enjoy it. There is no denying that Neither
Beecher nor any one else could emphasize the
power more clearly than he does: "The longer I
live the more I am convinced it is a greater thing
to influence a man's will ; a man whose will is set
against God ; to have that will broken and brought
into subjection to God's will or, in other words, it
is a greater thing to have power over a living, sin-
ning, God-hating man, than to quicken the dead." 42
And he reveled to the full in the exercise of it:
"Then the joy of winning men to Christ. There is
no joy like it. I thought when I was converted that

299

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

that was a great joy, but, oh, the bliss of saving
others. There is no joy in the world like that
The luxury of winning a soul to Christ, the luxury
of being used by God in building up his kingdom,
the luxury of hearing the young convert testify of
what God has done for him." 43 Or, as he sums it
up elsewhere: "It is the greatest pleasure of living
to win souls to Christ, and it is a pleasure that
Angels can't enjoy." 44

The excitement, the exaltation, were so great
that he liked to think that there were no limits to
his power, that is, to the power of God working in
him. Only go at it right, he says, and you can
accomplish all things : "I have hardly ever known
in my life a man who resented being spoken to
about his soul. Of course you must go the right
way to work and wait for the guiding of the Spirit.
But in 999 cases out of a thousand a wise, skillful
conversation on the deepest things of the soul is
not resented." 45 At another time, referring to a
hard subject who had been conquered, he puts it
even more sweep ingly and universally: "In all my
acquaintances I don't know of a man whom it
seemed more hopeless to reach. I believe if we
lay ourselves out for the work, there is not a man

300

THE HOLDER OF SOULS

in Boston" and surely impossibility could go no
further than Boston '"but can be reached and
saved. I don't care who he is, if we go in the
name of our Master, and persevere till we suc-
ceed." 46

What a delicious range of conjectures does this
passage open. Constantly, as I have followed
Moody's triumphant course of effort and success,
I have thought to myself of the innumerable types
whom it seemed to me impossible that he could
have influenced by any ingenuity whatever, and I
have set down little imaginary dialogues in which
his insistent "Are you a Christian?" received the
greatest variety of answers. The hardened chil-
dren of this world are perhaps more easily reached
than might be supposed. Their indifference and
disregard are sometimes melted, if you can once
call their attention to matters they have deliberately
thrust on one side. But there are more subtle,
thoughtful tempers whom 1 Moody could surely
never have touched. I have already referred to a
conceivable confrontation with Lincoln. What
could he have made of Goethe, or of Shelley, or
of Flaubert? Every one of them would have been
courteous, would have been interested. But his

301

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

skillful conversation on the deepest things of the
soul would have fallen off them like snow-flakes
that melt before they can be noticed.

I think he would have had most trouble with
those that were most like himself and those that
were least Mr. Duffus has excellently pointed out
with what astonishment, indignation, and resent-
ment Moody would have met any one who had
assailed him with the certainly very appropriate
query, a Are you a Christian?" On the other hand,
let us take our Shakespearean clown, who, as I
have said before, has no soul, or all soul, whose
own fluid personality is lost, dissolved, in the
quick, gracious play of the mobile world about
him. When Moody assails him with the eternal
interrogatory can you not imagine his answer:
"No, no, Moody, I am too little. And, Moody, let
me warn you that that vast, swollen, humble, eter-
nal consequence of yours is filling the whole infi-
nite universe, and light and gayety and laughter
and even God are being crowded into a little
wee corner. If you don't take care, they will
be crowded out altogether, and your vast con-
sequence, and all this sun-warmed, wind-swept,
laughter-lighted universe will turn to nothing."
And the clown would go his way, and Moody his.

302

THE MOLDER OF SOULS

Yet, though there were so many upon whom
Moody could have made no Impression, upon
whom, with his keen practical sense, he would
never have attempted to make any, we must re-
member how many thousands there were who
needed his help, whom he could help, and whom
he did help.

That is all, I think. And the question finally
arises, whether the doctrines that Moody preached
will fade and vanish, or whether with a strange
and indestructible vitality they will survive, in
one form or another, to move the world. Surely
we may end as we began, with the insistence that
God is the one supreme universal need of all hu-
manity, and that that need was never more pro-
nounced than in America to-day. Not long ago
a brilliant and popular author, who would cer-
tainly never be associated with evangelistic propa-
ganda, wrote me in regard to a review of one of
his books: "What I really want to thank you for
is your perception that I am interested in nothing
else in the world, seriously, except speculations
and wonderings about God ... I suppose, if we
would all admit it, none of us is really interested
in anything else." It makes no difference how you
define God. You need not define Him at all, but

303

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

fall back upon the saying of Emerson, "In your
metaphysics you have denied personality to the
Deity, yet when the devout motions of the Soul
come, yield to them heart and life, though they
should clothe God with shape and color." 47 The
simple fact is, that, if God does not exist, the uni-
verse is but a wilderness of barren horror. If
He does exist, life should be but one long effort
to know Him and be at one with Him. Separa-
tion from Him is the most terrible punishment
the mind can conceive. As one of the very great-
est of English prose writers expresses it: "What
Tophet is not Paradise, what brimstone is not am-
ber, what gnashing is not a comfort, what gnaw-
ing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is
not a marriage-bed to this damnation, to be se-
cluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight
of God?" 48

It may be that in the future others will have
different ways of overcoming this separation from
those that appealed to D. L. Moody. But it will
not be denied that in his day none worked more
passionately, more lovingly, and more successfully
to bring God to man and man to God.

304

BOOKS BY D. L. MOODY. THE TITLES IN

ITALICS ARE THOSE USED FOR REFERENCE

IN THE NOTES

Bible Characters, Revell, 1888.

Glad Tidings, E. B. Treat, 1876.

Heaven, Revell, 1880.

Latest Sermons, Colportage Association, 1900.

Life and Sermons, J. S. Ogilvie, 1900.

Men of the Bible, Colportage Association, 1898.

The Overcoming Life, Revell, 1896,

Pleasure and Profit in Bible Study, Revell, 1895.

Prevailing Prayer, Revell, 1885.

Secret Power, Revell, 1881.

Select Sermons, Colportage Association, no date.

Short Talks, Colportage Association, 1900.

Sowing and Reaping, Revell, 1896.

Moody's Stories, Colportage Association, 1899.

To All People, E. B. Treat, 1877.

To the Work, Revell, 1896.

The Way Home, Colportage Association, 1904.

Weighed and Found Wanting, Colportage Association, 1898.

305

BOOKS BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL, WITH

THE ABBREVIATIONS USED IN REFERRING

TO THEM IN THE NOTES

Abbott, Lyman, Silhouettes of My
Contemporaries.

Begbie, Harold, Life of William
Booth.

Beardsley, Frank Grenville, A His-
tory of American Revivals.

Biederwolf, William E., Evangelism.

Chapman, J. Wilbur, The Life and
Work of D wight L. Moody.

Clark, Rufus W., The Great Work
of God in Great Britain under
Messrs. Moody and San key.

Coe, George A., The Spiritual Life.

Conant, William C., Narratives of
Remarkable Conversions and Re-
vival Incidents.

Gumming, I. A. M, Tabernacle
Sketches.

Daniels, Reverend W. H., D. L.
Moody and His Work.

Daniels, W. H., Moody: His Words,
Work, and Workers.

Dewey, Orville, Letters of an Eng-
lish Traveler to His Friend in
England on the Revivals of Re-
ligion.

Duffus, Robert L., The Hound of
Heaven, in American Mercury,
April, 1925, vol. v, pp. 424-432.

Farwell, John V., Early Recollec-
tions of Dwight . Moody.

306

Abbott, Silhouettes.
Begbie, Booth.

Beardsley.
Biederwolf.

Chapman.

Clark.
Coe.

Conant.

Tabernacle Sketches.
Daniels, D. L. Moody.
Daniels, Moody.

Dewey.
Farwell.

BIOGRAPHICAL BOOKS

Finney, Reverend Charles G., Mem-
oirs, Written by Himself.

Goodspeed, Reverend E. J., A Full
History of the Wonderful Career
of Moody and Sankey in Great
Britain and America.

Goss, Charles F., Echoes from the
Pulpit and Platform.

Hall, John, and George H. Stuart,
The American Evangelists, D. L.
Moody and Ira D. Sankey in
Great Britain and Ireland.

James, William, The Varieties of Re-
ligious Experience.

Kernahan, A. Earl, Visitation Evan-
gelism.

McDowell, John, Dwight L.
Moody.

Moody, Paul D. and A. P. Fitt, The
Shorter Life of D. L. Moody.

Moody, W. R., The Life of Dwight
L. Moody.

Moody, D. L., at Home.

Nason, Reverend Elfas, The Amer-
ican Evangelists Dwight L.
Moody and Ira D. Sankey.

Northrop, Henry Davenport, Life
and Labors of Dwight L. Moody.

Pascal, Blaise, Pensees, (edition
Louandre).

Sainte-Beuve, C. A., Port-RoyaL

Sales, Saint Francis of, (Euvres,

(edition 1833).
Sankey, Ira D., My Life and the

Story of the Gospel Songs.
Stebbins, George C., Reminiscences,

and Gospel Hymn Stories.

Finney, Memoirs.

Goodspeed.
Goss.

Hall

James, Varieties.

Kernahan*

McDowell.

Paul Moody.

W. R. Moody.
Moody at Home.

Nason.
Northrop.

Pascal, Pensees.
Sainte-Beuve, Port-
Royal.

Saint Francis, CEumes.

Sankey.

Stebbins.

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

Torrey, R. A., Why God Used D. L.
Moody. Torrey,

Tracy, Joseph, The Great Awaken^

inff. Tracy.

Tyerman, Reverend L., The Life
and Times of Reverend John
Wesley. Tyerman.

Underwood, Alfred Clair, Conver-
sion, Christian and Non-Christian. Underwood.

Willard, Frances E., Glimpses of

Fifty 'Years. Willard, Glimpses.

Williamson, David, Ira. D. Sankey. Williamson.

308

NOTES
CHAPTER I: THE GROWTH OF A SOUL

1. Short Talks, p. IOO.

2. Duffus, p. 424.

3. WiUard, Glimpses, p. 633.

4. Daniels, D. L. Moody, p. 13.

5. Stories, p. 80.

6. W. R. Moody, p. 24.

7. Weighed and Found Wanting, p, 53.

8. Stories, p. 106.

9. Nason, p. 31.

IQ. Glad Tidings, p. 69.

11. The Way Home, p. 41.

12. Glad Tidings, p. 164.

13. Gumming, p. 81.

14. Latest Sermons, p. I2O.

15. Goss, p. 84.

1 6. Glad Tidings, p. 456.

17. Boston Advertiser, March 31, 1877.

1 8. Goss, p. 39. ,

19. Daniels, D. L. Moody, p. 51.

20. Id., p. 54.

21. Id., p. 190.

22. Goss, p. 48.

23. Short Talks, p. 79.

24. Darwin to Henslow, April I, 1848, More Letters of
Charles Darwin, vol. i, p. 61.

25. Begbie, Booth, vol. i, p. 225.

26. Sermon In Boston Transcript, February, i, 1877.

27. Tabernacle Sketches, p. 12.

28. Glad Tidings, p. 452.

29. Prevailing Prayer, p. 51.

30. Heaven, p. 8.

31. Underwood, Conversion, p. II.

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

32. Finney, Memoirs, p. 263.

33. Finney, Memoirs, p. 20.

34. Harold Begbie, Twice-born Men, p. 204.

35. Underwood, Conversion, p. 223.

36. Jonathan Edwards, A Narrative of Conversions, section iii.

37. Short Talks, p. 78.

38. Pleasure and Profit, p. 91.

39. W. R. Moody, p. 42.

40. Men of the Bible, p. 23.

41. Torrey, p. 53.

42. Sermon, in Boston Advertiser, February I, 1877.

43. Northrop, p. 528.

44. Torrey, p. 9.

45. Life and Sermons, p. 353*

46. To All People, p. 164.

47. Northrop, p. 79.

48. Daniels, D. L. Moody, p. 116.

49. To All People, p. 168.

50. Goss, p. 40.

51. Daniels, D. L. Moody, p. 149.

CHAPTER II: HEAVEN AND HELL

1. Pascal, Pensees, I.

2. Goodspeed, p. 315.

3. Heaven, p. 8.

4. Kelman, in Daniels, D. L. Moody, p. 269.

5. Pleasure and Profit, p. 20.

6. Pleasure and Profit, p. 26.

7. To ^// P*o#fe, p. 508.

8. Goss, p. 104.

9. Life and Sermons, p. 191.

10. Stories, p. 55-

11. Tabernacle Sketches, preface.

12. Tabernacle Sketches, p. 38.

13. Heaven, p. 9.

14. Prevailing Prayer, p. 77-

15. Latest Sermons, p. 53.

16. Secret Power, p. 76.

310

NOTES

17. Underwood, p. 106.

1 8. John Dyer, in Penn Monthly, June, 1875, vol. vi, p. 430.

19. Dewey, p. 19.

20. In Harper's Magazine, November, 1917, vol. cxxxv, p. 858.

21. See Edward Hitchcock, Life of Mary Lyon, p. 155.

22. Oldtown Folks (Riverside edition), vol. ii, p. 54.

23. Finney, Memoirs, p. 104.

24. Begbie, Booth, vol i, p. 412.

25. Dewey, p. 64.

26. Quoted in Tracy, p. 215.

27. Conant, p. 43.

28. In Beardsley, p. 270.

29. Thoughts on the Revival, section v.

30. Maximen und Reflexiomn, section Hi.

31. Thoughts on the Revival, section v.

32. St. John of the Cross, in James, Varieties, p. 306.

33. Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
(translation Haldane and Kemp), vol. i, p. 532.

34. The Way Home, p. 12.

35. The Way Home, p. 81.

36. Silhouettes, p. 2OI.

37. Saint Teresa, The Way of Perfection (translation by the
Benedictines of Stanbrook), p. 174.

38. Senancour, Obermann, p. 40.

39. The Way Home, p. 68.

40. Quoted by James H. Leuba, Studies in the Psychology of
Religious Phenomena, American Journal of Psychology,
April, 1896, vol. vii, p. 324.

41. Pensees, xxiv, 35.

42. John Morley, Critical Miscellanies, vol. i. p. 344.

43. Quoted in Outlook, September 26, 1908, vol, xc, p. 175.

44. Weighed and Found Wanting, p. 12 1.

45. Short Talks, p. 76.

46. Finney, Memoirs* p. 171.

47. Select Sermons, p. 45.

48. Madame Du Deffand to Voltaire, February 28, 1766,
Voltaire, Correspondance, vol. xii, p. 231.

49. In James, Varieties, p. 137. As Dr. A. W. Vernon points

3 11

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

out to me, this is taken from Eckermann, Gesprdche Mit
Goethe, January 27, 1824, vol. i, p. 76.

50. To All People, p. 162,

51. Jean Jacques Brousson, Anatole France Himself (trans-
lation Pollock), p. 70.

52. Short Talks, p. 90.

53. James, Varieties, p, 47.

CHAPTER III: MOODY THE PREACHER

1. John Dyer, in Penn Monthly, June, 1875, vol. vi, p. 433.

2. Ibid.

3. Finney, Memoirs, p. 81.

4. Men of the Bible, p. 32.

5. Whitefield's Diary, in Tracy, p. 107.

6. Nason, p. 85.

7. Saturday Review, March 13, 1875, vol. xxxix, p. 344.

8. Silhouettes, p. 2OO.

9. Tabernacle Sketches, p. 12.

10. Goss, p. 96.

11. To All People, p, 179.

12. The Overcoming Life, p. 72.

13. W. R. Moody, p. 441.

14. W. R. Moody, p. 459,

15. Torrey, p. 24.

1 6. Dr. Joseph Collins, in Harper $ Magazine, November,
1917, vol. cxxxv, p. 864.

17. W. R. Moody, p. 315.

1 8. Silhouettes, p. 2OO.

19. W, R. Moody, p. 500.

20. W. R. Moody, p. 509.

21. Goodspeed, p. 238.

22. Goss, p. 101.

23. To All People, p. 185.

24. Clara Erskine Clement, Charlotte Cushman, p. 100,

25. Ramakrishna, His Life and Sayings, in James, Varieties,
P. 365.

26. Port-Royal, vol. i, p. 268.

27. Begbie, Booth, vol. i, p. 88.

312

NOTES

28. Begbie, Booth, vol. i, p. 47.

29. Pensees, iii, 2.

30. Confessions, book x, chapter 37.

31. Tyerman, vol. ii, p. 595.

32. Ibid.

33. Reverend Jonathan Parsons, of revival in Lynn, Con-
necticut, 1741, in Tracy, p. 139.

34. Finney, Memoirs, p. 228.

35. James Stalker, in Sunday Magazine, reprinted in Living
Age, May 24, 1900, vol. Ixx, p. 398.

36. Life and Sermons, p. 140.

37. The Overcoming Life, p. 83.

38. Glad Tidings, p. 471.

39. Torrey, p. 28.

40. DufEus, p. 429.

41. Conant, p. 24.

42. Life and Ser?nons, p. 8?

43. Life and Sermons, p. 8l.

44. Chapman, p. 276.

45. Nason, p. 59.

46. Glad Tidings, p. 375.

47. Nason, p. 82.

48. Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part ii, section
2, member 3.

49. Tracy, p. 427.

50. Clark, p. 34.

51. W. R. Moody, p. 360.
52- Life and Sermons, p. HO.

53. W. R. Moody, p. 2.

54. Moody at Home, p. 29.

55. Dewey, p. 12.

56. To All People, p. 425.

57. Weighed and Found Wanting, p. 47.

58. Latest Sermons, p. 58.

59. Weighed and Found Wanting, p. 59.

60. Richard Whiteing, in Manchester Guardian, reprinted in
Living Age, September 30, 1919, vol. cccii, p. 734

3*3

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

CHAPTER IV: MOODY AND SANKEY

1. Williamson, p. 37.

2. Duffus, p. 428.

3. Goodspeed, p. 539.

4. A. C. Benson, in Underwood, p. 208.

5. Nason, p. 234.

6. January 29, 1877.

7. W. R. Moody, p. 174.

8. Williamson, p. 145.

9. Daniels, D. L. Moody, p. 230.

10. Hall, p. 18.

11. Williamson, p. 121.

12. Goodspeed, p. 280.

13. Hall, p. 79.

14. Sankey, p. 80.

15. Tabernacle Sketches, p, 32.

1 6. Williamson, p. 12.

17. Sankey, p. 13.

1 8. Williamson, p, 154.

19. Nason, p. 235.

20. Williamson, p. 45. Also, in Sankey, pp. 305-307.

21. Goodspeed, p. 580.

22. Williamson, p. 21, and In many other places, with the
usual variants.

23. Northrop, p. 86.

24. W. R. Moody, p. 180.

25. Williamson, p. 49.

26. Northrop, p. 176.

27. Goodspeed, p. 539.

28. Northrop, p. 210.

29. Sankey, p. 70.

30. Glad Tidinas, p. 449.

31. Goodspeed, p. 582.

32. W. R. Moody, p. 259.

33. Northrop, p. 517.

34. Northrop, p. 176.

35. Goodspeed, p. 589.

36. To All People, p. 424.

3*4

NOTES

37- Goss, p. 53.

38. W. R. Moody, p. 529.

39. Underwood, p. 207,

40. Preface to Dawn Boy,, by Edna Lou Walton.

41. Tyerman, vol. i, p. 398.

42. Secret Power, p. 118.

43. To All People, p. 171.

44. Stories, p. 46.

45. Northrop, p. 535.

46. Goss, p. 100.

47. Tabernacle Sketches, p. II.

48. E. F. Rimbault, in Leisure Hour, 1875, vol. xxiv, p. 476*

49. Clark, p. 51.

50. Goodspeed, p. 294.

51. In Underwood, p. 208.

52. Clark, p. 51.

53. Printed at length in My Life and the Story of the Gospel
Songs.

54. Clark, p. 49.

55. The World Soul

56. Essay on Love, Essays, First Series, p. 84 (Riverside edi-
tion, 1884).

57. Cowper to Newton, September 9, 1781, Cowper's Corre-
spondence (edition Wright), vol. i, p. 351.

58. Quoted by E. F. Rimbault, in Leisure Hour, 1875, vol.
xxiv, p. 475.

CHAPTER V: MOODY THE MAN

1. Glad Tidings, p. 490.

2. Scotch Journalist, in Hall, p. 189.

3. Nason, p. 77.

4. W. R. Moody, p. 553.

5. Goss, p. 83-

6. Northrop, p. 188.

7. Sermon in Boston Advertiser, January 30, 1877.

8. Daniels, Moody, p. 473.

9. Quoted in Outlook, December 30, 1899, vol. Ixiii, p. 998.
IO. In Abbott, Silhouettes, p. 206.

315

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

11. Life and Sermons, p. 154.

12. W. R. Moody, p. 552.

13. Life and Sermons, p. 194.

14. Select Sermons, p. 67.

15. Torrey, p. 33.

16. Torrey, p. 36,

17. Nason, p. 80.

1 8. Farwell, p. 81.

19. W. R. Moody, p. 589.

20. The Overcoming Life, p. 16.

21. Goss, p. 86-

22. Goss, p. 85.

23. Clark, p. 36.

24. Chapman, p. 26.

25. Stebbins, p. 313.

26. Goss, p. 63.

27. Goodspeed, p. 587.

28. W. R. Moody, p. 38-

29. W. R. Moody, p. 30.

30. Paul Moody, p. 24.

31. Stebbins, p. 314.

32. W. R. Moody, p. 518.

33. Secret Power, p. 122.

34. James, Varieties, p. 365.

35. Daniels, D. L. Moody, p. 30.

36. Williamson, p. 154.

37. Northrop, p. 461.

38. Pascal, Pen$ees f xxiv, 60.

39. Latest Sermons, p. 53.

40. W. R. Moody, p. 517.

41. W. R. Moody, p. 23.

42. Paul Moody, p. 95.

43. W. R. Moody, p. 523.

44. The Overcoming Life, p. 30.

45. Nason, p. 51.

46. W. R. Moody, p. 507.

47. Men of the Bible, p, 56.

48. Glad Tidings, p. 150.

316

NOTES

49. Life and Sermons, p. 320.

50. Willard, Glimpses, p. 361.

51. Daniels, D. L. Moody, p. 94.

52. Glad Tidings, p. 328.

53. Life and Sermons, p. 173.

54. Short Talks, p. 77.

55. Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, vol. i, p. 359.

56. To ^// People, p. 39.

57. Nason, p. 345.

58. Goodspeed, p. 234.

59. Episcopal Clergyman, in Independent, March 5, 1903, vol.
Iv, p. 538.

CHAPTER VI : MOODY THE MAN OF
BUSINESS

1. Goss, p. 53.

2. W. R. Moody, p. 509.

3. Ibid.

4. Moody at Home, p. 112.

5. McDowell, p. 56.

6. Stebbins, p. 207.

7. Tabernacle Sketches, p. II.

8. Life and Sermons, p. 48.

9. Torrey, p. 24.

10. GOES, p. 91.

11. McDowell, p. 54.

12. W. R. Moody, p. 46.

13. Paul Moody, p. 95.

14. Duffus, p. 429.

15. In Outlook, January 20, 1900, vol. Ixiv, p. 164.

16. Tracy, p. 258.

17. Goss, p. 85.

1 8. Northrop, p. 517.

19. To the Perronets, Tyerman, vol. ii, p. 85*

20. Begbie, Booth, vol. i, p. 427.

21. Finney, p. 192.

22. Nason, p. 83.

23. W. R. Moody, p. 1 80.

24. Torrey, p. 8,

317

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

25. Men of the Bible, p. 24.

26. Men of the Bible, p. 7.

27. Lettres Spirituelles, No. 40.

28. To /&<? JForA, p. 32.

29. G/tfJ Tidings, p. 58.

30. Willard, Glhnpses J p. 358.

31. Daniels, D. L. Moody, p. 28.

32. Daniels, D. L. Moody, p. 29.

33. W. R. Moody, p. 263.

34. Begbie, Booth, vol. i, p. 384.

35. Northrop, p. 77.

36. Daniels, D. L. Moody, p. 127.

37. Torrey, p. 15.

38. Goss, p. 67.

39. Daniels, D. L. Moody, p. 171.

40. W. R. Moody, p. 457.

41. Tabernacle Sketches, p. 12.

42. Unitarian Review, Editors Note Book, March, 1877.

43. To All People, p. 169.

44. To All People, p. 181.

45. Goss, p. 4.

46. Latest Sermons, p. III.

47. Goss, p. 90.

48. Ibid.

49. Glad Tidings, p. 14.

50. Dr. Henry F. Cutler, in McDowell, p. 44.

51. Beth Bradford Gilchrist, The Life of Mary Lyon, p. 198.

CHAPTER VII: THE MOLDER OF SOULS

1. Duff us, p. 430.

2. Finney, Memoirs, p. 92.

3. Dewey, p. 56.

4. Saturday Review, May 22, 1875, v l* xxxix, p. 656.

5. Moody at Home, p. 41.

6. Moody at Home, p. 73.

7. Coe, p. 56.

8". Quoted in Henry Charles Lea, A History of Auricular
Confession* vol. ii, p. 456.

NOTES

9. Coe, p. 21.

10. Quoted in C. P. de Lasteyrie, The History of Auricular
Confession (translation), vol. i, p. 59.

11. Saint Francis of Sales, CEuvres, vol. iv, p. 217.

12. In Jules Lemaitre, Fenelon, p. 262.

13. Let ires Spirituelles, in (Euvres Choisies (edition Hachette,
1910), vol. iv, p. 114.

14. Glad Tiding p. 52.

15. To All People, p. 75.

1 6. Pleasure and Profit, p. 117.
I?. Glad Tidings, p. 63.

1 8. McDowell, p. 39.

19. Select Sermons > p. I2O.

20. Beardsley, p. 322.

21. W. R. Moody, p. 392.

22. Pleasure and Profit, p. 120.

23. Moody at Home, p. 50.

24. Moody at Home, p. 70.

25. Torrey, p. 39.

26. Torrey, p. 43.

27. Glad Tidings, p, 261.

28. In North American Review, February, 1900, vol. clxx,
p. 270.

29. Ibid.

30. To All People, p. 176.

31. Pleasure and Profit, p. 121.

32. Farwell, p. 28.

33. Epistles of Saint Jerome, No. 133, freely translated from
the French of Gaston Boissier, in La Fin du Paganisme>
vol. ii, p. 8 1.

34. (Euvres, vol. xi, p. 288.

35. In Daniels, Moody, pp. 334-441.

36. Life and Sermons, p. 313.

37. To All People, p. 126.

38. To All People, p. 124.

39. In Chapman, p. 31.

40. Article on Moody's Northfield Home, in National Maga-
zine, February, 1900, vol. xi, p. 478.

319

D. L. MOODY: A WORKER IN SOULS

41. Address by Beecher, in Conant, p. 383.
42* Stories, p. 66.

43. Sermon, in Boston Transcript, February i, 1877,

44. Glad Tidings, p. 51.

45. Williamson, p. 105.

46. To All People, p. 162.

47. Essays, first series (Riverside edition, 1884), p. 58.

48. Sermon of John Donne, in Bullen's edition of the Works
of John Marston, vol. i, p, be.

320

126027

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "D L Moody A Worker In Souls"

See other formats