24. Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899)
Dwight Lyman Moody was perhaps the most remarkable Christian layman America ever produced.
Yes, I said “layman,” because D. L. Moody was never ordained, nor did he ever have any formal training for the ministry. He preferred to be called “Mr. Moody,” and he readily admitted his educational limitations. In fact, whenever a group of preachers met with him, Moody usually asked them pointed questions about the Bible and the interpretation of difficult passages. “I have never been through a college or a theological seminary,” he once said to a gathering of London pastors, “and I have invited you here to get all the valuable teaching I can out of you to use in my work!”
And he readily admitted when his interpretations were wrong and his sermons had to be changed!
One time Moody invited Dr. Henry Weston of Crozier Seminary to be one of the speakers at his Northfield Conference. (Dr. Weston was one of the original editors of the Scofield Reference Bible.) As Weston stepped to the pulpit, Moody picked up one of the platform chairs, stepped off the platform, and sat right in front of the pulpit, literally at the preacher’s feet.
Dr. Weston began to expound the Word, and suddenly Moody exclaimed, “There goes one of my sermons!” Weston stopped and asked the evangelist what he had meant by that statement. Moody explained that Weston’s exposition had shown him that his own sermon on that text had been built on a misinterpretation and was now useless.
Weston continued to preach, and Moody said it again, “There goes another!” Weston smiled and kept right on speaking, because in his seminary classes the students had used Moody’s sermons to challenge their professor’s interpretations—and now the situation was reversed!
As I review the life of D. L. Moody, I am again amazed to discover how many important servants of God were influenced by this energetic Yankee’s life and ministry. Ira Sankey, Moody’s soloist, would probably have died an unknown Internal Revenue collector had Moody not recruited him. The saintly F. B. Meyer, proper British pastor, had his life transformed through meeting and working with Moody. The godly American pastor, S. D. Gordon—whose series of Quiet Talk books is still popular—was converted in Moody’s campaign in Philadelphia (1875–76). Moody laid hands on intellectual Reuben Archer Torrey and God made a soul-winning evangelist out of him. Spurgeon’s gifted assistant, W. Y. Fullerton, gladly admitted that he “discovered his life’s business”—the winning of the lost— at Moody’s Belfast meetings in 1874. And the great expositor Dr. G. Campbell Morgan was “discovered” by Moody and brought to America before Morgan’s gifts were really appreciated in Britain. (In all fairness, we must admit that Moody himself was “discovered” in Britain before he became popular in America.)
Dr. A. T. Pierson estimated conservatively that Moody brought the gospel to 100 million people during his lifetime—without radio, television, or even a public address system! And it is remarkable to discover some of the people who sat in his congregations—a lad named Harry Ironside, for one. When Moody held his Los Angeles campaign in 1888, twelve-year-old Ironside was sitting in Hazzard’s Pavilion, listening intently. Little did either of them realize that, for eighteen years (1930–48), Ironside would pastor Moody Church in Chicago.
When Moody was preaching in Denver, a young lad wanted to hear the evangelist but could not get into the building. “I’ll get you in!” said a heavyset man at the back door. “Just hold on to my coattail.” The man was D. L. Moody, and the boy was Paul Rader, who grew up to become one of America’s greatest preachers and also a pastor of Moody Church (1915–21).
In the late 1800s, when Moody was preaching in western New York, a boy named Harry Emerson Fosdick was in the congregation— more than once! Apparently the gospel message did not impress the lad, for he grew up to become America’s leading liberal preacher and an opponent of the fundamentals of the faith.
How could this relatively unlearned shoe salesman become such a forceful and effective evangelist and teacher? Moody’s success lay in his tremendous burden for the lost and a willingness to do whatever God asked of him. The life and ministry of this humble man of God is an example to us of what the Lord can do in the life of an ordinary person who is totally yielded to him.
Dwight L. Moody was born in Northfield, Massachusetts, on February 5, 1837. When he was four months old, young Victoria was crowned Queen of England, and Moody lived through almost all of the Victorian era. He died December 22, 1899, and Victoria died January 22, 1901.
The Moody family was poor, and the situation became even worse when their father died in 1841, leaving their mother with seven children. Twins were born to her just a month after her husband died. The creditors swooped down on her, taking even the fuel from the woodpile. One especially cruel neighbor tried to foreclose on the mortgage. (Forty years later, Moody bought the man out!)
When Moody was seventeen years old, he went to Boston to work in his uncle’s shoe store. Sam Holton made his nephew promise that he would attend Sunday school and church, which young Dwight dutifully did. Fortunately, he had a teacher who was burdened for the lost. On April 25, 1855, Edward Kimball visited Moody at the store and led him to faith in Jesus Christ. (Seventeen years later, Moody would lead Kimball’s son to the Savior.)
“I was in a new world,” said Moody as he recalled the experience. “The next morning the sun shone brighter and the birds sang sweeter . . . it was the most delicious joy that I’d ever known.”1
A month later, Moody applied for membership in the Mt. Vernon Church, but he was rejected because he simply could not answer the questions put to him by the committee. One officer told him, “Young man, you can serve the Lord better by keeping still!” It took Moody a year to join the church; he was finally admitted on May 4, 1856.
Four months later he was in Chicago, selling shoes for the Wiswall Company on Lake Street. Moody was nineteen years old, a hard worker and a growing Christian; and, like Joseph in Egypt, he prospered because the Lord was with him.
Moody joined the Plymouth Congregational Church where Dr. J. E. Roy was pastor. He rented five pews and filled them with young men Sunday after Sunday. One day he walked into a little mission on North Wells Street and told the superintendent that he wanted to teach a Sunday school class. Apologetically, the superintendent confessed that he had almost as many teachers as students, so Moody decided to recruit his own class. The next Sunday he showed up with eighteen ragged pupils, thus doubling the size of the school.
“That was the happiest Sunday I have ever known,” Moody later stated. “I had found out what my mission was.”
During the summer of 1858, he taught his growing class on the shores of Lake Michigan. When winter set in, he moved them into an old, abandoned saloon on Market Street. By 1859 there were one thousand pupils in Moody’s Sunday school, and the creative ministry of their leader had won for him the title “Crazy Moody.” In fact, when Moody returned to Northfield for a visit in January 1860, his uncle Zeb Allen said he was crazy! To compensate for this kind of opposition, however, something very special happened on November 25, 1860—Abraham Lincoln visited Moody’s school and commended his work.
In June of that year Moody learned a lesson that helped transform his life and direct him into his future ministry. One of his faithful teachers was dying of tuberculosis and was greatly burdened for his pupils. Before he went to heaven, he wanted to be sure all of them were converted. The man was too weak to visit them alone, so Moody went along. For ten days, the two men visited home after home; and at the end of that time, they saw each of the children won to the Lord. When the teacher left for his widowed mother’s home to die, the entire class was at the railroad station, singing songs about heaven.
This experience made a lasting impression on Moody. From it he got “the strongest impulse for trying to bring souls to Christ.” Being successful in business meant less and less to him. The only business that counted was God’s business—winning the lost to Jesus Christ.
During the Civil War, Moody ministered effectively to the soldiers. In fact, this was his training ground for later ministry. He gradually overcame his shyness in public speaking and learned how to deal personally with people in great need. Moody built a chapel at Camp Douglas (where the Illinois Institute of Technology now stands) and saw that the gospel was preached to the men. He made nine visits to the front. He was on hand at Pittsburg Landing, Shiloh, and Murfreesboro, and was one of the first to enter Richmond.
Moody prospered as a shoe salesman and had saved $7,000—quite a sum in that day! He decided it was time he thought about marriage. He had noticed a lovely Christian girl teaching in the Sunday school. Her name was Emma Revell, and her father had been a British shipbuilder who had come to America to make a new beginning. Dwight and Emma were engaged in 1860, and on August 28, 1862, they were married. If the name Revell sounds familiar to you, it is because Emma’s brother, Fleming H. Revell, founded the Christian publishing firm that bore his name. In fact, he went into publishing primarily to make Moody’s songbooks and sermons available at a popular price to a wider audience. D. L. Moody was probably the originator of the Christian paperback.
As Moody’s Sunday school prospered, he faced a problem. Most of his converts did not feel at home in the established churches of the city. They wanted to be with Mr. Moody. Always the innovator and the pioneer, Moody built the Illinois Street Independent Church and laid hands on a fellow named Wheeler to be the pastor. Of course, nobody doubted who the leader of the church was.
Moody was now in the Lord’s business full-time. He allowed himself to be appointed to the Illinois State Sunday School Union Board. Always the activist, Moody never did shine while serving on committees; however, his presence certainly kept everybody else on their toes. In 1866 he was elected president of the YMCA in Chicago, a position he held until 1870. In that day, the “Y” was an evangelical ministry, seeking to reach the young people in the city. It was a perfect base of ministry for a man like Moody.
Despite his early successes, D. L. Moody still had some important lessons to learn about the Bible and about evangelism. At that moment God was preparing the man who would teach Moody these lessons. And the truths that would revolutionize Moody’s ministry were to come—not from the great theologians and preachers of the day—but from an ex-prizefighter in Great Britain.
“I do not expect to visit this country again.” Dwight L. Moody made that statement shortly after arriving in England in March 1867. He had been seasick during the voyage from America and was also a bit discouraged with the “dull and formal” church life in England. In short, he was homesick.
But Mr. Moody was wrong in his evaluation. During his ministry he would visit Britain seven times, and his fourth visit would last more than two years and result in thousands coming to Christ. In fact, it was Britain that really discovered Moody and Sankey and made their names household words before the men were famous in America.
During that first visit, Moody had practically no public ministry. He went to the Metropolitan Tabernacle and heard Charles Spurgeon preach. Although an usher tried to keep Moody out of the Tabernacle because he didn’t have a ticket, the quick-talking shoe salesman argued his way in. Spurgeon was one of his spiritual heroes, and Moody was not about to visit London without hearing him. Moody was greatly moved by the message from “an untrained man” like himself.
In the weeks that followed, Moody also met John Nelson Darby (founder of the Plymouth Brethren movement) and George Müller (pioneer of the famous “faith ministry” with orphans).
Moody gave a brief address at the anniversary breakfast of the Aldersgate YMCA in London. He was introduced as “our American cousin, the Reverend Mr. Moody from Chicago.”
“The vice-chairman has made two mistakes,” Moody said in reply. “To begin with, I’m not ‘the Reverend Mr. Moody’ at all. I’m plain Dwight L. Moody, a Sabbath school worker. And then I’m not your ‘American cousin.’ By the grace of God, I’m your brother, who is interested with you in our Father’s work for his children.”
In the speech that followed, Moody “unstarched” the British brethren, won many friends, offended a few saints, and started a fresh wind blowing. The noon prayer meetings at the YMCA took on new power and blessing, thanks to the influence of Moody. This brief contact with some of Britain’s religious leaders would bring rich dividends in Moody’s later ministry, particularly the 1873–75 campaign.
But in retrospect, the most important man he met on that trip was the ex-prizefighter Harry Moorehouse. Converted out of a life of great sin, Moorehouse had become a bold evangelist for the Lord. He and Moody had a great deal in common, but Moody was to learn from Moorehouse two important lessons.
“If you are ever in Chicago, plan to preach at my church,” Moody casually told Moorehouse, and then Moody forgot the matter completely. But Moorehouse did not forget. No sooner had Moody returned to Chicago than he received a letter from Moorehouse, informing his new friend that he had arrived in New York and would be coming to Chicago to preach! Moody had to be out of the city, so he told the church officers to let the young man preach.
When Moody returned home, he asked Emma how the British preacher had done, and she gave her husband an enthusiastic report. “He proves everything he says from the Bible,” she said, “and he has preached both nights from the same text—John 3:16.” Always ready to learn new truths and pick up new ideas, Moody went to the meeting and was amazed to see his own people carrying Bibles and using them during the message. Moorehouse began at John 3:16 and took the people from Genesis to Revelation as he talked about the love of God and the divine plan of redemption.
Privately, Moorehouse gently rebuked Moody. “Learn to preach God’s words instead of your own. He will make you a great power for good.” Then Moorehouse showed Moody how to use the Bible and trace the great themes of Scripture. It was like a second conversion for Moody. He purchased a Cruden’s Concordance and began to get up two or three hours before breakfast so that he might read and study the Bible. Years later, at the 1887 Northfield Conference, Moody said: “Take up the Bible, with a concordance. I believe Alexander Cruden did more to open up the Bible than he could ever have dreamed.”
But Moorehouse did more than teach Moody how to study the Bible. He taught him to love sinners to the Savior. Night after night, as the ex-prizefighter preached on John 3:16, he emphasized the love of God for lost men and women. As Moody listened, his eyes were opened and his heart was melted. “I never knew . . . that God loved us so much! This heart of mine began to thaw out; I could not hold back the tears.”
From 1867 to the fall of 1871, Moody kept busy in Sunday school work and the program of the YMCA. He became a popular speaker at state Sunday school conventions and was even elected to various offices in the associations, including that of president of the Illinois State Sunday School Association.
In 1870 Moody made a second trip to Britain. That same year, at the “Y” convention in Indianapolis, he heard Ira Sankey sing and decided he was just the man he needed for his own ministry. “Where are you from?” Moody asked. “What is your business? Are you married?” Sankey answered Moody’s questions, wondering what he was driving at.
It took Moody six months to convince Sankey that evangelism was his calling; but the man finally yielded, and the team of “Moody and Sankey” was born.
One story about Sankey must be repeated. While serving in the Union army, Sankey was on guard duty one night and felt inspired to sing a hymn. What he did not know was that he was in the sights of a Confederate rifleman who, when he heard the song, lowered his rifle and did not shoot. If ever a man had been “compassed about with songs of deliverance” (see Ps. 32:7), it was Ira Sankey.
It appeared that everything was now in place, and Moody could move ahead in Sunday school work, the YMCA ministry, and the winning of souls. But something was still missing in Moody’s life and ministry, and he had to experience some further crises before he would become the man God wanted him to be. If ever there was a busy man serving the Lord, it was Dwight L. Moody. But deep within, Moody knew that something was missing from his ministry.
Enter at this point two somewhat eccentric women, Aunt Sarah Cooke and Mrs. Hawxhurst, both of whom were identified with “the holiness movement” of greater Chicago and northern Indiana. Cooke belonged to the Free Methodist Church but fellowshiped widely with God’s people and called herself simply “the handmaiden of the Lord.”
“Mr. Moody was an earnest, whole-souled worker,” Sarah Cooke wrote in her memoirs, Wayside Sketches, “but ever to me there seemed such a lack in his words. It seemed more the human, the natural energy and force of character of the man, than anything spiritual.”2 Cooke and Hawxhurst often discussed Moody and his ministry and then decided to talk to the man himself. They told him that they were praying for him that he might receive the power of the Spirit. At first Moody was surprised at their concern and suggested that they pray for the lost. Then he became convicted and began to pray with the ladies every Friday afternoon.
“At every meeting,” Sarah Cooke reported, “he would get more earnest, in agony of desire for this fullness of the Spirit.”
But before the “fire” of God’s power came upon him, Moody experienced another kind of fire, for on October 8, 1871, the great Chicago fire broke out. From Belden Avenue on the north to 12th Street on the south, and as far west as Halsted Street, the fire destroyed more than 17,000 buildings and property worth nearly $200 million.
Moody was preaching that night at Farwell Hall on the theme “What Will You Do with Jesus?” He admitted later that what he did that night was foolish—he ended the message by asking the people to take a week to decide and then come back to report their decision. But even while Sankey was singing the closing song (ironically it was “Today the Savior Calls”), the noise of fire engines and warning bells drowned out the meeting. Moody dismissed the crowd and set about doing what he could to rescue his family and a few possessions.
The Moody family found refuge with Horatio Spafford, the author of the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul.” Later Moody said that the fire had taken from him “everything but my reputation and my Bible.” When a well-meaning friend said, “Moody, I hear you lost everything!” Moody opened his Bible to Revelation 21:7 and said, “Well, you understood wrong. I have a good deal more than I lost!” Then he read the verse: “He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God.”
With his family cared for, Moody left for the East Coast to preach, rest, and raise money to replace his church building. It was while ministering in Theodore Cuyler’s church in Brooklyn that Moody had his life-changing experience and the power of the Spirit came upon him. He was walking down Wall Street in New York City, mulling over the impotence of his preaching and the failure of his fund-raising program, when the Spirit of God filled him.
“Oh, what a day!” he later reported. “I cannot describe it; I seldom refer to it; it is almost too sacred an experience to name. . . . I can only say that God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand.”
It is unfortunate that some groups have tried to use Moody’s experience to promote their own special views of the baptism of the Spirit and speaking in tongues. There is no evidence that D. L. Moody ever spoke in tongues, and during his many campaigns in Great Britain, he and Sankey always avoided the people who promoted tongues and prophesying. If somebody in a meeting began to speak out or swoon, Moody would either call for a hymn or close the meeting.
One of the leading specialists on the theology of D. L. Moody is my friend Dr. Stanley Gundry, whose definitive book Love Them In: The Proclamation Theology of D. L. Moody should be in every pastor’s library. Originally published by Moody Press, the book was reprinted by Baker Books.
Dr. Gundry says:
One must proceed cautiously when examining Moody’s statements on this matter (the filling of the Spirit), for it is all too easy to impose upon Moody’s statements a meaning that he did not intend. . . . Moody himself seldom went into the details of his 1871 experience, or at least existing sermons seldom give the details. But on those rare occasions when he did, he described it as a filling, a baptism or an anointing that came upon him when he was in a cold state. His selfish ambitions in preaching had been surrendered, and he then received power by which to do his work for Christ.3
Moody returned to the rather dismal “revival” meeting at Cuyler’s church, and the fire began to burn. More than one hundred people professed faith in Christ, and the blessings spread to other congregations. Moody was preaching the same messages, but his preaching contained a new tenderness, and the power of God was evident in the meetings.
Something also happened to Moody, the fund-raiser. Instead of depending on his own experience as a salesman, Moody began to trust God for guidance as he approached people with his needs. He was still aggressive, but in a new way. Before long he had the needed funds to replace the church building. On December 24, 1871, he dedicated the new tabernacle with more than 1,000 children and their parents assisting him.
Perhaps this is a good place to mention the history of the church that Mr. Moody founded in 1864. It was originally called the Illinois Street Independent Church, with Mr. Wheeler as the pastor. Of course, everybody knew that Mr. Moody was their leader, but he was not an ordained minister. From 1866 to 1869 J. H. Harwood pastored the church, but there was no regular pastor from 1869 to 1871. Moody had many friends who enjoyed assisting in the work, so there was always somebody in the pulpit. Often Moody did the preaching himself.
After the fire, the new structure was called the North Side Tabernacle, and in 1876 the church relocated to Chicago Avenue and La-Salle Street and became the Chicago Avenue Church. The esteemed pastors were William J. Erdman (1876–78), Charles M. Morton (1878, 1879), George C. Needham (1879–81), Charles F. Goss (1885–90), and Charles A. Blanchard (1891–93). From 1894 to 1906, Reuben Archer Torrey pastored the church, which was renamed Moody Church in 1901. Mr. Moody would never have put his name on the church, but it seemed to be an appropriate way to honor his memory after his death.
Beginning in 1889, the newly founded Chicago Evangelistic Society (later Moody Bible Institute) used the church’s facilities, and Dr. R. A. Torrey served as both pastor and superintendent of the school. When Torrey left in 1906 to start the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles, Dr. A. C. Dixon became pastor (1906–11). One of America’s greatest preachers, Paul Rader, became pastor in 1915, and the church moved a mile north on LaSalle Street to North Avenue, where a 5,000-seat tabernacle was built. Rader preached to thousands of people night after night, and multitudes were saved.
Rader resigned in 1921, and P. W. Philpott accepted the pulpit, remaining until 1929. During his ministry the congregation tore down the old tabernacle and, in 1925, dedicated the present building that is officially named the Moody Memorial Church. For eighteen fruitful years (1930–48), Dr. H. A. Ironside ministered the Word to large congregations, and on every Sunday except two he saw public decisions for Christ.
S. Franklin Logsden followed Dr. Ironside as pastor. Logsden was succeeded by Dr. Alan Redpath from England. From 1966 to 1971, Dr. George Sweeting was pastor. I had the privilege of succeeding Dr. Sweeting, serving from 1971 to 1978. The present pastor is Dr. Erwin Lutzer, a former instructor at Moody Bible Institute.
Whenever former Moody pastors or Moody church “alumni” get together, there are often spirited discussions about what Mr. Moody would have done had he lived longer. Would he have approved the construction of a 4,000-seat cathedral-type church building? Would he perhaps have scattered the congregation to various locations in Chicago, to build fifty or one hundred soul-winning churches? Paul Rader wanted to build a “skyscraper” with an auditorium for 2,500 people and classrooms and offices for the church; and then he planned to rent the rest of the structure out to help pay the bills!
Unless Mr. Moody tells us in heaven, we will never know what he would have done; therefore, it is useless to speculate. We do know that both Moody Church and Moody Bible Institute, with its many ministries, have been used by God over the years to bless countless people around the world.
Moody made another trip to Britain in 1872, during which he was introduced to “dispensational truth” and met evangelist Henry Varley. It was Varley who said to Moody (and this seems to be the accurate version): “Moody, the world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him.” Varley did not remember making the statement, but Moody never forgot it.
One of the ministers asked Moody to preach at a church in Arundel Square, London, and that service turned into a two-week meeting during which four hundred people professed faith in Christ. Part of the secret behind the harvest was the praying of Marianne Adlard, a bedridden girl who had read about Moody in a newspaper and had been praying daily that he would come to her church and preach. God answered her prayers, and Moody caught a new vision of what God could do through him in Britain.
In fact, it was a crisis experience for him. As a result, he determined to concentrate on evangelism and give himself completely to the winning of lost souls. The result was the great campaign of 1873–75.
“I go where I can do the most good. That is what I am after. It is souls I want—it is souls I want!”
Moody spoke those words to some British friends in 1873. He had recently arrived in Britain, responding to an invitation from three leading English Christians—Henry Bewley, Cuthbert Bainbridge and William Pennefather. To his dismay, he discovered that Bainbridge and Pennefather were both dead and that Bewley was not expecting him.
But Moody was not the kind of man who quit easily. He had in his pocket a letter from George Bennet, who was secretary of the YMCA at York, so he wired Bennet that he was coming. The man was shocked by the news and informed Moody that it would take weeks for them to get ready for a meeting. Bennet’s arguments meant nothing to Moody, who promptly went to York and started preaching the Word, with Sankey singing his way into the hearts of the people.
The British congregations were suspicious and for a time kept their distance. “One has an organ and performs on that,” went the report. “The other tells stories.” And everybody waited to see what the “catch” was and how these uninvited American guests would make a profit out of the meetings. Attendance was not large, and the spirit of the meetings was nothing exciting.
Then God touched a pastor’s heart, and the whole atmosphere began to change. The young pastor of the Priory Street Baptist Chapel was brought under deep conviction at the noon prayer meeting. He had been “beating the air” in his ministry, and when Moody had preached on the Holy Spirit, the pastor realized his need and how God could meet it. That man was F. B. Meyer, whose ministry of the Word would be greatly used around the world and whose many books minister to hearts even today.
Meyer even permitted Moody to use his church building for extra services, and by now the tide was beginning to flow in. A large crowd came to hear Moody at the Corn Exchange, and one of the leading religious newspapers in England began to report the meetings. F. B. Meyer was so blessed with his new vision of evangelism and ministry that his enthusiasm offended some of his officers, and he was asked to leave the church. “This is not a gospel shop!” the irate officers told him. God opened the way for him to establish a new church in Leicester, “Melbourne Hall,” which still maintains a faithful witness.
After the ministry at York, Moody and Sankey moved to Sunder-land and then Newcastle. Their friend Harry Moorehouse joined them and shared in the meetings. It was at Newcastle that Sacred Songs and Solos was first issued, published on September 16 by Marshall, Morgan, and Scott. Known as the “Sankey Hymnbook,” this volume was just what Moody needed in his meetings, as most of the church hymnals did not contain gospel songs with an evangelistic emphasis.
Since that time, more than ten million copies of Sacred Songs and Solos have been sold. When the initial royalties started to come in, Moody offered them to his British friends for whatever ministries they chose; but they refused the money. So Moody sent the money back to Chicago where it was used to complete the Chicago Avenue Church building.
The tide continued to come in, so the team decided to invade traditional, evangelical Scotland; on November 23, they opened a campaign in Edinburgh. It was not an encouraging beginning. For one thing, Moody was ill with tonsillitis; for another, Sankey’s organ was in need of repairs. But they started the meetings, and God began to bless.
Let me interrupt this report with an interesting sidelight. On October 19, just a few weeks before Moody and Sankey arrived, the leading “spiritual giant” of Scotland, Dr. R. S. Candlish, died. Before he died, he predicted that there would come to Scotland “a great blessing which should not be despised, though it come strangely.” Moody and Sankey were the “strange” bearers of that blessing.
Here’s a humorous sidelight on the Edinburgh meetings. San-key finally got his organ repaired (the Scots called it “a chest of whistles”) and sang the gospel in the meetings. At one point, it was necessary to hold two meetings across the street from each other in order to accommodate the crowds. Sankey would sing in one church while Moody preached in the other, and then they would exchange places.
As Sankey began to sing and play his organ in the one meeting, a faithful Presbyterian lady jumped up and ran from the meeting, shouting, “Let me oot! Let me oot! What would John Knox think of the like of ye?” She was offended, of course, by Sankey’s use of a musical instrument in a church. She then went across the street to the other meeting, and when Sankey appeared to sing there, she jumped up and ran out again, still shouting, “Let me oot! Let me oot! What would John Knox think of the like of ye?”
It is worth noting that Sankey sang “The Ninety and Nine” for the first time in the Edinburgh campaign. The words were written by a frail Scottish lady, Elizabeth C. Clephane, who lived near Edinburgh. Sankey had found the poem in a newspaper he had purchased at the train depot and, impressed with the message, had put the clipping in his pocket. After preaching on the Good Shepherd, Moody turned to Sankey and asked him to sing an appropriate song. Asking God for help, Sankey put the words on his organ, struck A-flat, and composed the tune as he went along. Moody then gave his invitation, and many “lost sheep” entered the inquiry room to find the Shepherd.
On February 8 the campaign moved to Glasgow, but all was not well. One of Scotland’s most famous preachers, the Reverend John Kennedy (“The Spurgeon of the Highlands”), opposed Mr. Moody’s ministry. The fact that some 3,000 persons had been received into the Edinburgh churches as a result of Moody’s work did not impress Kennedy. He published a pamphlet “proving” that it was not scriptural for Moody to use “human hymns” instead of the Psalms, to play the organ in a church, or to invite sinners into inquiry rooms.
Not all of the leading clergy were opposed to the campaign, however, among them the saintly Andrew Bonar, noted pastor and special friend of Robert Murray McCheyne. “The tide of real revival in Edinburgh has been stirring up all of us,” he wrote in his journal on January 1, 1874. On February 10, he wrote: “This city has been at last visited; Moody and Sankey, sent by the Lord.” Bonar and many other pastors prayed earnestly that God would break through the religious complacency of the churches and that many sinners would come to the Savior.
God answered their prayers as the tide kept deepening. On February 24, some 101 men professed faith in Christ in one meeting! When the campaign closed on April 19, the record showed that there had been more than 6,000 professions of faith and that 7,000 persons had united with local churches. Bonar wrote in his journal that he had a communicant’s class of fifty-two, all of them clear as to their salvation experience, and that fifty-four people came to the Lord’s Table for the first time.
Moody and Sankey spent the summer months in the Scottish Highlands, ministering from town to town, and then in September moved to Ireland. In spite of some inclement weather and the prejudice of some Roman Catholic people, the meetings were a great success. Buildings were packed, and people responded to Moody’s simple presentation of the gospel.
After five weeks in Belfast, the men moved their witness to Dublin where only one-fourth of the population was Protestant. The crowds came, however, even though the archbishop had issued an edict forbidding his people to attend. Even ridicule did not affect the ministry, as the following story proves.
A couple of clowns performing at a Dublin circus tried to ridicule the evangelists with this routine:
“I’m rather Moody tonight. How do you feel?”
“I feel rather Sankeymonious.”
The audience began to hiss the so-called comedians and then began to sing “Hold the Fort.”
For the most part, the Roman Catholic publications were sympathetic to the meetings. One editor wrote: “The deadly danger of the age comes upon us from the direction of Huxley and Darwin and Tyndall, rather than from Moody and Sankey.” Moody’s positive message carried the day, and the British Weekly called the meetings “a Pentecost.”
The Irish campaign closed on November 29, and Moody then preached in Manchester during December, in Birmingham in January, and in Liverpool in February. The crowds came and people were converted, although not as many as Moody had hoped. On March 9 he tackled London with its three million people. Once again his biggest problem was with the clergy, so Moody held an informal session to answer their questions.
“How are you paid?” one minister asked.
“I have money enough for myself right in my pocket,” said Moody, “and do not ask for a cent.” (The fact was that Moody had single-handedly raised thousands of dollars for the construction of YMCA buildings and missions in Britain.)
“I am a ritualist,” said another minister. “Will you send me all my proper and rightful converts?”
Moody replied, “I am not here to divide up the profits but to get as many as I can to give their hearts to Jesus Christ.”
It seems that every Christian evangelist, from Peter to Martin Luther to John Wesley to Moody to those of our present day, has had his greatest problems with the ministers who should have been out winning the lost themselves.
An entire book could be written about the miracles of the London campaign. Wealthy sportsman Edward Studd came to Christ through Moody’s ministry, and eight years later his son C. T. Studd trusted Christ when Moody preached at Cambridge. Fifteen thousand men attended a special “men only” meeting and many of them found Christ. It was estimated that 2.5 million people heard Moody and Sankey during the campaign and that the men conducted 285 different public meetings. The total budget ran $140,000!
On August 4, 1875, Moody left for home, arriving in the United States ten days later. It had been a triumphant campaign for Christ. He had won the battle for Britain.
Before we leave Moody and Sankey, let’s try to answer the question that many people asked then and still ask today: what was the secret of their success, not only in their British campaign but also in their ministry in general? When you read the reports and evaluations written in Moody’s day, you start to get a composite answer that seems to be valid.
To begin with, Moody himself was a Spirit-filled man who was burdened for souls. He had no interest in making money. He was not intimidated by “important people,” nor was he afraid to try something new. In fact, Moody stands as one of the great innovators in Christian ministry. If one approach did not work, being a good businessman, he tried another.
The meetings were undergirded with prayer. The noon prayer meeting was the most important meeting of the day to Moody. If it became dull or dead, he livened it up and got the people praying. “I’d rather be able to pray than to be a great preacher,” he once said. “Jesus Christ never taught his disciples how to preach, but only how to pray.”
Third, he worked in and through the church and encouraged ministers to forget their minor differences and work together to win the lost. This was not easy in Britain where the state church and the independents sometimes engaged in mutual suspicion and attack. “Satan separates,” said Moody. “God unites. Love binds us together.”
Moody used the Bible and kept the Bible before the people. During the two years of the British campaign, publishers could hardly keep up with the demand for Bibles. “I have observed that Mr. Moody speaks to inquirers with an open Bible in his hands,” wrote one reporter. Moody did not argue theology; he simply quoted the Bible and let God speak for himself.
Several leaders mentioned the order and atmosphere of the meetings as a factor in Moody’s success. There was a spirit of worship, and ushers were trained to deal immediately with disturbances. When applause broke out in one meeting, it was instantly silenced; and often Moody would call for times of silent prayer and worship.
Everybody knew that Ira Sankey’s music was a key factor in the blessing of God on the meetings. Even the dour Scots finally yielded to the wooing of the portable organ and songs of the American singer. One reporter wrote: “He spoils the Egyptians of their finest music and consecrates it to the service of the tabernacle.” Both Moody and Sankey were courageous enough to use new hymns and gospel songs in spite of the opposition of the traditionalists.
The campaign seemed a failure at the start, but God worked in a remarkable way and gave Britain perhaps the greatest spiritual movement since the days of George Whitefield and John Wesley. And he did it through two ordinary men who would not quit but who trusted God to bless his Word.
God can still do that today in our land or in any land. Henry Varley’s words are still true: “The world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him.”