Moody Conducting Meetings
MOODY CONDUCTING MEETINGS
I used to love to watch him in the meetings he conducted. His eyes were always open to take in the most minute detail of the services, and things to which other men would be blind he was ever seeing. I frequently almost lost the message he was giving in my admiration for the messenger. While he was sitting in the first part of the service, he would make a dive into his pocket, take out a little piece of paper and write a message to some of his workers, put down an illustration or record something which was to be the seed thought for a future sermon. Sometimes you would scarcely think he was noticing what was going on, and suddenly he would be on his feet announcing a hymn, and while he could not sing himself, yet he was superb in his power to make other people sing, "Isn't that magnificent" he would say, as voice after voice took up the great chorus. "Now the galleries sing, that is my choir up in the gallery, now show the people what you can do; now the men, now the women, now altogether," until it would seem as if greater singing one had never heard in all his life.
He was ever on the alert in every service. I have heard him many times relate, however, one instance to the contrary, when George O. Barnes was being greatly used in evangelistic effort. Mr. Moody had taken him around to several appointments, and the evening service came so quickly upon them that they did not have time to eat anything except a hasty lunch which they took somewhere together, the principal article of which Mr. Moody said was bologna. When Mr. Barnes arose to speak in the evening, the room was very hot, and Mr. Moody said that that, together with the lunch he had taken, made him very drowsy; he pinched himself to keep awake, but at last he fell asleep. Mr. Barnes did every-thing he could to arouse him, and when he had failed he stopped preaching, and Mr. Moody said, turned to his audience to say, "This is the first time I have ever seen D.L. Moody defeated, but the devil and bologna sausage seem to have gotten the best of him." I have heard him tell it over and over. No one enjoyed a joke better than himself, even though he might be the subject of it.
He seemed to know what the people wanted and what they would take, and the things that other men would turn away from he would present with great power. I remember a meeting in Albany, New York, years ago, when short conferences were being held through the country by Mr. Moody and his coworkers, when he turned to Dr. Darling, then of Schenectady, now of Auburn Seminary, and said, "Doctor, tell them the story you told me this morning;" and then the distinguished preacher gave an illustration which he might have thought too simple to use in a crowded assemblage, but which swayed the great audience.