A Changed Life
A CHANGED LIFE
Concerning his relations to the Mount Vernon Church, Mr. Moody afterward said: "When I first became a Christian, I tried to join the church, but they wouldn't have me, because they didn't believe I was really converted."
A number of years afterward, Dr. Kirk was attending the anniversary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which was held that year in Chicago. He was entertained by Mr. Moody, the man who as a boy had come into the light, in some measure, under his influence, and he preached on Sunday in the pulpit of his former parishioner. When he returned to Boston Dr. Kirk called upon Mr. Moody's uncle, Mr. Holton, and said: " I told our people last evening that we had every reason to be ashamed of ourselves. That young Moody, whom we thought did not know enough to belong to our church and Sunday school, is to-day exerting a wider influence for the Master than any other man in the great Northwest."
Speaking of his experience in passing from the life of sin to the life of religion, Mr. Moody once said: "I used to have a terrible habit of swearing. Whenever I would get mad, out would come the oaths; but after I gave my heart to Christ, He took the oaths away, so that I did not have the least disposition to take God's name in vain."
At another time, when waited upon by a journalist, who asked him for a sketch of his life, Mr. Moody said " I was born in the flesh in 1837; I was born in the Spirit in 1856. What is born of the flesh may die; that which is born of the Spirit will live forever".