Wonderful Spiritual Returns
WONDERFUL SPIRITUAL RETURNS
Mr. Moody's preaching, Mr. Sankey's singing - how indissolubly these two are associated in the minds of millions of people! And how wonderful were the spiritual returns that this partnership brought! Often Mr. Moody's words would bring a sinner to the point of conviction, and then the tender pathos of Mr. Sankey's singing would let a great flood of blessing into that sinner's soul, and the softening influences would work until he would cry out in his joy, "I am saved!" And, on the other hand, when a meeting had just begun, and away back in the farthest corners men were sitting who had come in a scoffing mood, or out of curiosity, to hear the evangelists, the preliminary song of Mr. Sankey would rouse the attention of those persons, and they would try to get nearer the platform, and by the time Mr. Moody was ready to speak, they would have forgotten why they had come, in their eagerness to hear the preacher's message.
Mr. Sankey's singing was as direct in its appeal to the individual as Mr. Moody's speaking. Their was no sentimental clap-trap about either, in spite of. the charge which we have frequently heard to that effect against the "Gospel hymns". Music, of all the arts, is now in the highest development. John Addington Symonds in his story of the Renaissance tells us that the form of art in which any given generation finds the most perfect expression for its ideals of beauty depends upon the nature of the religious feeling of that generation, Thus, the mysticism of the mediaeval Church was typified in the symbolism, the lofty aspiration of Gothic architecture; the rich formalism, the sensuous comprehensiveness of the Church of Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries established the ideals and led to the feelings which were spread in glowing colors upon the canvasses of the greatest painters the world has ever known; while, in present times, the development of religious life to a plane of lofty hope, brotherly love, and a consciousness of salvation has found its highest expression in music.