Eighty-six
years ago (February 5, 1837), there was born of poor parents in a humble
farmhouse in Northfield, Massachusetts, a little baby who was to become
the greatest man, as I believe, of his generation or of his century --
Dwight L. Moody. After our great generals, great statesmen, great scientists
and great men of letters have passed away and been forgotten, and their
work and its helpful influence has come to an end, the work of D. L. Moody
will go on and its saving influence continue and increase, bringing blessing
not only to every state in the Union but to every nation on earth. Yes,
it will continue throughout the ages of eternity.
My subject is "Why God
Used D. L. Moody," and I can think of no subject upon which I would
rather speak. For I shall not seek to glorify Mr. Moody, but the God
who by His grace, His entirely unmerited favor, used him so mightily,
and the Christ who saved him by His atoning death and resurrection life,
and the Holy Spirit who lived in him and wrought through him and who
alone made him the mighty power that he was to this world. Furthermore:
I hope to make it clear that the God who used D. L. Moody in his day
is just as ready to use you and me, in this day, if we, on our part,
do what D. L. Moody did, which was what made it possible for God to
so abundantly use him.
The whole secret of why
D. L. Moody was such a mightily used man you will find in Psalm 62:11:
"God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that POWER BELONGETH
UNTO GOD." I am glad it does. I am glad that power did not belong to
D. L. Moody; I am glad that it did not belong to Charles G. Finney;
I am glad that it did not belong to Martin Luther; I am glad that it
did not belong to any other Christian man whom God has greatly used
in this world's history. Power belongs to God. If D. L. Moody had any
power, and he had great power, he got it from God.
But God does not give His
power arbitrarily. It is true that He gives it to whomsoever He will,
but He wills to give it on certain conditions, which are clearly revealed
in His Word; and D. L. Moody met those conditions and God made him the
most wonderful preacher of his generation; yes, I think the most wonderful
man of his generation. But how was it that D. L. Moody had that power
of God so wonderfully manifested in his life? Pondering this question
it seemed to me that there were seven things in the life of D. L. Moody
that accounted for God's using him so largely as He did.
1. A FULLY
SURRENDERED MAN
The first thing that accounts for God's
using D. L. Moody so mightily was that he was a fully surrendered man.
Every ounce of that two-hundred-and-eighty -pound body of his belonged
to God; everything he was and everything he had, belonged wholly to
God. Now, I am not saying that Mr. Moody was perfect; he was not. If
I attempted to, I presume I could point out some defects in his character.
It does not occur to me at this moment what they were; but I am confident
that I could think of some, if I tried real hard. I have never yet met
a perfect man, not one. I have known perfect men in the sense in which
the Bible commands us to be perfect, i.e., men who are wholly God's,
out and out for God, fully surrendered to God, with no will but God's
will; but I have never known a man in whom I could not see some defects,
some places where he might have been improved.
No, Mr. Moody was not a faultless man.
If he had any flaws in his character, and he had, I presume I was in
a position to know them better than almost any other man, because of
my very close association with him in the later years of his life; and
furthermore, I suppose that in his latter days he opened his heart to
me more fully than to anyone else in the world. I think He told me some
things that he told no one else. I presume I knew whatever defects there
were in his character as well as anybody. But while I recognized such
flaws, nevertheless, I know that he was a man who belonged wholly to
God.
The first month I was in Chicago, we were
having a talk about something upon which we very widely differed, and
Mr. Moody turned to me very frankly and very kindly and said in defense
of his own position: "Torrey, if I believed that God wanted me to jump
out of that window, I would jump." I believe he would. If he thought
God wanted him to do anything, he would do it. He belonged wholly, unreservedly,
unqualifiedly, entirely, to God.
Henry Varley, a very intimate friend of
Mr. Moody in the earlier days of his work, loved to tell how he once
said to him: "It remains to be seen what God will do with a man who
gives himself up wholly to Him." I am told that when Mr. Henry Varley
said that, Mr. Moody said to himself: "Well, I will be that man." And
I, for my part, do not think "it remains to be seen" what God will do
with a man who gives himself up wholly to Him. I think it has been seen
already in D. L. Moody.
If you and I are to be used in our sphere
as D. L. Moody was used in his, we must put all that we have and all
that we are in the hands of God, for Him to use as He will, to send
us where He will, for God to do with us what He will, and we, on our
part, to do everything God bids us do.
There are thousands and tens of thousands
of men and women in Christian work, brilliant men and women, rarely
gifted men and women, men and women who are making great sacrifices,
men and women who have put all conscious sin out of their lives, yet
who, nevertheless, have stopped short of absolute surrender to God,
and therefore have stopped short of fullness of power. But Mr. Moody
did not stop short of absolute surrender to God; he was a wholly surrendered
man, and if you and I are to be used, you and I must be wholly surrendered
men and women.
2. A MAN OF PRAYER
The second secret of the great power exhibited
in Mr. Moody's life was that Mr. Moody was in the deepest and most meaningful
sense a man of prayer. People oftentimes say to me: "Well, I went many
miles to see and to hear D. L. Moody and he certainly was a wonderful
preacher." Yes, D. L. Moody certainly was a wonderful preacher; taking
it all in all, the most wonderful preacher I have ever heard, and it
was a great privilege to hear him preach as he alone could preach; but
out of a very intimate acquaintance with him I wish to testify that
he was a far greater prayer than he was preacher.
Time and time again, he was confronted
by obstacles that seemed insurmountable, but he always knew the way
to surmount and to overcome all difficulties. He knew the way to bring
to pass anything that needed to be brought to pass. He knew and believed
in the deepest depths of his soul that "nothing was too hard for the
Lord" and that prayer could do anything that God could do.
Often times Mr. Moody would write me when
he was about to undertake some new work, saying: "I am beginning work
in such and such a place on such and such a day; I wish you would get
the students together for a day of fasting and prayer" And often I have
taken those letters and read them to the students in the lecture room
and said: "Mr. Moody wants us to have a day of fasting and prayer, first
for
God's blessing on our own souls and work,
and then for God's blessing on him and his work."
Often we were gathered in the lecture room
far into the night -- sometimes till one, two, three, four or even five
o'clock in the morning, crying to God, just because Mr. Moody urged
us to wait upon God until we received His blessing. How many men and
women I have known whose lives and characters have been transformed
by those nights of prayer and who have wrought mighty things in many
lands because of those nights of prayer!
One day Mr. Moody drove up to my house
at Northfield and said: "Torrey, I want you to take a ride with me."
I got into the carriage and we drove out toward Lover's Lane, talking
about some great and unexpected difficulties that had arisen in regard
to the work in Northfield and Chicago, and in connection with other
work that was very dear to him.
As we drove along, some black storm clouds
lay ahead of us, and then suddenly, as we were talking, it began to
rain. He drove the horse into a shed near the entrance to Lover's Lane
to shelter the horse, and then laid the reins upon the dashboard and
said: "Torrey, pray"; and then, as best I could, I prayed, while he
in his heart joined me in prayer. And when my voice was silent he began
to pray. Oh, I wish you could have heard that prayer! I shall never
forget it, so simple, so trustful, so definite and so direct and so
mighty. When the storm was over and we drove back to town, the obstacles
had been surmounted, and the work of the schools, and other work that
was threatened, went on as it had never gone on before, and it has gone
on until this day. As we drove back, Mr. Moody said to me: "Torrey,
we will let the other men do the talking and the criticizing, and we
will stick to the work that God has given us to do, and let Him take
care of the difficulties and answer the criticisms."
On one occasion Mr. Moody said to me in
Chicago: "I have just found, to my surprise, that we are twenty thousand
dollars behind in our finances for the work here and in Northfield,
and we must have that twenty thousand dollars, and I am going to get
it by prayer." He did not tell a soul who had the ability to give a
penny of the twenty thousand dollars' deficit, but 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.
Yes, D. L. Moody was a man who believed
in the God who answers prayer, and not only believed in Him in a theoretical
way but believed in Him in a practical way. He was a man who met every
difficulty that stood in his way -- by prayer. Everything he undertook
was backed up by prayer, and in everything, his ultimate dependence
was upon God.
3. A DEEP AND PRACTICAL
STUDENT OF THE BIBLE
The third secret of Mr. Moody's power,
or the third reason why God used D. L. Moody, was because he was a deep
and practical student of the Word of God. Nowadays it is often said
of D. L. Moody that he was not a student. I wish to say that he was
a student; most emphatically he was a student. He was not a student
of psychology; he was not a student of anthropology -- I am very sure
he would not have known what that word meant; he was not a student of
biology; he was not a student of philosophy; he was not even a student
of theology, in the technical sense of the term; but he was a student,
a profound and practical student of the one Book that is more worth
studying than all other books in the world put together; he was a student
of the Bible.
Every day of his life, I have reason for
believing, he arose very early in the morning to study the Word of God,
way down to the close of his life. Mr. Moody used to rise about four
o'clock in the morning to study the Bible. He would say to me: "If I
am going to get in any study, I have got to get up before the other
folks get up"; and he would shut himself up in a remote room in his
house, alone with his God and his Bible.
I shall never forget the first night I
spent in his home. He had invited me to take the superintendency of
the Bible Institute and I had already begun my work; I was on my way
to some city in the East to preside at the International Christian Workers'
Convention. He wrote me saying: "Just as soon as the Convention is over,
come up to Northfield." He learned when I was likely to arrive and drove
over to South Vernon to meet me. That night he had all the teachers
from the Mount Hermon School and from the Northfield Seminary come together
at the house to meet me, and to talk over the problems of the two schools.
We talked together far on into the night, and then, after the principals
and teachers of the schools had gone home, Mr. Moody and I talked together
about the problems a while longer.
It was very late when I got to bed that
night, but very early the next morning, about five o'clock, I heard
a gentle tap on my door. Then I heard Mr. Moody's voice whispering:
"Torrey, are you up?" I happened to be; I do not always get up at that
early hour but I happened to be up that particular morning. He said:
"I want you to go somewhere with me," and I went down with him. Then
I found out that he had already been up an hour or two in his room studying
the Word of God.
Oh, you may talk about power; but, if you
neglect the one Book that God has given you as the one instrument through
which He imparts and exercises His power, you will not have it. You
may read many books and go to many conventions and you may have your
all-night prayer meetings to pray for the power of the Holy Ghost; but
unless you keep in constant and close association with the one Book,
the Bible, you will not have power. And if you ever had power, you will
not maintain it except by the daily, earnest, intense study of that
Book. Ninety-nine Christians in every hundred are merely playing at
Bible study; and therefore ninety-nine Christians in every hundred are
mere weaklings, when they might be giants, both in their Christian life
and in their service.
It was largely because of his thorough
knowledge of the Bible, and his practical knowledge of the Bible, that
Mr. Moody drew such immense crowds. On "Chicago Day," in October, 1893,
none of the theaters of Chicago dared to open because it was expected
that everybody in Chicago would go on that day to the World's Fair;
and, in point of fact, something like four hundred thousand people did
pass through the gates of the Fair that day. Everybody in Chicago was
expected to be at that end of the city on that day. But Mr. Moody said
to me: "Torrey, engage the Central Music Hall and announce meetings
from nine o'clock in the morning till six o'clock at night." "Why,"
I replied, "Mr. Moody, nobody will be at this end of Chicago on that
day; not even the theaters dare to open; everybody is going down to
Jackson Park to the Fair; we cannot get anybody out on this day."
Mr. Moody replied: "You do as you are told";
and I did as I was told and engaged the Central Music Hall for continuous
meetings from nine o'clock in the morning till six o'clock at night.
But I did it with a heavy heart; I thought there would be poor audiences.
I was on the program at noon that day. Being very busy in my office
about the details of the campaign, I did not reach the Central Music
Hall till almost noon. I thought I would have no trouble in getting
in. But when I got almost to the Hall I found to my amazement that not
only was it packed but the vestibule was packed and the steps were packed,
and there was no getting anywhere near the door; and if I had not gone
round and climbed in a back window they would have lost their speaker
for that hour. But that would not have been of much importance, for
the crowds had not gathered to hear me; it was the magic of Mr. Moody's
name that had drawn them. And why did they long to hear Mr. Moody? Because
they knew that while he was not versed in many of the philosophies and
fads and fancies of the day, he did know the one Book that this old
world most longs to know -- the Bible.
I shall never forget Moody's last visit
to Chicago. The ministers of Chicago had sent me to Cincinnati to invite
him to come to Chicago and hold a meeting. In response to the invitation,
Mr. Moody said to me: "If you will hire the Auditorium for weekday mornings
and afternoons and have meetings at ten in the morning and three in
the afternoon, I will go. " I replied: "Mr. Moody, you know what a busy
city Chicago is, and how impossible it is for businessmen to get out
at ten o'clock in the morning and three in the afternoon on working
days. Will you not hold evening meetings and meetings on Sunday?" "No,"
he replied, "I am afraid if I did, I would interfere with the regular
work of the churches."
I went back to Chicago and engaged the
Auditorium, which at that time was the building having the largest seating
capacity of any building in the city, seating in those days about seven
thousand people; I announced weekday meetings, with Mr. Moody as the
speaker, at ten o'clock in the mornings and three o'clock in the afternoons.
At once protests began to pour in upon
me. One of them came from Marshall Field, at that time the business
king of Chicago. "Mr. Torrey," Mr. Field wrote, "we businessmen of Chicago
wish to hear Mr. Moody, and you know perfectly well how impossible it
is for us to get out at ten o'clock in the morning and three o'clock
in the afternoon; have evening meetings." I received many letters of
a similar purport and wrote to Mr. Moody urging him to give us evening
meetings. But Mr. Moody simply replied: "You do as you are told," and
I did as I was told; that is the way I kept my job.
On the first morning of the meetings I
went down to the Auditorium about half an hour before the appointed
time, but I went with much fear and apprehension; I thought the Auditorium
would be nowhere nearly full. When I reached there, to my amazement
I found a queue of people four abreast extending from the Congress Street
entrance to Wabash Avenue, then a block north on Wabash Avenue, then
a break to let traffic through, and then another block, and so on. I
went in through the back door, and there were many clamoring for entrance
there. 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. I do not think that anyone else in the world could have
drawn such a crowd at such a time.
Why? Because though Mr. Moody knew little
about science or philosophy or literature in general, he did know the
one Book that this old world is perishing to know and longing to know;
and this old world will flock to hear men who know the Bible and preach
the Bible as they will flock to hear nothing else on earth.
During all the months of the World's Fair
in Chicago, no one could draw such crowds as Mr. Moody. Judging by the
papers, one would have thought that the great religious event in Chicago
at that time was the World's Congress of Religions. One very gifted
man of letters in the East was invited to speak at this Congress. He
saw in this invitation the opportunity of his life and prepared his
paper, the exact title of which I do not now recall, but it was something
along the line of "New Light on the Old Doctrines." He prepared the
paper with great care, and then sent it around to his most trusted and
gifted friends for criticisms.
These men sent it back to him with such
emendations as they had to suggest. Then he rewrote the paper, incorporating
as many of the suggestions and criticisms as seemed wise. Then he sent
it around for further criticisms. Then he wrote the paper a third time,
and had it, as he trusted, perfect. He went on to Chicago to meet this
coveted opportunity of speaking at the World's Congress of Religions.
It was at eleven o'clock on a Saturday
morning (if I remember correctly) that he was to speak. He stood outside
the door of the platform waiting for the great moment to arrive, and
as the clock struck eleven he walked on to the platform to face a magnificent
audience of eleven women and two men! But there was not a building anywhere
in Chicago that would accommodate the very same day the crowds that
would flock to hear Mr. Moody at any hour of the day or night.
Oh, men and women, if you wish to get an
audience and wish to do that audience some good after you get them,
study, study, STUDY the one Book, and preach, preach, PREACH the one
Book, and teach, teach, TEACH the one Book, the Bible, the only Book
that is God's Word, and the only Book that has power to gather and hold
and bless the crowds for any great length of time.
4. A HUMBLE MAN
The fourth reason why God continuously,
through so many years, used D.L. Moody was because he was a humble man.
I think D. L. Moody was the humblest man I ever knew in all my life.
He loved to quote the words of another; "Faith gets the most; love works
the most; but humility keeps the most. "
He himself had the humility that keeps
everything it gets. As I have already said, he was the most humble man
I ever knew, i.e., the most humble man when we bear in mind the great
things that he did, and the praise that was lavished upon him. Oh, how
he loved to put himself in the background and put other men in the foreground.
How often he would stand on a platform with some of us little fellows
seated behind him and as he spoke he would say: "There are better men
coming after me." As he said it, he would point back over his shoulder
with his thumb to the "little fellows. " 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 overestimated others.
He really believed that God would use other
men in a larger measure than he had been used. Mr. Moody loved to keep
himself in the background. At his conventions at Northfield, or anywhere
else, he would push the other men to the front and, if he could, have
them do all the preaching -- McGregor, Campbell Morgan, Andrew Murray,
and the rest of them. The only way we could get him to take any part
in the program was to get up in the convention and move that we hear
D. L. Moody at the next meeting. He continually put himself out of sight.
Oh, how many a man has been full of promise
and God has used him, and then the man thought that he was the whole
thing and God was compelled to set him aside! I believe more promising
workers have gone on the rocks through self-sufficiency and self-esteem
than through any other cause. I can look back for forty years, or more,
and think of many men who are now wrecks or derelicts who at one time
the world thought were going to be something great. But they have disappeared
entirely from the public view. Why? Because of overestimation of self.
Oh, the men and women who have been put aside because they began to
think that they were somebody, that they were "IT," and therefore God
was compelled to set them aside.
I remember a man with whom I was closely
associated in a great movement in this country. We were having a most
successful convention in Buffalo, and he was greatly elated. As we walked
down the street together to one of the meetings one day, he said to
me: "Torrey, you and I are the most important men in Christian work
in this country," or words to that effect. I replied: "John, I am sorry
to hear you say that; for as I read my Bible I find man after man who
had accomplished great things whom God had to set aside because of his
sense of his own importance." And God set that man aside also from that
time. I think he is still living, but no one ever hears of him, or has
heard of him for years.
God used D. L. Moody, I think, beyond any
man of his day; but it made no difference how much God used him, he
never was puffed up. One day, speaking to me of a great New York preacher,
now dead, Mr. Moody said: "He once did a very foolish thing, the most
foolish thing that I ever knew a man, ordinarily so wise as he was,
to do. He came up to me at the close of a little talk I had given and
said: 'Young man, you have made a great address tonight.'" Then Mr.
Moody continued: "How foolish of him to have said that! It almost turned
my head." But, thank God, it did not turn his head, and even when pretty
much all the ministers in England, Scotland and Ireland, and many of
the English bishops were ready to follow D. L. Moody wherever he led,
even then it never turned his head one bit. He would get down on his
face before God, knowing he was human, and ask God to empty him of all
self-sufficiency. And God did.
Oh, men and women! especially young men
and young women, perhaps God is beginning to use you; very likely people
are saying: "What a wonderful gift he has as a Bible teacher, what power
he has as a preacher, for such a young man!" Listen: get down upon your
face before God. I believe here lies one of the most dangerous snares
of the Devil. When the Devil cannot discourage a man, he approaches
him on another tack, which he knows is far worse in its results; he
puffs him up by whispering in his ear: "You are the leading evangelist
of the day. You are the man who will sweep everything before you. You
are the coming man. You are the D. L. Moody of the day"; and if you
listen to him, he will ruin you. The entire shore of the history of
Christian workers is strewn with the wrecks of gallant vessels that
were full of promise a few years ago, but these men became puffed up
and were driven on the rocks by the wild winds of their own raging self-esteem.
5. HIS ENTIRE FREEDOM
FROM THE LOVE OF MONEY
The fifth secret of D. L. Moody's continual
power and usefulness was his entire freedom from the love of money.
Mr. Moody might have been a wealthy man, but money had no charms for
him. He loved to gather money for God's work; he refused to accumulate
money for himself. He told me during the World's Fair that if he had
taken, for himself, the royalties on the hymnbooks which he had published,
they would have amounted, at that time, to a million dollars. But Mr.
Moody refused to touch the money. He had a perfect right to take it,
for he was responsible for the publication of the books and it was his
money that went into the publication of the first of them.
Mr. Sankey had some hymns that he had taken
with him to England and he wished to have them published. He went to
a publisher (I think Morgan & Scott) and they declined to publish
them, because, as they said, Philip Phillips had recently been over
and published a hymnbook and it had not done well. However, Mr. Moody
had a little money and he said that he would put it into the publication
of these hymns in cheap form; and he did. The hymns had a most remarkable
and unexpected sale; they were then published in book form and large
profits accrued. The financial results were offered to Mr. Moody, but
he refused to touch them. "But," it was urged on him, "the money belongs
to you"; but he would not touch it.
Mr. Fleming H. Revell was at the time treasurer
of the Chicago Avenue Church, commonly known as the Moody Tabernacle.
Only the basement of this new church building had been completed, funds
having been exhausted. Hearing of the hymnbook situation Mr. Revell
suggested, in a letter to friends in London, that the money be given
for completion of this building, and it was. Afterwards, so much money
came in that it was given, by the committee into whose hands Mr. Moody
put the matter, to various Christian enterprises.
In a certain city to which Mr. Moody went
in the latter years of his life, and where I went with him, it was publicly
announced that Mr. Moody would accept no money whatever for his services.
Now, in point of fact, Mr. Moody was dependent, in a measure, upon what
was given him at various services; but when this announcement was made,
Mr. Moody said nothing, and left that city without a penny's compensation
for the hard work he did there; and, I think, he paid his own hotel
bill. And yet a minister in that very city came out with an article
in a paper, which I read, in which he told a fairy tale of the financial
demands that Mr. Moody made upon them, which story I knew personally
to be absolutely untrue. Millions of dollars passed into Mr. Moody hands,
but they passed through; they did not stick to his fingers.
This is the point at which many an evangelist
makes shipwreck, and his great work comes to an untimely end. The love
of money on the part of some evangelists has done more to discredit
evangelistic work in our day, and to lay many an evangelist on the shelf,
than almost any other cause.
While I was away on my recent tour I was
told by one of the most reliable ministers in one of our eastern cities
of a campaign conducted by one who has been greatly used in the past.
(Do not imagine, for a moment, that I am speaking of Billy Sunday, for
I am not; this same minister spoke in the highest terms of Mr. Sunday
and of a campaign which he conducted in a city where this minister was
a pastor.) This evangelist of whom I now speak came to a city for a
united evangelistic campaign and was supported by fifty-three churches.
The minister who told me about the matter was himself chairman of the
Finance Committee.
The evangelist showed such a longing for
money and so deliberately violated the agreement he had made before
coming to the city and so insisted upon money being gathered for him
in other ways than he had himself prescribed in the original contract,
that this minister threatened to resign from the Finance Committee.
He was, however, persuaded to remain to avoid a scandal. "As the total
result of the three weeks' campaign there were only twenty-four clear
decisions," said my friend; "and after it was over the ministers got
together and by a vote with but one dissenting voice, they agreed to
send a letter to this evangelist telling him frankly that they were
done with him and with his methods of evangelism forever, and that they
felt it their duty to warn other cities against him and his methods
and the results of his work." Let us lay the lesson to our hearts and
take warning in time.
6. HIS CONSUMING PASSION
FOR THE SALVATION OF THE LOST
The sixth reason why God used D. L. Moody
was because of his consuming passion for the salvation of the lost.
Mr. Moody made the resolution, shortly after he himself was saved, that
he would never let twenty-four hours pass over his head without speaking
to at least one person about his soul. His was a very busy life, and
sometimes he would forget his resolution until the last hour, and sometimes
he would get out of bed, dress, go out and talk to someone about his
soul in order that he might not let one day pass without having definitely
told at least one of his fellow-mortals about his need and the Savior
who could meet it.
One night Mr. Moody was going home from
his place of business. It was very late, and it suddenly occurred to
him that he had not spoken to one single person that day about accepting
Christ. He said to himself: "Here's a day lost. I have not spoken to
anyone today and I shall not see anybody at this late hour." But as
he walked up the street he saw a man standing under a lamppost. The
man was a perfect stranger to him, though it turned out afterwards the
man knew who Mr. Moody was. He stepped up to this stranger and said:
"Are you a Christian?" The man replied: "That is none of your business,
whether I am a Christian or not. If you were not a sort of a preacher
I would knock you into the gutter for your impertinence." Mr. Moody
said a few earnest words and passed on.
The next day that man called upon one of
Mr. Moody's prominent business friends and said to him: "That man Moody
of yours over on the North Side is doing more harm than he is good.
He has got zeal without knowledge. He stepped up to me last night, a
perfect stranger, and insulted me. He asked me if I were a Christian,
and I told him it was none of his business and if he were not a sort
of a preacher I would knock him into the gutter for his impertinence.
He is doing more harm than he is good. He has got zeal without knowledge."
Mr. Moody's friend sent for him and said: "Moody, you are doing more
harm than you are good; you've got zeal without knowledge: you insulted
a friend of mine on the street last night. You went up to him, a perfect
stranger, and asked him if he were a Christian, and he tells me if you
had not been a sort of a preacher he would have knocked you into the
gutter for your impertinence. You are doing more harm than you are good;
you have got zeal without knowledge."
Mr. Moody went out of that man's office
somewhat crestfallen. He wondered if he were not doing more harm than
he was good, if he really had zeal without knowledge. (Let me say, in
passing, it is far better to have zeal without knowledge than it is
to have knowledge without zeal. Some men and women are as full of knowledge
as an egg is of meat; they are so deeply versed in Bible truth that
they can sit in criticism on the preachers and give the preachers pointers,
but they have so little zeal that they do not lead one soul to Christ
in a whole year.)
Weeks passed by. One night Mr. Moody was
in bed when he heard a tremendous pounding at his front door. He jumped
out of bed and rushed to the door. He thought the house was on fire.
He thought the man would break down the door. He opened the door and
there stood this man. He said: "Mr. Moody, I have not had a good night's
sleep since that night you spoke to me under the lamppost, and I have
come around at this unearthly hour of the night for you to tell me what
I have to do to be saved." Mr. Moody took him in and told him what to
do to be saved. Then he accepted Christ, and when the Civil War broke
out, he went to the front and laid down his life fighting for his country.
Another night, Mr. Moody got home and had
gone to bed before it occurred to him that he had not spoken to a soul
that day about accepting Christ. "Well," he said to himself, "it is
no good getting up now; there will be nobody on the street at this hour
of the night." But he got up, dressed and went to the front door. It
was pouring rain. "Oh," he said, "there will be no one out in this pouring
rain. Just then he heard the patter of a man's feet as he came down
the street, holding an umbrella over his head. Then Mr. Moody darted
out and rushed up to the man and said: "May I share the shelter of your
umbrella?" "Certainly," the man replied. Then Mr. Moody said: "Have
you any shelter in the time of storm?" and preached Jesus to him. Oh,
men and women, if we were as full of zeal for the salvation of souls
as that, how long would it be before the whole country would be shaken
by the power of a mighty, God-sent revival?
One day in Chicago -- the day after the
elder Carter Harrison was shot, when his body was lying in state in
the City Hall -- Mr. Moody and I were riding up Randolph Street together
in a streetcar right alongside of the City Hall. The car could scarcely
get through because of the enormous crowds waiting to get in and view
the body of Mayor Harrison. As the car tried to push its way through
the crowd, Mr. Moody turned to me and said: "Torrey, what does this
mean?" "Why," I said, "Carter Harrison's body lies there in the City
Hall and these crowds are waiting to see it."
Then he said: "This will never do, to let
these crowds get away from us without preaching to them; we must talk
to them. You go and hire Hooley's Opera House (which was just opposite
the City Hall) for the whole day." I did so. The meetings began at nine
o'clock in the morning, and we had one continuous service from that
hour until six in the evening, to reach those crowds.
Mr. Moody was a man on fire for God. Not
only was he always "on the job" himself but he was always getting others
to work as well. He once invited me down to Northfield to spend a month
there with the schools, speaking first to one school and then crossing
the river to the other. I was obliged to use the ferry a great deal;
it was before the present bridge was built at that point. One day he
said to me: "Torrey, did you know that that ferryman that ferries you
across every day was unconverted?" He did not tell me to speak to him,
but I knew what he meant. When some days later it was told him that
the ferryman was saved, he was exceedingly happy.
Once, when walking down a certain street
in Chicago, Mr. Moody stepped up to a man, a perfect stranger to him,
and said: "Sir, are you a Christian?" "You mind your own business,"
was the reply. Mr. Moody replied: "This is my business." The man said,
"Well, then, you must be Moody." Out in Chicago they used to call him
in those early days "Crazy Moody," because day and night he was speaking
to everybody he got a chance to speak to about being saved.
One time he was going to Milwaukee, and
in the seat that he had chosen sat a traveling man. Mr. Moody sat down
beside him and immediately began to talk with him. " Where are you going?"
Mr. Moody asked. When told the name of the town he said: "We will soon
be there; we'll have to get down to business at once. Are you saved?"
The man said that he was not, and Mr. Moody took out his Bible and there
on the train showed him the way of salvation. Then he said: "Now, you
must take Christ." The man did; he was converted right there on the
train.
Most of you have heard, I presume, the
story President Wilson used to tell about D. L. Moody. Ex-President
Wilson said that he once went into a barber shop and took a chair next
to the one in which D. L. Moody was sitting, though he did not know
that Mr. Moody was there. He had not been in the chair very long before,
as ex-President Wilson phrased it, he "knew there was a personality
in the other chair," and he began to listen to the conversation going
on; he heard Mr. Moody tell the barber about the Way of Life, and President
Wilson said, "I have never forgotten that scene to this day." When Mr.
Moody was gone, he asked the barber who he was; when he was told that
it was D. L. Moody, President Wilson said: "It made an impression upon
me I have not yet forgotten."
On one occasion in Chicago Mr. Moody saw
a little girl standing on the street with a pail in her hand. He went
up to her and invited her to his Sunday school, telling her what a pleasant
place it was. She promised to go the following Sunday, but she did not
do so. Mr. Moody watched for her for weeks, and then one day he saw
her on the street again, at some distance from him. He started toward
her, but she saw him too and started to run away. Mr. Moody followed
her. Down she went one street, Mr. Moody after her; up she went another
street, Mr. Moody after her, through an alley, Mr. Moody still following;
out on another street, Mr. Moody after her; then she dashed into a saloon
and Mr. Moody dashed after her. She ran out the back door and up a flight
of stairs, Mr. Moody still following; she dashed into a room, Mr. Moody
following; she threw herself under the bed and Mr. Moody reached under
the bed and pulled her out by the foot, and led her to Christ.
He found that her mother was a widow who
had once seen better circumstances, but had gone down until now she
was living over this saloon. She had several children. Mr. Moody led
the mother and all the family to Christ. Several of the children were
prominent members of the Moody Church until they moved away, and afterwards
became prominent in churches elsewhere. This particular child, whom
he pulled from underneath the bed, was, when I was the pastor of the
Moody Church, the wife of one of the most prominent officers in the
church.
Only two or three years ago, as I came
out of a ticket office in Memphis, Tennessee, a fine-looking young man
followed me. He said: "Are you not Dr. Torrey?" I said, "Yes." He said:
"I am so and so." He was the son of this woman. He was then a traveling
man, and an officer in the church where he lived. When Mr. Moody pulled
that little child out from under the bed by the foot he was pulling
a whole family into the Kingdom of God, and eternity alone will reveal
how many succeeding generations he was pulling into the Kingdom of God.
D. L. Moody's consuming passion for souls
was not for the souls of those who would be helpful to him in building
up his work here or elsewhere; his love for souls knew no class limitations.
He was no respecter of persons; it might be an earl or a duke or it
might be an ignorant colored boy on the street; it was all the same
to him; there was a soul to save and he did what lay in his power to
save that soul.
A friend once told me that the first time
he ever heard of Mr. Moody was when Mr. Reynolds of Peoria told him
that he once found Mr. Moody sitting in one of the squatters' shanties
that used to be in that part of the city toward the lake, which was
then called, "The Sands," with a colored boy on his knee, a tallow candle
in one hand and a Bible in the other, and Mr. Moody was spelling out
the words (for at that time the boy could not read very well) of certain
verses of Scripture, in an attempt to lead that ignorant colored boy
to Christ.
Oh, young men and women and all Christian
workers, if you and I were on fire for souls like that, how long would
it be before we had a revival? Suppose that tonight the fire of God
falls and fills our hearts, a burning fire that will send us out all
over the country, and across the water to China, Japan, India and Africa,
to tell lost souls the way of salvation!
7. DEFINITELY ENDUED
WITH POWER FROM ON HIGH
The seventh thing that
was the secret of why God used D. L. Moody was that he had a very definite
enduement with power from on High, a very clear and definite baptism
with the Holy Ghost. Moody knew he had "the baptism with the Holy Ghost";
he had no doubt about it. In his early days he was a great hustler;
he had a tremendous desire to do something, but he had no real power.
He worked very largely in the energy of the flesh.
But there were two humble
Free Methodist women who used to come over to his meetings in the Y.M.C.A.
One was "Auntie Cook" and the other, Mrs. Snow. (I think her name was
not Snow at that time.) These two women would come to Mr. Moody at the
close of his meetings and say: "We are praying for you." Finally, Mr.
Moody became somewhat nettled and said to them one night: "Why are you
praying for me? Why don't you pray for the unsaved?" They replied: "We
are praying that you may get the power." Mr. Moody did not know what
that meant, but he got to thinking about it, and then went to these
women and said: "I wish you would tell me what you mean"; and they told
him about the definite baptism with the Holy Ghost. Then he asked that
he might pray with them and not they merely pray for him.
Auntie Cook once told me
of the intense fervor with which Mr. Moody prayed on that occasion.
She told me in words that I scarcely dare repeat, though I have never
forgotten them. And he not only prayed with them, but he also prayed
alone. Not long after, one day on his way to England, he was walking
up Wall Street in New York; (Mr. Moody very seldom told this and I almost
hesitate to tell it) and in the midst of the bustle and hurry of that
city his prayer was answered; 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 hand, lest he die
on the spot from very joy. He went out from that place with the power
of the Holy Ghost upon him, and when he got to London (partly through
the prayers of a bedridden saint in Mr. Lessey's church), the power
of God wrought through him mightily in North London, and hundreds were
added to the churches; and that was what led to his being invited over
to the wonderful campaign that followed in later years.
Time and again Mr. Moody
would come to me and say: "Torrey, I want you to preach on the baptism
with the Holy Ghost." I do not know how many times he asked me to speak
on that subject. Once, when I had been invited to preach in the Fifth
Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York (invited at Mr. Moody's suggestion;
had it not been for his suggestion the invitation would never have been
extended to me), just before I started for New York, Mr. Moody drove
up to my house and said: "Torrey, they want you to preach at the Fifth
Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. It is a great big church, cost
a million dollars to build it." Then he continued: "Torrey, I just want
to ask one thing of you. I want to tell you what to preach about. You
will preach that sermon of yours on 'Ten Reasons Why I Believe the Bible
to Be the Word of God' and your sermon on 'The Baptism With the Holy
Ghost.'"
Time and again, when a
call came to me to go off to some church, he would come up to me and
say: "Now, Torrey, be sure and preach on the baptism with the Holy Ghost."
I do not know how many times he said that to me. Once I asked him: "Mr.
Moody, don't you think I have any sermons but those two: 'Ten Reasons
Why I Believe the Bible to Be the Word of God' and 'The Baptism With
the Holy Ghost'?" "Never mind that," he replied, "you give them those
two sermons.
Once he had some teachers
at Northfield -- fine men, all of them, but they did not believe in
a definite baptism with the Holy Ghost for the individual. They believed
that every child of God was baptized with the Holy Ghost, and they did
not believe in any special baptism with the Holy Ghost for the individual.
Mr. Moody came to me and said: "Torrey, will you come up to my house
after the meeting tonight and I will get those men to come, and I want
you to talk this thing out with them."
Of course, I very readily
consented, and Mr. Moody and I talked for a long time, but they did
not altogether see eye to eye with us. And when they went, Mr. Moody
signaled me to remain for a few moments. Mr. Moody sat there with his
chin on his breast, as he so often sat when he was in deep thought;
then he looked up and said: "Oh, why will they split hairs? Why don't
they see that this is just the one thing that they themselves need?
They are good teachers, they are wonderful teachers, and I am so glad
to have them here; but why will they not see that the baptism with the
Holy Ghost is just the one touch that they themselves need?"
I shall never forget the
eighth of July, 1894, to my dying day. It was the closing day of the
Northfield Students' Conference -- the gathering of the students from
the eastern colleges. Mr. Moody had asked me to preach on Saturday night
and Sunday morning on the baptism with the Holy Ghost. On Saturday night
I had spoken about, "The Baptism With the Holy Ghost: What It Is; What
It Does; the Need of It and the Possibility of It." On Sunday morning
I spoke on "The Baptism With the Holy Spirit: How to Get It." It was
just exactly twelve o'clock when I finished my morning sermon, and I
took out my watch and said: "Mr. Moody has invited us all to go up to
the mountain at three o'clock this afternoon to pray for the power of
the Holy Spirit. It is three hours to three o'clock. Some of you cannot
wait three hours. You do not need to wait. Go to your rooms; go out
into the woods; go to your tent; go anywhere where you can get alone
with God and have this matter out with Him."
At three o'clock we all
gathered in front of Mr. Moody's mother's house (she was then still
living), and then began to pass down the lane, through the gate, up
on the mountainside. There were four hundred and fifty-six of us in
all; I know the number because Paul Moody counted us as we passed through
the gate.
After a while Mr. Moody
said: "I don't think we need to go any further; let us sit down here."
We sat down on stumps and logs and on the ground. Mr. Moody said: "Have
any of you students anything to say?" I think about seventy-five of
them arose, one after the other, and said: "Mr. Moody, I could not wait
till three o'clock; I have been alone with God since the morning service,
and I believe I have a right to say that I have been baptized with the
Holy Spirit."
When these testimonies
were over, Mr. Moody said: "Young men, I can't see any reason why we
shouldn't kneel down here right now and ask God that the Holy Ghost
may fall upon us just as definitely as He fell upon the apostles on
the Day of Pentecost. Let us pray." And we did pray, there on the mountainside.
As we had gone up the mountainside heavy clouds had been gathering,
and just as we began to pray those clouds broke and the raindrops began
to fall through the overhanging pines. But there was another cloud that
had been gathering over Northfield for ten days, a cloud big with the
mercy and grace and power of God; and as we began to pray our prayers
seemed to pierce that cloud and the Holy Ghost fell upon us. Men and
women, that is what we all need the Baptism with the Holy Ghost.
Source: To
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