Why God Used D. L. Moody
by R. A. Torrey
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 pray-er
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 fellowmortals
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.
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