WHAT MOODY STOOD FOR
By EDWARD SHILLITO
DWIGHT L. MOODY, born on February 5th, 1837, was only a visitor to these islands ; he was American in every fibre of his being ; to America he gave his lifelong service, and there his• memorial must be sought. But, visitor though he was, he was more than a passing visitor ; and though it is now over sixty years since he landed in Liverpool, there are many whose faces light up with grateful memory when they hear his name. The three missions which the American evangelist conducted cannot be overlooked in any history of the Christian Church in these islands.
Moody and Sankey landed in Liverpool in 1873, Moody to preach, Sankey to sing. Moody, as I remember him, was a short, thick-set, sturdy man with a pronounced jaw and a quick eye ; both his voice and his humour made clear whence he came ; he was a layman, who never professed to have studied theology ; he was evangelical but not in the least sectarian, and a sincere, disinterested, experimental preacher. When one of his friends said to him that he believed in the Mission because he could see no relation between the results achieved .and the instrument, Moody laughed and said that he would not have it otherwise.
- It was in Scotland that the revival first began ; and of Moody in Scotland there are many admirable records. By way of Newcastle, where he had begun to awaken a wider response, he came first to Edinburgh, and one of the strange surprises of history took place, for the layman from America came to play an important part in the life of the Free Church of Scotland. He arrived in a critical hour. That Church had begun its life (in 1848) in a passionate devotion to " the crown rights of the Redeemer " ; but by this time there was a danger that it might lose its fervour and its splendid unity. James Macdonell, the famous journalist, in 1874 said in The Spectator that the Free Church was being intellectu- ally starved. The new facts which scholarship had brought before men were being faced by the great scholars of the Church, and there was no more learned ministry in Christendom. But the rank and file in the Churches held to the traditional views. " A crisis," wrote Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, " was sure to come, and it might very well have been a crisis which would have broken the Church to pieces. That it did not was due to the influence of one man—the American evangelist, Mr. Moody."
Moody found a welcome both from the scholars of the Church and from its working ministry, and not least from the students for the ministry. Those who held to the old ways, and those who were thinking out the new facts, found themselves together on the platform of Moody's meetings and in the enquiry room. They learned to understand each other in a common redeeming task. The Missioners went through Scotland and Ireland, and everywhere they called others to their side. No one who will turn to, the Life of Henry Drummond by Sir George Adam Smith can miss the radiance of that revival, or fail to see some of its shadows.
For it is here that Henry Drummond enters the story, and in his experience the work of Moody can be inter- preted. Through the story of that age Drummond moves like a knightly soul, who in other ages might have been a Bayard or a Sidney. A man of rare culture, a scientist by training, a man of rich humanity, he was studying for the ministry when Moody came to Scotland. He had been looking for something more scientific in Christian methods, something that could be called " clinical." He found it in Moody's meetings, and especially in the personal dealings with the sick of soul. In the interviews which followed the large assemblies Drummond and Moody became fast friends. Moody saw in Drummond, young and inexperienced as he was, the very man he needed. He gave to him great tasks at once. And in this way the Mission was able to cover new ground ; and Drummond began a service to youth, which only ended in his death. Those who trace back to its springs the Student Christian Movement can never forget Drummond ; and Drummond can never be understood without Moody. Moody was a loyal friend ; in after years when the hounds of controversy were loosed upon Drummond, he stood by him. Not that Moody ever adopted for himself the new critical views of Scripture, but he knew how to distinguish those who had the root of the matter in them, and he never betrayed a friend.
Moody can also be seen as R. W. Dale saw him. By the fiine Moody came to Birmingham in 1875 he was well known even to those who were strangers to the churches, Dale at that time was at the height of his power as preacher, theologian, citizen and statesman. He took his place wholeheartedly with Moody and indeed spoke and wrote fiercely in defence of him. In the same hall in the same week he would speak with John Bright, and help Moody to bring light and peace to the souls of men. He found in Moody an agent of an invisible power. He watched the light, which he likened to an Alpine dawn, break upon the faces of multitudes. _Such were the happenings in all the great cities, and they are not forgotten to this day.
Moody came again in the 'eighties. It was during this mission that a young medical student, Wilfred Grenfell, enters the picture. He tells himself how re- turning from an out-patient case he saw a large tent near Shadwell and entered. A tedious prayer-bore embarked on a long oration. Grenfell started to leave, but he was arrested by the words of Moody, a man of robust common sense : " Let us sing a hymn while our brother finishes his prayer." This seemed practical to the medical student, who stayed out the meeting. " When eventually I left," he says, " it was with the deter- mination either to make religion a real effort to do as Christ would do in my place as a doctor, or frankly abandon it." What this doctor has lived to do in Labrador everyone knows : but it is only right to remember how Moody comes into the story, as indeed he does into the story of many in that day who had their life to give. There were, for example, the Cam- bridge Seven, those athletes who went through this country with a fiery cross and afterwards sailed for the mission field. C. T. Studd, one of them, was at the time the best all-round cricketer in England ; but to athletic men as to theologians Moody made a strong appeal.
There are only a limited number of methods open to those who seek to call their fellows to a new faith and service. Two must always be used, the mass meeting and the personal interview. The warmth and en- couragement of the assembly prepare the way for the friendly help which can be given to those who have answered the first call. These methods vary in different ages, but they are the same in principle, and students of modern religious movements will see close resemblances between the sharing of the Groups and the work of the after-meetings in which Drummond and many other helpers dealt with awakened souls.
Much depends upon the provision which such an evangelist makes for the hour when the tide recedes. Moody did not fail by this test. He never encouraged his hearers to believe that they could be Christians_ without applying their religion to the life of their city, their nation, and the family of mankind. Everywhere he left behind him eager servants of humanity.
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