Page 5056 – Christianity Today (2025)

Dwight L. Moody

1837: Born February 5 at Northfield, Mass.

1854: Leaves home for Boston; begins work in S.S. Holton shoe store; joins, YMCA

1855: Converted April 21 through Sunday school teacher; denied membership at Mt. Vernorn Congregational Church

1856: Accepted as member of Mt. Vernon Church; moves to Chicago; employed by C.E. Wiswall as shoe salesman

1858: Meets Emma C. Revell; organizes North Market Hall sabbath School

1860: John V. Farwell elected superintendent of the North Market Mission; Abraham Lincoln visits

1861: Gives up business

1862: Marries Emma C. Revell on August 28; as delegate of U.S. Christian Commission, works with Civil War soldiers

1863: Appointed missionary of YMCA of Chicago

1864: Helps form Illinois Street Independent Church

1865: Enrolls as student in Baptist Theological Seminary, Chicago

1866: Elected president of Chicago YMCA

1867: First visit to Great Britain; meets Earl of Shaftesburv, Charles H. Spurgeon, and George Muller

1870: Meets Ira Sankey at International Convention of YMCA; second visit to Great Britain

1871: Great Chicago Fire destroys Illinois Street Church and Moody’s home; Moody experiences new endowment of power

1872: Third visit to Great Britain; preaches in London and Dublin

1873: First great campaign in U.K. begins in June (continues until July 1875); first form of Sacred Songs and Solos used

1874: Meetings in Scotland (Jan Aug.); Ireland (Sept.-Nov.); Manchcster (Dec.)

1875: Meetings at Oxford and Cambridge; in Great London campaign March July, speaks to 2.5 million; campaigns in Brooklyn and Philadelphia

1876: Elected president of Illinois Sunday School Union; purchases farm at Northfield; Chicago Avenue Church dedicated; evangelistic campaigns in Chicago, Nashville, Kansas City

1877: Evangelistic meetings in Boston and in Mexico and Canada

1877-78: Meetings throughout New England; in October 1878 begins seven-month Baltimore campaign

1879: Northfield Seminary opens November 3; six months’ meetings in St. Louis

1880: First Northfield Conference

1881: Mt. Hermon School for boys established; second major campaign in U.K. begins (continues to April 1883)

1882: Meetings throughout England, including Oxford and Cambridge; twice preaches in Paris

1883: January through April, meetings in Ireland and England; returns to America

1885: Evangelistic meetings in southeastern U.S.

1886: Student Volunteer movement begins; Chicago Evangelization Society formed; conference of college students at Mt. Herman; campaigns in New Orleans, Washington, New York

1887: Four-month campaign in Chicago; second conference at Northfield

1888: Evangelistic meetings on West Coast and in Canada and England

1889: Meetings in Scotland and Ireland; Bible Institute formally opened in Chicago

1890: Chicago Bible Institute building dedicated

1891: Seventh visit to England

1892: Travel through Europe and Holy Land; meetings in England and Ireland, including eight days at Spurgeon’s Tabernacle; accident at sea

1893: Great campaign at Chicago World’s Fair

1894: Meetings across Eastern Seaboard and in Canada

1895: Meetings in New York, Boston, Dallas, Mexico City

1896: Elected President of International Sunday School Association; meetings in New York

1897: Meetings in Boston, Chicago, Ottawa, elsewhere

1898: Works among soldiers of Spanish- American War; preaches in Colorado, Montreal, Tampa Bay

1899: Meetings throughout western US; dies December 22 at Northfield home

Other Significant Dates

1840: Renoir, Monet, and Tchaikovsky born

1844: YMCA founded in England by George Williams

1846: Irish potato famine

1846–48: Mexican-American War

1848: California gold rush; Marx’s Communist Manifesto

1850: US population hits 17 million

1852: Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

1854: Hudson Taylor arrives in China; War for Bleeding Kansas over state slavery rights

1858: Third Great Awakening begins

1859: Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

1861: Dickens’s Great Expectations

1861–1865: U.S. Civil War

1864: Pasteur invents pasteurization . 1865 Lincoln assassinated i 1867 Russia sells Alaska to U.S.

1869: First Vatican Council

1870: Rockefeller founds Standard Oil

1872: Ulysses S. Grant reelected; Whistler’s The Artist’s Mother

1875: Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health

1876: Alexander Graham Bell invents telephone

1878: Treaty of Berlin settles Russo- Turkish Wars; Salvation Army begins

1880: Edison devises practical electric light

1881: President Garfield assassinated

1883: First skyscraper (10 stories, in Chicago)

1884: Grover Cleveland elected

1889: Dakotas, Montana, and Washington become states

1890: Global flu epidemics

1892: Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker

1894–1895: Chinese-Japanese War

1895: Röntgen discovers x-rays

1896: First modern Olympics held Athens

1898: Spanish-American War

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Emma (Revell) Moody

Dwight Moody’s indomitable spouse

Emma Revell emigrated from England with her family in 1849. The eldest of four children, Emma was her father’s favorite because of her calm sensibility, sensitivity, and keen sense of humor. Nine years later, those qualities attracted the attention of Dwight L. Moody, who later commented in a letter to his mother that his fiancee was “a good Christian girl.”

She was 15 when she met Moody in a Baptist Sunday school class; he was recruiting workers for his Sunday school on Chicago Avenue and Wells Street. Emma worked in Moody’s organization for one year before she and Moody were engaged in 1859. Not long after, the successful young businessman decided to renounce business to preach the gospel. Emma faced a choice: become the wife of an itinerant evangelist with no guarantee of support, or abandon the man she had grown to love. She took a teaching position in a Chicago public school to support herself during their three-year engagement and continued to work alongside Moody in the Sunday school.

On August 28, 1862, amid the confusion of the Civil War, Emma Revell became a bride. The records of the Moodys’ early years together are scanty, due in part to the war and to the fact their first house probably burned down. This was only the portent of a life that would test Emma Moody’s mettle.

In 1871 the Chicago Fire gutted the section of the city where the Moodys lived. Moody was preaching at church on the Sunday evening the blaze lit up the Chicago skyline. Alone at home with their two small children, Emma calmly dressed each child in two suits of clothing and led them to the window before they fled, promising them a sight they would never forget: a cityscape engulfed in flames.

Emma provided direction and support throughout her husband’s demanding public life. Although responsible for the care of their three children, Emma wrote D.L.’s correspondence and handled their money. From age 15 until her death in 1903 (she outlived her husband by four years), Emma seized every opportunity to teach. In the last year of her life, in fact, she resumed her Sunday school class at the Old Home in Northfield.

The dignity and serenity with which the “good Christian girl” encountered potentially defeating situations counterbalanced her husband’s impulsive, emotional nature and became the backbone of Moody’s success.

John V. Farwell

Moody’s strong supporter

John Farwell came to Chicago in 1848 with $3.45 and was hired as a bookkeeper in a dry goods store, earning a few dollars a month. Eventually, he became a partner in a dry goods business, his associate a young Marshall Field. Field went on to establish his own business; Farwell also became the head of one of the largest wholesale dry goods firms in the country. (Farwell & Co. was absorbed into Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. in 1925.)

Farwell met Moody in a young men’s class at the Methodist-Episcopal Church in Chicago where both attended. Moody had been in Chicago but a few years and was scrambling between two churches in his self-appointed role of Sunday school/YMCA street missionary. Farwell was attracted to the young man’s work and was elected superintendent of the North Market Hall Mission in 1860, continuing in that position for ten years.

When Moody gave up business for full-time Christian work, Farwell gave him a home rent-free; it was the beginning of a life-long commitment to support Moody’s endeavors. Farwell designed and built the Chicago Tabernacle for Moody’s revivals there and was a charter member of the Chicago Evangelization Society (later Moody Bible Institute).

Farwell was Moody’s Chicago contact when Moody was involved in campaigns abroad. During an 1874 campaign in Scotland, a Chicago lawyer wrote a scurrilous letter attacking Moody and sent it to people connected with the campaign. In the resulting uproar, the committee that had invited Moody to Edinburgh wrote Farwell for help in determining the truth or falsity of the charges. Farwell obtained the signatures of thirty-five Chicago ministers endorsing Moody’s character.

In addition, John Farwell helped to organize the United States Christian Commission, which ministered spiritually and medically to troops during the Civil War. He had been a presidential elector on the Lincoln ticket in 1860; it was through his contact that President-elect Lincoln was persuaded to make his famous visit to Moody’s Sunday school. Farwell was later Indian Commissioner under President Grant.

Steadfastly concerned with Moody’s ministry, Farewell was said to be the “inventor of Dwight L. Moody.” To this Farwell answered, “I didn’t create Moody; God did.”

“Auntie” Sarah Cooke

Her prayers changed Moody’s ministry

“Few persons in Chicago were better known in certain religious circles than she, for she was continuously going to the missions, street meetings, conventions, camps, conferences, lectures and every kind of religious gathering within her reach. She was the living personification of aggressive evangelism, instant in season and out of season, ever exhorting sinners to flee the wrath of God and urging believers to plunge in the fountain of cleansing.”

So quotes a memorial article (Moody Monthly, September 1921) for “Auntie Cooke.” She arrived in Chicago in 1868—in her words, “a perfect stranger”—but it didn’t take her long to become involved in God’s work, helping the YMCA on Madison Street. She attended Moody’s church when he was young. Cooke described him years later as a “ ‘diamond in the rough’—most truly, with the one desire to do good burning through everything, his very earnestness moving people, but withal such a lack in his teachings of the divine unction and power.”

During a St. Charles camp meeting in 1871, she felt burdened for Moody—he needed an anointing of power from the Holy Spirit. She and her friend, Mrs. Hawxhurst, who usually sat on the front row, told Moody they were praying for him to be baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire. Moody was unsure this was a need; nevertheless, he asked the two ladies to meet with him in Farwell Hall every Friday afternoon to discuss this matter and pray. Apparently his hunger increased. Cooke reports that on the Friday before the Great Chicago Fire, “Mr. Moody’s agony was so great that he rolled on the floor and in the midst of many tears and groans cried to God to be baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire.”

Following the fire, Moody went to New York shortly thereafter to raise funds for the rebuilding of the church and YMCA building. In New York, while walking down Wall Street, the young preacher finally received the spiritual blessing they had prayed for. Moody felt such a sense of the Holy Spirit’s filling that he cried, “Hold, Lord, it is enough!”

“I went to preaching again,” Moody testified. “The sermons were not different; I did not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should give me all the world.”

Auntie Cooke continued in vigorous service and died in Chicago in 1921.

Ira D. Sankey

Partner in song

Sankey was no newcomer to Christian service when he met Moody in 1870 at the International Convention of the YMCA in Indianapolis. Sankey was converted at 16 and became a member of the Methodist-Episcopal church in New Castle, Pennsylvania. By age 22, Ira was superintendent of the Sunday school and began solo singing. He also became an active member of the New Castle YMCA and later its president.

Sankey was helping with his father’s business and working as a local revenue collector, married and with one child, when Moody’s path crossed his. Moody heard him sing at the YMCA convention and in his characteristic straightforward way informed Sankey that he would have to quit his job. “I have been looking for you for the past eight years,” said the evangelist. But Sankey hesitated to give up the security of a well-paying government job.

So the next day, according to one writer, “Moody … asked to meet him on a certain street corner. When Sankey arrived, he found Moody setting up a barrel on the sidewalk. Moody called to Sankey to climb up and start singing. Startled, Sankey hardly remembered how, but he found himself on the barrel singing ‘Am I a Soldier of the Cross?’ The crowd of factory workers heading home stopped and stayed for Moody’s sermon. One example was worth a thousand arguments to Sankey. He knew he must return home and seriously consider joining Moody in Chicago.”

He did, and their names became inseparably linked. Although Sankey was not college-educated, and his voice was untrained, the enrapturing quality of his sound and his sensitivity to the use of music in spiritual capacities became his trademarks. It was said of him: “Mr. Sankey sings with the conviction that souls are receiving Jesus between one note and the next.”

Sankey also composed hymns, although many of his successful solo performances used the hymns of P. P. Bliss, another singer associated with Moody. One of Sankey’s most famous hymns, “The Ninety and Nine,” was a poem he found in a Scottish newspaper; two nights later he sang it to a large audience, improvising the melody as he went.

Moody and Sankey became famous during their campaign in the British Isles in 1873–75. Sankey was an oddity to the puritanistic Scots, singing hymns a form unfamiliar to them and playing a harmonium, which shocked congregations not accustomed to musical instruments in church services. His musical eloquence, however, won them over, and it became necessary for Moody and Sankey to print hymnbooks so congregations could learn the songs they used. Sacred Songs and Solos is said to have reached a circulation of seventy million by 1927. A successor, Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs, sold over fifty million copies. Both Moody and Sankey relinquished rights to the hymnbook royalties; the money was used toward the work of the gospel.

Sankey’s role in the partnership diminished with the gradual weakening of his voice. By the 1880s his talent as a singer was nearly spent, and he accompanied Moody less. Sankey was blind the last five years of his life and died in 1908.

William Moody

Dwight’s elder son

William Revell Moody, born March 25, 1869, the second child of Emma and Dwight Moody, published the first “official” biography of his father’s life. The announcement of unauthorized biographies prompted him to hastily pen, in 1900, the first version, which was revised in 1930.

D.L. Moody’s thoughts were never far from his children, and stories about young Willie often made their way into his sermons. Moody once remarked that he taught Willie the concept of faith by having him jump from the table into his father’s arms.

In his teenage years, Will and older sister Emma accompanied their father on his second overseas tour in 1870. Although Moody traveled extensively, Will and Emma spent most of their time in London boarding schools.

In the fall of 1887 Will entered Yale, which became a point of contention between Moody and his ultra-conservative critics. Moody paid little attention to them; he trusted his children to evaluate the liberal religious views for which Yale was gaining a reputation. (In fact, he preached on campus each year that Will, and later, son Paul, were there. )

This trust was put on trial. Will began to vacillate between commitment to Christ and the current philosophies promoted in the college. At one point, Will communicated an increasing dislike for the Bible, an observation that left the Moodys devastated. Four months later, however, the Moodys were encouraged with the news that their son had decided to take a stand for Christ.

Will’s strong family ties brought him home to Northfield following his graduation; there he married and reared a family. Eventually he assumed leadership of the schools his father established in Northfield and Chicago. He served in a general leadership capacity over the Moody legacy for over thirty years. His evangelical viewpoint, more conservative than his father’s, set the tone for those schools after 1900.

Paul Moody

He carved his niche outside the Moody legacy

D.L. Moody desired that his sons, Paul and Will, jointly manage his Northfield Schools. Will was to be in charge of Mount Hermon School for Boys, and Paul to be responsible for Northfield Seminary. But soon after their father’s death, the Moody brothers became estranged. Will was conservative and formal, while Paul had an easygoing nature and a reputation for being a practical joker like his father.

Will pressed for the incorporation of the two schools’ boards; under the new consolidation, Paul would be forced out altogether. A bill proposing the merger was presented to the Committee on Mercantile Affairs on April 8, 1912. Despite opposition to the timing of the proposal, which gave Paul, away in Chicago at the time, no chance to voice his opinion, the bill passed.

Paul then carved out a distinguished career for himself independent of Moody circles, primarily among the liberal wing of American Protestantism. After graduating from Hartford Theological Seminary in 1912, he pastored a church in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont, and during World War I he was commissioned senior chaplain of the American Expeditionary Forces. After the war he served as president of Middlebury College for 21 years. Paul also published a biography of his father, My Father: An Intimate Portrait of Dwight Moody.

The remarkable breadth of D.L. Moody’s life and faith can be seen no more clearly than in the theological differences of his two sons. He was a man who stood in the gap, inviting differing theological perspectives—all the while preaching with unmitigated certainty the necessity for the sinner to repent.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Moody’s preaching mentor

Dwight Moody first encountered Spurgeon through newspaper accounts of London’s celebrated preachers. Moody began to read everything he could about and by this popular preacher, and he determined that one day he would hear him preach. In 1867, following his first sea voyage, Moody remarked that the fourteen days of seasickness were worth it because he had accomplished a lifelong ambition: hearing Spurgeon preach at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. Moody was moved by Spurgeon’s sermon and inspired by his prayers. Moody later recalled that the veteran preacher gave him the incentive to begin his own preaching ministry.

The relationship between the two famous preachers was distant, perhaps due to the fact that Spurgeon’s philosophy of ministry clashed with Moody’s. Years before Moody gained the reputation of being a revivalist, Spurgeon said he was suspicious of anyone who called himself a revivalist, and the title, if it were applied to him, would be derisive. Despite this, Moody and Spurgeon supported and complemented each other’s ministries. Spurgeon became part of an evangelistic movement that heralded the potential of every person to be forgiven and saved. His work laid an essential foundation for the acceptance and sensational success of Moody’s revivals of 1873.

Like Moody, Spurgeon was concerned that biblical education be accessible to the general public. He founded a pastors’ college as well as schools and facilities for the poor and orphaned. He edited a magazine, The Sword and the Trowel, and wrote many tracts emphasizing the atonement of Christ.

For thirty years Spurgeon held the pulpit in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, which was built (seating 6,000) to accommodate the large crowds he drew. On Spurgeon’s fiftieth birthday, in 1884, the church sponsored a jubilee celebration, and Moody was invited to give an address. In his reply, Moody wrote to Spurgeon that not only would he consider it a great honor to be invited to speak on that occasion, but also he would consider it an honor to blacken the boots of the great preacher.

Cyrus H. McCormick

Inventor of the reaper who financed Moody’s spiritual harvest

During Cyrus McCormick’s boyhood, farmers faced the unwieldy task of harvesting increasingly larger crops of grain. McCormick inherited his father’s dream to perfect a mechanical reaping machine. When he did (assisted by a slave named Jo Anderson), Cyrus McCormick made history. In 1847 McCormick moved to Chicago to oversee manufacture of his reaper, and in one year he sold 1,500 machines. At age 40, McCormick was heralded as a captain of industry.

A Presbyterian layman, McCormick lived by the creed that business and Christianity are compatible; the latter ought to serve the former. In that context, he enticed the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the Northwest to move to Chicago by promising to endow a chair if it relocated. The seminary not only moved, but also adopted McCormick’s name.

It took an extraordinary man to convince McCormick to invest in projects outside his own denomination. Dwight L. Moody succeeded. When the young revivalist described his vision for a Chicago YMCA building that would be larger than the Crosby Opera House, McCormick warmed to his tenacity.

Moody boldly asked McCormick for an initial investment of $10,000. His plan was to raise $125,000 by selling stocks in the YMCA association. The association then hoped to repay investors from its paying boarders. McCormick’s name, Moody said, would start the ball rolling. Two years later, in 1866, the full sum was pledged.

The building was hardly built when it burned down. McCormick again purchased $10,000 in stocks, and in 1869 the new hall was dedicated to him.

McCormick contributed yearly to the YMCA and periodically to Moody’s campaigns in Chicago. In 1886, when Moody began raising funds for the Bible Institute, McCormick offered $50,000. “Better make it a hundred,” Moody told him. “That will require some consideration,” McCormick replied with a smile, ending the conversation. But he later consented to give the larger amount.

Reuben Archer Torrey

Moody’s opposite, yet his successor

Torrey was distinguished from other revivalists in his time by his level of education: he graduated from Yale University and Yale Divinity School. He was ordained in 1878 a minister of the Congregational Church and studied theology from 1882 to 1883 in Leipzig and Erlangen.

Torrey was an agnostic during his first years at Yale, and as a young Christian he adopted liberal views. By his own admission, he was unorthodox in his beliefs. He came back to conservatism while studying abroad. He was working in Minneapolis with International Christian Workers Conventions when Moody heard of him.

Torrey served as a pastor in Ohio and Minnesota before coming to Chicago at Moody’s request to superintend the Bible Institute of the Chicago Evangelization Society (later Moody Bible Institute) in 1889. An associate described the two men: “Moody was brusque, impulsive, and uneducated; Torrey polished, logical, and scholarly.” Complements to one another, they were close friends. Torrey eventually built a summer home in Northfield, where the two of them could be seen early mornings in a carriage, touring the countryside and discussing matters of faith. Another friend once said that “Moody was the only person who ever dared tell Torrey what to preach.”

Torrey contributed much to the Chicago school’s curriculum. He also served as a trustee of the Northfield Schools until well after Moody’s death. Torrey was one of the most popular lecturers during the summer conferences at Northfield, although there was some conflict over his strong preaching of the “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” a doctrine not held by some teachers at Northfield.

R. A. Torrey lectured frequently at conventions around the country. He also was a revivalist whose meetings reaped similar effects as those of Moody. This reputation, as well as his close affiliation with the Bible Institute and Moody’s church, identified him in public consciousness as Moody’s successor.

Torrey pastored Moody’s Church from 1894 to 1906, although from 1902 to 1906 he also conducted evangelistic tours in ten or more countries. From 1912 to 1924 he was dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles; the last ten of those years he was pastor at the Church of the Open Door, also in Los Angeles. In 1927 Torrey returned to Moody Bible Institute as special lecturer.

Torrey authored at least 40 books, among them The Fundamentalist Doctrines of the Christian Faith, The Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and How to Study the Bible for the Greatest Profit.

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Revivalism is a strand within the evangelical tradition. Evangelicalism has been marked over time by four characteristics:

1. Conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed by faith in Christ;

2. Biblicism, a high estimation of the teaching of Scripture;

3. Crucicentrism, a concentration in theology on the doctrine of the Atonement;

4. Activism, a variety of efforts for the welfare of others’ souls.

Revivalism is a form of activism, involvement in a movement producing conversions not in ones and twos but en masse.

In the nineteenth century revivalism was more widespread in America than in Britain. The pulse of mass revival felt in America in 1857–58 nevertheless extended, via Ulster, to Britain in 1859–60. There was created a network of zealous Christians eager for a fast spiritual tempo. With these British believers the young D.L. Moody made contact, traveling across the Atlantic to visit them in 1867 and again in 1872. Returning in the following year, his campaigns made a major impact on several cities.

-David W. Bebbington

Dr. David W. Bebbington is lecturer in history at University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland.

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Moody left home at age 17 and became a shoe salesman.

The first time he applied for church membership, it was denied him because he failed an oral examination on Christian doctrine.

When he first came to Chicago in 1856, his goal in life was to amass a fortune of $100,000.

Moody ministered to soldiers in the American Civil War.

His engagement to Emma Revell was formalized by the unassuming announcement that he would no longer be free to escort other young ladies home after church meetings.

Abraham Lincoln visited Moody’s Sunday school, and President Grant attended one of his revival services.

He chose to use theaters and lecture halls rather than churches for his meetings.

Moody’s house in Chicago burned down twice; his Chicago YMCA building burned three times. Moody raised funds for the rebuilding each time.

D.L. Moody was never pastor of the church that grew out of his Sunday school work and that today bears his name.

At the Chicago World’s Exhibition in 1893, in a single day, over 130,000 people attended evangelistic meetings coordinated by Moody.

D.L. and his son Will survived a near-fatal accident at sea.

It is estimated that Moody traveled more than one million miles and addressed more than one hundred million people during his evangelistic career.

Moody’s revivals often elicited relief programs for the poor.

Moody once preached on Calvary’s hill on an Easter Sunday.

Moody was personally acquainted with George Muller, the orphanage founder; Lord Shaftesbury, the great social reformer; and Charles H. Spurgeon, the prince of preachers.

All three schools founded by Moody in the late nineteenth century are thriving today.

Copyright © 1989 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

1820 Born May 12 in Florence, Italy

1837 February 7, records in diary a call to God’s service

1839 Presented to Queen Victoria

1842 Introduced to Richard Monckton Milnes

1843 Decides to work in hospitals

1844 Declines wedding proposal of Milnes

1845 Seeks training at Salisbury Infirmary; parents object

1847 Visits hospitals in Italy and observes Catholic sisters fulfilling nursing duties

1850 Visits Kaiserwerth Institution in Germany

1851 Returns to Kaiserwerth and joins in active nursing duties

1853 Becomes Superintendent of the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances

1854 Crimean War begins; appointed Superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment of the English General Hospitals in Turkey; arrives at Scutari on the Crimean War front

1855 Contracts Crimean Fever and almost dies

1856 Crimean War ends; returns to England; declines wedding proposal of Sir Harry Verney

1859 Publishes Notes on Hospitals and Notes on Nursing

1860 Nightingale Training School is opened

1861 Assists U.S. in organizing soldiers’ hospitals in Civil War

1865 Settles in her Mayfair home in London

1897 Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria includes exhibition of Florence Nightingale’s nursing contributions

1907 Awarded the Order of Merit

1910 Dies in sleep August 13

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

1. Was Moody a Calvinist or an Arminian?

Both Calvinists and Arminians cooperated with him in his meetings, although neither camp was entirely comfortable with his views. Moody had been profoundly affected by both the Arminianizing trends of North American evangelicalism and the more Calvinistic views of British evangelicals.

Arminians were ill at ease with Moody’s “once in grace, always in grace” views, and they were not happy with Moody’s statements about election. But Calvinists felt uncomfortable with Moody’s evangelistic emphasis on human responsibility to believe and the universal provision and offer of salvation. In Moody’s words, “I don’t try to reconcile God’s sovereignty and man’s free agency.”

2. Did Moody experience or teach a second work of grace, commonly known a the “second blessing?”

Moody believed that the Holy Spirit established a permanent relationship with the believer at the moment of regeneration. Nevertheless, he believed that something more was needed for effective Christian work. That “something more” was the “Holy Spirit upon us for service.” He had such an experience himself in 1871, and on those rare occasions when he referred to it, he spoke of it as a filling, a baptism, an anointing, an empowerment for service. However Moody disavowed that such an experience led to entire sanctification, eradication of the sin nature, or perfection.

3. Did Moody speak in tongues or advocate the practice?

No. Moody seldom mentioned the subject; when he did, he never did so in a way suggesting sympathy with the practice or the belief.

4. Was Moody a premillennialist? a dispenstionalist?

Moody was clearly a premillennialist; in fact, he was the first premillennial evangelist of note in North American history (the rest had been postmillennialists). History was on a downhill trend, and Christ would return in judgment before his kingdom would be set up. In Moody’s words, God had given him a lifeboat to rescue people off this world as off a sinking vessel. This was a key motive to evangelism. But Moody’s eschatology was hardly more specific than this. He was sympathetic to dispensationalists and dispensationalism, but his sermons only indirectly reflect dispensational themes. It is even difficult to establish that he believed in the pretribulation rapture of the church. When premillennial ranks began to splinter on this point in the 1890s he said, “Don’t criticize if our watches don’t agree about the time we know that he is coming.” He later warned, “I don’t think anyone knows what is going to happen.”

5. Was Moody tolerant of theological liberalism?

Moody had cordial relationships with several scholars and theologians known for their liberal tendencies (e.g., Henry Drummond, William Rainey Harper, George Adam Smith). He even would invite them to speak under his auspices if he thought they had a positive contribution to make to his ministry. But this reflected his high regard for them as individuals and for the genuineness of their faith, in spite of his reservations about their theological tendencies. He specifically disapproved of their theology and often expressed concern and dismay over trends that, after his death, were to come to fruition in what we now call modernism.

-Stanley N. Gundry

Dr. Stanley N. Gundry is publisher for academic and professional books and general manager of Zondervan Publishing House in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His book Love Them In: The Life and Theology of D. L. Moody (Moody, 1976, and Baker, 1982) is the definitive study of Moody’s theology.

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

For Dwight L. Moody the main task in life was evangelism, to “win men to Christ,” to save souls.

The salvation message, then, must be delivered as persuasively and as clearly as possible, and by as many evangelists as could be summoned for the task. Moody conceived of education as the means to prepare religious workers—first by converting them and then by training them to evangelize others. Not only seminary-trained pastors with B.D.’s were to be enlisted for the effort, but also legions of devoted laypersons who had received a brief but effective training. Since in Moody’s mind education and evangelism were so closely connected, most of his notions about education derived from his conception of the evangelistic task.

Moody’s Own Education

Moody himself had received only the most rudimentary education—about the equivalent of the fifth grade. In an era when most people did not attend high school, this was not remarkable, except that the lack of learning and polish showed all over Moody. During his early days in Chicago his grammar was impossible; his pronunciation smacked of the Massachusetts hill country of his boyhood; his vocabulary was poor; and his spelling can be described only as imaginative. His physical appearance struck even the street Arabs of Chicago as “uncouth.” He moved awkwardly, spoke awkwardly, and stumbled when he read. In short, Moody was not only ill educated; he also struck observers as a country bumpkin, a rube in the big city. An early Chicago acquaintance recalled, “No one ever thought he would amount to much on account of that fact that he was so poorly educated.”

Eventually Moody’s more polished and better educated wife, Emma Revell, gently went to work on him. Reportedly they spent an hour every day studying to make up Moody’s deficit. As a result, the evangelist became more presentable, though his grammar, spelling, and pronunciation always remained rough and uncertain.

He never became a student, never a real reader. He was too restless, too constantly intent on action. Theology never greatly interested him, nor did literature. The details of contemporary events the frequent labor troubles, the radical political movements, American involvement abroad failed to capture his attention. The clash of ideas did not stimulate him; mostly he surrounded himself with workers who agreed with him. He remained immune to theorizing, systematizing, and the codification of ideas; one gets the feeling that he regarded theorizers tolerantly as somewhat curious and quaint creatures. One book truly captivated his attention: the English Bible. An acquaintance recalled the Moody library as crowded not with works of theology or literary classics but with Bibles and biblical commentaries and interpretations. Even in this respect, Moody was far from a scholar. He was oblivious to the higher critical theories then achieving currency in the United States. Nor did he care about studying the Bible in its original languages.

In fact, Moody regarded the Bible as remarkably unproblematic, uncomplicated; it was self-interpreting if only one approached it in the proper spirit. Problems of consistency and obscurity of meaning that worried conservatives and liberals alike gave him hardly a moment’s pause. For Moody the Bible was a sort of commonplace book, a source of compelling stories and quotations, any of which was capable of going unaided directly to the human heart. Bible study need not even be very systematic. One of the women in Moody’s Chicago church recalled that after one Sunday meal, Mr. Moody said, ” ‘Now we’ll have honey out of the rock.’ He would go around the table calling on each one for a thought from the Bible.”

Other books, though less rich and certainly less inspired than the Bible, were useful in some of the same ways: to be combed for lively anecdotes and timely quotations. He once hired a woman student at Northfield School to mark passages in books “you haven’t heard me use” to be employed as illustrations for his sermons and addresses.

Inclusive Educational Ideas

Moody was not greatly interested in complex questions of pedagogy, despite the fact that his was an age of educational experimentation and theory: the ideas of the European educators Herbart, Pestalozzi, and Froebel permeated the air, and the American progressive educators like John Dewey were beginning their work. Educational leaders debated how best to connect education to real life, how to motivate students, and how to gear the content of learning to student understanding. Moody was smart and attuned enough to current educational ideas to pull them from the atmosphere, and perhaps in addition he had a natural instinct for the pedagogically sound approach; for instance, he vigorously preached the coordination of classroom knowledge with actual experience. An early Moody Bible Institute prospectus asserted, “Study and work go hand in hand.” And discipline in Moody’s Sunday schools came more from keeping students interested than from threatening them with a whipping. On the other hand, the question of motivation remained a simple matter to him, not a weighty pedagogical consideration. Persuading students to attend his Sunday school in Chicago involved unsubtle promises of “missionary sugar,” picnics, and pony rides, and the fun of roughhousing with Moody himself.

The evangelist also strongly believed in providing more educational opportunity for those who, like himself, had been deprived. Quite clearly Moody regarded his lack of education as a handicap, and yet he had demonstrated that a smart, earnest, and energetic young man, no matter how poor and uneducated, could prove astonishingly effective in religious work. He had also absorbed the egalitarian thinking common in America—”he was just as cordial with the humblest as with the highest,” an early acquaintance observed. And he was firmly convinced that those who had grown up in poverty were the best—equipped once they had received training—to proselytize among the poor, to stand as “gap men,” in his famous phrase, between the well-educated religious leaders and the masses.

Among the groups normally excluded from schooling, those without economic means found a welcome in Moody’s educational institutions. Neither the Northfield schools nor Moody Bible Institute charged tuition. The Northfield schools were intended for poor mountain kids, the Institute for students who had to work their way through school.

The evangelist was also well aware that girls and women had frequently been barred from educational institutions. The first of the Northfield schools was for girls; the school for boys came later. The early program he began in the 1870s with Emma Dryer that predated his Bible Institute involved only the training of women—not men—as evangelists. Moody initially assumed that the seminaries could take care of the men.

Finally, not even the disruptive and ill-behaved were excluded from Moody’s Chicago Sunday school—it was against school policy to evict any student, no matter how unruly.

The habit of inclusiveness was so firmly established at Moody Bible Institute that when, early in the twentieth century, Dean James M. Gray tried to limit admission to high school graduates, a barrage of opposition forced him to back down. Visiting instructors at the Institute were often nonplused at the wildly disparate educational backgrounds of early Institute students, all collected indiscriminately into the same classes.

Moody’s philosophy of inclusiveness educating the largest possible number whatever economic, educational, and geographical disabilities might limit them—unquestionably led to many of the Institute’s educational activities: the evening, extension, and correspondence classes; the Christian Workers Magazine published by MBI; and the Institute-sponsored Bible conferences. Moody himself organized the Bible Institute Colportage Association, which made possible the energetic distribution of inexpensive religious books. No doubt this same inclusive spirit, continued after Moody’s death, was responsible for the important role MBI played in evangelical broadcasting (with radio station WMBI) and in the production of religious films.

Institution Builder

If Moody was not an educational theorizer or systematizer, he certainly was an institution builder: Sunday school, conferences for Sunday school teachers, the Moody Church, the Chicago YMCA, the Northfield Conferences, and of course MBI and the Northfield schools. None of these institutional forms originated with him. Not even the Bible institute, novel at the time, was his brainchild, though Moody, like other early American founders of Bible schools and missionary training schools, had the sense to look to Europe and Great Britain for inspiration. Moody had actively studied certain well-known English institutions: the deaconess institute at Mildmay, Charles Spurgeon’s London college for poor and ill-educated Baptist pastors, George Muller’s orphanage-school at Bristol, and H. Grattan Guinness’s East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions. The educational philosophy behind these institutions strongly appealed to Moody: they aimed to train those who otherwise would have lacked preparation for religious work; they sought out the very ones who would be most likely to evangelize among the poorer classes not ordinarily reached by pastors and evangelists. These institutions spurned the classical education in Greek and Latin current at the time in favor of concentraton on the English Bible and methods of Christian work. They set out to turn out efficient workers in the shortest possible time, teaching them only what they needed to know in order to become effective and consecrated workers.

Moody Bible Institute was formally constituted in 1889. At that time it was called the Institute for Home and Foreign Missions; though it took Moody’s name only later, from the beginning people tended to refer to it informally as “Moody’s.” It followed a couple of similar schools: the Baptist Missionary Training School for women in Chicago (1881) and the Missionary Training College in New York City (1882). The course at MBI was open to all no matter what their educational background—religious zeal counted for more—and lasted two years, though students could stay for shorter periods as they found necessary. Mostly students studied the English Bible, and they spent much of their time in Christian work—visiting homes, handing out tracts, conducting street meetings, teaching Sunday schools, and preaching in churches, prisons, and missions. Institute education was thoroughly biblical and practical.

A Typical Day

It is possible to catch a glimpse of a typical day at Moody Bible Institute in 1900. According to Bernard R. DeRemer, in Moody Bible Institute: A Pictorial History (Chicago: Moody Press, 1960), students awoke to the rising bell at 6:45 and went to breakfast and devotions at 7:30. Except for Sundays and Mondays (Mondays were set aside for rest and recreation), they attended classes each morning and additional classes in the early afternoon. Each day at 5:00 they went to Physical Culture (apparently tennis was a favorite activity). In classes, of course, they concentrated on the Bible, taking subjects such as chapter summary, Bible doctrine (three times a week), and analysis of Romans; they also studied religious music and methods of evangelism and of teaching the Bible. On Tuesday nights they had Synthetic Bible Study, a class most probably open to the public as well as to regular students. Students were expected to study about twelve hours a week. On top of that, they fulfilled several practical work appointments a week, and at “report hour” every Tuesday morning they discussed the results of their practical work and received advice from the faculty. Regular times were set aside for prayer and worship: Saturday evenings, Sunday mornings before church services, and the first Tuesday morning of every month. On Friday mornings students met for the “Missionary Study and Prayer Union,” at which they studied the needs of the various foreign missionary fields, prayed for missions, and heard missionaries on furlough. Each day students were expected to perform one hour of domestic work around the Institute. And of course those who were short of funds—a substantial number—held remunerative jobs outside the school. Life was often hectic.

As was the case in the other institutions he set up, Moody seldom involved himself in the day-to-day affairs of Moody Bible Institute. Others—Reuben A. Torrey and later James M. Gray—oversaw daily matters and of course set their own educational imprints upon the emerging school. Moody raised funds for it and dropped in from time to time, staying in the men’s dormitory and holding discussions with the students. A student in the Institute in 1897 recalled Moody’s breakfast talks:

They were like a father’s instructions to his son. Here he told us about those little things that so effect [sic] one’s ministry. Dress, mannerisms, length of sermons, etc., were all dealt with. … He often asked at these breakfast talks that the students give their best thoughts of the day before. When an especially good one was given he would comment on it.

Moody Bible Institute would continue long after its founder’s death to educate and evangelize widely. By the late 1920s it would enroll 1,000 students in each of its day and evening programs. Today, its day enrollment numbers 1,500, while extension and correspondence courses attract another 12,000 students.

When Everyone Needed Training

Dwight Moody, then, was a popular educator par excellence. His educational institutions encouraged all to attend. MBI especially reached out beyond its Chicago confines through correspondence, conferences, extension, publications, and broadcasting. Moody’s primary educational text—the Bible—was, he thought, thoroughly comprehensible to all who approached it with a good heart. He did not aim to train pastors with B.D.’s but rather laypersons (as he himself was a layperson)—including women. He had few formal educational theories about how to reach the greatest numbers of people with the message of salvation; instinctively, it seems, he did what worked and was aided in the process by a personality most people found charming and irresistible. In 1860, for example, Moody’s huge Sunday school (numbering as many as five hundred to six hundred students) attracted so much attention that Abraham Lincoln visited it during a trip to Chicago.

The late nineteenth century celebrated popular education and popular educators. The reasons for this enthusiasm were numerous: the educational needs of a rapidly industrializing nation; a renewed romance with the notion of democracy, in which all ought equally to receive enlightenment; and concern for Americanizing the thousands of new immigrants. As the turn of the century approached, more and more young people attended high schools, including the new manual training institutions. The first universities were just emerging, and they offered education not only for the elite, but also for the broader public: extension courses, popular Journals, summer schools and institutions evening schools, and learning by mail. Everyone, it seemed, needed training, and there were new schools started for salespeople, nurses, teachers, and engineers, among others. Even younger children were drawn in with the appearance of the German innovation of kindergarten. Religious leaders like Moody ardently joined the popular education efforts, fostering a religious education movement: the Chautauquas, Bible study conferences and classes, the International Sunday School Lessons, and of course the Bible institutes.

What precisely was the place of Moody in his era’s intense enthusiasm for popular education? Certainly he did not originate the attitudes nor the institutional forms. But as the foremost embodiment of “ordinary man,” and as inspired evangelist, fund raiser, publicist, institution builder, and salesman extraordinaire, he did as much as anyone to spread the gospel of popular education, especially popular religious education.

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

I will direct your attention to the third chapter of John and the third verse: “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” … If there are a thousand people here tonight who want to know what love God has for them, let them read the third chapter of John, and they will find it there, and find eternal life. They need not go out of this hall tonight to find eternal life. They will find it here in this chapter, and find eternal life before these services close.…

Now, let me say what regeneration is not. It is not going to church. Very often I see people and ask them if they are Christians. “Yes, of course I am, at least I think I am; I go to church every Sunday.” Why, I could say to them, the very Devil goes to church every Sunday, and no one goes more regularly to church than he does.… Why if going to church was regeneration—being born again—there is hope even for Satan himself. But there never was a church erected but that the Devil was the first to enter and the last to leave.

But still there is another class of Christians, or who think they are Christians. They say, “I am trying to do what is right—am I not a Christian? Is not that a new birth?” No; I tell you, no. What has that to do with being born again?

There is yet another class those who have turned over a new leaf and think they are regenerated. No; forming a new resolution is not being born again. That will not do you any good…

But another man comes and says, “I say my prayers regular.” Still, I say, that that is not being born again. That is not being born of the Spirit.

It is a very solemn question, then, that comes up before us, and would that every one should ask himself earnestly and faithfully: “Have I been born again? Have I been born of the Spirit? Have I passed from death unto life?”

Now there is another class of men who say that these meetings are very good for a certain class of people. That they would be very good if you could get the drunkard here, or get the gambler here, or get other vicious people here—that would do a great deal of good. There are certain men that need to be converted, who say: “Who did Christ say this to? Who was Nicodemus? Was he a drunkard, a gambler, or a thief?” He was one of the very best men of Jerusalem; no doubt about that He was an honorable councillor; he belonged to the Sanhedrim [sic]; he held a very high position; he was one of the best men in the state; he was an orthodox man; he was one of the very soundest men. Why, if he were here today, he would be made a president of one of our colleges; he would be put at once into one of our seminaries and have the “Reverend” put before his name, “Reverend Nicodemus, D.D.,” or even “LL.D.” And yet, what did Christ say to him? “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

See Nicodemus. He, with Joseph of Arimathea, took down the body of Jesus and brought it away, and stayed by Jesus to the last. I never knew a man that had a personal interview with Jesus that did not stay by him. Oh, make up your mind that you will seek him and follow him until you have an interview with him; for never man spake as that man spake. He is just the man that everyone wants.

But I can imagine someone say, “If that is to have a new birth, what am I to do? I can’t create life. I certainly can’t save myself.” You certainly can’t, and we don’t preach that you can. We tell you it is utterly impossible to make a man better without Christ, and that is what men are trying to do. They are trying to patch up this old Adam’s nature. There must be a new creation. Regeneration is a new creation, and if it is a new creation it must be the work of God. In the first chapter of Genesis man don’t appear. There is no one there but God. Man is not there to help or take part. When God created the earth, he was alone. When God redeemed the world he was alone. “That which was born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” … A man might just as well try to leap over the moon as to serve God in the flesh. Therefore that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Now God tells us in this chapter how we are to get into his kingdom. We are not to work our way in, not but that salvation is worth working for. We admit all that. If there were rivers and mountains in the way, it would be worth swimming those rivers and climbing those mountains. There is no doubt that salvation is worth all that, but we don’t get it by our works. It is to him that worketh not, but believeth. We work because we are saved; we don’t work to be saved. We work from the cross but not towards it. Now it is written, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Why you must have your salvation before you can work it out. Suppose I say to my little boy, “Go and work out that garden,” I must furnish him the garden before he can work it out. Suppose I say to him, “I want you to spend that $100 carefully.” “Well,” he says, “let me have the $100 and I will be careful how I spend it.” I remember when I first left home and went to Boston, I had spent all my money, and I went to the post-office three times a day. I knew there was only one mail a day from home, but I thought by some possibility there might be a letter for me. At last I got a letter from my little sister, and I was awful glad to get it. She had heard that there were a great many pickpockets in Boston, and a large part of that letter was to have me be very careful not to let anybody pick my pocket. Now I had got to have something in my pocket in order to have it picked. So you have got to have salvation before you can work it out.

“It is to him that worketh not but believeth.” When Christ shouted on Calvary, “It is finished,” he meant what he said. All that men have to do now is just to accept of the work of Jesus Christ. There is no hope for a man or a woman as long as they are trying to work out their salvation. I can imagine there are some people here who will say, as Nicodemus did, “This is a very mysterious thing.” I see the scowl on that Pharisee’s brow as he says, “How can these things be?” It sounds very strange to his ear. “Born again; born of the Spirit? How can these things be?” A great many people say, “You must reason it out, but if you don’t reason it out, don’t ask us to believe it.” Now, I can imagine a great many people in this hall saying that. When you ask me to reason it out, I tell you frankly I can’t do it. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and you hear the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” I can’t understand all about the wind. You ask me to reason it out. I can’t. It may blow due north here, and up to Boston it may blow due south. I may go up a few hundred feet and find it blowing in an entirely opposite direction from what it is down here. You ask me to explain these currents of wind, but because I can’t explain it, and because I don’t understand it, suppose I stand here and assert, “O humph! There is no such thing as wind.” … My friends, you might just as well tell me tonight that there is no wind as to tell me there is no such thing as a man born of the Spirit. I have felt the Spirit of God working in my heart just as much as I have felt the wind blowing in my face…

I can’t help believing in the regeneration of man when I see men that have been reclaimed…

Look you, down there in the dark alleys of New York is a poor drunkard. I think if you want to get near hell, go to a poor drunkard’s home. Go to the house of that poor miserable drunkard. Is there anything nearer like hell on earth? See the want and distress that reigns there. But hark! A footstep is heard at the door, and the children run and hide themselves. The patient wife waits to meet him. The man has been her torment. Many a time she has borne about for weeks the marks of blows. Many a time that strong right hand has been brought down on her defenseless head. And now she waits expecting to hear his oaths and suffer his brutal treatment. He comes in and says to her: “I have been to the meeting, and I heard there that if I will I can be converted. I believe that God is able to save me.” Go down to that house again in a few weeks and what a change! As you approach you hear someone singing. It is not the song of a reveler, but they are singing the “Rock of Ages.” The children are no longer afraid of him, but cluster around his knee. His wife is near him, her face lit up with a happy glow. Is not that a picture of regeneration? I can take you to thousands of such homes, made happy by the regenerating power of the religion of Christ. What men want is the power to overcome temptation, the power to lead a right life.

The only way to get into the kingdom of God is to be born into it. If the archangel Gabriel was to wing his way here tonight, and we could have a chance to tell him all our wishes, we couldn’t ask him for a better way of getting into the kingdom of God. Christ has made salvation ready for us, and all we must do is just to take it. Oh, may we not hesitate to take it! There is a law in this country requiring that the president must be born in the country. When foreigners come to our shores they have no right to complain against such a law which forbids them from ever becoming presidents. Now hasn’t God a right to make a law that all those who become heirs of eternal life must be born into his kingdom? An unregenerated man would rather be in hell than in heaven. Take a man whose heart is full of corruption and wickedness, and place him in heaven among the pure, the holy, and the redeemed, and he wouldn’t want to stay there. My friends, if we are to be happy in heaven we must begin to make a heaven here on earth. Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. If a gambler or blasphemer were taken out of the streets of New York and placed on the crystal pavement of heaven and under the shadow of the tree of life he would say, “I don’t want to stay here.” If men were taken to heaven just as they are by nature, without having their hearts regenerated, there would be another rebellion in heaven. Heaven is filled with a company of those that are twice born. When I was born in 1837 I received my old Adam nature, and when I was born again in 1856 I had another nature given to me.

It is impossible to serve God a right unless you first make up your mind to be born again. If a house is built upon the sand, it falls; but if it is founded upon a rock, it stands firm against the wind and wave. Our faith can never endure unless it is founded on Christ. We may travel through the earth and see many countries, but there is one country—the land of Beulah, which John Bunyan saw in vision—that country we shall never see unless we are born again—regenerated by Christ. We look abroad and see many beautiful trees, but the tree of life we shall never see until our eyes are made clear by faith in the Savior. You may see the beautiful rivers of the earth—the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Hudson—you may ride upon their bosoms, but bear in mind that your eye will never rest upon the river which bursts out from the throne of God and flows through the upper kingdom. God has said it, and not man. You will never see the kingdom of God except you are born again. You may see the kings and lords of the earth, but the King of Kings and Lord of Lords you will never see except you are born again. When you are in London you may go to the Tower and see the crown of England, which is worth millions, and is guarded there by soldiers; but bear in mind that your eye will never rest upon the crown of life except you are born again. You may come to these meetings and hear the songs of Zion which are sung here, but one song—that of Moses and the Lamb—the uncircumcised ear shall never hear that song unless you are born again. We may see the beautiful mansions of New York and the Hudson, but bear in mind that the mansions which Christ has gone to prepare you shall never see unless you are born again. It is God who says it. You may see ten thousand beautiful things in this world, but the city that Abraham caught sight of—and from that time he became pilgrim and a sojourner, you shall never see unless you are born again. Many of you may be invited to marriage feasts here, but you will never attend the marriage supper of the Lamb except you are born again. It is God who says it, dear friend. You may be looking on the face of your sainted mother tonight, and feel that she is praying for you, but the time will come when you shall never see her again except you are born again. I may be speaking to a young man or a young lady who has recently stood by the bedside of a dying mother, and she said to you, “Be sure and meet me in heaven,” and you made the promise. Ah! You shall never see her again except you are born again. I believe Jesus of Nazareth sooner than those infidels who say you do not have to be born again. If you see your children who have gone before, you must be born of the Spirit. I may be speaking tonight to a father and mother who have recently borne a loved one to the grave, and how dark your home seems! You will never see her again except you are born again. If you wish to meet your loved ones you must be born again…

Yes, we all have an elder Brother there. Nearly 1,900 years ago he crossed over, and from the heavenly shores he is calling you to heaven. Let us turn our back upon the world. Let us give a deaf ear to the world. Let us get our heart in the kingdom of God, and cry, “Life! Life! Eternal life!” Let us pray that God may keep every soul now here from going out of this building tonight without being born again!

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

It was as a successful evangelist in Britain—among (according to The New York Observer) “men who are not emotional or enthusiastic, who are the furthest removed from religious fanaticism”—that D.L. Moody first achieved fame. With his campaigns in 1873 and succeeding years, he was catapulted into the foremost place in the transatlantic revivalist world.

It was an opportune time, for society was changing in broadly parallel ways on the two sides of the Atlantic. Industrialization was gathering force; by 1880 nearly half the American and well over half the British workforces were employed in industry. The ups and downs of the business cycle meant that unemployment, with its attendant misery and discontent, was a serious threat. More strikingly, however, industry had brought prosperity. In both countries real wages roughly doubled between 1860 and 1890. With increased leisure time and improved transport, working people had money to spend on entertainment—in saloons and music halls, billiard parlors and sports grounds. And more of them lived in urban areas—by 1870 a quarter of the American population and already more than half the people of Britain. Chicago and Glasgow—the two cities Moody knew best—experienced a mushroom growth and felt proud of their modernity. Could evangelical religion flourish in the new urban-industrial age as it had in the less-developed past?

It was Moody’s achievement to help ensure the future of evangelicalism by adaptation. Already, before Moody’s rise to prominence, revivalism had been altering its character. Moody observed the direction of change, identified himself with it, organized it, and accelerated it.

Moody’s impact was felt in six key ways.

Interdenominational Work

In the previous generation the greatest revivalists, such as Methodist James Caughey, had commonly confined their ministry to a single denomination. Now the trend was toward interdenominational work. The Young Men’s Christian Association, whose work markedly expanded during the Civil War, existed to combine Christians of different traditions for special forms of mission, particularly in the burgeoning cities. Moody’s early training came from the YMCA, and later on his outreach scrupulously avoided giving offense to any Christian body. In Scotland combined support for Moody’s missions helped to heal the wounds inflicted by forty years of sharp intra-Presbyterian rivalry. It is no exaggeration to see Moody’s work as one of the roots of the ecumenical movement. Men in his circle, of whom John R. Mott is probably the most famous, went on to promote rapprochement between the churches in the twentieth century.

Lay Participation

A second trend was toward greater lay participation and leadership—from all social strata—in revivalist activities. Moody was a layman and reinforced the unclerical tone of his campaigns by using halls and theaters rather than churches. Businessmen such as John Wanamaker, the Philadelphia pioneer of department stores, gave him generous support. Higher social groups were penetrated in Britain, where weekends at the home of Lady Ashburton were remembered for Moody’s “energetic croquet.” Yet Moody did not buckle to his superiors. He stubbornly refused to alter his London preaching place even at the request of the redoubtable Lord Shaftesbury. The respectability of Moody’s campaigns—he dropped, for instance, the “anxious seat” for isolating awakened sinners—was as much a matter of his choice as of his patrons’ preferences. Perhaps some working people, whom Moody eagerly wanted to reach, were deterred from attending by the preacher’s association with the elite. Yet Moody was successful in inducing the wealthy to help promote the interests of the gospel.

Social Reform

Moody reinforced the existing link between revivalism and social reform. It is unjust to see him as a social conservative. He frequently insisted that there must be public display of the fruits of the faith, and he was associated with many of the progressive causes of his day. “Although their mission,” observed a Scottish newspaper of Moody and Sankey, “is not distinctly to promote the Temperance cause, it has operated powerfully in this direction.” In Glasgow free breakfasts for sleepers out at night and day refuges for destitute children were begun in the wake of the visit of the evangelists. Several councillors were inspired to set about making the city a model of civic virtue. Moody, noted a leading Scottish minister, issued a “Christian call to righteousness and even philanthropy.” It is increasingly appreciated that the social gospel movement had evangelical roots. Some of them were nurtured in soil prepared by Moody.

Romanticism in Theology

The fourth trend was in the sphere of theology. Moody was not, as is sometimes supposed, an Arminian, dismissing predestination and believing that redemption was achieved for all. In Britain Methodists upholding that view criticized his preaching; Calvinists defended him. Moody’s position was compatible with traditional Reformed teaching but avoided doctrinal matters as far as possible. The right perspective is to see Moody, like a growing number of evangelical leaders in his day, as influenced by Romanticism, the body of thought stressing will and emotion in reaction against the emphasis on reason in earlier Christian thinking swayed by the Enlightenment. Such an appreciation of Moody’s intellectual position helps explain why sentimentalism was allowed to enter so many of his addresses. It also shows why he favored certain specific teachings that derived from Romantic ways of looking at the world.

One was premillennialism, the doctrine that the Second Advent is imminent, preceding the millennium. Moody probably derived this view from the so-called Plymouth Brethren, whose brand of premillennial teaching was spreading in revivalist circles around 1870; the ultimate source of this teaching was Edward Irving, the erratic London preacher of the 1820s who posed as a Romantic genius.

Another strand of popular theology with which Moody was associated was the holiness movement, again Romantic in inspiration. Although he never identified with the Keswick form of holiness teaching (let alone any other variant), he did appear on the Keswick platform in 1892, and his attitude toward sanctification came close to its principle of holiness by faith rather than by works.

The idea that mission must be undertaken in faith, waiting on God for his provision, also affected his message. Again it was a Romantic notion going back to Irving. Moody’s encouragement of foreign missions along such lines had its effect. After a visit to Cambridge, England, in 1882, a group of young men from the university, the “Cambridge Seven,” offered themselves as missionaries; and a student conference summoned by Moody at his Northfield, Massachusetts, base in 1886 led to the creation of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. The emphases in Moody’s preaching caught the imagination of the young for they were part of the rising spirit of the age.

Refined Techniques

A fifth tendency that Moody accelerated was the refinement of revivalist technique into a more efficient tool of evangelism. The spontaneous, community-based revivals of the early nineteenth century were giving way by the 1870s to carefully organized events more appropriate to sophisticated city dwellers. Moody’s greatest innovation was to team up with Ira D. Sankey, whose expressive singing was as powerful in its way as his partner’s preaching. At the start of a meeting there would be half an hour of congregational singing; at the end those seeking spiritual guidance would be invited to a separate inquiry room. Methods begun in Britain were applied in America: organizational preparations in advance and house-to-house visitation. Moody kept on learning, but at no time did he make general appeals for money. He did, however, seek to multiply his work by training lay missionaries at Northfield, Chicago, and (under his inspiration rather than direction) Glasgow. Women were not excluded. He even permitted them to preach from the pulpit. John Kennedy, a doughty Highland divine, censured Moody for his willingness to change. Perhaps, on the contrary, that was the essence of his genius.

Unity

If Moody helped turn evangelicalism into new and effective channels, his further achievement was the preservation of its unity. Conservative and liberal tendencies were already apparent in the movement on both sides of the Atlantic. Eventually they would issue in the controversies of the fundamentalists against the modernists in the 1920s. But Moody kept the tendencies together in interaction. Once in 1893 when the Scottish college evangelist Henry Drummond aroused opposition from conservatives at Northfield, no doubt for his pro-evolution sympathies, Moody insisted that he be allowed to speak. Moody’s legacy, as we have seen, included the liberal causes of church unity and social reform as well as the conservative ones of premillennialism and faith missions. He was big enough to combine what others put asunder. Deeply attached to the four cardinal evangelical verities of conversion the Bible, the cross, and activism, Moody was a bridge between the conservative and the liberal, as well as between the old and the new.

Dr. David W. Bebbington is lecturer in history at University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland.

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

On Moody

Gamaliel Bradford, D. L. Moody: A Worker in Souls (New York: George H. Doran, 1927). An important early biography by a non-Christian scholar.

*James F. Findlay, Jr., Dwight L. Moody, American Evangelist: 1837–1899 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969; now available through Ann Arbor, Michigan: Books on Demand, University Microfilms International). An eminent study; highly recommended.

Wilbur M. Smith, Dwight Lyman Moody: An Annotated Bibliography (Chicago: Moody, 1948). A guide, itself interesting reading, to works on Moody published before 1948; includes a timeline of Moody’s life.

William R. Moody, The Life of Dwight L. Moody (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1900). The first official biography of Moody, written by his older son. It sold approximately 400,000 copies and is, according to one writer, “the most important single volume on Mr. Moody.” In 1930 Will Moody wrote a second volume, D. L. Moody (New York: Macmillan), which was more accurate.

Stanley N. Gundry, Love Them In: The Life and Theology of D. L. Moody (Chicago: Moody, 1976; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1982). The book of choice for those interested in Moody’s theology.

*Moody (Quadras, 55 min.). The only film of Moody’s life; available in VHS video from Christian video rental companies or from Christian bookstores.

*John C. Pollock, Moody: The Biography (Chicago: Moody, 1984). Previously issued as Moody: A Biographical Portrait of the Pacesetter in Modern Mass Evangelism by John C. Pollock (New York: Macmillan, 1963; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1963). Lively, readable.

Paul Moody, My Father: An Intimate Portrait of Dwight L. Moody (Boston: Little, Brown, 1938). Includes delightful humorous stories as only a son could tell.

Arthur P. Fitt and Paul Moody, The Shorter Life of D. L. Moody, Vol. II, His Work (Chicago: Bible Institute Colportage Association, 1900). Early recollections from Dwight Moody’s younger son and son-in-law.

By Moody

*Dwight L. Moody: The Best from All His Works abridged and edited by Stephen Rost (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1989). Sixteen sermons and addresses.

*The Way to God (Springdale, Penn.: Whitaker House, 1983). An inexpensive paperback edition, edited, of The Way to God and How to Find It , a collection of Moody’s sermons published in 1884 that sold 435,000 copies by 1900.

Stanley & Patricia Gundry, The Wit & Wisdom of D. L. Moody (Chicago: Moody, 1974; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1982). Over 250 quotable statements culled from over forty sources.

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.