Dwight Lyman Moody

“ What is that long procession approaching Jerusalem? I think, from the pomp of it, there must be royalty in the train. I smell the breath of the spices which are brought as presents, and I hear the shout of the drivers, and I see the dust-covered caravan, showing that they come from far away. Cry the news up to the palace:
“The Queen of Sheba advances.”
Let all the people come out to see. Let the mighty men of the land come out on the palace corridors. Let King Solomon come down the stairs of the palace before the Queen has alighted. ”

“ The king caroused with his princes and satraps and all the mighty men of Babylon, drinking and rioting and praying to gods of silver and gold and brass and stubble—just what we are doing today, if we bow the knee to the gods of this world. And the revelers, waxing wanton, even go into the temple and lay sacrilegious hands on the sacred vessels that had been brought away from Jerusalem, and drank wine from them—drank toasts to idols and harlots. And, undoubtedly, as they are drinking they scoff at the God of Israel. ”

“ The little Bible of your life is read in your kitchen, in your parlor, in your shop and in your warehouse; and if you do not bear your trials, anxieties and difficulties with a Christian chivalry and heroism, what is there but mockery on Earth and gloating in hell?
May God give us grace to bear chastisement nobly and serenely; bless us with the peace which passeth understanding—with the quietness kindred to the calm of God; help us when death is in the house, when poverty is on the hearth-stone. ”

“ And so we might go on—citing the men who have sold themselves. It is easy for us to condemn these men, but let us see if there are not men and women doing the same thing today. How many are selling themselves tonight for naught! It is easy enough to condemn Judas, Herod and Ahab, but in doing this do we not condemn ourselves?
We thought that slavery was hard. We thought it hard that those poor black people should be put upon the block, in the market, and sold to the highest bidder; but what do you think of those men who sell themselves today to evil? ”

“ Every rebellion must be put down that can not justify itself by the very spirit and genius of justice. Separation becomes schism when it but expresses a whim, an aversion, of a superficial or technical kind; and every rebellion is wickedness, is born of the spirit of the pit, that can not justify itself by appeals to justice, nobleness, liberty and God.
Yet our rebellions have made our history.
We should have been in slavery but for rebellion. The rebels are the heretics that have created orthodoxy. ”

“ Differences of merely accidental detail there will ever be, but no honor can mark the death of those who have gone contrary to the will of Heaven, and taken counsel of their own imagination. How long shall the lessons of history be wasted upon us? How long will men delude themselves with the mad infatuation that they can fight against God and prosper? Horsemen and chariots are nothing; gold and silver are valueless; all the resources of civilization are but an elaborate display of cobwebs. Nothing can stand in the final conflict but truth, right and purity. ”

“ Hezekiah will now go to work and prove himself to be an energetic reformer.
“He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made; for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and he called it Nehustan.”
He must have been a strong man. He had no colleague, no ally; no one to say to him: “Be brave, be true.” He went straight against the hardest wall that ever was built by the stubbornness and perversity of man.
It is not easy to begin life by a destructive process of reformation. ”

“ We should call Jehoshaphat a man of conviction and a man who had the courage of his convictions. Altogether, this is the outline of a noble personage—a born king, a man who has a right to the purple and the scepter. When such men ascend thrones nations should be glad and rejoice with a great joy, for their character is grander than their office and their spirit is the best guarantee of the elevation and utility of their regal policy. ”

“ When he became an old man, thinking of the goodness of God, he seemed to hear again the bleating of his father’s sheep across many years, and to think of the time when he tended them on the Bethlehem hills, and he cries out: “The Lord is my shepherd.”
There is one scene in the life of David that you may not have pondered.
You have seen him with a harp, playing the devil out of Saul; with a sling, smashing the skull of Goliath; with a sword, hacking to pieces the Philistines; with a scepter, ruling a vast realm; with a psalm, gathering all nations into doxology. ”

“ Gehazi was “the servant of Elisha, the man of God.” Surely, then, he would be a good man? Can a good man have a bad servant? Can the man of prayer, whose life is a continual breathing unto God of supreme desires after holiness, have a man in his company, looking on and watching him, and studying his character, who denies his very altar and blasphemes against his God? Is it possible to live in a Christian house and yet not be a Christian? ”

“ By this demise the Church of God has lost nothing; the world has lost nothing. It is only a nuisance abated; it is only a grumbler ceasing to find fault; it is only an idler stopped yawning; it is only a dissipated fashionable parted from his wine cellar—while, on the other hand, no useful Christian leaves this world without being missed. The Church of God cries out like the prophet: “Howl, fir tree, for the cedar has fallen.” Widowhood comes and shows the garments which the departed had made. Orphans are lifted up to look into the calm face of the sleeping benefactress. ”

“ We live an off-hand life.
Religion is now as easy as a wave of the hand, a salutation across a thoroughfare; it is something that can be taken up, laid down, forgotten and resumed.
What wonder if the Rab-shakehs of the age come and taunt us, mock our piety and blow back our prayers before they get to the skies?
We want more trust, more cleaving piety, more keeping of the commandments, living in them and having no other life that is not consonant with them.
Now came, as we have often seen, the inevitable temptation. We pass instantly to the visit of Rab-shakeh. ”

“ Can we not, in some small sense, be leaders in our little circles—in our business relations, in our family life, in our institutional existence? Many people can follow a tune who can not begin one. That is the philosophy we would unfold and enforce.
Regard all leaders with prayerful hopefulness in so far as they want to do good and to be good. Sympathize with them; say to Asa, even the king: “What thou hast done thou hast well done; in God’s name we bless thee for the purification of the land and for the encouragement of all noble things.” ”

“ The accusation of Abijah was that Jeroboam had “gathered unto him vain men, the children of Belial.” For “vain men” read “sons of worthlessness”—empty fellows, who will join any mob that pays best; men who will cheer any speaker for a half-crown an hour, and put out anybody on any plea on any side for extra remuneration.
Where do these men come from? Whose language do they speak? Whose image and superscription do they bear?
They are in every country; they worship in the sanctuary of mischief and bow down at the altar of selfishness. They know not what they do. ”

“ Rehoboam should have consulted the King Maker whose throne is on the circle of the Earth, whose scepter touches the horizon and whose will is the law of both monarchy and commonwealth.
The greater the man, the nearer should he stand to God; yea, he should be within whisper-reach of the Lord of lords, asking Him in every crisis of national history what Israel ought to do—what the country ought to answer—what is the will of Heaven. ”

“ Now Abijah says, as a kind of climax:
“And, behold, God himself is with us for our captain, and His priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm against you. O children of Israel, fight ye not against the Lord God of your fathers; for ye shall not prosper.”
How steadfastly Abijah abides by the altar! He can not be tempted one step from the throne of God. His appeal is sublime because it is religious. It is historically religious. “The Lord God of your fathers.” It would seem to be a solemn thing to cut off oneself from all the currents of history—to bury our fathers over again in a deeper grave ”

“ Our Savior knew that John was going first. He knew that He was soon to die, and that John would have to come to Him; that they would soon be together in Glory, and then they could talk matters over; that John must sink out of sight, and the Lord of Glory must be the central object.
Jesus and John were like the Sun and Moon in comparison with the stars. All the prophets were like the stars in comparison with those two men. There was no prophet like John. None born of woman was greater. Moses was a mighty prophet. Elijah was the son of thunder, and a great and mighty prophet; and so was Elisha. ”

“ Then Elisha said: “Lord, open his eyes; let this young man see. At present he can only look upon appearances, which are not realities. The universe is within the universe. The Bible is within the Bible. The man is within the man. This servant of mine sees only the outer circle—the rim or rind of things. Lord, show him the reality; let him see, and then he will be at peace.”
There is a view of sight; there is a view of faith. The worldly man goes by what his bodily eyes notice or discern; the spiritually minded man walks by faith, not by sight.
The telescope does not create the stars ”

“ Do not believe that they are the heavenly, pure and brilliant souls who have no church, no religion, no altar; who live under the dome of their own hats and walk on the marble of their own boots. Whose prophets, pray, are they? They must be accounted for, as well as the Melchisedeks, the Balaams and Elijahs of old time. What is their history? Where have they made their mark? What marvels of beneficence have they performed? Or do they only live in the very doubtful region of sneering at other people’s piety?
Balak’s was a great thought. ”

“ I wish that the wives and mothers and daughters and sisters of this congregation would imitate Dorcas in her discipleship. Before you sit with the Sabbath class, before you cross the threshold of the hospital, before you carry a pack of tracts down the street, before you enter upon the temptations and trials of tomorrow, I charge you, in the name of God and by the turmoil and tumult of the Judgment Day, O women, that you attend to the first, last and greatest duty of your life—the seeking for God and being at peace with Him. ”

“ Not a soul fluttered—not a heart started up in the royal defense. The woman—the evil daughter of an evil mother—was taken out by the way along which the horses came into the king’s house, and the sword which she had thrust into the throats of others drank her own blood.
In an event of this kind there must be some great lessons for all time. These are not merely momentary ebullitions of wrath or malice. They have history in them; they are red with the common blood of the whole race.
Very few men stand out in ancient history with so fair and honorable a fame as good Jehoshaphat. ”

“ How is it that a man can not be understood in his own house, but be thought fanciful, fanatical, eccentric and phenomenally peculiar? How is it that a man may be living among men, and yet not be of them; may be in the world and yet above the world; may be speaking the very language of the time, and yet charging it with the [378] meaning of eternity? See here the differences that still exist, and must ever exist, as between one man and another:
Elisha—living the great spiritual life, the grand prayer-life and faith-life.
Gehazi—grubbing in the Earth and seeking his contentment in the dust. ”