Moody

“ The next time he drew the net there were forty, and when he came to see me later, he said to me joyfully,
“Moody, I have had eight hundred conversions this last year! It is a great mistake I did not begin earlier to pull in the net.”
So, my friends, if you want to catch men, just pull in the net. If you only catch one, it will be something. It may be a little child, but I have known a little child to convert a whole family. You don’t know what is in that little dull-headed boy in the inquiry-room; he may become a Martin Luther, a reformer that shall make the world tremble—you cannot tell. ”

“ In spite of injurious puritan traditions there is something inalienably American and truly great about old New England. It is the same unafraid stoutness of heart that is at the bottom of Moody’s personality. It gives him power; it gives him unconscious dignity.
Yet Moody was indeed a rebel against the religious and social muddle in which he found himself. Something red and pagan poured into his veins the instinct of defiance to a jealous god and to pale customs. The best of the Greek was his; instinctively he turned at last to Greek drama for his form and to Greek mythology for his figures. ”

“ Their instinctive grasp of the figurative deeper meanings, their immediate response to elusive metaphor, and their understanding of his vigorous, exact, but sometimes recondite diction make them his best audience. For they too can most nearly appreciate the distinguished beauties of his work—his wide and intimate knowledge of world literature, the opulence of his style, the firmness of his structure, the scrupulousness of his detail. Through the rising and the risen poets of the present generation Moody’s influence is exerted on thousands who are all unconscious of it. ”

“ Moody sat in the library, knitting. Her expression was as sweet and as restful as usual, as she bent over her work, so that no one could have suspected the gray-haired old lady of any thought more important than the number of her stitches. ”

“ The work of such a life as Mr. Moody's goes on forever. His influence will be felt in almost countless homes after he has passed away from earth. He has wrought without means, and with no fortuitous circumstances. ”

“ Moody has few equals, and rugged as his preaching may seem to some, there is in it a pathos of a quality which few orators have ever reached, and an appealing tenderness which not only wholly redeems it, but raises it, not unseldom, almost to sublimity. ”

“ Most of Moody’s best work bears witness to his glorification of man’s possible personality in rebellion against man’s restrictive conception of society and god. We have had many such rebels; the peculiar significance of Moody lies in the fact that he lacks utterly the triviality of the little radical, and that his is a power which springs from the most heroic in American quality. ”

“ Of course all this would be worth nothing unless Moody had the authentic utterance of the poet. His fulness of inspiration, combined with his sensitive editing, has left us scarcely a line which should have gone to oblivion. As an example of his magic take three lines from I Am the Woman, in which the woman is walking with her lover ”

“ Moody says that as a man sows so shall he reap.
Mr. B. lived a useless and wicked life. By his cruelty he drove his wife to insanity, his children became vagrants and beggars, his home was a perfect hell, he committed many crimes, he was a thief, a burglar, a murderer. A few minutes before he was hanged he got religion and his soul went from the scaffold to heaven. And yet Mr. Moody says that as a man sows so shall he reap.
Mr. Moody ought to have a little philosophy—a little good sense.
So Mr. Moody says that only in this life can a man secure the reward of repentance. ”

“ For several reasons Moody’s poetry is not easy to read and is therefore undestined to wide popularity (see pp. 263, 264) . He was not interested to compose simple lyrics or narratives. Seldom does he aid the reader by means of even an implied narrative thread. The poems inspired by history are not self-explanatory nor accompanied by footnotes. Moody consistently employed events, whether actual or imagined, as mere avenues of approach to emotional and spiritual experiences, and he expected the reader to contribute to the poems from his own resourceful imagination. ”

“ How Moody's Faith Saved an Infidel.
When I was in Edinburgh, at the inquiry meeting in Assembly Hall, one of the ushers came around and said, "Mr. Moody, I'd like to put that man out; he's one of the greatest infidels in Edinburgh." He had been the chairman of an infidel club for years, I went around to where he was and sat down by him. "How is it with you, my friend?" I asked, and then he laughed and said, "You say God answers prayer; I tell you He doesn't. I don't believe in a God. ”

“ Time passed, and on our last day at Brooklyn the same man, conspicuous by his commanding figure, sat in a back seat in the Simpson Church. My friend accosted him once more, and this was the answer: "I am waiting to thank Mr. Moody, who, under God, has been the greatest blessing of my life to me. I have given up my engagement, the temptations of which are such as no Christian can face. And I am a Christian--a new creature; not reformed; you cannot reform a drunkard; I have tried that a hundred times; but I am regenerated, born again by the grace and power of God. ”

“ I am struck more and more by the marvellous fact that God can and does reveal Himself—in His essential moral nature—to man; that we are so made that we can apprehend the revelation; nay, that we in turn can in measure reveal Him to men!
Moody's Life stirs me up to realise more the worth of the individual, the surpassing value of man's moral and spiritual nature. I long to help men to see what I see, to love Him whom I love, and the failure of my efforts is largely, I feel, due to defects in myself. Still I do not despair of doing something.
To his brother Edward in South Africa. ”

“ Moody, my mother's dead, and my father drinks, and they don't love me, and the Lord won't have anything to do with me because I am a poor drunkard's boy." "You have got a wrong idea, my boy, Jesus will love you and save you and your father too," and I told him a story of a little boy in an Eastern city. The boy said his father would never allow the canting hypocrites of Christians to come into his house, and would never allow his child to go to Sunday-school. A kind-hearted man got his little boy and brought him to Christ. When Christ gets into a man's heart he cannot help but pray. ”

“ On 8 Nov. 1855 he was appointed commanding royal engineer in North Britain.
Moody was a skilled draughtsman, and delighted in architecture. While in Scotland he drew up plans for the restoration of Edinburgh Castle, with which Lord Panmure, then secretary of state for war, was so pleased that Moody was commanded to proceed to Windsor and submit them to the queen and the prince consort. On 28 April 1858 Moody was promoted brevet-colonel, and in the autumn he was appointed lieutenant-governor and chief commissioner of lands and works in the colony of British Colombia. ”

“ Moody was forty-one years old when he died—and there was a time when the poet of forty was considered well past the meridian of his genius. Most of the great poets established their fame before they were thirty years old—Keats and Shelley died at twenty-five and twenty-nine respectively. But nowadays the [Pg 303] poet of forty-five is still called young and the poet of thirty our kind critics consider a precocious infant.
As a matter of stern fact, it is doubtful that American literature has really lost much by Moody's death. ”

“ Great-minded youth must dream, and modern dreams of the meaning of life lack the props and pillars of the old dogmatism. Vagueness, confusion and despair are a natural inference from the seeming chaos of evil and good, of pain and joy. Moody from the beginning took the whole scheme of things for his province, as a truly heroic poet should; there are always large spaces on his [Pg 55] canvas. In his earlier poetry, both the symbolic Masque of Judgment and the shorter poems derived from present-day subjects, we find him picturing the confusion, stating the case, so to speak, against God. ”

“ Moody, on his return from England, while conducting a prayer-meeting in Northfield, Mass., gave this illustration of the power of prayer to subdue the most unlikely cases of sin and unbelief:
"There is not a heart so hard that God cannot touch it. While in Edinburgh, a man was pointed out to me by a friend who said, 'Moody, that man is chairman of the Edinburgh infidel club.' So I went and sat down beside him, and said, 'Well, my friend, I am glad to see you at this meeting. ”

“ He dropped Moody on the narrow cot, relieved him of his keys and stepped out, grinning as he locked the door behind him. It would be a long, long time before the recreant warder awakened to discovery and disgrace. No one from outside would come near the place until eight or nine in the morning; he had oceans of time in which to make good his escape before the alarm could be given.
He possessed himself of a slouch hat that he found in Moody's room and drew its brim well down over his eyes, then cautiously unlocked the back door of the jail. ”

“ Moody, I hadn't a child that didn't mock me!"
That made me think of Lot down in Sodom. It is an awful thing for a man who has been a backslider to have his children mock him. But it is written: "Thy back-slidings shall reprove thee; know, therefore, and see [Pg 18] that it is an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God." ”

“ Moody, if you knew me you would understand. I have a very quick temper. I inherited it from my father and mother, and it is uncontrollable; but my swearing comes only from the lips.”
When God said, “I will not hold him guiltless that takes My name in vain,” He meant what He said, and I don’t believe any one can be a true child of God who takes the name of God in vain. What is the grace of God for, if it is not to give me control of my temper so that I shall not lose control and bring down the curse of God upon myself? When a man is born of God, God takes the “swear” out of him. ”

“ Moody, I would like to know whether I am a Christian or not. I would like to know if I am saved." The longer I live the more I am convinced that it is one of the greatest privileges of a child of God to know--to be able to say, "I am saved." The idea of walking through life without knowing this until we get to the great white throne is exploded. If the Bible don't teach assurance it don't teach justification by faith; if it don't teach assurance it don't teach redemption. The doctrine of assurance is as clear as any doctrine in the Bible. ”

“ Moody may live to the age of two and eighty years; that his experience may be more fortunate than the fate that he attributes to me, and that at that advanced period of his life his ability to interpret the Constitution of his country will not be less than it now is. ”

“ Another young lady came down from the gallery and said: "Mr. Moody, I want to become a Christian." I asked a young Christian to talk to her, and when she went home that night about 10 o'clock--her mother was sitting up for her--she said: "Mother, I have accepted the invitation to be present at the marriage supper of the Lamb." Her mother and father laid awake that night talking about the salvation of their child. That was Friday night, and next day (Saturday) she was unwell, and before long her sickness developed into scarlet fever, and a few days after I got this letter:
"Mr. ”

“ Moody openly justified Mr. English, and, in defiance of all the Prejudices which prevailed, expressed his Abhorrence of the Measures which had obliged a useful Citizen to flee from the Executioners. Mr. Moodey was commended by all discerning Men; but he felt the angry Resentment of the deluded Multitude of his own Times; among whom, some of high Rank were included. He soon after left Boston and returned to Portsmouth. ”

“ Moody can freely speak to them of the love of God without stopping to explain what love is, or that God is not a bit of painted and gilded wood. He can allude to the good Samaritan or the prodigal son without pausing to tell the stories. ”

“ He is a man consecrated to a single purpose,—that of winning souls.
Mr. Moody died at his home at East Northfield, Mass., at noon, Friday, December 22, 1899. He was taken ill during a series of meetings at Kansas City, a few weeks previously, and heart disease resulted from overwork. He was conscious to the last. He said to his two sons who were standing by his bedside: "I have always been an ambitious man, not ambitious to lay up wealth, but to leave you work to do, and you're going to continue the work of the schools in East Northfield and Mount Hermon and of the Chicago Bible Institute." ”

“ Moody a Young Convert.
I remember soon after I got converted a pantheist got hold of me, and just tried to draw me back to the world. Those men who try to get hold of a young convert are the worst set of men. I don't know a worse man than he who tries to pull young Christians down. He is nearer the borders of hell than any man I know. When this man knew I had found Jesus he just tried to pull me down. He tried to argue with me, and I did not know the Bible very well then, and he got the best of me. ”

“ Thinking to appease the mob, Moody said, in Irish tones such as he was accustomed to employ, that 'he was very sorry he had displeased them by saving their lives in putting out the fire.' This was held an aggravation of his offence, and the audience insisted that he should go on his knees. He exclaimed, 'I will not, by heaven,' and left the stage, to be embraced by Garrick, who declared that while he had a guinea he would pay Moody his salary. Garrick was compelled to promise that Moody should not appear again on the stage while under the displeasure of the audience. ”