Chapter XIII

CHAPTER XIII.

MR. MOODY'S CRISP SAYINGS.

Personal dealing is of the utmost importance. No one can tell how many souls have been lost through not following up the preaching of the Gospel by personal work.

People are not usually converted under the preaching of the minister. It is in the inquiry-meeting that they are most likely to be brought to Christ.

A doctor doesn't prescribe cod-liver oil for all complaints.

What a man wants is to be able to read his Bible, and to read human nature, too.

There are a great many church-members who are hobbling about on crutches.

One backslider can do more harm in the world than twenty Christian men can do good.

Every man should make a public confession if his sin has been public.

When you tell an unconverted person who desires to become a Christian that he is to live without sin, you discourage him.

You can't offer a man a greater insult than to accuse him of telling a wilful lie.

I challenge any infidel to put his finger on any promise that God has not kept.

For 6,000 years the devil has been trying to find out if God has broken His word.

What a jubilee there would be in Hell to-day if they found God had broken His word!

Just preach Christ, and the Spirit of God will bear witness.

We want to get the church up on a higher plain. Let there be a teaching out of the Scriptures, and the church will grow.

A great many churches in this country hardly expect to gain in numbers. If they hold their own they think they are doing pretty well.

I don't believe a man can preach the simple Gospel faithfully, anywhere in this country, and not have inquirers inside of thirty days, and there will be those added to the church daily of such as shall be saved.

If you can get a man to walk across a church before all the people, and go into an inquiry-room, it means a great deal.

There is nothing like keeping the people stirred up all the time—full of courage—full of hope.

There is no trouble about getting the people to attend the weekly prayer-meeting if it is made interesting.

We don't hear of long prayers in the Bible, except at the dedication of Solomon's Temple, and that comes but once in centuries.

No one likes to hear a long prayer, and when a man is making one, very likely the people are praying that he will stop.

Long prayers may have been all right in other times, but they are not now. Men think quicker than they used to, and act quicker.

If a man will pray fifteen minutes in a prayermeeting, he will pray all the spirituality out of it.

Any minister that preaches twice on Sundays, and then gives a long lecture in the prayer-meeting, will kill any church in this country."

I believe the time is coming when in many of our churches there will be a meeting every night in the week.

Everything shouldn't depend on the minister. What you want is to bring out all the talent you have got in the church.

It helps a meeting wonderfully to introduce new tunes as fast as the people will learn them.

There ought to be more effort made for good music in all our churches and Sabbath-schools.

If a woman goes into a house she can sit down with the wife and family, and talk and pray, and when the man comes home in the evening he won't get mad and rage as he might if a man had been there.

I firmly believe that if we had to-day, in these great cities, hundreds where we have one lady missionary, we would soon break up this Nihilism, and Communism, and all such things.

When a young mother is just beginning to feel her responsibility, it isn't very difficult to reach her heart.

When I commenced to give Bible readings, years ago, I used to give about forty quotations at one time; but I found the people got tired—the sermon was too heavy for them. Then I cut the number down to twenty. Now I have cut it to ten. If I can bring out the meaning of ten passages, with a story here and there to keep up the interest, I think I get more truth lodged in their minds than if I used a hundred passages. There is a danger of giving too much; the people won't stand it. We must give them homoepathic doses. It is better to take a dozen 'passages and throw light on them than to run over a hundred and not say a word between them.

I think there is no better place for people to begin Christian work than right at their own homes.

If a man hasn't got a good enough record to have any effect at home, he won't be of much account in the foreign field.

If we keep at it three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, there will be a good deal of work done at the end of the year.

Money is a very small account in the sight of God.

The great trouble with many of us is, that we are working for God without power.

There was a time when I thought the raising of Lazarus was the greatest work ever done on this earth. But I think the conversion of those three thousand Jews on the day of Pentecost was more wonderful still.

There are a great many men who had power five years ago that haven't got it now. They are like Samson robbed of his strength, or like fishermen working with old, broken nets.

It is an awfully sad thing for a man to outlive his usefulness, to be laid aside as a vessel no longer meet for the Master's use.

There are a good many Christians God can't us* as He used them once.

Of all the skeptics I have seen, I have never seen but one who claimed to have read the Bible through, and I doubted him, because he could not tell me nf but one verse in the Bible, and that was, "Jesus wept." ,

As for the mysteries of the Bible I am glad they are there, and that there are heights and depths that I have never been able to fathom, and length and breadth that no man has ever been able to discover. If I could take that book up and understand it all it would be pretty good proof that it did not come from God. *

It is easy to talk against the Bible, but did you ever think how dark this old world would be without it?

Millions of men have gone down to the grave because of their loyalty to the Bible. Some people . have tried to stamp it out, but God has raised up witnesses for it. I thank God I live where it is read. Anarchy, nihilism, socialism, would sweep this whole country, your property and your life would not be safe, if it was not for this old book.

If you do not like the Bible it is because it condemns your sins. So if you see a man to-morrow talking against the good book you may know he gets hit. Throw a stone among a group of dogs and the dog that gets hit goes off yelping every time.

Take the most faithful follower of Satan in Chicago for the last five years, and take a most faithful follower of Jesus Christ and let the two stand on this platform and their very faces would tell the story.

There is a great joy in the service of Christ that the world knows nothing of, and you never will know unless you taste it.

If you find a man howling about hypocrites, you

just look out for him, he doesn't live very far from one himself.

Most people have the idea that a man has got to join the church to be a hypocrite; my friends, I will find a hundred in the world while you find one in the church.

No man can believe the Bible without purifying his soul.

I don't think the prodigal son did much feeling till he got his feet under his father's mahogany table.

Let men act up to their convictions and what a meeting we would show you.

A man who will let a saloon-keeper or a gambler or a harlot keep him from what is right, I greatly pity.

Life is very sweet to me, and I can conceive of no sweeter work than that I am engaged in.

If your excuses will not stand the light of eternity throw them to the four winds.

It is the work of the shepherd to seek the lost. Who ever heard of a sheep seeking a lost shepherd?

I want to tell you, if your religion isn't saving you and keeping you day by day from sin, it is a shame, it is not the religion of Jesus Christ.

The Catholics have the same Savior as the Protestants,—one shepherd, one Christ.

The difficulty with a great many churches is that there are too many stumps in the way of the plough.

Knowledge is certainly better than feelings.

If you want results, just pray.

There is only one thing that will thoroughly satisfy a longing heart, and that is Jesus Christ.

You never saw a millionaire in your life, who was satisfied.

You know sheep never lie down to rest until they get enough to eat and drink.

I believe that where there is one sermon preached to the unconverted, there should be one hundred preached to the church members.

I remember when I was a boy I used to attempt to jump over my shadow, but I never succeeded in getting over it.

There are quite a number of nameless characters in the Scriptures that have shone very brightly in this world in the Scripture.

There are a good many who have an idea that distilling whiskey is all right if they will only give their money to the church.

A man may erect a synagogue and still be a blackhearted villian.

Treat men as they should be treated, and see if you do not win their esteem and respect.

Don't blow a trumpet and say that you have done so much for your servants; do it kindly and quietly.

If you find a man that has very high thoughts of himself he will have very low thoughts of God.

I pity those men who hold on with a tight grip to everything they have.

If you want to show kindness to a person, do it while you are living.

Business men can reach the men employed by them a good deal better than the minister.

If we are going to get victory over the world we

will have to get it through Christ.

I wouldn't think of talking to unconverted men about overcoming the world, for it is utterly impos sible for them to accomplish anything.

Don't let any man think that he is going to overcome his enemies without putting forth his strength with God's power. *

If you were to take a mill and put it forty feet above any river in this country, there isn't capital enough in the world to make that river turn the mill; but get it down about forty feet and then it works.

When Abraham took his eyes off God he was weak like other men and denied his wife.

It is a very singular thing to notice how the men in the Bible, if they have fallen, have generally fallen on the strongest points of their own characters.

Abraham was celebrated for his faith, and he fell there; but he lost that faith and denied his wife.

Moses was noted for his meekness and humility, he lost his temper and God kept him out of the promised land. Elijah was honored for his power in prayer and his courage, but he became a coward. Queen Jezebel scared the life nearly out of him. Peter was noted for his boldness, and a little maid frightened him nearly out of his wits.

The most objectionable characters one meets are those who are attempting to walk by sight and not by faith.

I believe that a great many Christians are overcome because they don't know what a terrible fright they have.

It is no sign because a man is a Christian that he is going to overcome the world.

The worst enemy one has to overcome, after all, is oneself.

I have had more trouble with D. L. Moody than with any other man who has ever crossed my path.

If one member of the family is constantly snapping, the whole family will soon be snapping.

Christianity isn't worth the snap of a finger if it doesn't straighten out characters.

If people ain't sure when you are telling the truth, there is something radically wrong, and you had better straighten it out at once.

There are a great many people who only want enough Christianity to make them respectable.

There is only one royal way, and that is by the way of Calvary.

There is more said in the Bible against covetousness than against intemperance.

We think when a man gets drunk he is a horrid monster, but a covetous man will often be received into the church and be put up into office, who is as vile and black in the sight of God as any drunkard.

You needn't be proud of your face, for there is not one of you but that after ten days in the grave the worms would be eating your body.

You must put off the mortal to put on immortality.

Every time we overcome one temptation we get strength to overcome another.

I honestly believe we are down here in school; in training; and if we cannot overcome we are not fit for God's service.

I am a joint heir with Jesus Christ, and you must find out how much He is worth in order to estimata my wealth.

We are not only heirs but joint heirs, and all Christ has I have.

What we want is a Christianity that goes into our homes and every-day lives.

Some men's religion just makes me sick.

It is wrong for a man or woman to profess what they don't possess.

If you are not overcoming temptations, the world is overcoming you.

Your ministers may preach like Gabriel on Sunday, but that won't do any good if you live like Satan during the week in your homes.

There are a good many people who are delighted when you talk about the sins of the patriarchs, and other Bible characters, but when you come here and touch upon the sins of this city that is another thing.

Did you ever notice that all but the heart of man praises God? If you look right through history, you will find that everything but the heart of man obeys God.

Now if you want to get near God, just obey Him.

Obedience is a matter of the heart.

He takes those into the nearest communion with Himself who just obey Him.

The man or woman that is nearest to God is the man or woman that is just obeying Him.

My dear friends, as long as we are living a disobedient life, we cannot do a thing to please God.

What the Lord wants is not what you have got, but yourself, and you cannot do a thing to please God until you surrender yourself to Him.

I believe the wretchedness and misery and woe in our American cities to-day comes from disobedience to God.

There is a great reward in keeping God's laws and statutes, but a great curse upon them that will disobey God.

People don't like to read legal documents; but if you are mentioned in the will it becomes instantlv very interesting reading.

If you haven't any faith in a doctor, you don't want him in the house, you wouldn't commit the life of your child into his hands.

Faith is the foundation of all social intercourse.

You might as well ask a man to hear without ears, see without eyes, walk without feet, as to ask a man to believe without giving him something to believe.

A creed is the road or street. It is very good as far as it goes but if it doesn't take us to Christ it is worthless.

I don't believe any man is so constituted that he can not believe God if he wants to.

Put your finger on a promise that God has made to man that he hasn't kept, and then we will talk about not believing Him.

When a man says he can not believe himself, but can believe in God, then he is on the right road.

The trouble is, people who don't know what the Bible says say they cannot believe it.

There are a lot of people running around who haven't got any roots.

A good many people live on negations. They are always telling what they don't believe.

The best illustration of faith is a little child. She never bothers her head as to where she is going to get her breakfast or supper.

I believe that faith grows like every other thing. You only have to water and feed it.

There is nothing to hinder you from being saved but your own will.

There are a great many people living on a few chapters and verses. They don't take the whole of the Bible.

You cannot touch Jesus Christ anywhere that there is not something supernatural about Him.

I don't like these gilt-edged Bibles that look like they had never been used.

I earnestly believe that this old world has swung out in the cold and dark and will never swing back until the truth dawns upon it, that "God is love."

You take a man or woman and make them believe that there is no one in the wide world that loves or cares for them, and they would rather die than live. That is the class that commits suicide.

The thing we prize above everything else in this world is love, and that is what God prizes above everything else.

There isn't a commandment that hasn't come from the loving heart of God, and what He wants is to have us give up that which is going to mar our happiness in this life and the life to come.

There is no book after all that will draw people like the Bible.

Don't get a Bible so good that you will be afraid to carry it for fear you will soil it.

There are a great many people who know only what they hear from other people.

A good way to study the Bible is to take one book at a time. I know some people who never sit down to read a book until they have time to read the whole of it.

Justification is what turned Martin Luther inside out. The truth dawned upon him as he went up those stairs in Rome.

I believe a man may come in here a thief and go out a saint. I believe a man may come in here as vile as Hell itself and go out saved.

I honestly believe that the greatest mistake we are making in this country is that we don't have more expository preaching.

I never saw anyone that kept the Sabbath and reverenced God's sanctuary who didn't prosper. I have never seen a man desert the house, the law, or the statutes of God, but that he grew lean.

I believe the reason so many people are having such hard times now is because they have wandered into sin.

The kiss of Judas wounded the heart of the Son of God a good deal more than the Roman spear did.

The wife that lets down the standard in order to reach her husband always loses ground.

When you see a Christian minister making the ungodly people in his congregation his society, look out for him.

When you see a man or woman in your church that' would rather be with the ungodly than with God's people look out for their piety. It isn't skin deep.

Did you ever think of the yards and yards of talk that you hear that doesn't amount to anything?

There are many Christians in the world about waist deep, and then they wonder why they haven't any power or influence.

Don't let the world get hold of you. Keep it under.

Let every man use the talent God has given him. Don't be mourning because you haven't more, but just take what you have and go to work.

If you can reach a man by taking him to the Episcopal church, take him to the Episcopal church. If you can reach him by taking him to the Baptist church, take him to the Baptist church. Never mind about the creeds and doctrines. Never mind about these names, they are nothing. What we want is to get him above these party walls.

It is the work of the Holy Ghost to convict of sin.

I have seen people who, when the spirit of God has been working mightily, would get up and go out and slam the door after them in a bad passion. Not a bad sign.

A great many are always trying to make themselves love God. You cannot do it. Love must be spontaneous. You cannot love by trying to make yourself love.

You never in your life saw a man full of God who wasn't fullof Scripture.

I don't know what angel it was that got down to the plains to tell the shepherds that Christ had come, but I have an idea that it was Gabriel.

I believe John Wesley did as much good as Charles. One preached and the other sung the gospel halfway around the world in a very short time.

I don't believe that any four walls are going to hold any man's influence.

I think one of the most lamentable things of this day is that Satan can walk right into some of our best Christian homes and families and haul the children down into the deepest and darkest depths, and we haven't got the power to reach them and bring them bacl$.

A good many are trying to work with the anointing they got many years ago.

There are a lot of Samsons around who have lost their hair. How many sermons have you heard of which you cannot remember a single word?

When the Spirit of God is in a man the fire just burns.

I have no sympathy with the idea if we ask God to do a certain work He is going to give us chaff in return.

Sometimes when I have prayed it has seemed as if the Heavens were closed over me.

I have often said I had rather be able to pray like Daniel than preach like Gabriel.

I am sometimes ashamed of myself to think how fluent I am when I go into the presence of God. As if God was on an equal footing with me, or rather as if I was on an equal footing with God—as if there was no difference between us.

One of the truest signs that a man is growing great is that God increases and he decreases.

The next true element to prayer is restitution.

It is folly for us to ask God to do something for us that we can do for ourselves.

Let us look out that we are not one of the class who come to the Lord constantly for favors and never thank Him.

This is one the sweetest promises Christ left for us. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee."

If I wanted to find a man who had rest I would

not go among the very wealthy.

The man or woman that is looking after the last fashion doesn't get rest to his soul.

Some people go back into the past and rake up all the troubles they ever had, and then they look into the future and anticipate that they will have still more trouble, and then they go reeling and staggering all through life.

About the first thing a mother does is to teach her child to look.

I tell you I had rather have ten thousand enemies outside than one inside.

The moment we begin to rob God then darkness and misery and wretchedness will come.

It is very easy to talk about revivals, but do you know that there is not a denomination that hasn't sprung out of revivals?

I venture to say there is many a church where four-fifths of the members were converted during revivals.

I believe whenever you see a Christian man's children turn out wrong, a good deal of the fault lies at his own door.

There is one thing about a back-slider, he is always finding fault with church members.

I will challenge you to find a father or mother that has back-slidden whose children haven't gone to ruin.

I think the hardest people to reach are the sons and daughters of back-sliders.

That Pharisee that went up to the temple to pray with the poor publican, did he know anything about meekness?

You put a man that has been living in wickedness and sin in the crystal pavement, and it would be Hell to him.

You may look at your little innocent child, but remember that a separation is going to come. If that child dies in early childhood, the Masler will take it to Himself, and you will not be permitted to sit in the kingdom with that child until you are born again.

When God speaks you and I can afford to listen.

I pity any man that goes into the pulpit and picks that old Bible to pieces.

I have noticed that when a man does begin to pick the Bible to pieces it doesn't take him more than five years to tear it all to pieces. What is the use of being five years about what you can do in five minutes?

I am not here to defend the Bible. It will take care of itself.

I want to say to any scoffer that has come in here to-day, you can laugh at that old Bible, you can scoff at your mother's God, you can laugh at ministers and Christians, but the hour is coming when one promise in that old book will be worth more to you than ten thousand worlds like this.

It is an old saying, "Get the lamb and you will get the sheep.'' I gave that up years ago. Give me the sheep and then I will have some one to nurse the lambs.

It has always been a mystery to me that a woman can turn against the Son of God, for there is not a country to-day where Christ is not preached where woman is not a slave or a toy.

I said when I was in Jerusalem that if I had my choice, in a Mohammedan country, of being born a woman or a donkey I would rather be a donkey, for it is treated better than a woman.

Every day you put it off you are going back from God, and are making it harder for you to be saved.

Nations are only collections of individuals, and what is true of part in regard to character is always true of the whole.

It is a great deal better to judge our own acts and confess them, than go through the world with a curse upon us.

It is not mere gush and sentiment this nation wants, so much as it is a revival of downright honesty.

A man once said he had a good well, only it would dry up in summer and freeze up in winter. Some Christians are just like that well, good at certain times.

It is doing a thousand times more harm than all the lectures of infidels to hear Christians say, "This and this isn't inspired."

We want to believe the whole Bible. We want to take the whole of it, from Genesis to Revelation.

I believe that for years after the death of Christ the air was full of the words which fell from His lips.

I have a good deal of sympathy with that old colored woman who said if the Bible said Jonah swallowed the whale she would believe it; God could make a man large enough to swallow a whale.

The best way to convert an infidel is to take him to the prophecies fulfilled.

I'm glad there are things in the Bible that I don't understand. If I could take that book up and read it as I would any other book, I might think I could write a book like that, and so could you. I'm glad there are heights I haven't been able to climb up to. I am glad there are depths I haven't been able to fathom. It's the best proof that the book came from God.

I believe that God would have created a world rather than that any prophecy should be unfulfilled.

Dozens of people have repented who don't know what repentance is.

Lots of people think repentance is going to strike them like lightning.

I have learned that sometimes the medicine people don't like to take may be the very best medicine for them.

Lots of people think they can go to heaven on a good moral character.

Look at the parable of the prodigal son. I would rather be the younger brother than the other. The elder brother had what the world calls a moral character, and yet I think he was about the meanest case in the whole Bible.

I think the best book on Assurance is the first Epistle of John.

For men who have nothing but essays it is hard to get pulpits, and it will be harder in years to come.

The reason there are so many pulpits vacant is that there am't men enough willing to give the word of God.

A great many churches have mere exhortations all the time, and it gets very tiresome.

I don't believe there is any place in the world where error has such a slim chance of getting a hold as in Scotland. The Scotch are a most wonderful people. You've got to be careful in preaching to them, or the first thing you know some old woman will come up with her Bible under her shawl, and say: "Here; you said so and so. The Bible says so and so." If you make a misquotation, a Scotchman will straighten you right up; but you might make forty misquotations in American churches and no one would know the difference.

In Scotland a minister doesn't think of preaching till everybody has found the text.

If we had more of the word of God there would be fewer defalcations and scandals inside the church.

It seems to me the time is coming when there should be a change in the churches of God in this land.