Chapter XVIII

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE LAST FAREWELL.

The funeral was held at Northfield, December 26.

During the morning the members of the Moody family were with the body, which has lain in the death chamber since Mr. Moody's death, Friday. Soon after ten o'clock the body was placed in the heavy broadcloth casket and removed to the parlor of the Moody home, where a simple service of prayer was conducted by Mr. Moody's pastor, the Rev. C. I. Schofield, and the Rev. R. A. Torrey, of Chicago.

At the close of the service the casket was placed on a massive bier, and thirty-two Mt. Hermon students bore it to the church, where it was to lie in £tate. The funeral cortege was led by the Rev. Messrs. Schofield and Torrey, and followed by the members of the various institutions with which Mr. Moody was connected, friends, and Christian workers from all over the United States, and some representatives from foreign countries.

One of the touching incidents of the morning was the appearance on the lawn outside the Moody home of the son, Will R. Moody, who stood in the keen December air, without hat or overcoat, as the procession passed out of the house, until the last mourner had left the door; then the young man leaned against a tree and gave vent to his long-suppressed grief.

At the church, the body was placed directly in front of the altar, and the casket immediately opened. Then began to file in the neighbors and friends from Northfield and surrounding towns, who had known Mr. Moody as a neighbor and personal friend, as well as a spiritual helper.

The casket and the oak burial case which was to receive it bore plates with the inscription—

"Dwight L. Moody, 1837—1899."

Around the casket were banked the numerous and beautiful floral offerings, among them being a pillow from the trustees of Mt. Hermon School, bearing the inscription, in purple and white, "God is calling me''; from the trustees of Northfield Seminary, an open book; from the faculty of the Bible Institute, in Chicago, a spray of cycas leaves; from the girls of Northfield Seminary, a spray of roses; from the Mt. Hermon students, white roses and laurels; from the teachers of the schools, bouquets of violets and hyacinths.

While the body lay in state in the Congregational Church, between 11 and 2:30 o'clock, fully three thousand persons looked upon the face of the man whose name is known the world around and who, it was stated by several here to-day, spoke during his life-time to billions of people.

For a small country town, this gathering seemed large; but, in comparison, this number was an infinitesimal delegation from the vast throngs which had been influenced by the voice and life of a wonderful man.

The church services over the remains of Evangelist Moody were simple but unusually impressive

The services began at 12130 o'clock, at which time the family arrived, Mr. Will R. Moody with Mrs. D L. Moody, Mr. Paul Moody and Mrs. A. P. Fitt, Mr. A. P. Fitt, and Mrs. W. R. Moody Following these came other relatives—Mr. and Mrs. Isaiah Moody, Mr. and Mrs. George F. Moody, Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Walker, Mrs. L. C. Washburn and Mr. Edward Moody. Following these were the grandchildren and members of the faculty and trustees, they having come in and taken seats directly behind those occupied by the family. The Rev Mr. Schofield and the Rev. Mr. Torrey, the honorary pallbearers, and several clergymen, and the Hon. John Wanamaker followed.

The services opened with a hymn, "A Little While and He Shall Come," and Dr. Schofield followed with prayer. The Rev. A. T. Pierson read the Scripture lesson, from II. Corinthians iv. 11— ''For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." This was followed by prayer, by the Rev. George C. Needham, after which the congregation sang "Emanuel's Land," the music being directed by Prof. A. B Phillips, professor of music in the Northfield Institute.

The Rev. Mr. Schofield then pronounced the eulogy, saying:

"'Weknow. We are always confident.' That is the Christian attitude toward the mystery of death. 'We know,' so far as the present body is concerned, that it is a tent in which we dwell. It is a convenience for this present life. Death threatens it, so far as we can see, with utter destruction. Soul and spirit instinctively cling to this present body. At that point revelation steps in with one of the great foundational certainties and teaches us to say: 'We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.'

"There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. But that is not all. Whither after all shall we go when this earthly tent dwelling is gone? To what scenes does death introduce us? What, in a word, lies for the Christian just across that little trench which we call a grave? Here is a new and most serious cause of solicitude. And here again revelation brings to faith the needed word: 'We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.'

"Note, now, how that assurance gives confidence. First, in that the transition is instantaneous. To be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord. And secondly, every question of the soul which might bring back an answer of fear is satisfied with that one little word 'home.'

''And this is the Christian doctrine of death. 'We know.' 'We are always confident.' In this triumphant assurance Dwight L. Moody lived, and at high noon last Friday he died. We are not met, dear friends, to mourn a defeat, but to celebrate a triumph. He 'walked with God and he was not, for God took him.' There in the West, in the presence of great audiences of 12,000 of his fellow men, God spoke to him to lay it all down and come home. He would have planned it so.

"This is not the place, nor am I the man to pre. sent a study of the life and character of Dwight L. Moody. No one will ever question that we are laying to-day in the kindly bosom of earth the mortal body of a great man. Whether we measure greatness by quality of character or by qualities of intellect, Dwight L. Moody must be accounted great

''The basis of Mr. Moody's character was sincerity, genuineness. He had an inveterate aversion to all forms of sham, unreality and pretense. Most of all did he detest religious pretence or cant. Along with this fundamental quality Mr. Moody cherished a great love of righteousness His first question concerning any proposed action was: 'Is it right?' But these two qualities, necessarily at the bottom of all noble characters, were in him suffused and transfigured by divine grace. Besides all this, Mr. Moody was in a wonderful degree brave, magnanimous and unselfish.

"Doubtless this unlettered New England country boy became what he was by the grace of God. The secrets of Dwight L. Moody's power were: First, in a definite experience of Christ's saving grace. He had passed out of death into life, and he knew it. Secondly, Mr. Moody believed in the divine authority of the Scriptures. The Bible was, to him, the voice of God, and he made it resound as such in the consciences of men. Thirdly, he was baptized with the Holy Spirit, and he knew it. It was to him as definite an experience as his conversion. Fourthly, he was a man of prayer; he believed in a divine and unfettered God. Fifthly, Mr. Moody believed in work, in ceaseless effort, in wise provision, in the power of organization, of publicity.

"I like to think of D. L. Moody in heaven. I like to think of him with his Lord and with Elijah, Daniel, Paul, August, Luther, Wesley and Finney.

"Farewell for a little time, great heart; may a double portion of the Spirit be vouchsafed to us who remain."

The next address was by the Rev. H. B. Weston, of Crozier Theological Seminary, Chester, Pa., who said:

"I counted it among one of the greatest pleasures of my life that I had the acquaintance . of Mr. Moody: that I was placed under his influence and that I was permitted to study God's words and work through him.

"He was the greatest religious character of this century. When we see men who are eminent among their fellows, we always attribute it to some special natural gift with which they are endowed, some special education they have received, or some magnetic personality with which they are blessed. Mr. Moody had none of these, and yet no man had such power of drawing the multitude. No man could surpass him in teaching and influencing individuals—individuals of brain, of executive power. I am speaking to some of such this afternoon. Mr. Moody had the power of grouping them to himself with hooks of steel,and many of them were good workers with him many years; and they will carry on his work now that he has passed away.

"Mr. Moody had none of the gifts and qualifications that I have mentioned. No promise, and apparently no possibility in his early life, no early promise, if he had any promise, of the life he had to lead. What had he? There was never anything as interesting in Northfield, as Mr. Moody to me. I listened to him with profound and great interest and profit, as the one who could draw the multitude as no one else in the world. He entered fully into the words, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' So he fed upon that word; his life was instantly a growth, because he fed on the word of God, so that he might have it ready for every emergency

"All this was not for himself, but for others. He did not study the Bible for himself alone, but that he might add to his stock of knowledge. He did not study his Bible in order to criticise, but to make men partakers of that light which had enlarged his own soul, and that, I appeal to you, was the first desire of his heart, that other men might live.

"With this one conception in his heart he dots his plain all over with buildings which will stand until the millennium. His soul was full of joy, and that definite joy finds its expression like the Hebrew prophet. I don't think he sung himself, but he wanted the gospel sung, and I used to listen to song after song and I remember all the time this was simply the expression of that joy that welled up in his heart, and the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ.

'You remember last summer how hopeful he was, constantly, as he compared himself to 'that old man of 80 years, and I am only 62, and I have so much before me to live for.' Because D. L. Moody had mastered, or the power of Christ had so mastered, every fibre of his being; because of that—well, you'll pardon me in saying, I hardly dare say it— put Jesus Christ in the same body, the same metal calibre and surroundings, and he would fill up his life much as Moody did, and that is the reason today that I would rather be Dwight L. Moody in his coffin than any living man on earth."

The next speaker was the Rev. R. A. Torrey, who said:

"It is often the first duty of a pastor to speak words of comfort to those whose hearts are aching with sorrow and breaking underneath the burden of death, but this is utterly unnecessary to-day. The God of all comfort has already abundantly comforted them, and they will be able to comfort others. I have spent hours in the past few days with those who were nearest to our departed friend, and the words I have heard from them have been words of 'Rest in God, and triumph.'

"As one of them has said: 'God must be answering the prayers that are going up for us all over the world, we are being so wonderfully sustained,' Another has said: 'His last four glorious hours of life have taken all the sting out of death,' and still another, 'Be sure that every word to-day is a word of triumph.'

"Two thoughts has God laid upon my heart this hour. The first is that wonderful letter of Paul in I. Corinthians xv. 10—'By the grace of God I am what I am.' God wonderfully magnified His grace in the life of D. \,. Moody. God was magnified in his birth. The babe that was born 62 years ago— the wonderful soul was God's gift to the world. How much that meant to the world; how much the world has been blessed and benefited by it we shall never know this side of the coming of Christ. God's grace was magnified in his conversion. He was born in sin, as we are, but God by the power of His word, the regenerating power of His Holy Spirit, made him a mighty man of God. How much the conversion of that boy in Boston 43 years ago meant to the world no man can tell, but it was all God's grace that did it .

"God's grace and love was magnified again in the development of that character. He had the strength of body that was possessed by few sons of men.

"It was all from God. To God alone was it due that he differed from other men. That character was God's gift to a world that sorely needed men like him. God's grace and love were magnified again in his service. The great secret of his success was supernatural power, given in answer to prayer.

"Time and time again has the question been asked, 'What was the secret of his wonderful power?' The question is easily answered. There were doubtless secondary things that contributed to it, but the great central secret of his power was the anointing of the Holy Ghost. It was simply another fulfillment by God of the promise that has been realized throughout the centuries of the church's history: 'Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost shall come upon you.'

"God was magnified again in his marvelous triumph over death, but what we call death had absolutely no terrors for him. He calmly looked death in the face, and said, 'Earth is receding. Heaven is opening. God is calling me.' Is this death? It isn't bad at all. It is sweet. No pain. No valley. 'I have been within the gates.' It-is beautiful. It is glorious. 'Do not call me back. God is calling me.'

"This was God's grace in Christ that was thus magnified in our brother's triumph over that last enemy, death. From beginning to end, from the hour of his birth until he is laid at rest on yonder hilltop, Mr. Moody's life has been a promulgation of God's everlasting grace and love.

"The other thought that God has laid upon my heart in these last few hours are those of Joshua i. 2 —'Moses My servant is dead. Now, therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them.'

"The death of Mr. Moody is a call to his children, his associates, ministers of the Word, everywhere and to the whole church: 'Go forward.' Our leader has fallen. Let us give up the work, some would say. Not for a moment. Listen to what God says: 'Our leader has fallen. Move forward. Moses My servant is dead, therefore arise, go in and possess the land. As I was with D. L. Moody, so I will be with you. I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.'

It is remarkable how unanimous all those who have been associated with Mr Moody are upon this point. The great institutions that he has established at Northfield, Mt. Hermon, Chicago, and the work they represent must be pushed to the front as never before. Many men are looking for a great revivial.

"Mr. Moody himself said when he felt the call of death at Kansas City: 'I know how much better it would be for me to go, but we are on the verge of a great revival, like that of 1857, and I want to have a hand in it.' He will have a mighty hand in it. His death, with the triumphal scenes that surround it, are part of God's way of answering the prayers that have been going up for so long in our land for a revival.

"From this bier there goes up to-day a call to the ministry, to the church: 'Forward.' Seek, claim, receive the anointing of the Holy Ghost, and then go, forthwith, to every corner, preach in public and in private to every man, woman and child the infallible word of God."

After Mr. Torrey had finished, Bishop Mallalieu said:

'' Servant of God, well done. Thy glorious warfare passed, battles fought, the race is over, and thou art crowned at last.

"I first met and became acquainted with him whose death we mourn, in London, in the summer of 1875. From that day, when he moved the masses of the world's metropolis, to the hour when he answered the call of God to come up higher, I have known him, esteemed him, and loved him. Surely we may say, and the world will indorse the affirmation, that in his death one of the truest, bravest, purest, and most influential men of this wonderful nineteenth century has passed to his rest and his reward.

"With feelings of unspeakable loss and absolute regret we gather about the casket that contains all that is mortal of Dwight L. Moody, and yet a mighty uplift must come to each one of us as we think of what his character and achievements were. He was one who never turned his back, but breasted forward, never doubting the clouds would break, never dreaming that, though right was worsted, wrong would triumph.

"In bone and brawn and brain he was a typical New Englander. He was descended from the choicest New England stock. He was born of a New England mother, and from his earliest life he breathed the free air of his native hills, and was carefully nurtured in the knowledge of God. It was to be expected of him that he would become a Christian of pronounced characteristics, for he consecrated himself thoroughly, completely, and irrevocably to the service of God and humanity.

"The heart of no disciple of the Master ever breathed with more genuine, sympathetic and utterly unselfish loyalty than did the great, generous, loving heart of our translated friend, because he held fast to the absolute truth of the Bible, and unequivocally and intensely believed it to be the inherent word of God; because he preached the gospel, rather than talked about the gospel; because he used his mother tongue, the terse, clear-ringing, straightforward Saxon; because he had the profoundest sense of brotherhood with all poor unfortunate and every outcast people; because he was unaffectedly tender and patient with the weak and the sinful; because he hated evil as thoroughly as he loved goodness; because he knew mightily how to lead a penitent soul to the Saviour; because he had the happy art of arousing Christian people to a vivid sense of their obligations and inciting them to the performance of their duties; because he had in his own soul a conscious, joyous experience of personal salvation.

"The people flocked to his services, they greeted him gladly, they were led to Christ, and he came to be honored and prized by all denominations, so that to-day all Protestantism recognizes the fact that he was God's servant, an ambassador of Christ, and indeed a chosen vessel to bear the name of Jesus to the nations.

"We shall not again behold his manly form, animated with life; hear his thrilling voice, or be moved by his consecrated personality; but if we are true and faithful to our Lord we shall see him in glory, for already he walks the streets of the heavenly city, and mingles in the songs of the innumerable company of white-robed saints, seeing the King in his beauty and awaiting our coming. May God grant that in due time we may meet him over Jordan."

J. Wilbur Chapman, of New York, the next speaker, said:

"I cannot bring myself to feel this afternoon that this service is a reality. It seems to me that we must awake from some dream and see again the face of this dear man of God, which we have so many times seen. It is a new picture to me this afternoon. I never saw Mr. Moody with his eyes closed. They were always open, and it seemed to me open not only to see where he could help others, but where he could help me. His hands were always outstretched to help others. I never came near him without his helping me.

(At this point the sun came in through a crack in a blind, and the rays fell directly on Mr. Moody's face, and nowhere else in the darkened church did a single beam of sunshine fall.)

"The only thing that seems natural is the sunlight now on his face. There was always a halo around him. I can only give a slight tribute of the help he has done me. I can only especially dedicate myself to God, that I, with others, can preach the gospel he taught.

"When a student in college, Mr. Moody found me. I had no object in Christ. He pointed me to the hope in God; he saw my heart, and I saw his Savior. I have had a definite life since then. Whe.n perplexities have arisen, from those lips came the words, 'Who are you doubting? If you believe in God's word, who are you doubting?' I was a pastor, a preacher, without much result. One day Mr. Moody came to me, and, with one hand on my shoulder and the other on the open Word of God, he said: 'Young man, you had better get more of this into your life,' and when I became an evangelist myself, in perplexity, I would still sit at his feet and every perplexity would vanish just as mist before the rising sun. And, indeed, I never came without the desire to be a better man, and be more like him, as he was like Jesus Christ. He was the dearest friend I have had. If my own father were lying in the coffin I could not feel more the sense of loss.

The Rev. A. T. Pierson spoke next, saying:

"When a great tree falls, you know, not only by its branches, but by its roots, how much soil it drew up as it fell. I know of no other man who has fallen in this century having as wide a tract of uprooting as this man who has just left us.

"I have been thinking of the four departures during the last quarter of a century, of Charles Spurgeon of London, A. J. Gordon of Boston, Catherine Booth, mother of the Salvation Army, and George Muller of Bristol, England, and not one made the worldwide commotion in their departure that Dwight Moody has caused.

''Now, I think we ought to be very careful of What is said There is a temptation to say more than ought to be said, and we should be careful to speak as in the presence of God. This is a time to glorify God.

"Dwight L. Moody was a great man; that man, when he entered the church, in 1856, in Boston, after ten months of probation, was told by his pastor that he was not a sound believer. That pastor, taking him aside, told him he had better keep still in prayer meeting. The man the church held out at arm's length has become the preacher of preachers, the teacher of teachers, the evangelist of evangelists. It is a most humiliating lesson for the church of God.

"When, in 1858, he decided to give all his time, he gave the key to his future. I say everything D. L. Moody has touched has been a success. Do you know that with careful reckoning he has reached 100,000,000 of people since he first became a Christian? You may take all the years of public services in this land and Great Britain, take into consideration all the addresses he delivered, and all the audiences of his churches, and it will reach 100,000,000. Take into consideration all the people his books have reached and the languages into which they have been translated, look beyond his evangelistic work to the work of education, the schools, the Chicago Bible Institute, and the Bible Institute here. Scores of people in the world owe their existence to Dwight L. Moody as a means of their consecration.

"I want to say a word of Mr. Moody's entrance into heaven. When he entered into heaven there must have been an unusual commotion. I want to ask you to-day whether you can think of any other man of the last half-century whose coming so many souls would have welcomed at the gates of heaven. It was a triumphal entrance into glory.

"No man who has been associated with him in Christian work has not seen that there is but one way to live, and that way to live wholly for God. The thing that D. L. Moody stood for and will stand for for centuries to come was his living only for God. He made mistakes, no doubt, but if any of us is without sin in this respect, we might raise a stone at him, but I am satisfied that the mistakes of D. L. Moody were the mistakes of a stream that overflowed its banks. It is a great deal better to be full and overflowing than to be empty and have nothing to overflow.

"I feel myself called to-day by the presence of God to give the eye that is left to me more wholly to him. Mr. Moody, John Wanamaker, James Spurgeon (brother of Charles), and myself were born in the same year. Only two of us are still alive. John Wanamaker, let us still live wholly for God."

Mr. H. M. Wharton of Baltimore, spoke in behalf of the Southern States. He said:

"I am sure, dear friends, that if the people of the South could express their feeling to-day they would ask me to say we all loved Mr. Moody; we did love him, with all our hearts. It seems to me that when he went inside the gates of heaven he left the gates open a little, and a little of the light fell upon us all.

"As I go from this place to-day I am more convinced that I desire to live and be a more faithful minister and more earnest Christian, and more consecrated in my life. We will not say 'Good night, dear Mr. Moody,' for in the morning we will meet again.''

As Mr. Wharton ceased, Mr. Will Moody rose in the pew, and said he would like to speak of his father as a parent. He said:

"As a son I want to say a few words of him as a father. We have heard from his pastor, his associates and friends, and he was just as true a father. I don't think he showed up in any way better than when, on one or two occasions, in dealing with us as children, with his impulsive nature he spoke rather sharply. We have known him to come to us and say: 'My children, my son, my daughter, I spoke quickly; I did wrong. I want you to forgive me.' That was D. L. Moody as a father.

"He was not yearning to go; he loved his work. Life was very attractive; it seems as though on that early morning as he had one foot upon the threshold, it was given him for our sake to give us a word of comfort. He said: 'This is bliss; it is like a trance. If this is death, it is beautiful.' And his face lighted up as he mentioned those whom he saw.

"We could not call him back; we tried to for a moment, but we could not. We thank God for his home life, for his true life, and we thank God that he was our father, and that he led each one of his children to know Jesus Christ."

Dr. Schofield then called upon the Hon. John Wanamaker of Philadelphia, who said:

"If I had any words to say it would be that the best commentary on the Scriptures, the best pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ, were in our knowledge of the beautiful man who is sleeping in our presence to-day. For the first time I can understand better the kind of a man Paul was, and Nehemiah, and Oliver Cromwell. I think of Mr. Moody as a Stonewall Jackson of the Church of God of this century. But the sweetest of all thoughts of him are his prayers and his kindnesses. It was as if we were all taken into his family and he had a familiarity with every one and we were his closest friends.

"It is not alone in Northfield these buildings will stand, but over a hundred million buildings that owe their standing to his efforts, Christian associations and churches that are erected for use both Sundays and week days. There is not any place in this country that you can go without seeing the work of this man of God. It seems to make every man seem small because he lived so far above us, as we crept close to his feet. It is true of every one who sought to be like him.

"I can run back into the beginning of his manhood and there have the privilege of being close to him. I can call up personal friends that were at the head of railroads, that were distinguished in finance and business, and I declare to you, great as their successes were, I don't believe that there is one of them who would not gladly have changed places with D. L. Moody.

"The Christian laborer I believe to-day looms up more luminous than any man who lived in the century. It seems as if it were a vision when the one who has passed away stood in Philadelphia last month, when on his way to Kansas City, and, with

tears in his eyes, he said to me with a sigh: 'If I could only hold one great city in the East before I die, I think it might help other cities to do the same.' Still trusting God, he turned his back on his home and family and went a thousand miles carrying that burden, and it was too much for him. A great many of the people of the sixties are quitting work, and if anything is to be done for God it is time we consecrate ourselves to him."

The service closed with the singing by the male quartet of "Blessed Hope of the Coming of the Lord.'' The music for this selection was recently arranged by Mrs. William R. Moody. Those in the church immediately left the building and the casket was closed.

At 4:4o the casket was taken outside and the cortege started for Round Top. The Rev. Messrs. Schofield and Torrey were first, followed by the bier, escorted by thirty-two Mt. Hermon students. Then came the honorary pallbearers, and Ira D. Sankey, George Stebbins, Dr. Wood, Col. Janeway of New Brunswick, N. J., C. A. Hopkins of Boston, H. M. Moore of Boston, Gen. J. J. Estey of Brattleboro, R. C. Morse of the international committee, many ministers and friends, and then the carriages containing the family and mourners.

At the grave all sang "Jesus Lover of My Soul." Dr. Torrey offered prayer, and Dr. Schofield pronounced the benediction. After the people had left the grave the casket was opened, and the family took a last look at Mr. Moody.

The following tribute and analysis of his character and work appeared in "The Independent" of December 28, 1899:

Succeeding generations call out each its own great evangelist. For the generation that is past that man was Dwight L. Moody.

Mr. Moody was an example of the broadening educational power of earnest religion, for that was about all the education he had. But nature had endowed him with a sound mind and great common sense. All his schooling was a few years in a district school; and forty-four years ago, like so many other boys, he quitted the farm at Northfield at the age of seventeen to seek his fortune in Boston. To assume the obligations of Christian life and to join the Mount Hermon Congregational Church was to him a speedy pleasure and duty, and it was his conviction that this meant a life of doing and not of receiving good. From Boston the boy went to Chicago, and immediately threw himself into Christian work. At first it was thought that he was too ignorant, too ill-trained to teach in the Sunday-school or take part in prayer meetings; but he brought in his own ragged scholars, and by the time he was twenty-three he was running a mission with sixty teachers and one thousand pupils in the Sunday-school, and had found it his duty to give himself wholly to religious work.

Mr. Moody was two men; an evangelist and an organizer. He was the best known, the most impressive and simply eloquent of all our evangelists. Millions have flocked to hear him speak. The month before he died he was listened to by audiences of ten and fifteen thousand. His influence has been immense in Great Britain and in this country. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands have been converted in his meetings. He was simple, unaffected, direct, idiomatic, full of story and equally of epigram, but always in deep earnest. Those who heard knew that they were listening to a great earnest soul, one who believed with intensity in what he said, who felt he had the Lord's commission. He educated a school of evangelists, men of great ability and great success, but they all looked up to him as their leader. They were men of collegiate and theological education; all he had learned was from reading his Bible. But such a Bible as his was! It was margined all over with the notes of his study and the substance of his addresses. That was one Dwight L. Moody.

The other Moody was the organizer. He was the builder of churches and Christian Association halls and the founder of schools. He had the gift of finding men of wealth that would support his work, and a great institution has risen up in Chicago as the fruit of his labor, while Northfield has become famous as his birthplace and the seat of the Northfield Seminary for girls and the Mount Hermon Academy for boys and the Bible Training School for the instruction of Sunday-school teachers and religious workers. The work of the evangelist fades from sight as men die, and the impulses they have gained pass into the life of other men; but the institution lives, and in the generations to come Mr. Moody will be known as the founder of flourishing Christian schools that rest upon the Bible, and whose great purpose is to develop the evangelistic spirit in those who attend.

We have said that a chief characteristic of Mr. Moody was his strong common sense. As a plain student of a plain Bible, no scholar in history or criticism, he was of course a conservative. As a literalist he was naturally led into Premillenarianism, and many of the speakers at his summer Bible conferences at Northfield were chosen from those who believed with him. But he would never allow this to be made a fad. Just so the Keswick school of believers, with which he sympathized, could never make him their mouthpiece. He would give their better men place with gladness, but he understood what was the breadth of Christian life and faith, and there was no bitterness in his soul for those who held a more liberal faith than he. What he wanted was Christian life, and, above all, Christian service. The man that would preach the Gospel and bring souls to Christ was the man he wanted and in whom he believed. His heart was too large, his purposes too grand to be confined in narrower limits than those of the Church of Christ. For denominations he cared nothing; for Christianity he would give up his life. Every one believed in him, no matter of what faith or unfaith; all knew that Dwight L. Moody was an honest, sincere, devoted Christian.

Mr. Moody's great evangelistic successes have not been during the past ten years. He has had great meetings, but those who attended were mainly church members. It would seem as if, for the present at least, the era of revivals was waning. Perhaps Mr. Moody himself saw this, and gave himself with the greater zeal to Christian education, for the better Christianity and the better hope of the Church is found rather in the education of the young than in the conversion of the old. It will be a blessed time for the Church when revivals are no longer needed, when children are taught and expected to take upon themselves the obligations of Christian life, not in the way of a formal confirmation at a given age, but with a serious and settled purpose to be followers of our Lord. This is what is meant by the developing work of the Sunday-school and especially of our various Christian Endeavor societies. When such influences as they foster in the Church pervade the community there will be no longer need for the first Mr. Moody, only for the work of the other Moody, who understood the coming age and the essential importance of Christian education.

Mr. Moody's life teaches us that, while the Church needs scholars, what she needs most of all is the impulse of Christian devotion, that force which compelled St. Paul, and has compelled a thousand others in all branches of the Church on whom was laid the burden of a lost world, and who have said, "Wo is me if I preach not the Gospel." Mr. Moody's life was well filled out with work nobly accomplished, and his death was the fit end of a life of faith and service.. His memory is one of the treasures of the Christian Church.