MOODY AND SANKEY IN LONDON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 6936, 9 February 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

MOODY AND SANKEY IN LONDON.

Duhing the past two days the interest in the Islington Mission has been steadily on the increase. The audiences were largely composed of non-churchgoers. The large hall has been fairly filled at the afternoon bible lectures, and in the evening it was on both Tuesday and Wednesday crowded to excess—on Tuesday, indeed, nearly 2000 had to be tnrned away, and an overflow meeting was organised in the adjoining hail of the Y.M.C.A. Mr Moody spoke to a deeply-impressed audience on ''Sowing and Reaping." Over two hundred professed their anxiety to become Christians in response to hi'j request to the anxious. Last night the subject of the address was "The New Birth." Mr Moody took occasion to condemn all reliance for salvation on or church ordinances. The devil went to church every Sunday, and was first in at the door at every dedication or consecration of a place of worship. He was inside it himself, and had no sympathy with those who reported that he stood ontside it and found fault. A Daily Aews correspondent has visited the meetings in Islington:—"That was hardlj the kind of congregation I expected, to find here," I remarked to Mr Sankey ; "the three or four thousand people present are not, in a worldly sense at least, • the maimed, the bait, and the blind' of Highbury. Your well-dressed audience might have been seen under the dome listening to Canon Liddon." Mr Sankey explained that the criticism would have been even more trne of the congregations who flocked to hear his oolleague and himself when they began their operations in London ten years ago. For the fashionable extreme the Moody and Sankey campaigning has lost its novelty. "It is not for this reason, though," added Mr Sankey, " that we have given up holding monster meetings in grand places like the Exeter and Agricultural Halls, to which the most fashionable folk trooped from all quarters of the land ; it was because v/e did not readily enough get at the masses." "How do you manage to get at them now ?" I asked. "By first working on th« minds of Bach people as you have just seen, and inducing them to go about among people of the lower ordersj with a view to bringing them to evening service." They have touching and noble histories, some of Messrs Moody and Sankey , s lady converts, aid one or two such stories were related to- me while their heroines were passing us with their nod of grateful recognition to Mr Sankey. One was a lady of title, who some years cince gave up her West-end mansion, and took a house somewhere in the East-end, where she still labours among the outcast and godless of that dreary quarter, and where, it may be added, she distributes not only prayers and good advice, but hard cash and solid food. This story caused me to remark that the classes most in need of his help were precisely those whom he could never reach, and I told him what a poor man had said to me two or three hundred yards from the tabernacle door. Ths man was leaning, crosslegsed, with bis bands in his pockets, a grimy cutty in his mouth, and hunger in his eyes, against a lamppost. At my request he showed me the way to the Priory Grounds, Highbury, where the service was going on. "Have you been there?" I asked. "1 aint a-going," he replied; '"taint gospel as I wanta, but grub." The man's language was as unpleasant as the sentiment, and I would rather not have referred to either; but if it be desirable to know the real feelings and opinions of men of his class, it will be best to let such persons speak in their, own language. Mr Moody appeared to be much impressed at this man's view of evangelisation and poverty. "I am told," he said, " and I believe it, that most of the working people in the big manufacturing towns care nothing for religion of any sort." By way- of illustrating what he said, I gave Mr Moody the reply which I received from a respectable weaver in Aehton, with whom I conversed at the time of the late strike. I asked the weaver what the most remarkable change was which had taken place among the mill hands during his thirty years' experience of them, "They have become atheists," said he ; and his startling assurance was endorsed by a great many other working men with whom I spoke. Mr Moody, however, was of too sanguine a temperament to accept my view that mere exhortation, mere appeals to patience and " faith," can have no effect upon people who are worried with the question of how to clothe, feed, and house themselves. " You never give any pecuniary relief?" I inquired. "We cannot," he answered ; "our services are free : we might certainly, sell tickets and make collections, and give the proceeds to the poor ; but 5f we took money the public might call our work a mere 'catchpenny,' so we must stick to our calling of exhortation and leave charitable relief to other people." Neither Mr Moody nor Mr Sankey spoke very hopefully of their prospeots. "We trust greatly to our staging," said Mr Sankoy to me. And well he may: Mr Sankey has a capital voice, and he makes the most of it. The English, it is said, are an unmusical nation. After hearing how the vast congregation picked up a pretty air after a single repetition by Mr Sankey, I shall never believe the accusation. Mr Sankoy made mention to me of numerous cases of conversion caused by a pretty air and its appropriate words. He explained to me that the plan was first to appeal to the emotions, through music, and then, to use bis own phrase, after the music had done its own work, to "go in" with the oratory. Mr Moody is the orator, and he "goes in" for it in a breezy, boisterous, pugnacious, and good-humoured manner, whicu, to judge from the smiles and subdued laughter he frequently provoked, is eminently successful.