SANKEY AND MOODY CHRISTIANITY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VIII, Issue 1278, 23 March 1881, Page 2

SANKEY AND MOODY CHRISTIANITY.

As Messrs Moody and San key, now in San Francisco, are said to be meditating a New Zealand campaign, it may be relevant to quote a highly characteristic incident reported from one of their recent meetings. Mr. Moody referred to his grandmother, who had died unconverted. He said, " Although she was good and kind and dearly loved by me, I fear she his met witli the reward of all who die not owning Christ. I know sho is in hell. " At this point a young man sitting near the front rose and walked down the aisle towards the door. Said Mr. Moody — "There goes a man who is tired of listening about Christ. He is going straight to hell." The young fellow, annoyed at being held up to notice, turned and said in a quiet, clear voice, " Well, is there any message I can take to your grandmother, Mr. Moody ?" Such is the story as 1 find it in an American newspaper. The hideous grotesquerie of the thing would mako it almost past belief, and one's tirst thought is that the San Francisco reporter, probably not being of an evangelical turn of mind, has been guilty of romancing. However, as I have been assured on credible authority that a Dunedin evangelist, no longer resident here, made a public statement of precisely similar tenor about his grandmother, 1, for my part, am constrained to think that the story may be true. The part attributed to Mr Moody , can hardly be said to bo foreign to his style. These porfcrvid Gospellers who so chceriully defame the mem- | ory and fictile the graves of their own | grand-mothers might go to soli >ol to the very heathen with advantage. The heathen would at least teach thorn respect for ancestors. " Where then are my forefathers gone I" asked one of the warriors of Attila of the missionary monk who wa* attempting his conversion. "They are gone to hell," replied the monk. " Thou to hell I will go with them," said the grim, but great-hearted old pagan. One respects the pagan, reprehensible person though ho was ; for the modern revivalist, dilating with unction on the certain perdition of his grandmother, one feels only disgust. Far be it from me, however, to question that evangelists of the Moody and Sankoy order have their use. Everything in nature has its use ; the mere existence of an organism is proof that there is place and function for it in the terrestrial scheme of things. Moody-and-Sankeyism is to be reckoned amongst the religioua forces of the world, and there are classes of people amenable to that force who, apparently', could never be moved by any other. Whether Mr. Moody does or doea not reverence the inanea of his ancestors, need not concern us. His methods, whatever they are, are said to be efficient for those who like them ; and aa for those who don't, why, as Mr. Stout opportunely remarks with reference to his theological lectures, they can stop away. — " Cms " in the Witness. " Why did y»u pass me yesterday without looking at me ?" asked a, beautiful lady of a gentlemen. "Because if I had looked, I could not have passed," was the gallant reply. i