On June 18, 1873, while waiting in Liverpool for Bennett’s reply, Dwight and his family were taken in by a ship owner interested in the YMCA, Richard Houghton. Harry Moorhouse hosted the Sankeys in Manchester. A reply came from Bennett on Friday morning asking Dwight to PLEASE FIX DATE WHEN YOU CAN COME TO YORK. Dwight’s response was immediate: I WILL BE IN YORK TONIGHT TEN O’CLOCK STOP MAKE NO ARRANGEMENTS TILL I COME.
When Dwight descended from the train, he was met by a somewhat bewildered Bennett. That night over supper, the two men planned their strategy. Mr. Bennett apologized to Dwight for having the bed curtains covered up, but Dwight reassured him, “I don’t think the Lord Jesus had any curtains to His bed. What did for Him will do for me.”
Sankey arrived Saturday afternoon and found Dwight in a jovial mood. “I say, Sankey,” Dwight related, “here we are, a couple of white elephants! Bennett is away all over the city now, to see if he can get us a place. He’s like a man who’s got a white elephant and doesn’t know what to do with it.”
Bennett returned discouraged. Ministers were suspicious, saying things like: “Americans? Why do they want to come to York? What’s the YMCA up to? Whoever heard of a mission in midsummer?” In spite of this, Bennett had been able to book the large and ugly Corn Exchange for Sunday afternoon. The Congregationalist deacons had grudgingly promised the morning pulpit at Salem Chapel because their new minister was away. Meanwhile, posters were being printed to advertise the meetings, and the news was being spread by word of mouth.
The Sunday morning message little affected the congregation made up of tradesmen and their families, a few footmen from the Deanery and Cannons’ houses, some soldiers from the barracks, a smattering of washerwomen, and railwaymen from back streets beyond the station. In the afternoon an undaunted Dwight and somewhat less confident Sankey walked with Bennett to the Corn Exchange. Dwight stopped at the YMCA and filled his arms with Bibles. He urged Sankey to get some, too.
DWIGHT STOPPED AT THE YMCA AND FILLED HIS ARMS WITH BIBLES.
Mr. Bennett asked, “What do you want to do?”
With a twinkle in his eye, Dwight laughed and said, “Oh, I shall have your hair standing straight on your head before I have finished in York!”
Roughly eight hundred people waited in the Corn Exchange, which was not quite filled to capacity. Dwight ran around distributing Bibles here and there with a slip of paper in each designating a scripture number and reference.
He told them to read the text when he called out their number. The novel but effective Bible lecture that resulted on “God Is Love” piqued their interest; the Yorkshire Gazette even reported on it.
The evening chapel services seemed lukewarm to George Bennett, but the Spirit of God worked unseen in people’s hearts. Many of them thought the songs Sankey led them in singing were strange—very different from the dirgelike hymns they thought proper for church services. Even though they were dignified and straitlaced, these same people later found themselves humming songs like “Hold the Fort” as they went about their daily chores.
When the charming Sankey sat at the little harmonium organ, his solos, with every word distinct, lifted hearers to worlds unknown and brought to their remembrance buried Christian teaching about God’s love.
Dwight’s preaching also shocked and intrigued. His hearers noted that he did not seek to score by denigrating the regular ministry. He let them know that he “preferred preaching in chapels and strengthening existing causes” to beginning any new work. He emphasized repeatedly that religion is a friendship and quoted, “‘To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become sons of God.’ ” Then he would add: “Him, mark you! Not a dogma, not a creed, not a myth, but a Person.” They noticed the blend of reverence and affection with which he would speak of “the Lord Jesus.”
DWIGHT’S PREACHING ALSO SHOCKED AND INTRIGUED.
Dwight had also started a noon prayer meeting in a small room at the YMCA in Feasegate. The meeting turned out to be preparation for a great harvest.
On the second Wednesday, July 2, the Spirit’s movement broke through the surface. Dwight spoke at the Wesleyan chapel on “Redeemed with the Precious Blood of Christ.” Bennett witnessed that “the Holy Spirit’s power was mightily manifested,” and many people expressed great concern for their soul’s salvation. Caught up in the rapture of the moment, the elderly chapel superintendent could only weep for joy and astonishment.
Since that evening had been the last at the chapel, the meeting moved to a new Baptist chapel on Priory Street. The young minister, Frederick Brotherton Meyer, wondered what an evangelist would do that he could not do himself. Meyer possessed flawless doctrine and deliberate preaching, and he hesitated before opening his pulpit to Dwight.
Dwight’s retelling of the “Dying Teacher” whom he accompanied back in Chicago failed to move the Reverend F. B. Meyer. But when Meyer casually asked the woman who taught the senior girl’s class her opinion, she blurted out, “Oh, I told that story again and I believe every one of my girls has given her heart to God!”
Her response shook Meyer, and he began to watch intently night after night as the moderate-sized chapel, vestries, lobbies, and even the pulpit stairs were crowded with people. Each night he also watched reverently as the people crowded his minister’s parlor, seeking the knowledge of salvation.
As an old man, F. B. Meyer remembered Moody’s visit: “For me it was the birthday of new conceptions of ministry, new methods of work, new inspirations and hopes.” After going into the ministry, Meyer admitted his lack of spiritual understanding: “I don’t know anything about conversion, or about the gathering of sinners around Christ. I owe everything in my life to that parlor room where for the first time I found people brokenhearted about sin. I learned the psychology of the soul. I learned how to point men to God.”
The revival didn’t spread to other areas, so both Dwight and Sankey sent for their families to join them. They were quite homesick. Dwight implored Farwell to send full details to the YMCA and mission in Chicago. Sankey complained that the sun near the arctic circle kept him from sleeping.
After a brief foray to Sunderland for a “campaign,” as Dwight began to call his meetings, the evangelists were invited to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, twelve miles northwest of Sunderland. Despite mid opposition to the Americans, Dwight determined when he arrived on August 25 “to stick there until prejudice died.”
By the end of September, a distinguished Scottish Presbyterian minister, John Cairns, who also held a part-time professorship in Edinburgh, passed through Newcastle. He wrote his sister about the meeting: “There was a great crowd at Mr. Leitch’s church; and the chief peculiarity was the singing by a Mr. San-key with harmonium accompaniment under the direction of a Mr. Moody, an American gentleman who had been laboring in Newcastle for five weeks. The singing was impressive, the congregation striking in at the choruses with thrilling effect.” Cairns went on to say that everyone in the vicinity spoke warmly of the meetings and of their results.
Suddenly Dwight and Sankey had jumped from the obscurity of York to being the talk of the greatest city in northern England.
The Newcastle campaign had started among the well-churched middle classes and slowly spread upward and downward. Rich merchants, shipbuilders, and coal mine owners began to attend after the Newcastle Chronicle praised the “wonderful religious phenomenon.”
DWIGHT AND SANKEY JUMPED TO BEING THE TALK OF THE GREATEST CITY IN NORTHERN ENGLAND.
The article especially acclaimed the meetings’“lack of sectarianism, the singlemindedness of Moody,” and the fact that no offerings were taken.
One class that Dwight longed to reach, but that had not yet attended, were the “Geordies,” the people of the slums. They had to work long hours underground, barely exist on scanty diets, and breathe coal dust day and night.
Dwight created an opportunity to reach this class when a baby cried at one of his meetings. Instead of censoring the mother and demanding the baby be taken out, he decided then and there to hold “Mothers’ Meetings,” which no one could attend without a baby. The lower-class women flocked to these meetings, and Dwight was gratified that he could now reach out to these poorer classes.
Increasing attendance also brought a demand for copies of the hymns which Sankey sang, especially “Jesus of Nazareth Passeth By.” Sankey had the only copies and wrote to the English publishers of Philip Phillips’ collection, offering his own selection without charge if they would print it as a supplement. The publisher refused, and Dwight promised another publisher, Richard Cope Morgan of Morgan and Scott, to guarantee an edition of a sixteen-page pamphlet of Sankey’s selection.
On September 16, Sacred Songs and Solos appeared in its first short form at sixpence a copy, or a penny for words only, to be used in alliance with Phillips’ book, which was also on sale.
Moody and Sankey had affected the churches in England’s northeast corner, although many ministers still looked with disdain on unaccredited lay preachers from America—or anywhere else.
As Dwight planned where to go next and tentatively considered a nine-day opportunity in Darlington and some other small towns, a Scottish minister, the Reverend John Kelman, approached him after the evening meeting.
“Come to Edinburgh. I and my friends of the Free and Established Churches will form a committee. We will prepare the ground, and I believe that every presbytery will support you. Win Edinburgh, and you will win Scotland. Scotland needs you!”
Speechless, Dwight hardly knew how to respond. Could it be that Edinburgh, the Athens of the North, would really receive a man who had little formal education and still lapsed into poor grammar in unguarded moments? Then he thought about the able Presbyterian theologians, dry scholars of intense earnestness, grave, discriminating, rigid, who would be on the platform. His rapid torrent of anecdote and informal Bible teaching might shock or irritate.
And what about Sankey? Most Scotsmen considered the singing of anything other than metrical versions of the Psalms to be offensive. Lamely, Dwight suggested accepting a prior invitation to Dundee, but Kelman was emphatic. “Come to Edinburgh first. Then you will reach the nation.” He was unable to give an immediate answer; Dwight needed time to think, to pray about his decision. This was so momentous an opportunity—the first one to work in a capital city prepared by a representative committee. Edinburgh’s leading men of religion, Kelman assured him, would stand behind him. Dwight thought, That is only an opinion!
If he accepted the offer, it would be at the risk of being made Britain’s laughingstock. Never would he be able to show his face again in the British Isles.
IF HE ACCEPTED THE OFFER, IT WOULD BE AT THE RISK OF BEING MADE BRITAIN’S LAUGHINGSTOCK.
The Moody and Sankey families arrived in Edinburgh at Waverly Station on November 22, 1873, on a stormy Saturday night. The Sankeys had been invited to stay with Horatius Bonar, the veteran hymn writer; the Moodys were to be guests of William Blaikie, a friend of David Livingstone.
The first meeting began the next evening on Princes Street. While the committee tried to estimate the attendance, Sankey could see the city’s largest hall “densely packed to its utmost corners; even the lobbies, stairs, and entrance were crowded with people, while more than two thousand were turned away.” All these people made Sankey nervous. He had heard the complaints about his “human” hymns and even more against his “kist o’ whustles,” as the Scots called the little harmonium organ that accompanied him.
The chairman’s announcement at the outset that Mr. Moody, due to a sore throat, would not attend that evening brought gasps of disappointment.
Sankey stood up and invited the congregation to sing with him a familiar tune, the “Old Hundredth.” When he sang “Jesus of Nazareth Passeth By,” an intense silence pervaded the huge audience. Sankey felt reassured about the merit of “human” hymns to work in people’s hearts. Following the address given by James Hood Wilson of the Barclay Free Church, Sankey concluded with “Hold the Fort,” and to his delight, the congregation joined wholeheartedly in the chorus.
After spending the day spraying down his throat with medicine, Dwight rejoined Sankey the following night in Barclay Church. Dwight had his work cut out for him in the formidable Scottish religious climate.
Extreme Calvinism had long held sway in the majority of churches. In fact, Old Testament Law had been deemed superior to “the royal law of love,” the “joy of the Lord” had been defeated by rules and regulations, and most people believed it blasphemy to claim the certainty of going to heaven. They would say that though Christ died for all, none know whether they are predestined to salvation.
Because of this extreme Calvinism, many of the lower classes never attended church at all; on the other hand, the educated classes were racked by doubt and unbelief, which had led to much division and suspicion among the churches of Scotland.
In spite of this unfavorable religious atmosphere, an elderly saint, R. S. Candlish, shortly before his death the previous fall, had prophesied a great blessing that, should not be despised—though it came strangely.
Night after night the people came. A participant, Hood Wilson, noted: “The church was crowded in every part and every spot of standing ground occupied. A number have come to peace in believing—some of them the most unlikely.”
The Scots took to Dwight immediately and even excused and enjoyed his profuse diction, which stopped neither for colons or commas. They tolerated his Yankee accent and forgave him for sometimes deliberately making them laugh in church. His audiences found themselves surprised by joy.
THE SCOTS TOOK TO DWIGHT IMMEDIATELY.
Growing more confident through his open acceptance, Dwight’s assertiveness in the power of Christ to save continued to increase. There were no sudden breaks as there had been during services at York, no groping for words. A steady brightening like some spring sunrise dispelling the chill November gray filled people’s hearts as men and women grasped the astonishing fact that God loves sinners; they had believed He loved only saints.
The audience listened enthralled as Dwight shared with them his convictions. One night he told them about a young man who thought himself too great a sinner to be saved. Dwight’s response: “Why, they are the very men Christ came after! ‘This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.’ The only charge they could bring against Christ down here was that He was receiving bad men. They are the very kind of men He is willing to receive. All you have got to do is to prove that you are a sinner and I will prove that you have got a Savior.” Then he would tell his audience an anecdote about someone he knew who came to know Christ.
His hearers scarcely believed their ears. It sounded so simple. Scottish preaching for many years had emphasized cold, dry doctrine and told its adherents that they were the subject of God’s wrath. The only way to obtain forgiveness was by believing in a complex theological puzzle.
For these strangers to appear suddenly and begin expounding a theology that God didn’t “hate” them was a shock. Time was required for these new ideas to sink in. Moody and Sankey stressed God’s goodness and forgiveness, a simple but welcome new idea.
When Dwight kept his messages down to less than an hour in length and interspersed them with silent prayer or a song from Sankey, the Scots thought the American duo even more novel. They expected a sermon to last at least an hour and a half.
Another novel aspect to the Scots was that Dwight made no attempt to play on their emotions through sensation or excitement; he also provoked “no articulate wailings, no prostrations, no sudden outbursts of rapture” found in other revivals, according to one observer.
DWIGHT MADE NO ATTEMPT TO PLAY ON THEIR EMOTIONS THROUGH SENSATION OR EXCITEMENT.
Nevertheless, Dwight preached for decision. People had to choose Christ as their Savior. He would not acquiesce to suit Calvinistic hesitancy which feared lest appeal for a definite step of faith overrode predestination—a word Dwight could barely pronounce!
He placed his emphasis “upon the doctrine that Christianity is not mere feeling, but a surrender of the whole nature to a personal, living Christ,” said Mr. Blaikie, a campaign associate. Inquiry room sessions after each meeting played a pivotal part in a person’s decision for Christ.
Some people expressed suspicions about the inquiry, thinking it might be an emotion “forcing house,” or a complete surrender to an unbalanced doctrine of free will. Some even feared that it was a dark imitation of the Roman Catholic confessional. These fears quieted as ministers had personal contact with the work and with the inquiries themselves.
The methods advocated in dealing with the inquirers were new, too. Dwight urged the “personal workers,” as he called them, patience and “thorough dealing with each case, no hurrying from one to another. Wait patiently and ply them with God’s word, and think, oh! think, what it is to win a soul for Christ, and don’t grudge the time spent on one person.”
By the middle of December, several weeks after the meetings began, Edinburgh had been stirred to its depths. The meetings were on everyone’s mind. Many had been strengthened and helped, and unity began to appear in Scottish churches and even among the clergy.
SEVERAL WEEKS AFTER THE MEETINGS BEGAN, EDINBURGH HAD BEEN STIRRED TO ITS DEPTHS.
An Edinburgh University professor, Professor Charteris, said, “If anyone had said that the sectarian divisions which are so visible not only in ecclesiastical concerns but in social life and in private friendships would disappear in the presence of two evangelists who came among us with no such ecclesiastical credentials, the idea would have seemed absolutely absurd.” The results in unity turned out to be so far-reaching that decades later, the Scots still rejoiced at what God had accomplished through Dwight L. Moody and Ira Sankey.
God used these two Americans to reform stiff, conservative Edinburgh in other ways as well. The campaign committee had started a prayer meeting before the onset of the larger gatherings. After sitting through a number of long, scriptural, doctrinal, somewhat controversial, and vague prayers, Dwight banged his fist on the table. Everyone sat bolt upright as he stated somewhat impatiently: “I tell you, friends, some people’s prayers need to be cut at both ends and set fire to in the middle!” His point made, the prayers shortened considerably. But the Scots could receive the brief reprimand more from Dwight than from one of their own.
Sankey, too, and his little harmonium organ became popular. The Scots’ distrust of “human” hymns had almost completely disappeared. Sankey sang some of Horatius Bonar’s hymns in the nightly meetings, and Bonar began to achieve acceptance along with Sankey.
By January 1874, news of the revival in Edinburgh had spread all over Scotland. The leading Edinburgh ministers and laymen sent out an “Appeal for Prayer” to every minister of every denomination in Scotland. The ministers also collected a special fund to provide a weekly copy of “The Christian” to send to each minister throughout the British Isles. The publication carried special reports about the meetings.
One of the ministers in the small village of Inverkip found himself caught up in the revival though he was miles away. His preaching and praying took on new life. He called for a Sunday night “testimony meeting.” The people didn’t even know what it was, but they ended up touched and revived as well as their minister.
Sudden fame had come to thirty-eight-year-old Dwight and his thirty-five-year-old song leader. Dwight knew he was merely the recipient of a higher power and remained humble, but Sankey probably enjoyed the new status. He stood more erect and had a new spring in his step. What else did God have for this amazing evangelistic duo? Were there new worlds to conquer? The next summons they received came from Glasgow—another bastion of Scottish conservatism and strict Calvinism. They were ready.
WHAT ELSE DID GOD HAVE FOR THIS AMAZING EVANGELISTIC DUO?