The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1892-05-22
SAM JONES ENDORSED.
Rev. D. c. Moomaw's Tribute
to the Great Evangelist.

IHE TIMES has kindly invited me to
give its readers an expression OF my
views of tho great evangelist and his
work and worry reluctantly essay the
performance OF the task. No man of
this generation is more worthily famous
than the subject Of this sketch mono
are doing moro to turn tho tides Of
thought and action into moral and re-
ligions channels; none are graphing
with the great living, practical issues
on which the veal or WOO of the world
hangs, with more heroism and self
abnegation; none have such a hold on
the popular heart and life.
With the courage born of conviction
OF duty and right, he attacks sin in all
of its phases, whether it is found in
trenched in the municipalities, or in
tho policies of great political parties;
whether in the gliding and glamor of
the pulpit or the flashing drapery of
the pow; whether in privacy of the
homo or the glare of the street; whet Their
behind the screened doors of the dens
or before the footlights of the stage;
whether imbedded between tho leaves
of the poisonous novel or in tho blind
devotion of fashions supple slave;
whether at the desk of the bloodless,
heartloss usurer or in tho oily forked
tongue Of the speculator. Without res
pect to condition, age, sex, occupation,
intention; without discrimina lion
between rich and poor, high and low,
the powerful or tho weak, the old or the
young; with favors for none and warn
ing and chastisement for all, he stands
before the world, unique, heroic, lonely
in tho attitude in which tho di.
vine commission calls him, a king
Of men, crowned with tho plaudits and
prayers of the thousands whom his
magic words untombs, and to whose
power the press, the repository of power
only second to tho infinite, pays de-
served willing homage.
His satire tears tho gaudy frock off
the pulpit dandy and rends the flimsy
robe that feebly covers the whitewashed
hypocrito of the pow, it cauterizes the
gangreen of false professions and ex-
poses tho bollowness of the average re-
ligion Of the times. With tho wit and
humor of hispigrams he laughs down
the tides of the winds, the follies and
shams OF the swirling crowd. His in
vective, as hot and fierce and unfeeling
as tho breath of the desert, lays bare
the rotten, soothing, carcass of sin,
shows its cavernous depths, it's blood
red mission, it's damhable intent, it's
soul-sickening destroying results, it's
final inevitable doom, and brings out
the fearful personality of the devil in
characters so vivid, so faithful, SO hon
est that we shudder at the thought of
the horrid vision, and we faint as the
picture flashes on the CANVASS Of the
soul.
His illustrations, garnered from
every path and thought and act and
vocation and experience and imagery,
that of men and women illumines with
the glare of thousand suns, the burn
ing thoughts that leap, ripe and full
blown, from his brain and pass like
lightning flashes from heart to heart,
from pow to pew, from valley to noun
tain, from city to city, and from gen.
Grafton to generation.
While the heart is opened wide 20
catch the brilliant picture painted BY
the drollery or pathos of his humor, he
dashes into it, full handed, the truths
that changes demons into angels, brutes
into men and women, gall into sweet
ness, darkness into light, hate into
love, cursing into prayer, sinners into
saints, and homes, where so metimes
song, where happy wives and loving,
sweet children live and love.
His methods, the subject of the criti-
cism of honest, good men and women
contains the open secret of his power.
He goes to the field or the workshop
of the toiler for his illustrations, and
his language is that of the masses and
not of the classes If the character he
describes is liar he says so, If dog,
hound, cur or other species, he SAYS so;
If devil or shoddy hypocrite, or fresh.
tongued, gossippy, old or young girl, he
says so and his characters, generally,
are unanimously present. He never
lampoons the Mormons or the Jews.
His game is in his own church and
among.his fellow min sters.
He touches nearer billing 's-gate than
pleases fastidious tastes, but his
methods are peculiar to himself and
they succeed. Therefore we will not
say him nay. His mission is to tho
sinners and he finds considerations OF
them in the parlors and boidours of the
rich and great, and in the club rooms,
and within the walls of the dainty, fash
ionable churches Of the cities, glazed
over with the plaster and paint and
drapery of pseudo civ iliZation.
While, too often, faltering, weak,
vacillating ministry fawns on the rich
and influential and condone their moral
lapses, his, fearless scalpel cleavec the
fostering carcasses of all alike. Christ
and his apostles found swine. dogs,
hypocrites, liars, devils, foxes, &C., in
the church and out of it, and they were
candid enough to tell them of their ami.
NAL propensi ties to their faces. Sc
does our client.
The great question of the day with
the leaders of religious thought is.
How can we reach the masses?'