The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-12-23

dictionary will tell tia safe guess is
60 years Perhaps he is older younger
he certainly is not.
Education Of n keen, practical sort
he had also but in grammar he was un-
schooled. If any proof were wanting
that Richard Grant White made a sage
discovery when he announced the Eng
lish as a grammarless tongue, Moody
is his living vindication.
Moody had the same contempt for
mere book learning that Wendell Phil
lips and Charles Sturgeon often dis
played. How different are these two
types of great men here associated to
make a comparison with Moody! The
hrst was Puritan austere and alb
stemious by descent from ancestry that
despised the pleasures of the flesh; his
was a fixed purpose, called human
freedom" AS an "abolitionist" he had
field almost to himself. Giddings,
Smith and perhaps Greeley alone dis
puted it with him. His eloquence was
nature itself. He was a wonder on the
platform. He never ranted or raised his
voice, but was most powerful when
most calm. He was not a parson in any
sense. He rarely mentioned the name of
God, though he was a believer. But he
loved his fellow men, and gave his
whole life up to them, trusting to the
hereafter for fair treatment at the
judgment seat.
TWO GREAT LEADERS.
Spurgeon was a wholly different sort
of man. He was a glutton Heaven only
knows what his vices might have been
had he not been able to pamper the
animal that was in him by feeding his
stomach. He looked like an overfed pig.
His flabby cheeks and his gross. vulgar
paunch bespoke the abnormal eater.
But he had energy withal No dinner
was too heavy to check his active mag
nation or to dull his memory. He
hadn't the observation of Moody or Tai
mage, but he had a florescent magma
ton. To him every incident in the Bible
was as realistic as though it had oc
Cured in his sight. Like Cuvier who
could take a single bone belonging
| to an extinct mammal and recreate the
animal around 1t, Sturgeon could grasp
a single incident anywhere in the Bible
and make his auditors live in the at
moSphere of it's environment That was
his power. I know, because I spent a
Sunday morning with him. years ago,
in the temple at Jerusalem. The Incl
dent was that of 1.-THE Widows Mite ,
The moral has passed from mind but
! the vivid reality of that day in the tenn =
pie never can fade,
A NATURAL STORY-TELLER.
| Storytelling was with him an accom-
| pliShment-almost a divine art. In sus-
| tanned plot he would probably have
| failed; but in the thousand word story
he was at the top. He could invest a
three-line paragraph with a climax He
could inject intense human interest"
as 1T is called. into the casual meeting
of two homeless tramps. He could strike
prickly stars of thought from a Broad
way pavement. He could appeal to a
man from more sides at once than the
most agile broadswordsman. Quick as
son of Erin at repartee, he was sure
| to find weak spot in the character of
his antagonist and land there, sooner or
later
A certain kind of genius Mr.. Moody
undoubtedly had but it is best described
as Keep going!" His stories are gem
orally effective, but when one misses its
mark he is headlong into another and
la better one before a single listener per-
ceives the mishap. ReaWakened interest
does the rest,
This brings us back to the energy of
the man. That was tremendous. He
dominated the clergymen on the plat
form. He hypnotized an entire audience
| of five or ten thousand people and kept
them in hand for hours. He made un-
believers forget their dinners and the
chosen of the Lord their particular
creeds. He cared nothing for orthodoxy.
1t is doubtful if he ever looked up the
word in dictionary. But he knew how
to manage a revival meeting.
| He was the meeting.
| 1t revolved about him. The platform
was where he stood. The throne OF
grace was near at hand, for the time
/ being at least, to every heart that he
has affected by the mysterious magic OF
his sympathetic voice.