You will find the whole secret of why D. L. Moody was such a mightily used man in Psalm 62:11: “God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God” (emphasis added). I am glad it does. I’m glad that power did not belong to D. L. Moody. If D. L. Moody had any power—and he had great power—he got it from God.

But God does not give His power arbitrarily. It is true that He gives it to whomever He will, but He wills to give it on certain conditions, which are clearly revealed in His Word.

But how was it that D. L. Moody had that power of God so wonderfully manifested in his life? As I pondered this question, it seemed to me that there were seven things in the life of D. L. Moody that accounted for God’s using him so largely as He did.

 

A Fully Surrendered Man

 

Every ounce of that 280-pound body of his belonged to God. Everything he was and everything he had belonged wholly to God. No, Mr. Moody was not a faultless man, but if he thought God wanted him to do anything, he would do it. He once said, “Torrey, if I believed that God wanted me to jump out of that window, I would jump.” I believe he would have.

Henry Varley, a very intimate friend of Mr. Moody in the earlier days of his work, loved to tell how he once said to him, “It remains to be seen what God will do with a man who gives himself up wholly to Him.” I am told that when Mr. Varley said that, Mr. Moody said to himself, “Well, I will be that man.”

If you and I are to be used in our sphere as D. L. Moody was in his, we must put all that we have and all that we are in the hands of God for Him to use as He will, to send us where He will, to do with us what He will; and we, on our part, to do everything God bids us do.

 

A Man of Prayer

 

The second secret of the great power exhibited in Mr. Moody’s life was that Mr. Moody was, in the deepest and most meaningful sense, a man of prayer. People oftentimes say to me, “I went many miles to see and to hear D. L. Moody, and he certainly was a wonderful preacher.” Yes, D. L. Moody certainly was a wonderful preacher. But out of a very intimate acquaintance with him, I wish to testify that he was a far greater pray-er than preacher.

Time and time again, he was confronted by obstacles that seemed insurmountable, but he always knew the way to surmount and overcome all difficulties. He knew the way to bring to pass anything that needed to be brought to pass. He knew and believed in the deepest depths of his soul that “nothing is too hard for the Lord” and that prayer could do anything God could do.

One day Mr. Moody drove up to my house at Northfield and said, “Torrey, I want you to take a ride with me.” I got into the carriage, and we drove out toward Lovers’ Lane, talking about some great and unexpected difficulties that had arisen in regard to the work in Northfield and Chicago, and in connection with other work that was very dear to him.

As we drove along, some black storm clouds lay ahead of us. Suddenly, as we were talking, it began to rain. He drove the horse into a shed near the entrance to Lovers’ Lane for shelter. Then he laid the reins on the dashboard and said, “Torrey, pray.”

As best I could, I prayed, while he in his heart joined me in prayer. When my voice was silent, he began to pray. Oh, I wish you could have heard that prayer! I shall never forget it, so simple, so trusting, so definite and direct and mighty.

As we drove back, Mr. Moody said to me, “Torrey, we will let the other men do the talking and the criticizing; we will stick to the work God has given us to do and let Him take care of the difficulties and answer the criticisms.” Everything he undertook was backed up by prayer, and in everything his ultimate dependence was on God.

 

A Student of the Bible

 

The third secret of Mr. Moody’s power was that he was a deep and practical student of the Word of God. Nowadays it is often said of D. L. Moody that he was not a student. I wish to say that he was a student.

He was not a student of psychology; he was not a student of anthropology—I am very sure he would not have known what that word meant. He was not a student of biology or philosophy. He was not even a student of theology, in the technical sense of the term. But he was a student of the one Book that is more worth studying than all other books in the world put together—he was a student of the Bible.

Every day of his life, I have reason for believing, he rose very early in the morning to study the Word of God. Mr. Moody used to rise about four o’clock in the morning to study the Bible. He would say to me, “If I’m going to get in any study, I’ve got to get up before the other folks get up.” He would shut himself up in a remote room in his house, alone with his God and his Bible.

Oh, you may talk about power; but if you neglect the one Book that God has given you as the one instrument through which He imparts and exercises His power, you will not have it. And if you ever had power, you will not maintain it except by the daily, earnest, intense study of that Book.

 

A Humble Man

 

The fourth reason God continuously used D. L. Moody through so many years was because he was a humble man. I think D. L. Moody was the humblest man I ever knew in all my life. He loved to quote the words of another: “Faith gets the most; love works the most; but humility keeps the most.”

He made no pretense to a humility he did not possess. In his heart of hearts he constantly underestimated himself and overestimated others. He really believed that God would use other men in a larger measure than he had been used.

Mr. Moody loved to keep himself in the background. At his conventions at Northfield, or anywhere else, he would push the other men to the front and, if he could, have them do all the preaching—McGregor, Campbell Morgan, Andrew Murray, and the rest of them. The only way we could get him to take any part in the program was to get up in the convention and move that we hear D. L. Moody at the next meeting. He continually put himself out of sight.

Oh, how many a man has been full of promise, and God has used him, and then the man thought that he was the whole thing, and God was compelled to set him aside! I believe more promising workers have gone on the rocks through self-sufficiency and self-esteem than through any other cause.

I can look back for forty years or more and think of many men who are now wrecks or derelicts, who at one time the world thought were going to be something great. But they have disappeared entirely from the public view. Why? Because of an overestimation of self. Oh! the men and women who began to think they were Somebody, that they were IT, and therefore God was compelled to set them aside.

God used D. L. Moody, I think, beyond any man of his day; but it made no difference how much God used him, he never was puffed up. He would get down on his face before God, knowing he was human, and ask God to empty him of all self-sufficiency. And God did.

 

A Man Free from Greed

 

The fifth secret of D. L. Moody’s continual power and usefulness was his entire freedom from the love of money. Mr. Moody might have been a wealthy man, but money had no charms for him. He loved to gather money for God’s work, but he refused to accumulate money for himself.

He told me during the World’s Fair that if he had taken for himself the royalties on the hymnbooks he had published, they would have amounted at that time to a million dollars. But Mr. Moody refused to touch the money. He had a perfect right to take it, for he was responsible for the publication of the books, and it was his money that went into the publication of the first of them. Millions of dollars passed into Mr. Moody hands, but they passed through; they did not stick to his fingers.

 

A Passion for the Lost

 

The sixth reason God used D. L. Moody was because of his consuming passion for the salvation of the lost. Mr. Moody made the resolution, shortly after he was saved, that he would never let twenty-four hours pass by without speaking to at least one person about his soul.

His was a very busy life, and sometimes he would forget his resolution until the last hour. Sometimes he would get out of bed, dress, and go out and talk to someone about his soul in order that he might not let one day pass without having definitely told at least one of his fellow mortals about his need and the Savior who could meet it.

On one occasion, Mr. Moody got home and went to bed before it occurred to him that he had not spoken to a soul that day about accepting Christ. “Well,” he said to himself, “it’s no good getting up now; there will be nobody on the street at this hour of the night.” But he got up, dressed, and went to the front door. It was pouring rain. “Oh,” he said, “there will be no one out in this pouring rain.”

Just then he heard the patter of a man’s feet as he came down the street, holding an umbrella over his head. Mr. Moody darted out and rushed up to the man and said, “May I share the shelter of your umbrella?” “Certainly,” the man replied. Then Mr. Moody said, “Have you any shelter in the time of storm?” and preached Jesus to him.

D. L. Moody’s consuming passion for souls was not for the souls of those who would be helpful to him in building up his work here or elsewhere. His love for souls knew no class limitations.

A friend once told me that the first time he ever heard of Mr. Moody was when Mr. Reynolds of Peoria told him that he once found Mr. Moody sitting in one of the squatters’ shanties that used to be in that part of the city toward the lake. Mr. Moody had a boy on his knee, a tallow candle in one hand, and a Bible in the other, and he was spelling out the words (for at that time the boy couldn’t read very well) of certain verses of Scripture, in an attempt to lead that ignorant boy to Christ.

Oh, men and women and all Christian workers, if you and I were on fire for souls like that, how long would it be before we had a revival? Suppose that tonight the fire of God falls and fills our hearts—a burning fire that will send us out all over the country and across the water to China, Japan, India, and Africa, to tell lost souls the way of salvation!

 

An Anointed Man

 

The seventh secret of why God used D. L. Moody was that he had a very definite enduement of power from on high—a very clear and definite baptism with the Holy Spirit. In his early days he had a tremendous desire to do something, but he had no real power. He worked very largely in the energy of the flesh.

But there were two humble Free Methodist women who used to come over to his meetings at the Y.M.C.A. One was “Auntie Cook,” and the other, Mrs. Snow. These two women would come to Mr. Moody at the close of his meetings and say, “We are praying for you.” Finally, Mr. Moody became somewhat nettled and said to them one night, “Why are you praying for me? Why don’t you pray for the unsaved?” They replied, “We are praying that you may get the power.”

Mr. Moody did not know what that meant, but he got to thinking about it and then went to these women and said, “I wish you would tell me what you mean.” They told him about the definite baptism with the Holy Spirit. Then he asked that he might pray with them, and not that they merely pray for him.

Auntie Cook once told me of the intense fervor with which Mr. Moody prayed on that occasion. She told me in words that I scarcely dare repeat, though I have never forgotten them. And he not only prayed with them, but he also prayed alone.

Not long after, he was walking up Wall Street in New York. (Mr. Moody very seldom told this, and I almost hesitate to tell it.) In the midst of the bustle and hurry of that city, his prayer was answered. The power of God fell on him as he walked up the street, and he had to hurry off to the house of a friend and ask that he might have a room by himself.

In that room he stayed alone for hours. The Holy Spirit came on him, filling his soul with such joy that at last he had to ask God to withhold His hand, lest he die on the spot from very joy. He went out from that place with the power of the Holy Spirit upon him.

Time and again, Mr. Moody would come to me and say, “Torrey, I want you to preach on the baptism with the Holy Spirit.” I don’t know how many times he asked me to speak on that subject. Once, I was invited to preach in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York (invited only because of Mr. Moody’s suggestion).

Just before I started for the city, Mr. Moody drove up to my house and said, “Torrey, they want you to preach at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. It’s a great big church—it cost a million dollars to build.” Then he continued, “Torrey, I just want to ask one thing of you. I want to tell you what to preach about. You will preach that sermon of yours on ‘Ten Reasons Why I Believe the Bible to Be the Word of God’ and your sermon on ‘The Baptism with the Holy Spirit.’”

Once he had some teachers at Northfield—fine men, all of them, but they did not believe in a definite baptism with the Holy Spirit for the individual. They believed that every child of God was baptized with the Holy Spirit, and they did not believe in any special baptism with the Holy Spirit for the individual. Mr. Moody came to me and said, “Torrey, will you come up to my house after the meeting tonight? I will get those men to come, and I want you to talk this thing out with them.”

Of course, I very readily consented, and Mr. Moody and I talked for a long time, but they did not altogether see eye to eye with us. When they went, Mr. Moody signaled me to remain for a few moments. He sat there with his chin on his breast, as he so often sat when he was in deep thought; then he looked up and said, “Oh, why will they split hairs? Why don’t they see that this is just the one thing that they themselves need? They are good teachers, they are wonderful teachers, and I am so glad to have them here; but why will they not see that the baptism with the Holy Spirit is just the one touch that they themselves need?”

Men and women, that is what we all need—the baptism with the Holy Spirit.