Lilias and Moody

I found it really interesting learning about Dwight L. Moody's evangelistic campaign in London and the influence it had on Lilias Trotter.

Rockness:

While it is, of course, impossible to determine fully the direct influence of Dwight L. Moody on Lilias Trotter, it can be stated with certainty that many of the approaches and attitudes that marked Moody’s work would be evident later in Lilias’s ministry—first with women in London, and later with Arabs in the slums of Algiers, in nearby mountain villages, and in the desert oases of the Sahara. Innovative, thoughtful, and practical, she, like Moody, would pioneer new methods and materials while never compromising the essential message.

London was abuzz with talk about the dynamic thirty-five-year-old Dwight L. Moody, who, after almost two years in the British Isles, was winding up his evangelistic campaign with a series of meetings in the city. Reports of packed houses and changed lives preceded his arrival, and people flocked to his meetings, out of sheer curiosity if not spiritual concern. Tireless, innovative, and unconventional, the uneducated layman from Chicago drew audiences in the tens of thousands to hear his straightforward presentation of the Gospel. Before the end of the summer of 1875, Moody would preach to no less than two and a half million people during the Great London Campaign alone. 

Though he was at first jeered by the press and mocked by the educated elite, Moody’s muscular Christianity (communicated in the vernacular of the common person with his characteristic rapid delivery—a rush of 230 words a minute!), his quick wit, and his sincere passion soon captivated the hearts of the sophisticated and the simple alike. He even caught the attention of Queen Victoria, who acknowledged his sincerity but allowed, “It is not the sort of religious performance which I like.” 

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Moody insisted that sound Christian character would by its very nature lead to charity to others, and it was a mark of his ministry to leave in its wake practical social reforms, beginning with his inner-city ministry to immigrants in Chicago, continuing in the creation of refuges for the destitute of Glasgow, and now, in services for the needy of London. “The reward of service,” Moody would say, “is more service.”