SANKEY, THE EVANGELIST.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 430, 29 August 1908, Page 4

SANKEY, THE EVANGELIST.

Ira D. Sankey, whose death was recently reported, spent the closing years of his life in Brooklyn., For five years he had been totally blind, and for three years he had been a helpless invalid. It is curious to read that the great evangelist was first of all a politi-. ciau. Dwight L. Moody, with whom he conquered the United States, pleaded with him for six months before he would abandon the political career on which he was entering. His father had been a Collector of Customs, and he had himself received an appointment in the Revenue Office under President Lincoln. He was a big, handsome man, with a powerful and persuasive voice, and, though Moody was the talker, it was Sankey who reached the hearts of the people. He said I himself that he did not draw one penny of reward from his evangelistic work, but he must have earned a good deal of money in other ways, because when failing health compelled him to retire, he had before him the prospect of a comfortable old age. He might have made immense profits out of the sale of his song-books, an d it has often been said that the revival campaigns paid him handsomely in this way. As it happened he renounced his source of income at the outset. Moody established a school at Northfield, in Massachussets, and Sankey made arrangements that this institution should receive a twenty per cent, royalty on the retail price of every hymn-book of his authorship. It is said that in thirty years the school had received ,£300,000 in royalties. The hymnbooks still sell freely at the rate of about five million copies a year, and their total circulation has reached eighty millions. Sankey was seldom interviewed after his retirement. When he was asked to talk about social or public questions, he invariably refused. “ I had a certain line of work to do, and for more than thirty years I did it. Many persons will believe I did it well, yet they would care little or nothing for any expression of my views on topics other than those in which I had been vitally concerned for the better part of my life.” He dropped out of the public arena very suddenly, but even last year he was still taking a keen interest in evangelical work, dictating a great deal of correspondence concerning it and talking freely with revivalists who went to him for sympathy and advice.