AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. MOODY. His Opinion of English Peoplo and English Ways. Titled Ladies Visit the Hovels of the Poor.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 69, 27 September 1884, Page 5

AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. MOODY. His Opinion of English Peoplo and English Ways. Titled Ladies Visit the Hovels of the Poor.

Mr Dwigiit L. Moody, the well-known evangelist, who for eight months has been conducting a series of evangolistic meetings on a larger scale than any which have hithorto been known in London, left Liverpool for America recently. His companion, Mr Sankey, had already preceded him across tho Atlantic. At present it is not Mr Moody's intention to return again to this country. The total cost of their London campaign is £16,000, the whole of which has been contributed without any application for a single subscription. ' The following report (which appears in the " Pall Mall Gazotto") of a recent interview with Mr Moody refers to the salient features of this remarkable religious movement : — " The fact is," said Mr Moody some days ago, " I feel ashamed at doming to say anything here. You are,. much further ahead than we are in America. T,hoy have more need of me in the States than you have in England. London, sir, I regard as the most religious city in the world; Thero is nothing like it to be found anywhere at present, and I very much doubt whether there ever was anything like it."' ' tc That is not saying much for the rost of the world, Mr Moody," remarked his visitor. " Wo have a tolerable number of sinners here." "Of course you have," replied the evangelist; "because there are so many of you altogether. But take it in proportion, and you will find that the facts bear out what I say. lam very much impiessod Mith that. The more I think of it the more it is borne in upon my mind that, take it all in all, there is nothing like London in the whole world. There is nothing like it in America, at any rate. Take, for instance, your wealthy men. In London there is such a thing as sanctified wealth. That is a very rare commodity in America. The reason for that, I suppose, is chiefly due to tho fact that in London you have families that have been acclimatised to wealth. They can breathe it without choking. It does not crush them. It is one ot the ordinary incidents of their lifo, and, being born to wealth, they i .i.» v.- as good a use of it as of a s other gift which they possess. •But in America our rich men have nearly all been born poor. Ti ey have heaped together vast fortunes. As a consequence, their wealth is too much for them : and there i<* nothing to compare with i ho great numbers of wealthy men and women who, in London, devote the whole of their leisure time to the service of God and their fellow men. Why, the other day, the heir to oneof the greatest fortunes in London, whose name I do not wish you to publish, stood outside our meeting and held a cabman's horse the whole time in order that the cabman might take part in the servico within. Nor was that at all an isolated incident. Titled ladies and wealthy ladies moving in the first society have gone down into the lowest slums in the districts in which we have been holding our meetings, and taken care of the children and nursed the babies while the mothers spent an hour in our hall. In some of the places they opened a creche, where they each took turns in keeping the babies while the mothers were at tho services. There has been no duty which they have not been prompt to perform. But it was done over and over again. In fact, there has been no limit to the self-sacrifice and zeal with which the mission has been carried through on all hands. Nor is it only the wealthy uho have shown such energy. About a hundred persons have followed us from place to place -camping out, as it -were— and have taken lodgings in the immediate vicinity of our halls in order that they might be able to work night and day and bring in the people. That is one of the great advantages you have here. You have more pcojjle with leisure than we have in America ; people who have time on their hands, and who are good enough to dedicate it to the service of their fellow-creatures. I don't think that ever any series of services were arranged for with more good feeling between all denominations, executed with more unity or zeal, or crowned with greater success. For two monthsbefore we started the ground was thoroughly prepared, so that for about ten months Mr .Paton has worked like a galley slave in the midst of an energetic and devoted body of helpers. Among those who helped us very materially were converts who joined us at Cambridge. There never was a place that I approached with greater anxiety than Cambridge. Never having had the privilege of a University education, I was nervous about meeting University men. But I think I had a better time at Cambridge than I had in any other provincial town, and many of the graduates who were brought in there rendered noble service in j our London campaign. Some of the best cricketers in Cambridge— some of the best in England, in fact — have been with us j heart and soul. We have experienced the advantage of the Cambridge visit through the whole of our London campaign."

The Evangelist Thinks England Improving. "And what do you think of us, Mr Moody ? Have we improved or gone backward during the eight years which have passed since you last came to England )" "You have improved," said Mr Moody—

"wonderfully improved. To begin with, thore is much more brotherly feeling, more Christian union among the various denominations than in 1876. The number of ministers, established and non-established, that co-operated with us all through has been much greater, and their fervour and brotherly feeling were all that could bo desired. Another great change very welcome to us is the increased spiritual life of the churches. There is still, no doubt, a gieat deal to be done ; but there has been a great awakoning, and the Church of England especially is much more alive than it used to be. Thon there i 3 another improvement that is very perceptible lying on the surface of society ; I mean the enormous advance you have made in temperance. Eight years ago it was difiicult for me to mix in your society without being constantly pressed to drink wine. Now I may say, broadly, lam never asked to touch it, and at many places whero I go it is not even on the table. This is a great change, and brings you nearer to the American level in that matter, for in our country Christian people "have been ahead of you in recognising the mischief of drink. Side by side with the increasing zeal of the churches there has been a most remarkable absence of abuse, and tho last improvement that. I notice is a diminution of caste feeling. Thoro seems to me to exist in England a greater sense of our common humanity permeating all classes. The rich and the poor seem to feel that there is no longer that great gulf between them which was formerly there." " This is very gratifying, Mr Moody," said our representative. "Now, have you learned anything from us ?" "I came here to loam, and I have learned one great truth." "What is that?" "Why the 1 great principle of divide and conquer. That is what distinguishes London above all other cities. The Church has discovered that in order to get at men it must attack them in sections. It is of no use trying to get at men in the mass. You must split them up and deal with them in detail ; and to such a length have you carried this principle that there is hardly a clas of a hundred persons in London that have not a society or missionary or somebody or other told off to look after them "—" Except journalists," remarked tho visitor sotto voce, — " For example," continued the evangelist, without noticing tho interruption, "you have your Policemen's Mission, your Cabmen's Mission, and look at the way your shop-girls are cared for ' Why, there is a friend of mine who has every week a class of no less than eight hundred shop-girls, and another has a class of six hundred. And then, above and before all, look at your Mildmay Park. Why don't you write up Mildmay Park Mission, now ? I think that is the grandest institution which exists in London at the present moment. Its activity is boundless, and it is doing a great work— a very great work indeed. I should like to see a Mildmay Park established in every city in the world."

The Want of the People, Good Homes. " Now, Mr Moody, that, you say, is what we have taught you ; what have you got to teach us?" "The great thing that you need in London," replied Mr Moody, "is homes. Homes ! there, that is your great lack. The great mags of your population is homeless. What you want to do is to give them a stake in tho country. Let them loel that they have a fixed home, out of which they cannot be turned by anyone. At pi-esent your poor people shift aimlessly from place to place. A man may be in a room to day, and out of it to-morrow. There is no senso of permanence of ownership such as we have in America, whore nearly every man owns his own house and has his own bit of land. There are more people who live from hand to mouth in England than in America, and I sometimes wonder how you would pull through in the event of a prolonged period ot depression. The home was founded before the church, and you in England stand more in need of homes than you do of churches. There are no homes in the world so well found and so beautiful as English homes ; but, on the other hand, the extremes meet, and there are none so destitute and squalid, or lacking in all that makes home home-like, as the homes of many, many thousands of your countrymen. In America the sense of ownership is a great stimulus to tho development of manhood, and I think our institutions also contribute to sharpen the intelligence of the working man. He has a vote, and so he reads the papers to see which side he should vote upon, and the result is that, on the whole, I think our working classes are more intelligent than yours. But the great thing that you are behind in is, after all, the home. Keep hammering away at the ' dwellings of the poor ' question, and keep moving on against the drink." "lam never excited," said Mr Moody, "in my most exciting meetings. I can sleep like a top within threo minutes of going into a meeting, and I can bo sound asleep three minutes after leaving it. If I were to get into such a state of nervous excitement as General Booth, for instance, gets into when he addresses lai'ge meetings, I should have been dead long ago. The survival of the Booth family to the present moment is to me little short of a miracle. There is nothing in my work approaching to the exhaustion, nervous and physical, which their operations constantly involve. The great defect, if I may be permitted to say so, of your services in England, especially of the services of the Church, is that they alienate the masses by their excessive length and their lack of interest and vitality. Your religious services are ad justed to the needs of an age before railways were invented and telegrams had revolutionised the whole method of communication between man and man. You want telegrammatic services (if I may use the phrase) if the busy men of the latter end of the nineteenth century are to attend them. None of our meetings exceeded one hour in length, and they were always broken up with plenty of singing. Long! services are a mistake. You want prayers ! short and to the point, with straightforward addresses from the heart of the speaker to the hearts of the listeners. In short, the great need of the church here, as elsewhere, is sanctified common sense. "

The young person who lent her charms to grace the character of Lady Godiva in last year's procession at Coventry has had her daring achievement commemorated with "a beautifully illuminated address " as a public mark of the appreciation of the citizens of Coventry. Considering that the character of Lady dodiva is personated in a costume which consists mainly of a sweet smile and a timid blush, it may not be indelicate to suggest that a dress would have been a more suitable testimonial than an address. —"York Post." " The price on that," said a clerk in an American store, picking up a remnant of | silk, « is quite decollette." ' • What ?" said the startled customer. "The price is quite decollette, I said." "Young man, do you know what decollette means?" "Yes, madame, I do." "Well, I think you are mistaken." " Oh, no, I am not." " What does it mean?" "It means cut low, and that's what's the matter with the price on this piece of goods j it's way down."— ♦'Figaro,"

Success of the Last Mission.— Two Million People Addressed. 11 Now, Mr Moody, compared with your last visit to England, how does this one stand ?" " Better," was the reply, better in every respect. There has not been so much newspaper sensation, for the newspapers did not write us up as they did betore, but we have had more meetings, better meetings, and the work has been of a more satisfactory character in every way. For the last eight months I have addressed on an average 9,000 people every day. We always rested on Saturdays, but as we had on an average 25,000 persons at our Sunday services, that brings the average up to 9,000 a day, seven days a week for eight | months. You can cipher out the total if you like. I have never done so." Making a rapid mental calculation, our representative noted the fact that Mr Moody, during that time, must have addressed over 2,000,000 people. "Tolerably large congregations," continued Mr Moody; "and we got down to the people better. There was not so much absolute work in the slums as among the middle and working classes. Our best services were at New Cross and Stratford, where we could have had twice the number of people every day if we had only had room for them. The worst services were those at the Temple Gardens in the city. We got the people even there ; but we had to go after them, whereas in New Cross and Stratford the difficulty was the other way. Eight years ago it was a superstition that you could not get people in the suburbs. Now, we find this time that it is much easier to get them at their homes than anywhere else. As a rule, the working man will not go to meeting until he has been home first, if only for five minutes."