Last Sunday we went to hear Mr. Spurgeon, and he announced that on Thursday (to-day) Messrs. Moody and Sankey would commence a new series of meetings for the especial benefit of the South of London. A large structure had been erected for the purpose. He warmly endorsed the movement, and spoke in high praise of the men, especially for the modesty and tact and the practical judgment they showed along with their zeal; and urged all, instead of standing aloof and criticizing, to join heartily in the effort which he believed would result in great good. In a conversation afterward in his study, Mr. Spurgeon said to me that Moody was the most simple-minded of men; that he told him on coming here, "I am the most over-estimated and over-praised man in the world." This low esteem of himself, and readiness to take any place, so that he may do his Master's work, ought to disarm the disposition to judge him according to the rules of rigid literary, or rhetorical, or even theological, criticism.
This new tabernacle which has been built for Mr. Moody is set up at Camberwell Green, on the south side of the Thames, not very far from Mr. Spurgeon's church. It is a huge structure, standing in a large enclosure, which is entered by gates. The service was to begin at three o'clock. It was necessary to have tickets for admission, which I obtained from the Hon. Arthur Kinnaird, a Member of Parliament, who is about as well known in London as Lord Shaftesbury for his activity in all good works. He advised me to go early to anticipate the crowd. We started from Piccadilly at half-past one, and drove quietly over Westminster Bridge, thinking we should be in ample time. But as we approached Camberwell Green it was evident that there was a tide setting toward the place of meeting, which swelled till the crowd became a rush. There were half a dozen entrances. We asked for the one to the platform, and were directed some distance around. Arrived at the gates we found them shut and barred, and guarded by policemen, who said they had received orders to admit no more, as the place was already more than full, although the pressure outside was increasing every instant. We might have been turned back from the very doors of the sanctuary, if Mr. Kinnaird had not given me, besides the tickets, a letter to Mr. Hodder, who was the chief man in charge, directing him to take us in and give us seats on the platform. This I passed through the gates to the policeman, who sent it on to some of the managers within, and word came back that the bearers of the letter should be admitted. But this was easier said than done. How to admit us two without admitting others was a difficult matter; indeed, it was an impossibility. The policemen tried to open the gates a little way, so as to permit us to pass in; but as soon as the gates were ajar, the guardians themselves were swept away. In vain they tried to stem the torrent. The crowd rushed past them, (and would have rushed over them, if they had stood in the way,) and surged up to the building. Here again the crush was terrific. Had we foreseen it, we should not have attempted the passage; but once in the stream, it was easier to go forward than to go back. There was no help for it but to wait till the tide floated us in; and so, after some minutes we were landed at last in one of the galleries, from which we could take in a view of the scene.
It was indeed a wonderful spectacle. The building is somewhat like Barnum's Hippodrome, though not so large, and of better shape for speaking and hearing, being not so oblong, but more square, with deep galleries, and will hold, I should say, at a rough estimate, six or eight thousand people. The front of the galleries was covered with texts in large letters, such as "God is Love"; "Jesus only"; "Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith"; "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." At each corner was a room marked "For inquirers."
As we had entered by mistake the wrong door, instead of finding ourselves on the platform beside Mr. Moody, we had been borne by the crowd to the gallery at the other end of the building; but this had one advantage, that of enabling us to test the power of the voices of the speakers to reach such large audiences. While the immense assemblage were getting settled in their places, several hymns were sung, which quietly and gently prepared them for the services that were to follow.
At length Mr. Moody appeared. The moment he rose, there was a movement of applause, which he instantly checked with a wave of his hand, and at once proceeded to business, turning the minds of the audience to something besides himself, by asking them to rise and sing the stirring hymn,
"Ring the bells of heaven! there is joy to-day!"
The whole assembly rose, and caught up the words with such energy that the rafters rang with the mighty volume of sound. A venerable minister, with white locks, then rose, and clinging to the railing for support, and raising his voice, offered a brief but fervent prayer.
Mr. Moody's part in this opening service, it had been announced beforehand, would be merely to preside, while others spoke; and he did little more than to introduce them. He read, however, a few verses from the parable of the talents, and urged on every one the duty to use whatever gift he had, be it great or small, and not bury his talent in a napkin. His voice was clear and strong, and where I sat I heard distinctly. What he said was good, though in no wise remarkable. Mr. Sankey touched us much more as he followed with an appropriate hymn:
"Nothing but leaves!"
As soon as I caught his first notes, I felt that there was one cause of the success of these meetings. His voice is very powerful, and every word was given with such distinctness that it reached every ear in the building. All listened with breathless interest as he sang:
"Nothing but leaves! the Spirit grieves
Over a wasted life;
O'er sins indulged while conscience slept,
O'er vows and promises unkept,
And reaps from years of strife —
Nothing but leaves! nothing but leaves!"
Rev. Mr. Aitken, of Liverpool, then made an address of perhaps half an hour, following up the thought of Mr. Moody on the duty of all to join in the effort they were about to undertake. His address, without being eloquent, was earnest and practical, to which Mr. Sankey gave a thrilling application in another of his hymns, in which the closing line of every verse was,
"Here am I; send me, send me!"
Mr. Spurgeon was reserved for the closing address, and spoke, as he always does, very forcibly. I noticed, as I had before, one great element of his power, viz., his illustrations, which are most apt. For example, he was urging ministers and Christians of all denominations to join in this movement, and wished to show the folly of a contentious spirit among them. To expose its absurdity, he said:
"A few years ago I was in Rome, and there I saw in the Vatican a statue of two wrestlers, in the attitude of men trying to throw each other. I went back two years after, and they were in the same struggle, and I suppose are at it still!" Everybody saw the application. Such a constrained posture might do in a marble statue, but could anything be more ridiculous than for living men thus to stand always facing each other in an attitude of hostility and defiance? "And there too," he proceeded, "was another statue of a boy pulling a thorn out of his foot. I went to Rome again, and there he was still, with the same bended form, and the same look of pain, struggling to be free. I suppose he is there still, and will be to all eternity!" What an apt image of the self-inflicted torture of some who, writhing under real or imagined injury, hug their grievance and their pain, instead of at once tearing it away, and standing erect as men in the full liberty wherewith Christ makes his people free.
Again, he was illustrating the folly of some ministers in giving so much time and thought to refuting infidel objections, by which they often made their people's minds familiar with what they would never have heard of, and filled them with doubt and perplexity. He said the process reminded him of what was done at a grotto near Naples, which is filled with carbonic acid gas so strong that life cannot exist in it, to illustrate