One hundred eighty one years ago (February 5, 1837), there was born of poor parents in a humble farmhouse in Northfield, Massachusetts, a little baby who was to become the greatest man, as I believe, of his generation or of his century—Dwight L. Moody.

After our great generals, great statesmen, great scientists and great men of letters have passed away and been forgotten, and their work and its helpful influence has come to an end, the work of D. L. Moody will go on and its saving influence continue and increase, bringing blessing not only to every state in the Union but to every nation on earth. Yes, it will continue throughout the ages of eternity.

My subject is “Why God Used D. L. Moody,” and I can think of no subject upon which I would rather speak. For I shall not seek to glorify Mr. Moody, but the God who by His grace, His entirely unmerited favour, used him so mightily, and the Christ who saved him by His atoning death and resurrection life, and the Holy Spirit who lived in him and wrought through him and who alone made him the mighty power that he was to this world.

Furthermore: I hope to make it clear that the God who used D. L. Moody in his day is just as ready to use you and me, in this day, if we, on our part, do what D. L. Moody did, which was what made it possible for God to so abundantly use him.

The whole secret of why D. L. Moody was such a mightily used man you will find in Psalm 62:11:

God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that POWER BELONGETH UNTO GOD

I am glad it does. I am glad that power did not belong to D. L. Moody; I am glad that it did not belong to Charles G. Finney; I am glad that it did not belong to Martin Luther; I am glad that it did not belong to any other Christian man whom God has greatly used in this world’s history. Power belongs to God. 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 whomsoever He will, but He wills to give it on certain conditions, which are clearly revealed in His Word; and D. L. Moody met those conditions and God made him the most wonderful preacher of his generation; yes, I think the most wonderful man of his generation.

But how was it that D. L. Moody had that power of God so wonderfully manifested in his life? Pondering 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.

1. A Fully Surrendered Man

The first thing that accounts for God’s using D. L. Moody so mightily was that he was a fully surrendered man. Every ounce of that two-hundred-and-eighty -pound body of his belonged to God; everything he was and everything he had, belonged wholly to God. Now, I am not saying that Mr. Moody was perfect; he was not. If I attempted to, I presume I could point out some defects in his character. It does not occur to me at this moment what they were; but I am confident that I could think of some, if I tried real hard. I have never yet met a perfect man, not one. I have known perfect men in the sense in which the Bible commands us to be perfect, i.e., men who are wholly God’s, out and out for God, fully surrendered to God, with no will but God’s will; but I have never known a man in whom I could not see some defects, some places where he might have been improved.

2. 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:  “Well, 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; taking it all in all, the most wonderful preacher I have ever heard, and it was a great privilege to hear him preach as he alone could preach; but out of a very intimate acquaintance with him I wish to testify that he was a far greater pray-er than he was preacher.

3. A Deep and Practical Student of the Bible

The third secret of Mr. Moody’s power, or the third reason why God used D. L. Moody, was because 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; most emphatically 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; he was not a student of philosophy; he was not even a student of theology, in the technical sense of the term; but he was a student, a profound and practical 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. 

4. A Humble Man

The fourth reason why God continuously, through so many years, used D.L. Moody 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 himself had the humility that keeps everything it gets. As I have already said, he was the most humble man I ever knew, i.e., the most humble man when we bear in mind the great things that he did, and the praise that was lavished upon him. Oh, how he loved to put himself in the background and put other men in the foreground.

How often he would stand on a platform with some of us little fellows seated behind him and as he spoke he would say: “There are better men coming after me.” As he said it, he would point back over his shoulder with his thumb to the “little fellows.” I do not know how he could believe it, but he really did believe that the others that were coming after him were really better than he was. He made no pretence to a humility he did not possess. In his heart of hearts he constantly underestimated himself, and overestimated others.

5. His Entire Freedom from the Love of Money

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; 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 which 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.

Mr. Sankey had some hymns that he had taken with him to England and he wished to have them published. He went to a publisher (I think Morgan & Scott) and they declined to publish them, because, as they said, Philip Phillips had recently been over and published a hymnbook and it had not done well.

However, Mr. Moody had a little money and he said that he would put it into the publication of these hymns in cheap form; and he did. The hymns had a most remarkable and unexpected sale; they were then published in book form and large profits accrued. The financial results were offered to Mr. Moody, but he refused to touch them. “But,” it was urged on him, “the money belongs to you”; but he would not touch it.

6. His Consuming Passion for the Salvation of the Lost

The sixth reason why 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 himself was saved, that he would never let twenty-four hours pass over his head 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, and sometimes he would get out of bed, dress, 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 Saviour who could meet it.

7. Definitely Endued with Power from on High

The seventh thing that was the secret of why God used D. L. Moody was that he had a very definite endowment with power from on High, a very clear and definite baptism with the Holy Ghost. Moody knew he had “the baptism with the Holy Ghost”; he had no doubt about it. In his early days he was a great hustler; 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 in the Y.M.C.A. One was “Auntie Cook” and the other, Mrs. Snow. (I think her name was not Snow at that time.) 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”; and they told him about the definite baptism with the Holy Ghost. Then he asked that he might pray with them and not they merely pray for him.

Auntie Cook once told me of the intense fervour 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, one day on his way to England, he was walking up Wall Street in New York; (Mr. Moody very seldom told this and I almost hesitate to tell it) and in the midst of the bustle and hurry of that city his prayer was answered; the power of God fell upon 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, and in that room he stayed alone for hours; and the Holy Ghost came upon 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 that very joy!

He went out from that place with the power of the Holy Ghost upon him, and when he got to London (partly through the prayers of a bedridden saint in Mr. Lessey’s church), the power of God wrought through him mightily in North London, and hundreds were added to the churches; and that was what led to his being invited over to the wonderful campaign that followed in later years.

R.A. Torrey, Why God Used D.L. Moody First published 1923-All rights reserved

What’s to be done about the West’s plummeting birth rate?

It is now largely common knowledge – and not before time – that birth rates in Western and other developed nations are well below the rate of replacement, leading to ageing and declining populations, and storing up serious social and economic problems for the future.   Source: Wikipedia/Supaman89

In Britain, as in a number of other Western nations, the situation is even worse than the national figures suggest, since these include the higher birth rate amongst more recent immigrant arrivals.

The idea that Europe should look to large-scale immigration to make up for its dire birth rates has been proffered by various public figures in recent years, but such a ‘solution’ can only store up ethnic and cultural tensions for the future, and at worst, risks the final erosion of traditional Western culture and values.

So what is the alternative? To answer this, first we need to ask what lies behind Europe’s declining birth rate.

It’s not ignorance about the best chances for fertility. According to the Fertility Education Initiative, women here are fully aware that they are best off having children in their 20s, and surveys in the US suggest most women want to have children. So what’s stopping them?

The common explanation is cost. People simply can’t afford to have more children, not least because of rising house prices and rental costs. Fertility rates follow closely the fortunes of the economy, rising during the boom years of the 1950s, late 1980s and 2000s, and dipping during the recessions of the 1970s and early 1990s, the 2001 dotcom crash and the 2008 credit crunch and ensuing Great Recession:Source: Institute for Family Studies

Yet many of the costs associated with children, such as education and medicine, are socialised. Initiatives such as childcare subsidies, parental leave and direct payment have not so far succeeded in appreciably lifting the fertility rate in any country where they have been tried.

It is noteworthy that none of these measures advantages marriage or one-breadwinner-couple families. Arguably current policy is funding family breakdown.

Is the decline of religion a key driver? If so, it is not consistent since some of the more religious countries, such as Poland, are no better off than the least religious.

Many point the finger at modern men: self-absorbed and wary of commitment. But what about modern women – are they really all ready to settle down and have their 2-3 children before the biological clock ticks out, if only men would do their bit?

Since the introduction of the contraceptive pill in the early 1960s, birth rates in all countries affected by the cultural and social changes associated with the sexual revolution have nosedived:Source: The Journal of Population and Sustainability 

These cultural changes go a long way towards explaining the changes in the behaviour and attitudes of modern men. Without any social obligation to marry a woman to have a sexual relationship with her, or even a family with her, a large part of the incentive for men to marry and settle down has evaporated.

When it is socially respectable to remain in a state of permissive sexual liaisons and semi-committed domestic arrangements, a great many more men (and indeed women, who should not universally be assumed to be instinctive lovers of commitment and settled family life) will take advantage of that.

Marriage too has been in consistent decline the lowest rate ever between opposite sex couple on record in 2015.

Male fertility is another issue. The average sperm count of men in the U.S. drops 1.5 per cent every year; one in five young men are not fertile.

The post-war baby boom was a relatively short-lived trend running counter to a much larger decline (from 4-6 births per woman to 1-3) that began in most countries around the 1870s, reaching a low in the UK of around 2 in 1940:

Source: Demography Resources 

The causes are widely disputed, but chief amongst them is the shift from children being regarded primarily as family assets (especially sources of income, though also family stature and legacy) to being regarded primarily as family costs (to be educated and set up for life). This was driven by many factors, including the suppression of child labour and the advance of universal education.

Simply to discourage contraception would not revive the birth rate. Widespread contraceptive use predated the 1960s, but it did not prevent the baby boom. Not until around 1980 did the fertility rate fall below replacement level. Having said this, it is hard not to see a link between the pill, which effectively places women in a persisting infertile state, and the intensely permissive sexual revolution and continuing rock-bottom fertility.

Additionally abortion ‘reform’ has led to the termination of around a fifth of UK pregnancies since 1967. Finally, the effect of women’s education and workforce participation which increased sharply in the 1970s and has grown consistently since, depressing both men’s pay and deferring childbirth, except amongst the poorer benefit dependent classes, cannot be ignored.

So what’s to be done?

This is a vexed question in a culture saturated with feminism and with the main political parties seemingly indifferent to encouraging married family formation, maternity and supporting children through the tax system.

On the contrary, Mrs May’s liberal-progressive priority is gender parity – making men and women more equal in the home. Studies suggesting that the birth rate among working women may be increased by their husbands or partners assisting more with child rearing and domestic duties have not however worked out in practice.

A sharp drop in the birth rates of some of the more domestically egalitarian countries such as Norway, Denmark and Finland in very recent years makes this theory look pretty shaky.

Couples who try to balance family commitments with holding down a demanding job each are unlikely to have capacity for more than two children. Yet families having three children or more is what is needed to push the birth rate up to replacement level and above. As the former Australian Treasurer Peter Costello pithily put it: ‘One for mum, one for dad and one for the country.’

Progressive policies of the past 50 years, from easy divorce to on-demand abortion, from sexual liberation to anti-man and anti-motherhood feminism, have all undermined a culture of marriage, family formation and fertility.

That this cultural and demographic shipwreck could be salvaged by yet another progressive policy, domestic equality, rather than a wholesale reversal in the direction of travel, is a clear example of inability to see when a prized project has failed and needs to be abandoned.

Whatever the details, the only solution is to be a lot less ‘progressive’ and a lot more ‘conservative’ in family and social policy than we have been accustomed to since the 1960s. That would be real progress.

Copyright © 2018 Will Jones, The Conservative Woman where the featured image was sourced-All rights reserved.