At a glance
- Age
- 62
- Born
- February 5, 1837
- From
- Northfield
- Nationality
- United States
Biography
The line most people meet first is his: "Faith makes all things possible... Love makes all things easy." It belongs to an American evangelist who spent the second half of the nineteenth century preaching to crowds on both sides of the Atlantic, and who got there by walking away from money.
Moody was running a profitable boot and shoe business when he left it to work full time in revivalism. His early efforts came during the Civil War, among Union troops, through the YMCA and the United States Christian Commission. From there he based himself in Chicago and built what became one of the country's major evangelical centres — still operating today. Touring with the singer Ira Sankey, he drew large audiences across the United States and the British Isles, relying on a direct and energetic platform manner rather than formal theological polish.
What he left behind is mostly institutional. He founded the Moody Church, the Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, the Moody Bible Institute, and Moody Publishers — a publishing arm that kept his material and that of others in circulation long after him. His work is associated with Keswickianism.
Born in Northfield on 5 February 1837, he died on 22 December 1899. The schools, the institute and the publishing house carried on without him, which is why his name still turns up on book spines more than a century later.
Moody was running a profitable boot and shoe business when he left it to work full time in revivalism. His early efforts came during the Civil War, among Union troops, through the YMCA and the United States Christian Commission. From there he based himself in Chicago and built what became one of the country's major evangelical centres — still operating today. Touring with the singer Ira Sankey, he drew large audiences across the United States and the British Isles, relying on a direct and energetic platform manner rather than formal theological polish.
What he left behind is mostly institutional. He founded the Moody Church, the Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, the Moody Bible Institute, and Moody Publishers — a publishing arm that kept his material and that of others in circulation long after him. His work is associated with Keswickianism.
Born in Northfield on 5 February 1837, he died on 22 December 1899. The schools, the institute and the publishing house carried on without him, which is why his name still turns up on book spines more than a century later.
