While in Great Britain, D. L. Moody met a young Englishman by the name of Henry Moorhouse. One day, Moorhouse said to Moody, "I am thinking of going to America."
"Well," said Moody, "if you should ever be in Chicago, come down to my place and I will give you a chance to preach."
Now Mr. Moody was not two-faced; he was merely trying to be polite, but mentally he was saying, "I hope he won't come." There are so many people, you know, who want to preach, even though God never meant them to, and Mr. Moody was not quite sure of Mr. Moorhouse.
Mr. Moody was rather taken back one day when, just before leaving for a series of meetings, he received a telegram from Moorhouse, which stated that he had just arrived in New York and that he would be in Chicago on Sunday. "And now I'm going away," Moody thought, "and I told him he could preach here." So he told his wife and his committee that a young Englishman was coming and to allow him to preach once. "If the people enjoy him," Moody added, "then put him on again."
When Moody returned he asked his wife, "Well, what about that young preacher?"
"Oh, he is a better preacher than you are."
"Why?" said Moody.
"He is telling sinners that God loves them."
"He is wrong! God doesn't love sinners!"
"Well, go and hear him." replied his wife.
"Why? Is he still preaching?" asked Mr. Moody.
"Yes, he has been preaching all week and has taken only one text, John 3:16."
As he listened he discovered Moorhouse was still on the same text, and that souls were being wonderfully saved. Moody confided to a friend, "I never knew up to that time that God loved us so much. This heart of mine began to thaw out; I could not keep back the tears. I just drank it in. So did the crowded congregation. I tell you there is one thing that draws above everything else in the world and that is love."
Mr. Moody was present at the meeting when Moorhouse got up and said, "I have been hunting and hunting all through the Bible looking for a text, and I think we will just talk about John 3:16 once more."
Mr. Moody always testified that it was on that night that he got his first clear understanding of the gospel and the love of God. Think what that meant in Moody's life, and in the lives of tens of thousands who were reached through his ministry―to know that God loves sinners!
On one occasion, young Moorhouse challenged Moody, "You are sailing on the wrong tack. If you will change your course, and learn to preach God's words instead of your own, He will make you a great power."
Moody's evangelistic preaching was to take on a different tenor than that of so much previous revivalistic preaching in the American tradition. From that point on there was also a new emphasis on God's love for the sinner.
“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15).
Henry Moorhouse (1840-1880)
Henry Moorhouse is known as the English Evangelist. Born in Manchester, England, after being in and out of jail and spending time in the army, he heard the gospel and was born from above at age 20. He immediately started preaching in public places. He is known as "the man who moved the man who moved the world".
During the last years of his life, Henry Moorhouse sold Bibles from a portable carriage. In two years, he sold over 150,000 Bibles and gave away millions of books and tracts.
Henry Moorhouse died on 28 December 1880, at the age of 40. Among his dying words were these: "If it were the Lord's will to raise me up again, I should like to preach more on the text, 'God so loved the world.'"
He seemed to pass away, but means employed by the attending physician revived him.
"Why have you brought me back to such dreadful suffering?" he asked of those at his bedside, "I was in heaven ..."
Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899)
D.L. Moody attributes his power and effectiveness in preaching to the instructions of this one man.
