Pulling in the Net – Dwight Lyman Moody

If you are always mending and setting the net, you won’t catch many fish. Whoever heard of a man going out to fish, and setting his net, and then letting it stop there, and never pulling it in. Why, everybody would laugh at the man’s folly. There was a minister in Manchester who came to me one day and said, “I wish you would tell me why we ministers don t succeed better than we do. So I took up the idea of pulling in the net, and I said, “You ought to pull in your nets. There are a great many in Manchester who can preach much better than I can, but then I pull in the net. A great many people have objections to inquiry-meetings;” and when I had pointed out the importance of them, the minister said, “I never did pull in the net, but I will try next Sunday morning.” He did so, and eight persons, anxious inquirers, went into his study. The next Sunday he came down to see me, and said he had never had such a Sunday in his life. The next time he drew the net there were forty, and when he came to see me at the Opera House, the other day, he said, “Moody, I have had eight hundred conversions this last year. It is a great mistake I did not begin earlier to pull in the net.” So, my friends, if you want to catch men, just pull in the net. If you only catch one it will be something. It may be a little child, but I have known a little child convert a whole family. Why, you don’t know what’s in that little dull-headed boy in the inquiry-room, he may become a Martin Luther — a reformer that shall make the world tremble.

(D. L. Moody.)