D. L. Moody and Modernism - Glenn Conjurske

D. L. Moody and Modernism

by Glenn Conjurske

That D. L. Moody was ever anything but a Fundamentalist in his doctrine none would dare affirm. But he was soft and careless in some of his associations. He never had any sympathy with modernism, but he associated with modernists, and in so doing left a horribly bad example to the church. His example does not seem to have been followed by his Fundamentalist associates, but it was followed by his sons, Will being soft towards modernists as his father was, and Paul being tinged with modernism himself. The Fundamentalist movement, of course, did not yet exist in Moody’s day, and if we had been dependent upon Moody for it, it never would have existed. C. H. Spurgeon, the prototype of Fundamentalists, took his noble stand against modernism in 1887, four years before his own death, and twelve years before Moody’s, but the movement did not develop until some years later, and Moody continued his own association with modernists until his end.

I suppose that personal friendship with certain modernists was the greatest factor in Moody’s continued association with them. Many of those friendships no doubt began before the modernism of those friends was so plainly visible, but it continued in spite of their undisguised modernism. Fundamentalists, who hold to “the faith once delivered to the saints,” are not likely to change much in doctrine, but modernists, having no objective standards of truth, are always drifting from bad to worse. Henry Drummond, one of Moody’s closest friends and co-workers from the time of his first British campaign, has this to say of the theological method of modernism:

“What faculty do I employ, then, in apprehending spiritual truth? What is the primary faculty of the new Evangelism if it is not the Reason? Leaving philosophical distinctions aside again, I think it is the IMAGINATION. Overlook the awkwardness of this mere word, and ask yourself if this is not the organ of your mind which gives you a vision of truth. The subject-matter of the new Evangelism must be largely the words of Christ, the circle of ideas of Christ in their harmony, and especially in their perspective. Sit down for a moment and hear Him speak. Take almost any of His words. To what faculty do they appeal? Almost without exception to the Imagination.”

It is possible that Drummond was not much of a modernist when Moody first took hold of him, but he certainly became one. Moody no doubt laid hold of him because of his personality, and his influence with young men, and was not careful about his doctrine. A close friendship developed, and after that, let Drummond’s imagination take him where it would, Moody held on to him, over the remonstrance of the Fundamentalists. “No one will ever know,” says George Adam Smith (another modernist) how much Mr. Moody had to bear, even from those who worked with him, of reproach and abuse for his loyalty to Christians who differed from certain of his views; yet some of that injustice has already come before the public. He was bitterly blamed for the way he stuck to Drummond and for the invitations he gave to Drummond in 1893 to speak at Northfield. Now, this loyalty came not merely from his loving heart. It was the large, fair mind which prevailed over what he might well have felt was due to at least the earnest and good-tempered among the opponents of Drummond’s teaching. He had never allowed the accent and proportion of Drummond’s message, although so different from his own, to blind him to its essential Christianity. `I have never,’ he said at the time when Drummond was most hotly attacked, `heard anything or read anything by Drummond with which I did not heartily agree—-though I wish he would oftener speak of the Atonement.’ It may not be known that, after the expostulations reached him against having Drummond at Northfield, he nevertheless invited his former lieutenant to join him in the evangelistic campaign which he conducted in Chicago during the time of the Exposition. Drummond would not go. `It was the first time he failed me,’ said Moody. But Drummond’s reason was his unwillingness to expose Moody to further attacks on his account.”

It may be that his friendship for Drummond actually did blind Moody to the essential un-Christianity of Drummond’s theology. After all, it would be hard enough to find direct denials of the fundamentals of the faith in Drummond’s utterances, but neither can we find any affirmations of them. Moody wished he would speak more of the atonement, but what is the atonement to the modernist’s evolution of character? It is not the denial of the fundamentals of the faith which characterized the utterances of the early modernists, but the absence of them. Their failure to deny, what they nevertheless did not believe, was studied and deliberate. This has always been the way of modernism, and Drummond knew this serpentine wisdom as well as the rest of them. In an address to a Glasgow theological society on “The New Evangelism” (not intended for publication, as the publishers note tells us, and printed only after Drummond’s death), he says, “A caution may be necessary. … We can speak of these things broadly to one another here, but we cannot with too much delicacy insinuate them upon the Church.” This is always the way of “certain men crept in unawares.”

It was with good reason that the Fundamentalists opposed Moody’s use of men like Drummond, and had it not been a man of Moody’s stature who was at fault in the matter, their opposition would probably have been much stronger. But they saw so much of undeniable good in Moody that they probably gave him too much of the benefit of the doubt on this point. James H. Brookes—-one of the staunchest stalwarts of Fundamentalism who ever breathed—-wrote in November of 1893, “The evangelistic meetings, conducted by Mr. Moody during the whole period of the World’s Fair have resulted in incalculable good. Hundreds of thousands have heard the pure gospel, not the poor stuff so often in these days substituted for the gospel, but the genuine, old fashioned doctrines of an inerrant Bible, a divine Redeemer, His atoning death upon the cross, regeneration by the Holy Ghost, salvation by grace, separation from the world, and the hope of the Lord’s return. Mr. Moody has not asked any one to assist him, who is in the least tainted with the heresies now alas! so common; and those whose confidence in him may have been shaken by his past connection with Prof. Drummond, may well restore their trust and love for his unflinching fidelity in preaching the truth, and for his unswerving loyalty to our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Alas, what could Brookes have said if he had known that Moody actually had invited Drummond to assist him in this very campaign! And six years later he was still doing the same. Moody’s modernistic son Paul relates, “That spring [1899], he was, as I have said, again in New Haven, on which occasion he met George Adam Smith and invited him to Northfield, much to the annoyance of some of his friends, who bothered more about orthodoxy than he did. To make matters worse from their standpoint he asked at the same time S. Parkes Cadman, whose fame was growing and who was entering upon that signally useful ministry which ended only a year ago. A great deal of comment was made on this move of my father’s, but it influenced him not one whit.”

This is that George Adam Smith who was one of the editors of the infamous Polychrome Hebrew Bible, —-and Moody can hardly have been ignorant of this, for if he had overlooked it himself, surely some of his Fundamentalist associates would have pointed it out to him. Though Smith’s portion (Deuteronomy) was not yet published at this date, his name had been published as the editor of it for years, nor could he have gained a place in the editorship of such a work without a thorough previous reputation as a thorough advocate of higher criticism.

George Adam Smith himself relates the circumstances of this invitation: “It was after he [Moody] had himself heard a representative [Smith] of the modern methods lecture on `The Hope Immortality in the Old Testament’—-a subject which could not be discussed without some exposition of the new views—-that he gave him an invitation to Northfield to speak, not, of course, upon criticism, but upon religious topics. `But,’ it was urged, `I fear my views of the Bible are not in harmony with those taught at Northfield.’ `Never mind,’ said Moody, `come and say what you like”’—-and this in spite of the fact that Moody had declared the platform at Northfield to be as follows: “The central idea of the Northfield Conference is Christian unity, and the invitation is to all denominations and to all wings of denominations; but it is understood that along with the idea of Christian unity goes the Bible as it stands.”

That Moody had no sympathy with modernism the modernists themselves bear witness. George Adam Smith wrote, “While at Northfield last summer I had several conversations with Mr. Moody on Old Testament criticism. He was frankly hostile.” And James H. Brookes (in 1897) cites the following from Moody himself, published in the New York Independent: “I have said that ministers of the Gospel who are cutting up the Bible in this way, denying Moses today and Isaiah tomorrow, and Daniel the next day, and Jonah the next, are doing the devil’s work: and I stand by what I have said. I do not say they are devils; I do not say they are bad men; they may be good men, but that makes the results of their work all the worse. Do they think they will recommend the Bible to the finite and fallen reason of men by taking the supernatural out of it? They are doing just the opposite to that. They are emptying the churches and driving the young men of this generation into infidelity.” Yet such men Moody chose to assist him in his work.

But there is yet something on the positive side. Frances E. Willard worked with Moody in 1877, and says, “Everything went on smoothly until a Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Convention was announced at Malden, and I was asked to speak there with Mrs. Livermore, then president of Massachusetts Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. I agreed to go, and was again taken to task by Brother Moody, but this time on another ground. He held with earnestness that I ought not to appear on the same platform with one who denied the divinity of Christ. In this he was so earnest and so cogent, by reason of his deep convictions and his unrivaled knowledge of proof-passages, that I deferred to his judgment, partly from conviction and partly from a desire to keep the peace and go on with my good friend in his work; for I deem it one of the choicest seals of my calling that Dwight L. Moody should have invited me to cast in my little lot with his great one as an evangelist.”

But Miss Willard shortly afterwards changed her mind on the subject, and dissolved her connections with Moody. Of this she says, “My friends were grieved again, and many told me what many more told others, that I had once more made `the mistake of a life-time.’ For myself I only knew that, liberal as he was toward me in all other things, tolerant of my ways and manners, generous in his views upon the woman question, devotedly conscientious and true, Brother Moody’s Scripture interpretations concerning religious toleration were too literal for me; the jacket was too straight [sic]—-I could not wear it.”

Now all of this may seem a little strange after seeing how determined Moody was to use modernists like Drummond and Smith. But it will be observed that the issue was a little different. Drummond and Smith denied the divinity of the Scriptures, while what Moody objected to was working with one who denied the divinity of Christ. There is really little practical difference, and a man or movement which denies (or redefines—-for this is the way of modernism) the divine inspiration of the Scriptures cannot long hold any true doctrine of the divinity of Christ. The fact is, it is very probable that the new modernists with whom Moody worked were no more sound on the divinity of Christ than were the old Unitarians whom he rejected. But modernists are smooth and suave, and do not usually deal in direct denials, but with delicate insinuations. But whatever Moody was, he was not a deep thinker, and he likely did not see this—-though he should have, and probably would have, had he not been blinded by the ties of personal friendship. J. Wilbur Chapman says, “D. L. Moody was heard to say again and again that he loved Henry Drummond.”

But we must conclude. That D. L. Moody was a good and great man none need question. But an old English proverb says, “Great men’s faults are never small.” Moody was a great man, but in his association with modernists he had a great fault.

Glenn Conjurske