Dwight L. Moody was unlike any preacher of his era. Other celebrated evangelists of the nineteenth century (including his contemporary Charles Spurgeon) preached with scholarly precision and theological authority.
Mr. Moody took a different approach. He talked to his audiences the way a trusted friend might talk across a kitchen table — warmly, personally, and without pretense. It was a style he probably carried with him from his early days as a shoe salesman in Boston, where he learned that persuasion begins with a human connection, not an argument.
His simple, conversational style is evident throughout Lesson Ten of Mr. Moody’s Bible Class.
He doesn’t begin the lesson with a Scripture text or a theological declaration. Instead, he opens with a lovely description of the view from his study window at his home in Northfield, Massachusetts. He describes the Connecticut Valley stretching out before him and his view of the distant Vermont hills after an early mist has burned away. It’s a short and ordinary paragraph, and that is precisely his point. From that gentle opening he moves into one of the most profound doctrines of the Christian faith: the resurrection of the dead.
Half way through the lesson, Mr. Moody shares more about his personal life and admits that when he was a child he was terrified of death. He describes how he would pause whatever he was doing and anxiously count the strokes of the church funeral bell (one toll for each year of the deceased’s life) and feel a cold dread whenever the count was low. It’s a tender and relatable confession of fear from a man who regularly preached to millions of people.
That is what makes this lesson so powerful and so relevant for readers today. Mr. Moody doesn’t lecture us about the Resurrection from a safe theological distance. Instead, he tells us what it cost him personally to believe it — and what it gave him in return.
YOU CAN READ LESSON TEN FOR FREE!
Click here to download a large-print PDF version you can print or share with friends. Then, join us again on August 25 for Lesson Eleven of Mr. Moody’s Bible Class.
If you missed Lessons One through Nine, you can find them by clicking here or on the Free Reads tab above.
Isabella Alden 