Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations / Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangelist

by Dwight Lyman Moody

There is no class of people exempt from broken hearts. The rich and the poor suffer alike. There was a time when I used to visit the poor that I thought all the broken hearts were to be found among them, but within the last few years I have found there are as many broken hearts among the learned as the unlearned, the cultured as the uncultured, the rich as the poor. If you could but go up one of our avenues and down another and reach the hearts of the people; and get them to tell their whole story, you would be astonished at the wonderful history of every family. I remember a few years ago I had been out of the city for some weeks. When I returned I started out to make some calls. The first place I went to I found a mother; her eyes were red with weeping. I tried to find out what was troubling her, and she reluctantly opened her heart and told me all. She said: "Last night my only boy came home about midnight, drunk. I didn't know that he was addicted to drunkenness, but this morning I found out that he had been drinking for weeks, and," she continued, "I would rather have seen him laid in the grave than have have had him brought home in the condition I saw him in last night." I tried to comfort her as best I could when she told me her sad story. When I went away from that house I didn't want to go into any other house where there was family trouble. The very next house I went to, however, where some of the children who attended my Sunday school resided, I found that death had been there and laid his hand on one of them. The mother spoke to me of her afflictions, and brought to me the playthings and the little shoes of the child, and the tears trickled down that mother's cheeks as she related to me her sorrow. I got out as soon as possible, and hoped I would see no more family trouble that day.

The next visit I made was to a home where I found a wife with a bitter story. Her husband had been neglecting her for a long time; "and now," she said, "he has left me, and I don't know where he has gone. Winter is coming on, and I don't know what is going to become of my family." I tried to comfort her, and prayed with her, and endeavored to get her to lay all her sorrows on Christ. The next home I entered I found a woman crushed and broken-hearted. She told me her boy had forsaken her, and she had no idea where he had gone. That afternoon I made five calls, and in every home I found a broken heart. Everyone had a sad tale to tell, and if you visited every house in Chicago you would find the truth in the saying that "there is a skeleton in every house." I suppose while I am talking you are thinking of the great sorrow in your own bosom. I do not know anything about you, but if I were to come around to everyone of you, and you were to tell me the truth I would hear a tale of sorrow. The very last man I spoke to last night was a young mercantile man who told me his load of sorrow had been so great that many times during the last few weeks he had gone down to the lake and had been tempted to plunge in and end his existence. His burden seemed too much for him. Think of the broken hearts in Chicago tonight! They could be numbered by hundreds--yea, thousands. All over this city are broken hearts.

If all the sorrow represented in this great city were written in a book, this building couldn't hold that book, and you couldn't read it in a long lifetime. This earth is not a stranger to tears, neither is the present the only time when they could be found in abundance. From Adam's days to ours tears have been shed, and a wail has been going up to heaven from the broken-hearted. And I say it again, it is a mystery to me how all those broken hearts can keep away from Him who has come to heal them.

"That is Your Fault."

I remember a mother coming to me and saying, "It is easy enough for you to speak in that way; if you had the burden that I've got, you couldn't cast it on the Lord." "Why, is your burden so great that Christ can't carry it?" I asked. "No; it isn't too great for Him to carry; but I can't put it on Him." "That is your fault," I replied; and I find a great many people with burdens who, rather than just come to Him with them, strap them tighter on their backs and go away struggling under their load. I asked her the nature of her trouble, and she told me. "I have an only boy who is a wanderer on the face of the earth. I don't know where he is. If I only knew where he was I would go around the world to find him. You don't know how I love that boy. This sorrow is killing me." "Why can't you take him to Christ? You can reach Him at the throne, even though he be at the uttermost part of the world. Go tell God all about your trouble, and he will take away his sin, and not only that, but if you never see him on earth, God can give you faith that you will see your boy in heaven." And then I told her of a mother who lived down in the southern part of Indiana. Some years ago her boy came up to this city. He was a moralist. My friends, a man has to have more than morality to lean upon in this great city. He hadn't been here long before he was led astray. A neighbor happened to come up here and found him one night in the streets drunk.

When that neighbor went home, at first he thought he wouldn't say anything about it to the boy's father, but afterward he thought it was his duty to tell him. So in a crowd in the street of their little town he just took the father aside, and told him what he had seen in Chicago. It was a terrible blow. When the children had been put to bed that night he said to his wife, "Wife, I have bad news. I have heard from Chicago today." The mother dropped her work in an instant and said: "Tell me what it is." "Well, our son has been seen on the streets of Chicago, drunk." Neither of them slept that night, but they took their burden to Christ, and about daylight the mother said: "I don't know how, I don't know when or where, but God has given me faith to believe that our son will be saved and will never come to a drunkard's grave."

One week after, that boy left Chicago. He couldn't tell why--an unseen power seemed to lead him to his mother's home, and the first thing he said on coming over the threshold was, "Mother, I have come home to ask you to pray for me;" and soon after he came back to Chicago a bright and shining light. If you have a burden like this, fathers, mothers, bring it to Him and cast it on Him, and He, the Great Physician, will heal your broken hearts.

"It will Kill Her."

I was thinking to-day of the difference between those who knew Christ when trouble comes upon them and those who knew Him not. I know several members of families who are just stumbling into their graves over trouble. I know two widows in Chicago who are weeping and mourning over the death of their husbands, and their grief is just taking them to their graves. Instead of bringing their burdens to Christ, they mourn day and night, and the result will be that in a few weeks or years at most their sorrow will take them to their graves when they ought to take it all to the Great Physician. Three years ago a father took his wife and family on board that ill-fated French steamer. They were going to Europe, and when out on the ocean another vessel ran into her and she went down. That mother when I was preaching in Chicago used to bring her two children to the meetings every night. It was one of the most beautiful sights I ever looked on, to see how those little children used to sit and listen, and to see the tears trickling down their cheeks when the Saviour was preached. It seemed as if nobody else in that meeting drank in the truth as eagerly as those little ones.

One-night when an invitation had been extended to all to go into the inquiry room, one of these little children said: "Mamma, why can't I go in too?" The mother allowed them to come into the room, and some friend spoke to them, and to all appearances they seemed to understand the plan of salvation as well as their elders. When that memorable night came that mother went down and came up without her two children. Upon reading the news I said: "It will kill her," and I quitted my post in Edinburgh--the only time I left my post on the other side--and went down to Liverpool to try and comfort her. But when I got there I found that the Son of God had been there before me, and instead of me comforting her, she comforted me. She told me she could not think of those children as being in the sea; it seemed as if Christ had permitted her to take those children on that vessel only that they might be wafted to Him, and had saved her life only that she might come back and work a little longer for Him. When she got up the other day at a mothers' meeting in Farwell Hall, and told her story, I thought I would tell the mothers of it the first chance I got.