Rev. Dwight Moody: Example of Grace
carol | April 30, 2008
“The Reverend Dwight Moody, who became the most famous evangelist of the late nineteenth century, was one of those rare parents who do not discipline their children as they themselves have been disciplined. Although he had been whipped as a boy, he did not choose to inflict similar pains on his own children. As his son William noted:
‘To these whippings Mr. Moody always referred with great approval, but with delightful inconsistency never adopted the same measures in the government of his own family. In his home grace was the ruling principle and not law, and the sorest punishment of a child was the sense that the father’s loving heart had been grieved by waywardness or folly.’
“Dwight Moody’s son, Paul, later confirmed this observation in his autobiography. One of Paul Moody’s most vivid memories was of an incident that occurred when he ‘was quite young.’ He was playing in the kitchen with a friend who had stopped by after his normal bedtime hour. His father observed this, and then returned shortly and commanded him to go to bed. Paul Moody recalled:
‘This time I retreated immediately and in tears, for it was an almost unheard-of thing that he should speak with such directness or give an order unaccompanied by a smile. But I had barely gotten into my little bed before he was kneeling beside it in tears and seeking my forgiveness for having spoken so harshly. He never, he said, intended to speak crossly to one of his children.’
“Paul Moody’s childhood experience remained embedded in his consciousness years later, and he acknowledged the impact that this encounter with his father had upon his religious life thereafter:
‘Half a century must have passed since then and while it is not the earliest of my recollections I think it is the most vivid, and I can still see that room in the twilight and that large bearded figure with the great shoulders bowed above me, and hear the broken voice and the tenderness in it. I like best to think of him that way. Before then and after I saw him holding the attention of thousands of people, but asking the forgiveness of his unconsciously disobedient little boy for having spoken harshly seemed to me then and seems now a finer and a greater thing, and to it I owe more than I owe to any of his sermons. For to this I am indebted for an understanding of the meaning of the Fatherhood of God, and a belief in the love of God had its beginnings that night in my childish mind.’
“Dwight Moody’s experiences with pain and punishment were not transmitted to the generation to come. The Moody family, however, was an exception to the general rule, which has shaped American family life, that we do to our children what was done to ourselves.”
The above quotes are from Philip Greven’s book, Spare the Child, p.15,16.
What a good man. What a good father. If Rev. Moody could choose a new path, free from violent actions and unkind words, then we also, need not repeat the past. We can fight the urge to react in the same way we were treated as children. We can humble ourselves and learn to forgive and ask forgiveness. We can be better parents. Tomorrow is a new day. We will sin again, but we, too, can be forgiven.
The following are comments from Samuel Martin’s book, Thy Rod and Thy Staff They Comfort Me Christians and the Spanking Controversy, pg. 129.
Mr. Martin quoted from the book: Wm. Moody, The Life of Dwight L. Moody (New York: Fleming Revell: 1900, pg. 24).
“Rev. Dwight Moody was one of the most famous of evangelists of the late 19th century. He was a Christian scholar who knew the difference between law and grace and he applied this difference in the way he raised his children. Rev. Moody grew up in a home dominated by law. ‘To these whippings (from his father) Mr. Moody always referred with great approval but with delightful inconsistency never adopted the same measure in the government of his own family. In his home grace was the ruling principal, not law, and the sorest punishment of a child was the sense that the father’s loving heart had been grieved by waywardness or folly.’ Reverend Moody understood the simple difference between grace and law. He chose the clearly spelled out New Testament teaching that ‘you are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by law; you are fallen away from grace.’” Galatians 5:4
