How D.L. Moody Preached: One Verse, One Bible Character, a Pile of Plain Stories

D.L. Moody was a Chicago shoe salesman with about a fifth-grade education who became the best-known evangelist of the 19th century. We studied nine of his sermons, published between 1880 and 1896. He preached the Bible like a man talking across a counter: one verse, one Bible character to carry it, and a pile of plain stories until the point felt obvious.

Who D.L. Moody was

Moody was born in Northfield, Massachusetts, in 1837 and moved to Boston at 17 to sell shoes in his uncle’s store. He came to faith in April 1855 when his Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimball, spoke to him at work. With song leader Ira Sankey, he went on to fill the largest halls in Britain and America.

Their 1873-75 campaigns across England, Scotland and Ireland, ending at London’s Agricultural Hall, made him internationally known, and he built the template of united city campaigns, a gospel soloist and the inquiry room. He founded the Northfield schools and, in 1886, the Bible institute now called Moody Bible Institute. His campaigns are estimated to have reached more than 100 million people.

The shape of a Moody sermon

The text is always short, usually a single verse. In “Where Art Thou?” it is just God’s question to Adam in Genesis 3:9. Early on he often names a mistaken belief: that God hates you, or that you’re a little better than your neighbor.

Then a Bible character, or a whole cast, carries the sermon. Adam hiding, Zacchaeus in the tree, Daniel in Babylon. In “What Think Ye of Christ?” he sets aside churches and creeds and calls witnesses like a trial: Pharisees, Pilate, Judas, the centurion.

The body is a stack of short stories, told back to back. Mothers, fathers, children, prisoners and soldiers, plus homely analogies like a chain, a mirror, medicine or a rope. He keeps piling them up until the point needs no more argument.

His theology fit on a card: ruined by the Fall, redeemed by the blood, regenerated by the Spirit. Most sermons end with a call to decide tonight, and anyone stirred went to a quiet inquiry room afterward.

What made his preaching different

What others said

“Taking it all in all, the most wonderful preacher I have ever heard.”

— R.A. Torrey

“Many of his sermons consisted of the biblical narratives retold in the vernacular of the common people.”

— Stanley N. Gundry, historian, 1990 (Christian History)

What to take into your own pulpit

Those are the ideas. The guide turns them into ten steps you can follow this week, plus the sermons we studied and a fill-in outline in his shape.

Common questions