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The Careers of the Revivalists
A Glimpse of the Life Story of Dr. Torrey and Mr. Alexander.
By GEORGE T. B. DAVIS
HE two evangelists who have just con
cluded a two weeks’ revival campaign
in Atlanta, have each had interest
ing careers. Dr. Torrey’s life has been
so strenuous that, while only fifty years
of age, he appears to be sixty. He was
born in Hoboken, N. J., and was reared
in the midst of wealth and luxury. His
father was a banker who made and lost
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three fortunes.
When only fifteen years of age, Reuben Archer
Torrey entered Yale University, and for three years
led a life of reckless pleasure. He kept up with his
classes with little effort, and devoted the rest of
his time to amusements. Card-playing, dancing and
horse-racing were his favorite pursuits. His fath
er allowed him plenty of money, and he went in for
“a good time.” In speaking of this period of his
life, Dr. Torrey says:
“Did I find it?” I did not. I found disappoint
ment. I found despair; I found utter wretchedness
and barrenness. So I plunged more deeply into
worldliness and dissipation, until, at last, still a
young man, but with life fairly burned out, one aw
ful night when life did not seem to be worth living
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DR. R. A. TORREY.
any longer, I jumped out of my bed and hurried to
the washstand to take out of it the weapon that
would end the whole miserable business.
“As I fumbled around for it, for some reason or
other I could not find it. I don’t know till this day
why I could not find it; I still think it was there.
Tn my awful despair I dropped upon my knees and
lifted my heart to God, and told God that if He
would take the burden off my heart I would preach
the Gospel.” He did not know at the time, but he
afterwards said that the very moment when life
seemed so black and hopeless that he contemplated
ending it, his mother, over four hundred miles away
was on her knees before God beseeching Him to
save her son.
Following his conversion, Dr. Torrey took his
theological course at Yale, and later spent some time
studying under the foremost German theologians,
such as Delitzsch, Luthardt, Frank and Kahnis. He
was a higher critic when he began his studies, but
The Golden Age for June 7, 1906.
before he completed them he rejected the higher
critical theories entirely and swung back to the old
conservative doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible.
Most of Dr. Torrey’s ministerial life has been
spent as pastor of churches in Ohio., Minneapolis
and Chicago. He says that when he began his min
istry he started out with the theory that every
church should have a continuous revival, and he de
clared that that was true of each of his churches
after the first year of his ministry. His church in
Chicago was founded by Dwight L Moody, and was
known as “Moody Church.” Dr. Torrey regularly
had the largest congregations in the city.
As a preacher, Dr. Torrey is not what is popular
ly termed eloquent. He is no rhetorican. He does
not strive after ornate effects. His style is rather
direct, blunt, dead in earnest. Sometimes he rises
to heights of passionate earnestness, when he be
comes eloquent in the truest sense. An English
journal declares that he commanded his audience
with a stream of fiery eloquence. Like his prede
cessor, Mr. Moody, Dr. Torrey is an adept at telling
an anecdote, and his remarkable store of stirring
incidents gathered in the course of his world-wide
revival tour forms one of the most interesting fea
tures of his sermons.
The open secret of Dr. Torrey’s success as a re
vivalist, and his chief characteristic as a man, lies
in his absolute faith in God. For many years when
a pastor ho refused to accept a salary, preferring
to live entirely by faith. Sometimes his money
would be all gone after a meal, and he would trust
God to send something for the next meal, and it
never failed to come.
The entire tour of the world by Dr. Torrey and
Mr. Alexander came about in direct answer to pray
er. For a full year Dr. Torrey together with four
or five friends prayed each week from 10 o’clock
on Saturday night until 2 or 3 a. m. on Sunday
morning for a world-wide religious awakening. One
Sunday morning about 2 o’clock, while on his knees
Dr. Torrey prayed that he himself might go around
the world preaching the Gospel, since nobody else
seemed raised up to do the work. What was the
result? Within a week two men came up to him and
invited him to go to Melbourne, Australia, to con
duct a revival mission. Dr. Torrey accepted the
call, asked a young Gospel singer named Charles
M. Alexander to accompany him, and set out. They
have now been going four years, and over 100,000
converts have been recorded in their meetings.
Their tour constitutes the most unique and striking
movement in the annals of the Christian church.
Mr. Alexander’s life-story has been no less re
markable than that of his associate. It has been a
sheer romance of faith. Thirty-eight years ago
Charles M. Alexander was born on a farm in Ten
nessee. His parents were Godly people, and he was
cradled in Gospel song. His father bought the first
book of Gospel hymns by P. P. Bliss at the time
when Moody and Sankey were doing their great
work, and they were the chief songs young Alex
ander heard in his bodhood days. His mother sang
them at her household work, and on rainy days read
Moody’s sermons to the children. When only nine
years of age Mr. Alexander used to start the hymns
in the Sunday school.
As a boy his chief ambition was to organize great
secular musical festivals. He had read about Gil
more, the famous land-leader, how he had come over
to America a poor Irish boy and had step by step
organized great bands and choirs, and young Alex
ander wanted to do the same. He studied all kinds
of band instruments from a scientific standpoint,
and when scarcely out of his teens had become Di
rector of Music in Maryville College.
At this period of his life, however, Mr. Alexan
der’s father died, and through this experience he
was led to realize as never before the meaning and
responsibility of life and the certainty of a here
after. The result was that he decided to devote
his life to sacred song and make his chief business
the winning of men to Christ. He gave music at
the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, of which Dr.
Torrey was the superintendent.
For eight years thereafter Mr. Alexander went
throughout the central states singing the Gospel
in company with a well known evangelist and or
ganizing choirs. His reputation, however, was mere
ly local until he joined hands with Dr. Torrey four
years ago. Scarcely had the evangelists reached
Australia before Mr. Alexander became instantly
farqous. His chief revival melody—the “Glory
Song”—is said to have “set Australia on fire.”
And his other hymns were sung and whistled and
hummed on the streets, in stores and factories, on
trains and street cars, —everywhere.
It was while Dr. Torrey and Mr. Alexander were
conducting a revival campaign in Birmingham, Eng
land, that the romance of the Gospel singer’s life
occurred. He had been praying for a wife, and
during the meetings fell in love with a young lady
sitting on the platform without knowing who she
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CHAS. M. ALEXANDER.
was. She proved to be the daughter of the late
Richard Cadbury, the famous philanthropist and
cocoa manufacturer. His love was reciprocated,
and a few months later they were married in a
Friends’ Meeting House in Birmingham, as all the
Cadburys are Quakers.
Mrs. Alexander, though reared in the midst of
wealth and luxury—the palatial Cadbury home is
next door to that of the Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamber
lain—has entered heart and soul into her husband’s
revival work, and every night when she attends the
meetings may be seen pleading with some one—per
haps some washerwoman—to give her heart to
Christ.
As a man, Mr. Alexander’s chief characteristic
is his passion for personal work. He believes in
seeking to win men to Christ individually every day
and everywhere,—on the train, on the street, —
wherever you meet people,
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