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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 T 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 9 Li •- a.' < IIH : w ■ ■' I ■hi 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 * ■ ■ WIL ■ 1 ? jh 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, 7