January 1929
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Church, but the preaching of the Gospel over the whole world. Sometimes these meetings lasted until two or three o’clock on Sunday morning. One evening, after a long season of silent prayer, no one having 'been moved to pray audibly though all were praying in the Spirit, Dr. Torrey arose, and in an awed tone told us that during the last half hour God had told him He was going to send him around the world to preach the Gospel. It should be borne in mind that this was an unheard of thing at that period. He asked us to keep it confidential. He seemed to feel that it was too sacred to make public. Y ear ' s L eave of A bsence In 1901 the invitation to undertake an evangelistic campaign in Australia was given Mr. Torrey by a com mittee of gentlemen who had been commissioned to find some one in Great Britain or the United States who they thought would be God’s choice. “Ted” Barber, the son of one of these gentlemen, was then a student in the Institute, training for work in China under the China Inland Mis sion. Mr. Torrey declined the invitation, for in the inter val that had elapsed since that prayer meeting, Mr. Moody had been called home, and Mr. Torrey felt the added responsibility for the Institute. He consented, how ever, to pray over the matter. He called the faculty to gether and asked them to join him in praying that he might know God’s will. Some of us felt we knew what God’s will was going to be, and I am afraid we were not wholly willing to say, “Thy will be done.” Mr. Torrey was given a year’s leave of absence by the Institute Trustees and the committee of the Chicago Avenue Church. A farewell meeting was held in the church, the building being crowded. Hundreds of earnest
winning the lost. Gospel music, recognized as a mighty factor in the work, was included in the program under the direction of Professor Hugh McGratiahan. Mission ary speakers from the field, both home and foreign, were given a hearty welcome, and pressed into service to enlist new recruits. It will be seen readily that Dr. Torrey thus blazed the trail for the Bible Institutes that are now so numerous all over the world, and which, with minor deviations, follow the original. It is well to keep this original purpose of Mr. Moody and Dr. Torrey in mind, lest our Bible Institutes swing off on one or other of the many sidelines that are being advocated today. P astor of M oody ' s Five years after the Institute was opened, Dr. Torrey was called to the pastorate of the Chicago Avenue Church, lovingly called “Moody’s” even then. This was a great responsibility, but depending on God, whose call he be lieved it to be, he threw himself into the work with his accustomed vigor. The church began to grow apace; the morning congregations filled the auditorium, while in the evenings overflow meetings had to be held frequently to accommodate the crowds which came from all parts of the city, and even from the suburbs. During the twelve years that Dr. Torrey was in Chi cago, hundreds of young men and women were trained under his care in the Institute and went out to the glorious task of soul-winning all over the world. And thousands of men and women were converted under his preaching in the church, and went to work there, and indeed all over the city, to win others to Jesus Christ. C alled to W orld -W ide S ervice Paul’s great evangelistic tour was the outcome of the
prayers of the church at Antioch, according to the record in Acts 13. And Dr. Torrey’s evangelistic tour of the world, beginning De cember 23, 1901, was also the outcome of twelve years of prayer by the churches of Australia, a n d after wards the prayers of hun dreds of Christians in Chi cago, where a weekly meet ing was held in the Bible Institute or the adjoining church, to pray for a world wide revival. This meeting was the suggestion of Miss E. S. Strong, then Superin tendent of Women, made to Dr. Torrey at the close of the Week of Prayer in 1898 or perhaps 1899 (probably the latter). Sometimes hun dreds of persons attended, and sometimes only a few scores remained to pray af ter the close of the great Union Bible Class, then a prominent feature of the Institute work. Following
Christians, r a t h e r thou sands, pledged Mr. Torrey and his singing colleague ( a n d f o r m e r student) “Charlie” Alexander, to re member them d a i l y in prayer, and to ask God to give them at least 10,000 converts for the Lord Jesus. The tour e n d e d with a three years’ campaign in the British Isles, during which more than 95,000 persons stood up in their meetings to confess publicly their acceptance of Jesus Christ as ' Saviour, Lord, and King, bringing t h e grand total for the whole tour to over 115,000. A ustralia , T asmania , N ew Z ealand The work in Australia was begun in Melbourne, a city of over 650,000 popula tion, with a simultaneous mission in which all the evangelical churches united. The account of the opening
of the mission, as reported in The Southern Cross, the leading religious magazine, begins as follows: “The Mel bourne Town Hall has witnessed many remarkable meet ings, but not one more significant and memorable than the preliminary meeting of workers in the Melbourne Simul-
the larger gathering a little group of intimate friends and associates of Dr. Torrey met with him in his office in the Institute, or elsewhere, and united in prayer for an out pouring of the Holy Spirit on the services of the Lord’s Day, npt merely the services of the Chicago Avenue
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