The British ex-Premier, William K. Gladstone, has made his contribution to the multitude of theories by which people attempt to account for the attractive power of Moody and Sankey

The British ex-Premier, William K. Gladstone , has made his contribution to the multitude of theories by which people attempt to account for the attractive power of Moody and Sankey . Mr. Gladstone says:

“This machine of advertising has been used lately with enormous effect in certain great religious movements, and there are even those, not adversely disposed, who think of those remarkable operations of Messrs. Moody and Sankey last year in London, that they could have had no considerable success, nor could have obtained a place in the general view of the public, unless sustained with the same energy and pertinacity of wholesale advertising which, until quite recently, was better known to the inventors of certain descriptions of blacking and certain kinds of medicine.”

The revivalists, or their managers in this city, have made extensive use of advertising, besides that in the daily and weekly newspapers. Their advertisements have fluttered from the tops of street cars; big posters have been put up on the fences and dead walls; and tens of thousands of stickers call “gutter snipes” have been pasted along the curbstones: Their best advertising, through the newspapers has been that which was gratuitous, in the shape of daily reports and comments, which set the whole city talking about them. They have had an immense amount of advertising in hundreds of churches from the clergy, who gave out their notices, preached about their operations and urged people to attend their meetings. There was nothing improper in these methods of publicity. Such advertising in modern times may be compared to the blowing of the trumpet in ancient times. There is an old hymn which begins:

“Blow ye the trumpet, blow,

Let all the people know,” &c.

And Moses was directed to make two silver trumpets by which to call the people to the tabernacle. The ancient Hebrews had a habit of blowing great trumpets in the city whenever an assemblage was required, and the use of these instruments is very frequently spoken of by the prophets. Advertising has been Brother Moody’s trumpet by which people were called to the Hippodrome. Even Mr. Gladstone, however, must be aware that mere trumpeting cannot account for Brother Moody’s power and popularity. No amount of trumpeting could, in itself, have filled the Hippodrome daily for ten weeks.— N. Y. Sun.