ABSTRACT
Mr. Sankey sings with the conviction that souls are receiving Jesus between one note and the next. Gospel hymnody reflected and in turn re-enforced the beliefs of revivalistic Evangelicals in the 1870s of whom Dwight Lyman Moody was chief. While Moody had no formal theological training, he possessed a hunger to learn and was an eager disciple of more educated men such as Dispensationalist Plymouth Brethren John Nelson Darby and British Baptist Charles Spurgeon. Although Moody's non-rhetorical, rapid-fire preaching elicited great interest, equal attention was focused on Sankey who appeared to have introduced rather unusual novelties into their religious gatherings. After the tour of Great Britain, Moody and Sankey returned to the USA, holding enormous rallies in America's most influential metropolises, providing a model for mass evangelism that held sway for more than a century. Sankey continued to carry the torch of musical revivalism through gospel hymnody until his passing in 1908.
