The Evangelist Who Stood Like a Statue
Mrs. Maria B. Woodworth, a traveling evangelist, brings her 'spiritual anointing' to Seattle despite a historic snowstorm.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Mrs. Woodworth, with her co-workers, Miss Daggett and Miss Eisenberg, began revival services last week in Olympic Hall, on Second street. The attendance, considering the inclemency of the weather, has been fairly good, a number having already confessed conversion. Mrs. Woodworth makes no claim to education or superior learning, having had but few advantages in her early years. She states that she promised the Lord if He would give her that spiritual anointing which she holds to be essential to every true Christian worker, she would devote her life to His service. A reporter of a leading Indianapolis paper, who was sent to one of her camp meetings, says: 'More than 10,000 people were present. Mrs. Woodworth rose to speak, stood immovable until profound silence prevailed, when she raised her right arm, pointing heavenward, and began one of the most impassionate discourses I ever heard, her arm remaining as if fixed in a vice for fifteen minutes.' She holds that the power she displays is the same Holy Ghost that fell upon the people under apostolic preaching.
“She seemed to be standing between the living and the dead, and did not have power to withdraw it.”
In an era of mass revivals, itinerant preachers like Woodworth operated outside formal church structures to create powerful communal emotional experiences. Today, these massive, non-sectarian revival meetings have largely migrated to the digital space or stadium-scale celebrity evangelism, yet the demand for a direct, mystical connection remains a recurring theme in American civic life.
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