Daily Inspiration Quote by Dwight L. Moody

Moody’s line lands like a rebuke to the sermon that mistakes eloquence for impact. “A good example is far better than a good precept” isn’t anti-idea; it’s anti-empty instruction. The phrase quietly demotes the pulpit from command center to witness stand: the persuasive power of faith, morality, and reform comes less from what you say people should do than from what your life makes believable.

Intent matters here. Moody was a revivalist and organizer in an era when American Protestantism was trying to hold the nation’s attention amid industrial upheaval, urban poverty, and a rising appetite for “respectability” religion. In that context, a “precept” can read like middle-class moral bookkeeping - tidy rules that let the speaker feel righteous while remaining untouched. “Example,” by contrast, implies cost: time, risk, consistency, the slow credibility of practice. The sentence is a miniature strategy for evangelism and social influence: make the message legible in behavior, not just in doctrine.

Subtext: hypocrisy is the real competitor. Moody doesn’t argue theology; he attacks the gap between declared values and lived ones, because that gap is where people stop listening. The comparative “far better” is a deliberately blunt instrument, refusing the polite compromise that teaching and modeling are equally important. He’s betting that people convert - to faith, to reform, to decency - through trust, and trust is built less by instruction than by demonstration. The line still stings because it makes leadership measurable.