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D. L. Moody: Bringing Souls to Christ

Copyright © 2011 by YWAM Publishing

Published by YWAM Publishing

a ministry of Youth With A Mission

P.O. Box 55787, Seattle, WA 98155

E-book edition 2011

ISBN 978-1-57658-584-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Benge, Janet, 1958–

D. L. Moody : bringing souls to Christ / Janet Benge, Geoff Benge.

p. cm. — (Christian heroes, then & now)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-57658-552-8 (pbk.)

1. Moody, Dwight Lyman, 1837–1899—Juvenile literature. 2. Evangelists—United States—Biography

Juvenile literature. I. Benge, Geoff, 1954– II. Title.

BV3785.M7B35 2011

269’.2092—dc22

[B] 2011004115

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Copyright 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission.

Adoniram Judson

Amy Carmichael

Betty Greene

Brother Andrew

Cameron Townsend

Clarence Jones

Corrie ten Boom

Count Zinzendorf

C. S. Lewis

C. T. Studd

David Bussau

David Livingstone

D. L. Moody

Elisabeth Elliot

Eric Liddell

Florence Young

George Müller

Gladys Aylward

Hudson Taylor

Ida Scudder

Isobel Kuhn

Jacob DeShazer

Jim Elliot

John Wesley

John Williams

Jonathan Goforth

Lillian Trasher

Loren Cunningham

Lottie Moon

Mary Slessor

Nate Saint

Paul Brand

Rachel Saint

Rowland Bingham

Sundar Singh

Wilfred Grenfell

William Booth

William Carey

Unit study curriculum guides are available for select biographies.

Available from YWAM Publishing

1-800-922-2143 / www.ywampublishing.com

Contents

1. Who Would Have Guessed?

2. Northfield

3. “My Fortune Lies Beyond These Hills”

4. A New Life in Boston

5. Chicago

6. A Growing Sunday School

7. A Cloud of War

8. Crazy Moody

9. England

10. A Partner

11. Fire

12. Ten Thousand Souls

13. Home

14. Schools

15. A Busy Man

16. Grandfather

Bibliography

About the Authors

Chapter 1

Who Would Have Guessed?

Dwight Lyman (D. L.) Moody swung open the door of Agricultural Hall in Islington, London. He stopped to stare at the cavernous place with its large gaslights hissing overhead, casting a golden hue over the empty chairs. Normally the hall was used for horse and cattle shows, but not tonight. Where the horses and cattle usually paraded, seats had been arranged in long rows as far as the eye could see. Against the far wall stood a high platform with a wooden rail running along the front and steps up to it at the side. D.L. took a deep breath. In just over an hour he would be standing on that platform preaching to thousands of people.

Several months of planning had gone into this meeting and the ones that would follow. D.L. checked to make sure that everything was in order. When he was satisfied that all of the details had been attended to, he headed for a side room behind the hall to pray.

An hour later D.L. emerged, his Bible in hand. He took several deep breaths before heading for the platform, where a group of local clergymen and other dignitaries were seated. As he climbed the steps onto the platform, the hall fell completely silent.

D.L. strode to the rail at the front edge of the platform and looked out on Agricultural Hall. The hall that had been empty when he entered the side room to pray was now packed to capacity. Somehow eighteen thousand people had squeezed themselves in. Their expectant faces were focused on D.L., who hoped his voice would carry to the far corners of the hall.

In his nearly two years of preaching in England, D.L. had spoken to some large crowds, but this was the biggest audience he had ever faced. He surveyed the faces in the hall, reminding himself that the people were not here to see him but to hear from God. He prayed a silent prayer for God to speak through him.

As he opened his Bible to begin his sermon, D.L. chuckled to himself. Who would have thought that eighteen thousand people would be eagerly waiting to hear him preach the gospel? If these people could have seen him when he first applied for membership in the Mount Vernon Church in Boston! The examining deacons had rejected him because of his lack of knowledge of the Bible and the Christian faith. How things had changed. In fact, D.L. was as surprised as anyone. No one, least of all D.L., would have guessed that he would end up an evangelist. His life had certainly taken some surprising turns since his boyhood in Northfield, Massachusetts.

Chapter 2

Northfield

Dwight Moody sat proudly beside his older brother Luther in the red clapboard schoolhouse in Northfield, Massachusetts. He was only four years old, but he had begged his mother to let him go to school for the winter months, and the teacher had allowed it. At the moment, the class was learning to recite the presidents of the United States. Dwight proudly chanted along with the other students: “George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler.”

Dwight was proud that he could remember all ten presidents, including William Harrison, who had been sworn into office two months before in March 1841 and had died one month later. The teacher was describing the city of Washington, D.C., where the president resided, but Dwight was finding it difficult to picture the place. For one, it seemed so far away. And then there were the wide avenues the teacher talked about, and the White House where the president lived, and the large, domed-roof Capitol building, where the House of Representatives and the Senate met. It was unlike anything in or around Northfield.

The teacher was explaining about the war of 1812. British soldiers had attacked Washington, D.C., in August 1814 and had ransacked the city, burning the White House and the Capitol building. Dwight heard a deep voice at the window next to him: “Got any of Ed Moody’s children in here? Better send them home. Their father’s dead.”

Dwight tried to think what this meant. His big, strong, happy stonemason father was named Edwin Moody. Suddenly Dwight felt his only sister, Cornelia, pull on the back of his shirt. “Come on,” she said grimly. “We’d better go and see what’s become of Ma.”

Cornelia led the way out the door, followed by Dwight and his four older brothers: Isaiah, George, Edwin, and Luther.

None of the six Moody children spoke as they ran home across the cow pasture and past the sugar maple trees. Dwight wanted someone to stop and tell him what was happening, but he knew better than to ask. As the second youngest member of the family, he knew things had a way of becoming clearer with time.

As the children reached the house, Dwight was on edge. Two horses were hitched to the post out front, and a buggy was coming up the road. The front door was ajar, and Dwight could hear the wailing voice of his pregnant mother coming from inside. His youngest brother, Warren, waited anxiously on the porch.

It did not take the Moody children long to learn what had happened. Their father had come home from his job at lunchtime complaining of a sore stomach. Their mother had insisted that he lie down while she fetched him some tea. When she came back, forty-one-year-old Edwin Moody was slumped over his bed, dead.

Dwight tried to imagine what being dead was like. Last month two of the family’s kittens had died, and he had seen their little bodies all stiff with their eyes glazed over. He wondered whether that was what his father now looked like.

The funeral and burial were a blur of images. People were dressed in black, and Boston relatives Dwight was meeting for the first time were kissing him. His grandmother sobbed while the minister encouraged his mother to have faith. Worst of all, Dwight overheard whispered conversations urging his mother to give up the children and send them to work for farmers who could afford to feed them.

“You’ll never get by,” Dwight heard a neighbor tell his mother. “Why, your baby could come any day now. You’re mighty ready, and by the looks of it, it might even be twins.”

Dwight’s mother, Betsy Moody, whispered in reply, “No, Eunice. I’ll keep the children together. They deserve a family. We’ve made it this far. We’ll keep going by the grace of God.”

“You’ll need more than God’s grace, Betsy,” came the neighbor’s tart response. “Your private business will be hung out as public as the washing on the line. You mark my words. Your husband’s creditors won’t have any pity on you. They’ll be over for the money, and if you don’t have it for them, they’ll strip this place bare. Edwin couldn’t have left you at a worse time.”

It did not take long for the neighbor’s prediction to come true. A man named Richard Colton came soon after the funeral and stripped the property of anything of value. He led away the horse and buggy and sent someone back for the cows. He even loaded up the family’s firewood supply. Dwight’s oldest brothers hid their father’s stonemason tools and led one calf down the hill to a neighbor’s so that the animal would not be taken. Dwight didn’t understand why this was happening, except that apparently his father drank too much and had mortgaged the house during hard times. Thankfully, the Dowager’s Law in Massachusetts made it illegal to turn their mother out of the house, since she was a widow.

A month later Betsy gave birth to twins, a boy named Samuel and a girl named Elizabeth. The twins had the same dark hair and eyes, and Dwight figured they would most likely share the same stocky build that was the hallmark of most of the Moody children.

While Dwight’s mother was still in bed recovering, another creditor, Ezra Purple, came to collect the mortgage payment. All of the children were sent outside while Betsy and Mr. Purple talked. Dwight and his siblings were astonished when Ezra stormed out of the house cursing and swearing. Later that day, they learned that he had fallen off his horse minutes after leaving the Moody house. Many of the townsfolk thought this was fitting for paying Mrs. Moody such a heartless visit.

Two of Dwight’s uncles, his mother’s brothers, Charles and Cyrus Holton, promised to help their sister pay the mortgage on the house until she could get back on her feet. They also urged Betsy to send the children to live in the homes of others in exchange for their board and keep, but Betsy would not hear of it.

Dwight could not imagine being taken away from his mother, and he was grateful that she so strenuously resisted the idea. He also understood that his father’s death had changed his oldest brother Isaiah’s role in the family. Now, at thirteen years of age, Isaiah had to find a job and help support them all, including the newborn twins.

One day not long after their father’s funeral, a second shock awaited the family. Isaiah, unable to take the pressures put upon him, ran away. There was no trace of him, though one of the local residents recalled seeing him walking westward. Even at four years old, Dwight knew that this was a serious blow to his mother, who now had five sons and two daughters to raise on her own.

Many times since the funeral, the Reverend Oliver Everett of the Unitarian Congregational Church had come by to see how the family was faring. He was a kind man who often gave Mrs. Moody money or brought the family vegetables or wild game. He constantly urged Betsy to have faith that God would keep the children safe and the family together.

Crops in Northfield, mainly wheat and corn, were planted each spring and harvested in the fall. The Moody family picked chestnuts and tended a large vegetable garden that provided food for them. Dwight went back to attending school on and off—though he did not like to concentrate on his schoolbooks and he found spelling and grammar tedious.

Dwight also watched his mother’s hair turn prematurely gray as she toiled to keep the family together. Betsy made sure the entire family attended church every Sunday, and the only book in the house was the family Bible, which she read aloud regularly. She worked hard to keep the family clothed, spinning her own cotton thread and wool yarn, weaving it on a small loom, and then sewing it into clothes that had to be constantly darned and mended.

The children each owned one pair of shoes, which they seldom wore except in church. They would carry their shoes until they were in sight of the church and then put them on. Keeping them in good repair meant that the shoes could be handed down through three or four children.

Life became more difficult for the family when Dwight was ten years old. His three older brothers had been hired out to earn money. In November 1847, Dwight’s mother told him it was his turn to go to work. It was a terrible struggle for Dwight to leave home. His brother George walked back from Greenfield, thirteen miles to the southwest, to pick Dwight up.

Dwight begged his mother to change her mind, but she would not. The two brothers set out in the early morning and walked across the frozen Connecticut River that divided Northfield. Dwight looked back sadly at the house on the hill where he had been born. He had never been more than a few miles from home, and he thought his heart was going to break. After a while he sat down on a log and began to cry. This did not change anything, however, and George urged him to keep walking. It was much too cold to sit around in their thin clothing.

Dwight trudged on, hoping that he would find a warm fire and a kind word at the end of his journey. Unfortunately, he did not. The couple he had been sent to live with and work for were old—too old to do simple chores like milking the cow—and Dwight was set to work right away. An hour later Dwight escaped from the couple and ran to the neighboring farm, where George worked.

“I’m going home, and you can’t stop me!” Dwight announced to his brother.

George looked up startled. “Why?” he asked.

“I’m homesick. I want to see Mother.”

George laughed. “You’ll get over it in a few days. Now go back before they notice you’re missing.”

Dwight remained firm. “No. I’ll never get over it as long as I live. I’m going home, now!”

George changed his tactic. “There’s not enough daylight left to make it all the way home. You’ll get lost, and what good would that do you? Come on. Let’s walk into town. I’ll show you around.”

“Alright,” Dwight agreed. “But I’m leaving first thing in the morning.”

Soon the two Moody brothers were staring into the shop windows. Any other time Dwight would have been fascinated by the array of knives on display at the general store, but not today. He felt far too homesick.

Suddenly George poked him in the ribs. “Dwight, here comes a man who’ll give you a cent. Look lively.”

Dwight was confused. “Why would he do that?” he asked.

“He does it for every new boy who comes to town.”

Dwight’s mood brightened. He wiped away his tears and stood right in the middle of the sidewalk so that it would be impossible for the man not to see him. Sure enough, the old man, leaning heavily on a cane, stopped in front of Dwight. “So who have we here? You are a new boy in town, aren’t you?” the man asked.

“Yes, sir, he is,” George said. “He just came today.”

“Welcome to Greenfield, son,” the old man said. “I expect you will be needing a friend. I have always found that when I am lonely, one friend sticks to me more closely than a brother. His name is Jesus Christ. Let me tell you about Him.”

As Dwight listened to the old man, he was so drawn in by his gentle voice and bright smile that he almost forgot about the cent. The man talked for about five minutes before he patted Dwight on the head and told him to remember to pray every night. Then he reached into his pocket, drew out a shiny penny, and handed it to Dwight.

Dwight closed his fingers around the coin. A cent all for himself! He could hardly believe it. Perhaps living in Greenfield wouldn’t be so bad after all. With the new penny firmly in his palm and a new lightness in his heart, Dwight returned to the old couple in time to milk the cow.

Two months later, when circumstances had improved a little for the Moody family, Dwight was able to return home to Northfield. He still carried the one-cent coin in his pocket along with the warm memory of the old man who had given it to him.

In 1848 Northfield celebrated the coming of a wondrous new invention—trains. Northfield was situated near the spot where three states converged: Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. The Central Vermont Railway had built a railway bridge across the Connecticut River at Northfield. It was now possible to take the train from Northfield up into Vermont and change to a Boston-bound train at Bellows Falls. Suddenly the rest of the country seemed closer than ever. Instead of taking a long, bumpy, horse-drawn coach trip to Boston, people could now take the train and get there much more quickly and comfortably.

Each night as he lay in bed in his second-story bedroom, Dwight would hear the wail of the whistle and the screech of iron wheels as the train sped across the new bridge. Someday, he told himself, he would be on that train heading east and away from the endless cycle of wood chopping, planting, weeding, and harvesting that absorbed most of his waking hours. He would find a way to become a gentleman—and a very wealthy one at that.

Chapter 3

“My Fortune Lies Beyond These Hills”

On February 12, 1854, a week after his seventeenth birthday, Dwight Moody could take it no longer. He was a strong, solid young man who desperately needed to find his own way in life. He threw down the saw he was cutting logs with near the house and told his brother Edwin, “That’s it! I’ve had enough of this. I’m not going to stay another day. I am off to the city!”

With that, Dwight walked back up to the house, avoiding the kitchen where his mother was busy cooking. He threw his few clothes into a carpetbag and walked out the back door. He headed down the hill toward town in the direction of Boston with no particular plan in mind. He just wanted to be as far away from his boring life in Northfield as possible before dark. He felt guilty that he had not told his mother he was leaving. He promised himself that he would write as soon as he reached Boston and send money to her when he could.

Whatever happened, Dwight knew that he could never abandon his family, especially after seeing how his mother was affected when Isaiah left. Betsy seldom talked about her eldest son, and when she did, tears ran down her cheeks. “If I could just know he was safe, that he wasn’t lost at sea or freezing to death somewhere,” she would say. She spent hours staring out the window and looking down the road. Every Thanksgiving she set a place at the table in case Isaiah showed up. He never did.

As Dwight walked on, he imagined the new life that awaited him. He looked down at his work boots, which were old and worn but soon would be replaced with shiny, new boots from his uncle’s shoe store in Boston. Suddenly it was all clear to Dwight. He would walk to Boston, where he would find the Holton Shoe Store owned by his mother’s brother, Samuel Socrates Holton, or Uncle S.S., as the family called him. Dwight was sure that his uncle would give him a job, which would put him on his way to wealth and fortune.

By the time Dwight had reached the bottom of the hill, he made another decision. He would no longer be called Dwight. He hated his name. Dwight might be fine for a young boy, but it was not the kind of name for someone of substance and prestige. His full name was Dwight Lyman Moody, and from now on he would go by his initials, D.L. He liked the ring of that name. “Mr. D. L. Moody,” Dwight repeated to himself as he walked on.

Soon he noticed a figure walking toward him from town. As the figure got closer, Dwight, or D.L., recognized his older brother George. When they were close enough, George shouted, “Where are you going?”

“Boston,” Dwight yelled back. “And no one is going to stop me!”

A few steps more and the two brothers stood facing each other. “But what about Mother?” George asked, his face flushed with anger.

“I can do much more for her in Boston than I can cutting wood here,” Dwight replied. “Sam and Edwin can cut enough wood to keep the fire going. My fortune lies beyond these hills, in the city. I’m certain of it.”

“Did you tell Mother?”

“No, I didn’t want to see her cry. But tell her where I’m going and that I’ll be back to visit as soon as I can,” Dwight said.

George took a deep breath. “So there’s nothing I could say to dissuade you?”

Dwight resisted the urge to laugh. He already felt freer than ever. “No, nothing. Not even Mr. Simpson’s crazy horse could drag me back,” he said.

Dwight’s words were followed by a long silence. Dwight had nothing more to say. He was off to make his way in the world, and George was headed up the hill back to the family house. George reached into his shirt and drew out a five-dollar bill. “I can see you’re settled in your mind. Take this, and God bless you, Dwight Moody.”

Dwight gratefully took the money from his brother. It was the largest sum he’d ever had. “You won’t be sorry you gave this to me,” he said as he thrust out his hand to shake George’s. Without another word, the two brothers shook and continued on their way.

An hour later, using some of the money he got from George, D.L. was on the train headed north to the Bellows Falls junction in Vermont, where he would catch a train to Boston. As he rode along, D.L. wondered what he would have done without the money from his brother. It would have been a very long walk to Boston.

As the train rolled across Vermont, D.L.’s sense of expectation increased. Each clack of the wheels was taking him farther from his home in the Connecticut River Valley. His mother’s family, the Holtons, had settled in Northfield in 1672, and Dwight’s grandfather, Isaiah Moody, had come to the region in 1796 to work as a brick mason. His father, Edwin, had been born in Northfield in 1800.

When the train pulled into Winchester, Vermont, D.L. stared with wide eyes at the biggest town he’d ever seen. He found it difficult to imagine anything grander, and he hadn’t even gotten to Boston or the ocean yet! The ocean was another thing D.L. had studied in school but had never seen with his own eyes.

After changing trains at Bellows Falls, D.L. was headed directly for Boston. What a scene awaited him when the train pulled into that city’s North Station. People were everywhere. Many of the women were dressed in fine clothes—flowing cotton and silk skirts and lace blouses and hats perched on their heads. The men were clad in suits and top hats. There were also those dressed more like D.L., in worn clothes and shoes. Soon D.L. noticed that many of the people milling around him had Irish accents.

Beyond the railway station, D.L. was amazed at the number of church spires that rose above the houses and buildings that seemed to stretch on forever. The harbor was abuzz with activity as small boats ferried people and goods around, and large ships with tall masts lay at anchor or were unloading their cargo at a dock.

Boston was truly a marvelous place, much bigger than D.L. could have imagined. He took careful note of the slope of the hill down toward the docks so that he would not get lost as he walked through the city. He asked for directions and found his way to the Holton & Co. Shoe Store on Court Street. Taking a deep breath, D.L. stepped inside. A bell jangled, and a middle-aged man turned to greet him. The man’s face lit with surprise. “Why, Dwight, whatever brings you to Boston?” Uncle S.S. asked. “Last Thanksgiving, back in Northfield, I thought I made it plain that Boston was no place for a country bumpkin like you.”

D.L. could think of ten things he wanted to say. But the words would not come.

“Well, lad, I hope you don’t want a job here. A man needs a certain aplomb to work in a shoe store selling to ladies and gents. Perhaps you should look for work in a stable or shoveling manure off the streets—some job you are accustomed to.”

D.L. stammered for words. “No, I wasn’t looking for work at all, Uncle,” he said. “Just the chance to see you and bring you word of your sister. You haven’t inquired about how she is.”

“Well, how is she? And your brothers and sisters? I suppose they all have that much more to do now that you have left them, Dwight,” Uncle S.S. snapped.

“Call me D.L. from now on. Dwight was good enough for the country, but I aim to be a city man.”

Uncle S.S. laughed. “It will take more than a change of name to do that. There’s no work to be had here. You’d better spend a couple of nights with your Uncle Lemuel and then head back where you belong.”

After scribbling on a piece of scrap paper, Uncle S.S. handed the paper to D.L. “Here’s your uncle’s address. He has more room than I. Now off you go. You’re disrupting the flow of customers.”

“More likely they don’t come in because of the sorry state of the window display,” D.L. said as he turned and left the shoe store.

It was nearly nightfall by the time D.L. reached his Uncle Lemuel and Aunt Typhonia’s home. Uncle Lemuel was another of his mother’s brothers and was more enthusiastic in his welcome. Yet he, too, made it clear that D.L. was probably better off turning around and heading home.

That night as he lay in bed, D.L. thought about his situation. He had expected Uncle S.S. to offer him a job and a little more encouragement, but that didn’t matter too much. As he drifted off to sleep, D.L. told himself that there must be plenty of jobs in a city this big.

The next day D.L. found out just how wrong he was. Jobs were scarce in Boston, and when he did find a help-wanted notice in a window, the conversation didn’t go well. D.L. had been to school on and off since he was four years old, but he had never graduated, and his speaking reflected this fact. Boston was a cultured city. Harvard University was located across the Charles River in Cambridge, and many young Americans his age living in the city spoke Latin and French and were readying themselves to enter university. Irish boys about D.L.’s age, refugees from the Potato Famine in Ireland, were eager to take on the backbreaking labor on the docks and to build roads, leaving little opportunity for an American country boy like D.L.

By the end of the week, D.L. had no job and no prospects. His Uncle Lemuel took him aside. “What are you going to do now?” he asked.

“If there’s no one who wants me in Boston, I’ll walk to New York,” D.L. blurted out.

Uncle Lemuel laughed. “Now, Dwight, I don’t think it has to come to that. Go and ask Uncle S.S. if he has a job for you. It might not be the job you want, but if you ask humbly, he might have something you could do.”

“He knows well enough that I am looking for work,” D.L. sulked. “Let him ask me!”

“It’s up to you, but being pigheaded won’t get you anywhere in life. Go and ask him for a job, and be direct about it. That’s my advice,” Uncle Lemuel said.

Later that day D.L. took his uncle’s advice. Uncle S.S. was not enthusiastic when D.L. made his request. “You like to run things, and you are full of opinions,” he told his nephew. “That’s a problem to me. I know how things need to be done around here, and I want them done right. You might be my nephew, but you can’t go throwing your weight around with the other employees. They answer to me, not you. Do you understand?”

D.L. nodded. Did this mean he had the job?

“The work will be doing odd jobs out back and running errands. And absolutely no talking to customers. I have a few other rules for you. You can take them or leave them. You have to stay at a reputable boarding house. No drinking, no going out at night, and you will be at the Mount Vernon Church every Sunday morning for Sunday school and service. That’s my offer to you, Dwight. Think about it for a couple of days and get back to me.”

D.L. didn’t need a couple of days or even a couple of minutes to think it over. One week in Boston had shown him how hard it was to get a job, and he was not about to let this opportunity slip through his fingers. “I’ll do it all, Uncle,” he replied. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be the best employee you ever had, and I won’t boss the others around, though I do have a few ideas about the window display.“ He stopped short when he saw the expression on his uncle’s face. “But that’s not what I’m here for. I understand that. It’s a perfectly fine display, perfectly fine. When can I start?”

“Tomorrow,” Uncle S.S. said guardedly. “And you’d better be at church on Sunday.”

“I will, I will, Uncle,” D.L. promised. “Nothing will stop me.”

Later that day D.L. used the last of the five dollars George had given him to move into a boarding house that Uncle S.S. approved of. Then he wrote a letter home, reassuring his mother and family that everything was going well, even though he hated to write and had a hard time coming up with the right spelling of words. “I do not bord out to Uncle SS now I bord in the city Calvin and I are going to room together bimb bi that word is not spelt rite I guess. I have a room up in the third story and I can open my winder and there is 3 grat buildings full of girls the handsomest thare is in the city they will swar like parrets.”

D.L. felt on top of the world as he lay on the foldable mattress in the boarding house. Opportunities were spread out before him, and he intended to make the most them all. He drifted off to sleep thinking of ways to improve his uncle’s shoe store.

Chapter 4

A New Life in Boston

He sat in the Sunday school class, spirits dropping by the minute. This was so different from anything D.L. had ever experienced in Northfield. For one thing, the church in Boston that Uncle S.S. insisted he attend was Congregational, and in Northfield he had attended a Unitarian Church. One of the other young men in the Sunday school had told him that the two churches preached quite different things, but D.L. had no idea what the man was talking about. He was not interested in dissecting church teaching any more than he was interested in listening to his new Sunday school teacher, Mr. Kimball, talk about new life in Christ.

“Turn to the Gospel of John, chapter three,” Mr. Kimball said.

The other young men in the class all flicked through the Bibles provided and settled on a page, but D.L. was lost. Where was the Gospel of John? He opened his Bible at the beginning—Genesis—and began turning pages. He hoped the Gospel of John wasn’t that far into the book.

D.L. felt heat in his face when he realized that all eyes were on him. Of all the things he had imagined going wrong in Boston, being made to feel ignorant in church was not one of them. At home he had been a natural leader. He could plow a deep, straight furrow and cut a wide swath with a scythe. Now he was sitting in Sunday school with a group of men who probably didn’t even know which end of a scythe to hold.

Mr. Kimball handed his Bible over. “Here you are, D.L., I’ve found the spot for you.”

D.L. gratefully exchanged Bibles with the teacher and kept his head low. He did not like the feeling of being the ignorant one of the group, and determined to improve himself.

Working at Uncle S.S.’s shoe store proved to be a challenge for D.L., who didn’t like having to stay in the back of the store away from customers. D.L. bubbled over with ideas for arranging and selling shoes, and within a few weeks his uncle relented and allowed his nephew to serve out front during slow times. Now D.L. was happy. He loved to persuade people to buy shoes. When no one was inside the shop, he walked up and down the pavement outside, searching for people who needed boots or shoes.

Life in Boston soon fell into a satisfying pattern. D.L. worked hard at the shoe store, attended Sunday school and church as arranged, and signed up for the best self-improvement deal in Boston: the Boston Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). For a dollar a year, D.L. had a home away from home. The YMCA was a new idea, and the Boston branch was the first in the United States. The organization had been founded in London, England, in 1844 by twenty-two-year-old George Williams, a draper. George had been concerned for the young men migrating to London from the rural areas of England. The city contained many bad influences for newly arrived boys, and George had decided to do something about it. He gathered eleven of his friends to organize the first Young Men’s Christian Association, whose purpose was to provide a place to nurture the boys’ spiritual well-being through Bible study and prayer. Several years later a retired Boston sea captain, Thomas Sullivan, had noticed a similar need to create a safe home away from home for sailors, merchants, and other young men who flocked to the city. In December 1851 he had formed the first branch of the YMCA in the United States at Old South Church in Boston.

D.L. made sure he got his dollar’s worth at the YMCA, which had a reading room and a free library. He checked out books and attended free lectures by interesting people. In 1854 Boston was the intellectual center of the Northeast and had more than its share of interesting citizens. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Lloyd Garrison, educator Bronson Alcott, and poet John Greenleaf Whittier all lectured at the YMCA, and D.L. went to hear them all.

One of the most debated topics these men spoke on was the abolition of slavery in the United States. Boston was a main “station” on the Underground Railway, which provided numerous hiding places for fleeing slaves headed north to freedom in Canada. Until this time D.L. had not thought much about slavery. The people he had grown up with in the Connecticut River Valley were all white farmers. Besides, slavery had been abolished in Massachusetts long before he was born. But now, in Boston, the inhumanity of slavery once again raised its head, as everyone, including D.L., waited anxiously for a resolution to the case of Anthony Burns.

Anthony Burns was a young African American man who had escaped from his slave-owning master in Virginia. He had made his way to Boston, where he had lived as a free man and worked as a clerk at a fabric store just around the corner from Holton & Co. Anthony’s owner had tracked him down in Boston and demanded that his “property” be returned to him. Anthony was arrested, and a court case followed.

The arrest of Anthony Burns stirred up resentment and unrest in Boston among abolitionists who did not want the young man returned to his life as a slave in Virginia. However, President Franklin Pierce decided to make an example of the Anthony Burns case to show those in the South, where slavery was still very much alive, that as president he was willing to strongly enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, which declared that all runaway slaves be returned to their masters.

On May 26, 1854, a court hearing was held to try to stop Anthony from being returned to Virginia and to a life of slavery. A large, angry crowd of abolitionists gathered in the streets around the courthouse. D.L. considered himself to be one of the luckiest young men in town that day. He had a front row seat to the courthouse proceedings. D.L. and a fellow clerk, George Bean, climbed from a second-story window at the shoe store and crawled onto the roof. From there, among the chimney tops, they had a bird’s-eye view of the courthouse entrance. As they waited for the outcome of the case, a large crowd of abolitionists surged down the street and surrounded the building.

“It’s over. Burns has been ordered back to slavery,” D.L. heard someone yell from below.

“Shame on the court! Shame on the judge!” another man yelled.

Suddenly the crowd in the street turned to storm the courthouse and free Anthony. Police and U.S. marshals tried to keep them back, and a huge riot and brawl ensued. U.S. troops were sent in to help restore order in the streets around the courthouse. Despite the desperate attempts of the abolitionists, the police managed to maintain custody of Anthony Burns, who was taken directly to the docks and put on a ship bound for Virginia.

From his perch on the roof, D.L. watched all the action. Boston certainly had turned out to be an exciting city! He wrote home to his mother to tell her he would never go back to live in Northfield. “I would not go back a gain to liv for nothing I never enjoyed myself so well be for in my life the time goes like a whirl wind.”

And so it did. D.L. kept busy working hard—tobogganing in winter, and swimming in the bay during the summer. He faithfully attended church each Sunday and often stayed awake during the entire sermon by Dr. Edward Norris Kirk. Dr. Kirk spoke of things D.L. did not understand, things like trusting Jesus and how He had died for all mankind. As D.L. listened, he realized that on many occasions Dr. Kirk urged members of the congregation to accept Christ as their Savior. While D.L. was not too clear on what this meant, he felt sure that it could wait for many years. He promised himself that when he was an old man, he would do whatever the pastor said he needed to do to get into heaven.

This approach worked out perfectly fine until Saturday, April 21, 1855. The day started like any other day. D.L. got up, ate his breakfast at the boarding house, and walked to work. It was a busy spring morning, and D.L. enjoyed chatting with the customers as they tried on shoes. He was in the back room wrapping pairs of shoes and placing them on a shelf when a man walked silently up behind him and placed his hand on his shoulder. D.L. turned to see Mr. Kimball, his Sunday school teacher, standing there. There was something about the moment that D.L. could not explain. He could see tears in Mr. Kimball’s eyes as he asked D.L. to come to Christ. Somehow all D.L. could do was comply. The two of them prayed a short prayer, and Mr. Kimball left as quickly and silently as he had arrived. Those few moments the two of them had shared in the back room of the shoe store had changed D.L.’s life.

The next morning as D.L. headed for church, he felt a new lightness about him. The sun looked brighter than ever, and as he walked through Boston Common, he heard birds singing in the trees and felt grateful to live in a world with chirping birds—something he had never even thought about. And while the outside world was cleaner and brighter, so too was his inside world. For the first time that he could recall, D.L. felt no bitterness or resentment toward anyone. His heart seemed to overflow with love, and he smiled at everyone he met.

More than anything, D.L. was glad that he had agreed to go back to Northfield to help his family plant potatoes and watermelons. This would provide a great opportunity for him to tell his entire family about how he had received Jesus Christ into his heart and how happy it had made him feel. However, things did not work out quite that well. His brothers and sisters stared blankly at D.L. as he tried to explain how the Son of God wanted to have a personal relationship with each of them. His mother grew impatient with the talk and muttered under her breath, “I will be a Unitarian until the day I die.”

Not long after D.L. returned to Boston, he received a cheerful letter from his mother. As he read, he quickly learned why she was so happy. After thirteen years away, D.L.’s brother Isaiah had returned to Northfield. His mother explained that after Isaiah left Northfield, he had headed west, where he had worked on various farms. D.L. was four years old when he had last seen his oldest brother, and he had to admit that it was difficult to remember him. He wished he could be back in Northfield to see Isaiah and share his mother’s joy.

In Boston D.L. found it difficult to explain his newfound faith at church. Mr. Kimball suggested that he apply for church membership, and D.L. soon found himself in front of the pastor and deacons, who took turns asking him questions. Since D.L. wasn’t quite sure how to answer many of the questions, he kept his responses to yes and no. Then the chairman of the deacons asked him a question that he could not answer easily. “Mr. Moody, what has Christ done for you—for us all—that entitles Him to our love?”

D.L. was stumped. He had no idea what the chairman wanted him to say. “I don’t know… I think Christ has done a lot for each of us,” he stammered.

“Please go on,” the chairman responded.

“Well, I can’t think of anything particular as I know of.”

Even before the pastor told him that he had failed, D.L. knew he would not be welcomed into membership. This was difficult for him to accept. He felt like a new man, he wanted to read his Bible all the time, and he prayed constantly for his family. He didn’t even want to swear anymore, but still he was not good enough to be admitted into membership of the church.

It did not take long for D.L. to dust himself off after the encounter and continue his Christian walk. Two deacons were assigned to help him understand more of the gospel truth. D.L. met with them privately for Bible studies. When he applied for church membership a second time about a year later, he was accepted into full membership at Mount Vernon Church. It was a proud day for D.L.

Dark days followed, however. Things were not going well with Uncle S.S. at the shoe store, and one day in September 1856, the two men got into a massive quarrel. Following the argument, D.L. wrote to his brother Warren, “I lov Boston and have got some warm friends there but as I was situated there it was not very pleasant.”

In fact, things in Boston had become so unpleasant for D.L. that he felt he needed to get out of town fast. He had no thoughts of going back to Northfield, and impulsively he plunked down five dollars for a ticket on an immigrant train bound westward for Chicago. Late in the afternoon on Monday, September 15, 1856, nineteen-year-old Dwight L. Moody walked to the Causeway Street train depot and joined the throngs of people hoping to find a better life in the newly opened western territories. D.L. had little money and no prospects, but he had faith that God would somehow make a way for him.

Chapter 5

Chicago

The trip to Chicago took much longer than the trip from Northfield to Boston. The first stage of the journey took D.L. back through Bellows Falls, Vermont, where he felt a pang of guilt that he had not told his family he was heading west. The guilt passed. His family might have met him at the station for a brief visit, or more likely, tried to persuade him to come home.

The train chugged onward through the night to Rutland, Vermont, where it arrived around two o’clock in the morning. All those headed for points west were instructed to disembark and wait for a connecting train. D.L. spent the time sitting on the station platform in Rutland. The next train took him past Lake Champlain and on to Ogdensburg, New York, where he boarded a lake steamer for a trip across Lake Ontario to Canada. From there it was on to another train to Windsor, Ontario, and then a ferryboat across the river to Detroit.

In Detroit D.L. had hoped to see his oldest brother Isaiah, who was now living and working there. However, the ferryboat was late getting across the river, and D.L. did not have enough time before catching the next train for the final leg of his journey. He would just have to visit Isaiah some other time. On the evening of Thursday, September 18, 1856, three days after setting out from Boston, D.L. arrived in Chicago.

D.L. was exhausted, but the raw energy of this bustling western city quickly revived him. He took in all the new sights. One of the first things he noticed was that the surface of many streets looked new and seemed to be higher than the surrounding buildings. Workmen were toiling with large jacks to raise the buildings to street level. This was quite odd, and soon D.L. learned what was going on. Because of its location beside the lake, Chicago was low-lying and had little natural drainage. When it rained, huge puddles of water would lie in the streets for days. These puddles soon turned into festering pools that led to diseases like dysentery, typhoid fever, and cholera. After an outbreak of cholera killed 6 percent of the city’s population in 1854, something had to be done about the situation. The solution was to install a sewer system under the streets. But for the sewer pipes to do their job and drain the surface water, the streets had to be raised. That part of the project had been completed, and now many of the buildings in central Chicago were being raised to the new street level. D.L. was impressed with the ingenuity of the engineers who had found a solution. It seemed to him that in a city like Chicago, anything was possible.

D.L. did not have much money in his pocket, but he had enough to pay for a room in a boarding house. Once settled, he set out looking for employment. He found a job at the Wiswall Shoe Store on Lake Street. As an added bonus, Mr. Wiswall, the owner, suggested that D.L. sleep in one of the rooms above the store with several other clerks. D.L. was very pleased. He had a permanent roof over his head and a job, and on Sunday he found a church to attend. Within a week of arriving, D.L. was sure that his decision to move to Chicago had been a good one. Looking back, Boston felt as stuffy as a shuttered parlor in summertime. Chicago, positioned between Lake Michigan and the Great Plains, was a refreshing wind. D.L. thought the people in Chicago welcomed change, and he was confident that they would make room for a man on his way up, a man like himself with an ambition to make $100,000 and live in a big house on the lake.

With total confidence that he was in the right place, D.L. wrote to his mother to tell her where he was and how much he liked the place. He also told her that he had made a number of friends at church and that he had realized God was the same in Chicago as He was in Boston.

D.L. transferred his Mount Vernon Church membership to the Plymouth Congregational Church, where he attended prayer meetings and began saying a few words publicly in the meetings. Since few college-educated men were in the church, D.L. felt much more at home. He was appalled, though, by the local lack of respect for Sunday and shocked to see stores open on the Sabbath. In response, D.L. rented five pews at the front of the church and invited young men who did not normally attend to come with him.

D.L.’s plan had mixed results. Sometimes he squirmed as the pastor’s message became too involved for his non-Christian guests to follow. Still, D.L. continued bringing new friends, but he was restless. He needed some kind of focus, some way to use his boundless energy. He found another church in town—the First Methodist Church—that met later on Sundays. D.L. was not concerned that this church held some different beliefs from his Congregational church. As long as the church preached the gospel, he felt at home.

Within weeks of attending the First Methodist Church, D.L. joined the mission band, a group of young Methodist men who visited hotels and saloons on Sunday mornings, distributing tracts and inviting people to services at the church. It was through this ministry that D.L. became acquainted with the poorest, most destitute area in Chicago. “The Sands,” as it was called, was located on the north side of the Chicago River where Irish and German immigrants lived. Conditions in The Sands were atrocious. Even the police were reluctant to enter the slums. They simply turned a blind eye to the murder and mayhem that went on there.

D.L.’s heart went out to the children he saw living in The Sands. Many of them had barely enough clothing to cover their thin bodies. D.L. heard stories of men spending their meager wages on whiskey, leaving their children to beg for food, and of women dying in childbirth and being buried—without ever having seen a doctor. The more he thought about conditions in The Sands, the more D.L. felt compelled to do something to help.

D.L. soon learned of a Sunday school on North Wells Street, close to The Sands. After work one night he set out to find the superintendent of the Sunday school. He was welcomed into a small, dark room—the headquarters of the mission that ran the Sunday school. He explained that he had come to offer himself as a Sunday school teacher.

Then the unexpected happened. The Sunday school superintendent laughed out loud. “You are welcome to join the other eighteen teachers on the roster, but the truth is that we have more teachers than students,” he told D.L.

D.L. frowned. “How can that be? I bet there are a hundred children within shouting distance of this building, and each of them has a soul. I’m sure that they would enjoy singing and listening to stories.”

“That could well be true,” the superintendent responded, “but we can’t get the children to come through the doors. Some of them are held back by their drunk or wayward parents, but a lot of them are just too wild to sit and listen to anyone.”

“I expect I can do something about that!” D.L. exclaimed. “I might not be a great Bible scholar, but I believe I can get children into the building. I will see you next week.”

Over the next few days, D.L. prayed hard. He desperately wanted to bring children to the mission Sunday school, but he had to find a successful way to do it. By Sunday morning he had an idea—rock candy. All children liked candy, and D.L. decided to use it to get the children’s attention. That morning a determined Dwight L. Moody walked into The Sands. Drunk men and women were lying about in the street. D.L. wondered how many of them had children at home waiting for breakfast.

D.L. soon attracted a crowd of unkempt children. He sat on the edge of a horse trough and shared candy with them. Then he told them about Sunday school and how they would hear amazing stories and learn things that would change their lives forever. He persuaded eighteen of the children to follow him to the North Wells Street mission Sunday school. The superintendent was shocked when D.L. walked in looking like the Pied Piper, the children trailing behind.

“Here, you take this lot and put them in classes, and I’ll go back and get more,” D.L. said.

Indeed, D.L. had found his calling. He knew that he was not a good speaker or a Bible scholar, but he could recruit children off the street to come to Sunday school. Soon over one hundred new students were attending the mission Sunday school, and each Sunday D.L. would go out to find more.

With the growing number of students at the Sunday school, more teachers volunteered to help. D.L. found himself drawn to one of them, Emma Revell. Although Emma was only fourteen years old, she had a poise and quiet faith about her that D.L. admired. Perhaps, he decided, it was because they were about as different from each other as any two people could be. D.L. wanted to get to know Emma’s family. He soon learned that her father was Fleming H. Revell, a shipbuilder in Chicago who had immigrated to the United States from England with his family in 1849. Emma was six years old at the time. Soon D.L. was a regular visitor at the Revells’ home.

One Sunday while attending church, D.L. met J. Stillton, a Presbyterian elder and architect from New York who was in Chicago to supervise the building of the Custom House. J. Stillton confided in D.L. that he felt compelled to do something for the sailors who traveled the Great Lakes. He handed tracts and New Testaments to sailors at their boarding houses and boarded ships to distribute them. D.L. felt an immediate bond with the man, and the two became fast friends. D.L. told his new friend of his dream to start his own mission Sunday school near North Side Market, and the two men prayed about this together.

Another man, John V. Farwell, became a good friend of D.L.’s at this time. D.L. greatly admired John as the embodiment of the rags-to-riches story that D.L. himself was seeking. John had hitched a ride to Chicago on a hay wagon with less than four dollars in his pocket. At age thirty-one, he now owned the city’s largest dry goods store, Cooley, Farwell & Co., worth millions of dollars. John and D.L. attended the same Methodist church. As time passed, the two men bonded over their mutual desire to share the gospel with the poorest of the poor.

Meanwhile, D.L. was honing his skills as a shoe salesman. At the end of 1857 he was offered a job as a traveling salesman for the C. H. Henderson Company, a boot and shoe wholesaler. The job would pay three times what he was making at the Wiswall Shoe Store, and it would allow him to see the entire midwestern United States. The thought thrilled D.L., but the job had one drawback: Mr. Henderson expected D.L. to be away from Chicago most of the time and would pay only for one trip back to the city a month. “That should be enough,” he told D.L. “You are a young man, only twenty years old, and you tell me you don’t have a wife or a lady friend. I don’t see anything to pull you back to Chicago more frequently, do you?”

D.L. did. He had become attached to the children in the Sunday school and to his dream of starting his own Sunday school. But how could that happen if he was in Chicago only twelve Sundays a year? The dilemma ate at D.L. He wanted to move forward in his business life, and this was a wonderful job opportunity. But he also felt that God wanted him to work among the poor. What should he do?

D.L. sought the advice of Colonel Hammond, a thoughtful man he had met at church. Colonel Hammond was the superintendent of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. He listened carefully as D.L. explained his predicament. D.L. wanted to take the job with the C. H. Henderson Company because it would help to further his business goals. At the same time, he wanted to pursue his commitment to the Sunday school and to preaching the gospel to the needy of Chicago.

Colonel Hammond rocked gently in his chair behind his desk as he listened. He finally and firmly said, “Take them both.”

D.L. gave the colonel a puzzled look.

“Tell Mr. Henderson you’ll take the job,” the colonel added, “and be back here every Sunday for your Sunday school.”

D.L. was confused. He had already explained to the colonel that that was impossible. Returning to Chicago every weekend would take every penny D.L. earned, and then some. Surely his friend couldn’t be serious in his recommendation.

Colonel Hammond reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a pink card. “This will help you do both,” he said as he handed the card to D.L. “It’s a free pass for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. Show the conductor that, and you can ride free on any of our trains, no questions asked. That way you can easily be back here each Sunday.”

Now D.L. understood, and the small pink card worked wonders. Wherever D.L. went, he showed the free pass to the conductor, who, with a tip of his hat, allowed him to board the train. D.L. loved visiting newly opened western territories and states of Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, and Minnesota. Yet, wherever he went, his heart was never far from home. Every Friday night or Saturday he would take a train back to Chicago so that he could spend Sunday at church and Sunday school.

D.L. was satisfied with the direction of his life. He was making enough money to live on, to give to his Sunday school work, and to save. He was also in the enviable position of crisscrossing the newest states and territories in the Union, selling shoes and meeting interesting people. As far as he was concerned, D.L. could do this for the rest of his life.

Chapter 6

A Growing Sunday School

During the cold winter of 1857, while back in Chicago on the weekends, D.L. spent many hours checking up on his Sunday school attendees. The poverty and need that he encountered drove him on. Most of the children lacked proper winter clothes to stave off illness in the bitter, snowy weather. Some of the children used this as an excuse not to go to Sunday school. Others shrugged their shoulders and told D.L. that Sunday school was boring, that the teaching did not hold their interest.

D.L. was troubled by this. He remembered how enthusiastic the children had been at first, and now they hid when they saw him coming. He realized the children were right: the Sunday school lessons were dry, and there was not enough singing. Children who lived in slums without much adult supervision didn’t sit still for long—they needed lots of activities.

With that in mind, D.L. decided in the fall of 1858 to start his own Sunday school, and with the most unlikely group of partners ever—the boys who had dropped out of the first Sunday school. D.L. went into the slums to ask these boys how they thought a Sunday school should be run. He got some interesting answers. The boys wanted to be able to pick their own teachers, and if a teacher got boring, they wanted to be able to join a different class. They also wanted a lot more singing, not dreary old hymns but new, catchy choruses like “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.” And they wanted prizes!

Such responses gave D.L. a lot to think about. His friends asked him if he thought it wise to let a group of illiterate ragamuffins tell him how to run a Sunday school. The answer was clear to D.L. If he wanted to reach the poorest children of The Sands, he needed these boys on his team.

The following week the new Sunday school was born. The only place D.L. could find to hold the Sunday school was in an old saloon. Fourteen boys from the slums—all characters with nicknames like Red Eye, Smikes, Madden the Butcher, Black Stove Pipe, Rage-Breeches Cadet, and Darby the Cobbler—promised to attend the new Sunday school and recruit others to come along. In return, D.L. dubbed these boys his “Body Guard” and promised each of them a new suit if they attended class every Sunday until Christmas.

D.L. redoubled his efforts to recruit more children for his Sunday school, and he often ran into stiff opposition in doing so. He was given a piebald pony, which he rode through the roughest areas of town. The pony was useful on two counts: it attracted a crowd, and it allowed D.L. to cover greater distances in a shorter time. Often on Sunday mornings he would lead the pony back to Sunday school with children sitting on it and others clinging to its tail.

D.L. was concerned about the home life of many of the students in his Sunday school. Often the children’s parents, particularly the fathers, were drunk and abusive, and the children had little, if anything, to eat. One Sunday morning D.L. entered a house in The Sands to collect several bedraggled children and take them to his Sunday school. The children’s father happened to be out at the time, and sitting on the kitchen table was a jug of whiskey the father intended to drink that day. Not only did D.L. take the children from the house, but he also took their father’s jug of whiskey and poured it out in the street.

The next Sunday, when D.L. returned to collect the children for Sunday school, their father was waiting for him. “Did you pour out my whiskey?” the angry father snarled. “I’ll thrash you for that.”

The father took off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves, ready to fight. D.L. stood his ground. “I broke the jug and poured out the whiskey for the good of you and your family,” he said. “If I am to be thrashed, let me pray for you all before you do that.”

The surprised father watched as D.L. kneeled and began to pray out loud for the family’s physical and spiritual well-being. When D.L. had prayed, he got back on his feet, ready for his beating. Instead of receiving a thrashing, D.L. watched as the father dropped his head in shame and mumbled, “You had better just take the kids, not a thrashing.” With that, D.L. herded the children out of the house and escorted them to his Sunday school.

Many of the families who lived in The Sands were Irish immigrants who had brought their struggle between Protestants and Catholics with them across the Atlantic Ocean. As D.L.’s Sunday school grew, those who attended came under attack from Catholic children. Windows in the old saloon building where the Sunday school was held were broken, and some of the boys would try to disrupt the proceedings. He decided that something had to be done, and he paid the Catholic bishop a visit.

D.L. arrived at the door of Bishop Duggan’s residence and knocked. A maid answered, and D.L. explained that he would like to see the bishop. When the maid informed him that the bishop was currently busy and was not seeing anyone, D.L. stepped through the open doorway and informed her that he was quite content to wait until the bishop was free. The surprised maid stepped aside as D.L. entered the residence and stood in the hallway to wait.

Eventually Bishop Duggan appeared in the hallway. After introducing himself, D.L. came right to the point, explaining about his Sunday school and how it was working with poor children from the slums. He then told the bishop that it would be a shame if the Sunday school could not continue because of the harassment by some Catholic boys. He suggested that perhaps the bishop could instruct the parish priests to forbid the young men in their churches from harassing the Sunday school children.

At first Bishop Duggan refused to believe that it was Catholic boys doing this. But when D.L. told him the reason he knew the boys were Catholic was because they had told him so, the bishop backed down.

The two men talked some more about the problem, and D.L. asked Bishop Duggan whether he would pray with a Protestant. When the Bishop replied that he would do so gladly, the two of them knelt together in the hallway and prayed.

Following D.L.’s visit with the bishop, Catholic boys no longer harassed the Sunday school children. Not only that, but also D.L. and Bishop Duggan became lifelong friends.

Within a year three hundred children were coming every week to D.L.’s Sunday school, and all but one of the original group of boys who made up Moody’s “Body Guard” had earned a new suit and a place in history.

It quickly became obvious to D.L. and his supporters that the old saloon building was just too small. Each Sunday the building was packed with children and had no room for new attendees. One of D.L.’s friends introduced him to Long John Wentworth, a man he thought could help find a larger facility. Long John, the former mayor of Chicago, soon managed to secure rent-free the use of the North Market Hall for D.L.’s Sunday school.

North Market Hall was a large brick public hall located above one of the downtown markets. Even though it was dark and grimy inside, its size made it a perfect venue for the Sunday school. The fact that D.L. could use it rent-free made it even more appealing. It had just one drawback: every Saturday night a German society hired the hall out for a dance and party. Unfortunately, the society members did not clean up after themselves. They left behind empty beer kegs, puddles of spilled alcohol, cigar butts, paper, and sawdust. Before Sunday school could be held, the facility needed a thorough cleaning. Since D.L. refused to hire anyone to clean on the Sabbath, he would get up at six o’clock each Sunday morning, regardless of how late he arrived back in Chicago the night before, and set to work cleaning up the mess. He and Jimmy Sexton, a volunteer worker at the Sunday school, would roll the empty beer kegs outside; sweep up the paper, sawdust, and cigar butts; and mop up the puddles of alcohol.

After they had cleaned and prepared the hall for Sunday school, D.L. would fill his pockets with rock candy and head out into the streets of the slums to round up children for what was now called the North Market Hall Mission Sunday School. Sometimes he would find the parents of children passed out from drinking the night before. In those instances D.L. would help the children wash and dress for Sunday school. Out in the streets, children came up to D.L. He would pull a piece of the rock candy from his pocket and hold it up for them to see. “A piece for each of you who comes to Sunday school,” D.L. would say, and then he’d add, “No Sunday school, no sweets.”

As he walked down the street with the children following him, D.L. would stop suddenly, turn around, and ask, “Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Yes,” would always come the cry.

“Then I expect they would like some candy too. You go and get them, and I’ll wait here for you.”

Moments later the children would be back with their brothers and sisters, and they would all head off down the street following D.L. By two o’clock in the afternoon, a throng of children were gathered in the North Market Hall ready for Sunday school.

Now that the Sunday school was held in a larger facility, the number of children attending grew steadily. Before long over one thousand children were in attendance. Soon a number of parents begged D.L. to allow them to come to Sunday school with their children and listen to the lessons.

A large group of volunteer teachers joined D.L. each Sunday to help staff the school. D.L. kept a watchful eye for those willing to do the administrative work necessary to keep the whole enterprise going. He decided that his wealthy friend John Farwell would be an excellent administrator for the Sunday school. He invited John to come to speak to the children. The visit started on a comical note. As John entered North Market Hall, a group of boys swarmed around him. D.L. turned to see a number of the boys offering to shine their guest’s already highly polished shoes. D.L. smiled to himself. The boys from the slums knew a rich man when they saw one, and they were always hoping for the opportunity to earn a tip from him, even at Sunday school.

D.L. could see by the expression on his friend’s face that the sheer number of children present for the Sunday school was impressive, though John wondered out loud how D.L. and the other teachers put up with the noise the children made.

“They’re quite a handful, but here, I’ll quiet them down for you,” D.L. said as he climbed onto a box. Raising his voice above the noise in the hall, he got the children’s attention. When he was satisfied that everyone was listening, he announced, “Children, we have a special guest with us today: Mr. J. Farwell. He is going to speak to you.”

John replaced D.L. on the box and began to address the children. D.L. was impressed with the way his friend managed to keep their attention. He was convinced that John would be a perfect superintendent for the Sunday school. As soon as his friend wrapped up his talk, D.L. strode to the front and announced, “Children, I have some news for you. Mr. Farwell is to be our new Sunday school superintendent. Give him a cheer.”

D.L. could see the look of surprise on John’s face. He hadn’t actually asked his friend before he made the announcement if he would take the job, and he knew it would be hard for him to back out in front of all these cheering children.

And sure enough, John Farwell accepted the challenge and did an excellent job as Sunday school superintendent.

Other than standing and quieting the children down with his booming baritone voice, D.L. did little public speaking at the Sunday school, or anywhere else, for that matter. As far as D.L. was concerned, his gift lay in attracting children to come to the Sunday school, not in being the speaker. He was reluctant to even try speaking. Yet on several occasions when the scheduled speaker did not show up, D.L. had no choice but to get up and speak to the children. It was certainly not easy for him the first time. But as he stood on the box before the sea of children’s faces, he found that he enjoyed telling the Bible stories and making it sound as if the characters in the stories were modern-day residents of Chicago. Once he got involved in the story, he found it a lot easier than he at first thought it would be. The children liked it when he was the speaker.

Before long D.L. found himself doing more and more public speaking, and not just to the children. The parents had asked him to run a family meeting at the North Market Hall, and D.L. often found himself speaking at these services.

During 1859, twenty-two-year-old D.L. decided that it was time to get married. Since meeting Emma Revell when she was a fourteen-year-old girl, he never doubted that one day she would be his wife. Emma was now sixteen and a public elementary school teacher. D.L. knew that she was still too young to marry, but he asked Emma’s father for permission to become engaged to her. Fleming H. Revell agreed, and D.L. looked forward to marrying Emma in three years.

In June 1860 one of the teachers at the Sunday school visited D.L. The man looked pale and ill. He explained that he’d had another hemorrhage in his lungs. His doctor had told him that he could no longer live near Lake Michigan because the damp climate was not good for him. As a result, he was making plans to return home to upstate New York to spend his last days with his family.

“I am sorry to hear that,” D.L. replied. “But tell me, you look like something else is bothering you.”

“It is this,” the teacher said. “I think I have done the girls in my Sunday school class more harm than good. I have not led one of them to Christ.”

The teacher’s concern caught D.L. off guard. He had never led anyone to Christ himself. In fact, he had never really given it much thought. As a layman he assumed that it was the job of the clergy to lead people to Christ. Even when he had first come to Chicago and rented five pews at the front of the Plymouth Congregational Church, he had not spoken about salvation directly to any of the young men he brought with him to fill the pews. That was the job of the pastor. It was also why D.L. became irritated sometimes at the boring nature of many of the sermons. Instead of challenging nonbelievers about their lack of faith and belief in Christ, more often than not the sermons put these nonbelievers to sleep.

Even at the Sunday school, D.L. saw his job as bringing in the biggest number of children he possibly could and teaching them about Jesus and the Christian life. He still believed it was the job of those he invited to speak to the children each week to lead them to conversion. D.L. considered himself to be the agent who gathered people so that other, more gifted and trained people could lead them to Christ.

The sick Sunday school teacher’s confession thus came as a surprise. But D.L. also saw it as an opportunity. “Before you leave Chicago, why don’t you visit each of the girls that you teach and tell them what you have just told me? I will borrow a buggy and go with you if you like.”

The Sunday school teacher agreed, and he and D.L. set out for the home of the first girl. They called for her, and she came outside to talk to them. As the teacher talked to the girl, D.L. could see tears forming in the corners of her eyes. And when the teacher asked the girl whether she would like to receive Christ, she said yes. The teacher asked D.L. to pray for the girl, who right there accepted Christ. The two men made their way to the home of another girl, where the result was the same.

Ten days later the teacher again visited D.L. Although he was still pale and weak from his illness, he had a bright, beaming smile. “Mr. Moody,” the Sunday school teacher exclaimed, “I have visited every one of the girls in my Sunday school class, and each one has yielded to Christ. I can leave Chicago a fulfilled man.”

The following evening D.L. made his way to the train station to see the teacher off to New York State. To his surprise all of the girls from the teacher’s Sunday school class were there to say good-bye. D.L. noticed that their faces also beamed.

This experience with the teacher and the girls from the Sunday school class had a profound effect on D.L. He knew now that he had to do more than just get children and adults into meetings. He had to make sure they understood that they could have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This new realization left D.L. with a fundamental question: Was continuing to sell shoes during the week and running a Sunday school on the weekends enough, or could he do more?

Given the experience D.L. had just had, the answer to the second part of the question was obvious to him: yes, he could do more. But the answer was not particularly easy to accept. If he did want to do more to spread the gospel and bring people to Christ, it would mean giving up his income and his business aspirations. He was doing quite well and making a very good salary for a young man of his age. But would Emma still marry him if he didn’t have a business or steady paycheck? He hoped so.

Chapter 7

A Cloud of War

I have decided to give God all of my time,” D.L. confided in Emma.

“But how are you going to live?” his fiancée asked. The couple were seated in the Revell family living room, and for once Emma’s younger brother Fleming was not eavesdropping on their conversation.

“I have $7,000 in savings. I will use that and then trust that God will provide for me if He wishes me to keep on. Otherwise, I will keep on until I’m obliged to stop,” D.L. replied as he studied Emma’s face.

Emma’s eyes were steady. D.L. knew that his new direction would come as a shock to her. The Revell family had come to Chicago from England with little money. They had struggled in the early years, but thanks to Fleming Revell’s skills as a shipbuilder, the family’s income had grown. And now D.L. was suggesting that his and Emma’s life together might be one of struggle rather than of the business success D.L.’s heart had been focused on until now. He hoped that his decision would not cause Emma to back away from marriage.

“So be it,” Emma said, her voice as calm and kind as always. “I will stand with you, whatever you decide to do, D.L., and I am confident God will help us face the future together.”

D.L. breathed a sigh of relief and prayed a silent prayer of thanks to God. What other young woman would have so serenely accepted her fiancé’s decision to spend all the money that would have gone toward building their first home? D.L. was grateful and humbled that he had found a woman who was willing to embark on this new adventure with him in faith.

D.L. quit his job and moved from traveling shoe wholesaler to full-time Christian layman. This was quite a change. But now that he was no longer employed, D.L. had much more time to recruit and organize his Sunday school. It was only a matter of weeks before the school was thrust into the public’s attention.

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the sixteenth president of the United States. Less than three weeks later, Lincoln was in Chicago to meet with his vice president-elect, Hannibal Hamlin, and a group of political advisors. On Sunday morning, November 25, 1860, the president-elect attended one of the most prestigious Episcopal churches in the city, Christ Church. Then he had lunch with Episcopal Bishop Charles Cheney. After his lunch with the bishop, Lincoln made another, quite different visit—to D.L.’s ragtag Sunday school at North Market Hall. John Farwell told D.L. that the president-elect had agreed to visit as long as no one called upon him to make a speech. D.L. nodded in agreement to the arrangement but secretly hoped that Lincoln would say something to the children.

Lincoln seemed impressed by the Sunday school and the hundreds of children who gathered in it. As the president-elect was about to leave, D.L. said, “We promised not to ask Mr. Lincoln to speak, but this does not prevent his saying a word to us if he wishes.”

Lincoln turned to address the children. He told them what a pleasure it was to be visiting their Sunday school, and then as an admonishment he added, “Govern your lives according to the precepts you learn from your study of the Bible.” With that, the visit was over. Of course, the fact that the president-elect would take the time to visit a Sunday school in a rough area of the city focused more public attention on D.L. and his work.

D.L. felt honored to have Lincoln visit his Sunday school. He was a strong supporter of this first elected Republican president and his notions toward abolishing slavery. But D.L. knew that a steep price—perhaps even a war between the Northern free states and the slave-holding Southern states—would have to be paid for that notion to become a reality. This possibility made D.L. work harder than ever. Who knew how much time he had before some of his boys from the Sunday school might be called upon to fight if there was a war?

D.L. redoubled his efforts to reach the poorest young people with the gospel. He visited his Sunday school students in their homes, where sometimes he was greeted as a friend by parents and at other times was pelted with rotten apples. D.L. took it all in stride. He wrote in a letter to a friend, “Since when was a messenger of God—no matter how humble or insignificant—greeted with open arms by those whose lives are evil? I am trying to save these children from a life of sin and crime. And if, at times, the job is difficult and strenuous, what of it? Satan’s forces work hard—harder than God’s, as it seems to me—and to beat them in a city like Chicago is nothing that can be done by a man sitting in an armchair.”

Since his arrival in Chicago, D.L. had been a member of the YMCA. He attended regular prayer meetings and was a prolific borrower of books from the organization’s library. Now that he had more time, D.L. accepted the nomination to be the volunteer chairman of the YMCA’s Visiting Committee to the sick and strangers. D.L. soon found himself sleeping on the benches in the YMCA prayer room to save money. Sometimes he lived for days on crackers and cheese, trying to conserve his money as much as possible.

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as president. The nation of which Lincoln had become president was already deeply divided over the issue of slavery. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina had seceded from the Union, followed shortly afterward by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. These states had formed themselves into the Confederate States of America and on February 9, 1861, had selected Jefferson Davis as their president. During his inaugural speech, Lincoln spoke directly to these breakaway states:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies…. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

As far as D.L. understood, the new president believed that the Union of states that so many had given their lives to establish during the Revolutionary War could not be so easily dismantled.

Like everyone else in the North, D.L. waited to see how the breakaway Southern states would respond to President Lincoln’s remarks. The answer came on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces under the command of General Pierre Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter, the Union fort located in the mouth of the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina. War between the Union and the Confederacy had begun.

On April 15, 1861, President Lincoln called on the states to send detachments totaling seventy-five thousand troops to recapture forts, protect the capital, and “preserve the Union.” This request forced the states to choose sides, and Virginia decided also to secede from the Union. The Confederate capital was then moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia. Following Virginia’s lead, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas voted to secede from the Union. Meanwhile, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland threatened secession but never did secede, nor did the slave state of Delaware.

In Chicago, D.L. watched as seventy-five young men from his Sunday school answered Abraham Lincoln’s call and volunteered to fight to preserve the Union. Since D.L. himself had strong feelings about the issue of slavery, he seriously considered enlisting as a chaplain in the Union army. Many of his friends begged him not to do so and limit himself to one regiment, but encouraged him to remain free to work with troops on many battlefields. D.L. took their advice.

Chicago soon became a hub of activity for the Union army as Illinois became a major source of troops for the fighting, military supplies, food, and clothing. Because it was situated near major rivers and railroads, Illinois also became a major jumping-off point for the early battles of the war, in which General Ulysses S. Grant and his Union army fought to seize control of the Mississippi and the Tennessee Rivers. At first the army volunteers were housed in buildings in the city, but as the number of recruits grew, the volunteers spilled out into tents on the outskirts of Chicago’s southeast side. They built several makeshift camps that came to be known as Camp Douglas, which served as the main training post for new army volunteers.

Even before the first tents were pitched, D.L. was at Camp Douglas, selecting a spot for a YMCA prayer tent. As chairman of the Visitation Committee for the YMCA, he felt responsibility to the men flowing into the city to join the Union army. D.L. put out a call for clergymen to volunteer to conduct services and meetings among the soldiers, and 150 clergymen stepped forward. Soon eight to ten meetings a night were held among the Union soldiers in various parts of Camp Douglas and in the city, and continuous meetings were held on Sundays. D.L. rounded up supplies of food and bandages for the men and preached at Camp Douglas most evenings.

The news that arrived in Chicago on July 22, 1861, shattered the notion D.L. and many others had that the Civil War was going to be an easy victory for the Union. The day before, the first land battle of the Civil War had been fought along Bull Run Creek outside Washington, D.C., and things had gone badly for the Union army, which had eventually retreated in disarray back to Washington. It had been a bloody and hard-fought battle; the Confederate army had turned out to be a formidable enemy.

As the new soldiers trained for war at Camp Douglas, D.L. continued his visits to the camp. And as the numbers of recruits at the camp grew, so did the problems. D.L. witnessed many drunken brawls, and theft and vandalism were out of control. The violence spilled out into the city, where many citizens were terrorized by the brutish behavior of some of the Union army recruits. Still, D.L. thrived in this environment as he ministered to the soldiers; his work in The Sands had made him a fearless crusader.

By November 1861 Camp Douglas housed about 4,200 soldiers from eleven regiments, and the real work of war was about to begin for many of the soldiers. Several regiments from Camp Douglas were ordered to march south to Kentucky to join General Grant and his Union army as they prepared to push south into Confederate territory and secure Union control over rivers and waterways.

As the troops were preparing to leave Camp Douglas, news reached D.L. of the formation of the U.S. Christian Commission. This group had been formed in a conference in New York by fifteen different YMCA chapters and a number of Protestant ministers. Its purpose was to serve as a central location for all religious work across the Union army. The Christian Commission provided Protestant chaplains and social workers for the soldiers and collaborated with the U.S. Sanitary Commission to provide medical services. Because of his reputation as a fearless advocate for soldiers, D.L., along with John Farwell, was asked to take a leadership role in the Christian Commission and help to oversee the spiritual welfare of Union soldiers. D.L. gladly accepted the leadership role, as did John Farwell.

Not long after the regiments left Camp Douglas to join Grant’s army, word came back that the troops wanted D.L. and other clergymen to join them and hold services and singing meetings to help prop up their flagging spirits. D.L. responded immediately and made arrangements to visit the men in Kentucky, where they were encamped not far from Lincoln’s birthplace. When he caught up with the men, he urged them to consider their souls and to repent before they were killed in battle.

D.L. then returned to Chicago, where he was kept busier than ever. He got up at sunrise and would often not go to bed until after midnight. During the day he kept busy organizing his Sunday school and visiting Camp Douglas to minister to the soldiers.

In early February 1862, word reached Chicago that General Grant and an army of fifteen thousand Union soldiers had attacked and captured Confederate Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. Twelve days later Grant’s army scored another victory. It attacked Fort Donelson, a Confederate stronghold along the Cumberland River at Dover, Tennessee. On February 15 the commander of the fort unconditionally surrendered to General Grant. This was a great victory for the Union. Twelve thousand Confederate soldiers were captured, along with a large supply of weapons stored at the fort.

News of the victory at Fort Donelson arrived in Chicago with an urgent plea to send medical relief and supplies to the battle site. D.L. and the Christian Commission sprang into action. He joined a trainload of supplies and people who were headed for Cairo, Illinois, where they were transferred to a river steamer for the rest of the trip to Fort Donelson.

D.L. was shocked by the carnage of the battlefield. Soldiers were still burying the dead, many of them mutilated and bloodied. Wounded soldiers, many awaiting certain death from their injuries, lay in rows. Despite the gruesome scene, D.L. got to work, determined to see that each dying soldier got to hear the gospel and had the chance to receive Jesus Christ before he died. Many of the soldiers did accept Christ before death, but knowing that many more thousands of men would be killed or maimed before the war was over, D.L. returned to Chicago with a heavy heart.

Back in Chicago D.L. was able to spend time with Emma. The couple had been engaged for two and a half years, and despite the interruption of the Civil War, they still planned to marry later in the year.

On April 8, 1862, more war news reached Chicago, this time of a huge battle at Pittsburg Landing in Tennessee. The Battle of Shiloh, as it was being called, had ended in a Union victory, but that victory had come with a large number of casualties. Urgent medical supplies and personnel were needed on the battlefield, and once again D.L. took action. He helped the Christian Commission round up three hundred nurses and seventy doctors and hired a train to get them to the battlefield. At 6:00 pm the next day, D.L. boarded the train with the medical personnel, unsure of what the group would find at journey’s end.

Pittsburg Landing was located along the Tennessee River. When D.L. arrived, a fairly accurate count of the casualties had been taken. In the battle that lasted two days, Union casualties had amounted to 13,047 (1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, and 2,885 missing). The Confederate army had suffered similar losses, which D.L. soon learned made the Battle of Shiloh the costliest battle thus far in American history.

At Pittsburg Landing D.L. met General Grant, who took him on a tour of the Shiloh battlefield. As Grant explained the particulars of the brutal battle, D.L. could not help but feel sad at the carnage around him, even if it had occurred in the pursuit of a just cause. As it had been on the battlefield at Fort Donelson two months before, soldiers were struggling to keep up with the task of burying the dead.

The doctors and nurses worked tirelessly on the wounded soldiers, and the most seriously wounded were loaded onto a steamer for a trip up the Tennessee River to Cairo, Illinois, and a train back to Chicago. D.L. went along on the steamer, deeply concerned for the spiritual well-being of the wounded soldiers, a number of whom he knew would die before they ever made it back to Chicago.

Four hundred fifty severely wounded soldiers were on the steamer. D.L. and his group of helpers had determined to talk to each man and share the gospel message with them all. As he made his way among the soldiers, D.L. came upon one young man who was in shock and dying from loss of blood. D.L. gave the unconscious man brandy and water and hoped that he would regain awareness.

The wounded soldier next to him told D.L. that the man’s name was William, and that the two of them were buddies from the same town and had volunteered together to fight in the war. According to his friend, William was the only son of a widow.

“William, William,” D.L. called to the young man as he administered more brandy and water.

When the young man did regain consciousness, D.L. asked him whether he knew where he was.

“Yes,” William mumbled, “I’m on my way home to my mother.”

“The doctor says you will not live. Have you any message to send to your mother?” D.L. asked.

“Tell her that I died trusting in Jesus Christ.”

“Is there anything else?” D.L. pressed.

“Yes. Tell my mother and sister to be sure to meet me in heaven.”

“I will, I will,” D.L. said as William lapsed back into unconsciousness. While D.L. felt grief for the young man, he also rejoiced that William had died trusting in Jesus Christ. When he arrived back in Chicago, D.L. made sure to relay William’s last words to his mother and sister in a letter to them.

With the horrific casualty count at the Battle of Shiloh, many in the North hoped that the two sides would be drawn to the peace table, but it was not to be. The North and the South fought on, and D.L. worked tirelessly to alleviate suffering and proclaim the gospel wherever he could. He continued to shuttle back and forth between the battlefields and Chicago, bringing messages of cheer and hope to the soldiers along with practical items such as bandages and dried foods.

Many of the twelve thousand Confederate soldiers captured at Fort Donelson were sent to Camp Douglas, transforming part of the place into a prisoner-of-war camp. D.L. sought to minister to these soldiers. As he wrote in a letter, “These poor men need the means of grace fully as much as any Union soldier. But to gain access to them is a matter of extreme difficulty.” But when D.L. had set his mind to do something, he found a way to do it, and before long he was allowed access to hold services among the Confederate prisoners of war.

As the war dragged on, D.L. and Emma decided to get married in a quiet family wedding ceremony that took place on Thursday, August 28, 1862. D.L. was twenty-five years old, and Emma was nineteen. After a short honeymoon the couple moved into a small house on Chicago’s north side, not too far from North Market Hall.

The next two months were filled with Sunday school work and helping to organize the Northwestern Sanitary Fair in Chicago. The fair was a big event that raised $86,000. President Lincoln had donated his own copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, an announcement that proclaimed freedom for millions of slaves. The document was auctioned off for $10,000. The Sanitary Commission used the money raised at the fair to provide personnel and equipment for transporting wounded soldiers from the battlefield, caring for them in the hospital, or moving them to the rear.

While D.L. was keeping busy ministering to the spiritual needs of soldiers fighting in the Civil War, the spiritual needs of the poorest residents of Chicago were never far from his mind.

Chapter 8

Crazy Moody

One bitter cold Chicago morning, when the sun had barely risen, D.L. heard a knock at the front door.

“Who’s there?” D.L. asked.

The man gave his name, which D.L. did not recognize. “What do you want?” he asked further.

“I want to become a Christian,” came the reply.

With that, D.L. swung the front door open and invited the man inside.

As the man stood in the hallway, D.L. recognized him—it was a man who had threatened him several months before. On that occasion D.L. had been walking home when he saw the man leaning against a lamppost. He had felt compelled to speak to him and, placing his hand on the man’s shoulder, had asked, “Are you a Christian?”

The man had immediately flown into a rage at the question. He stood up straight and spun around, his fists drawn into tight balls.

“I’m very sorry if I have offended you,” D.L. had said.

“Mind your own business!” the man barked back.

“But that is my business,” D.L. replied as he turned and left.

Now here was that same man standing in his hallway.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” the man said, “but from that time you approached me, I have had no peace. Your words have haunted and troubled me. Last night I could not sleep at all. I knew that I must find you and ask you to pray with me.”

D.L. led the man in a prayer of conversion. The next Sunday the man was at the North Market Hall Mission Sunday School to learn all he could about his new faith.

Such events always illustrated to D.L. the importance of speaking to people, wherever he found them, about their relationship with Jesus Christ. Even if the initial encounter appeared not to go well, as with this man, one never knew the impact those words could have, even months later.

This man was just one more of many adults who were now regularly attending D.L.’s Sunday school. Despite the Civil War, the Sunday school continued to grow. There was just one problem. Not long after Emma and D.L. were married, a fire partially damaged the North Market Hall, and D.L. had to find a new home for the Sunday school.

Not far from the hall, at the corner of Illinois and Wells Streets, a large lot of land was up for sale. D.L. thought it would be a perfect location for a new facility to house his Sunday school. He discussed the possibility with Isaac Burch and John Farwell, who helped him run the Sunday school, and both men agreed that it would be a perfect location. The land and erection of a building would cost about $20,000, and D.L. set to work raising the money. Before long he had raised the required amount, and in early 1863 the lot was purchased and plans were drawn up for a 1,500-seat auditorium with classrooms, an office, and a library. When the plans were complete, building began.

Meanwhile, D.L. kept busy working with the YMCA and the Christian Commission. Throughout 1863 he made more visits south to speak to and encourage the Union troops. The Civil War ground on. A number of Union victories had taken place along with some disastrous defeats, among them the Battle of Fredericksberg, where Union troops had suffered heavy losses and been soundly defeated by General Robert E. Lee’s army. Nonetheless, D.L. encouraged the troops in their fight and urged them to give their lives to Christ now, lest they die in battle before ever doing so.

Back in Chicago D.L. found that he enjoyed married life. Emma fed him well. In fact, D.L. had become rather plump from her cooking. Emma had also taken over the job of handling most of D.L.’s correspondence, a job he had found tiresome. Emma was always encouraging him in his ministry. D.L. knew that if any difficult decisions needed to be made, he could always talk them over with his wife, who seemed to him to have wisdom beyond her years.

As 1863 passed, the new building at the corner of Wells and Illinois Streets took shape. D.L. looked forward to its completion as he contemplated all the other ministries that could be run at the new facility. By Christmas the new building was almost complete, and on February 24, 1864, it opened.

It was a wonderful day for D.L. as he stood outside in the cold and viewed the new brick building. The building was very plain from the outside, and a passerby might not have even realized that it had been built for Christian purposes had it not been for the sign next to the front entrance that read, “Ever Welcome to This House of God Are Strangers and The Poor.” And beneath the sign was a notice that said, “The Seats Are Free.” The plainness of the building was just as D.L. wanted. He did not want anything that might look too much like a church and make people who were not used to going to church feel uncomfortable, or worse, scare them away altogether.

Inside the large building the chairs were arranged in circles for Sunday school classes, with the teachers’ chairs each marked with a silk flag that bore the number of the class. On a banner behind the platform at the front were the words “God Is Love.” Two Bible classrooms, one for men and the other for women, were at the back beside the main entrance. These rooms were partitioned off with wood and glass screens that could be pushed back to enlarge the size of the main hall. Above the main floor of the hall were two balconies, one on either side of the building. Upstairs was an office for D.L.

As the children and adults streamed into the new building the first Sunday, D.L. breathed a prayer of relief. Not only did he have a wonderful new facility in which to hold his Sunday school, but also he would no longer have to get up early each Sunday morning to clear away everything from the party the night before and sweep up cigar butts and mop up spilled beer.

Around the time the new facility opened, D.L. received some more good news. Emma was pregnant and expecting their first child in October.

In the spring of 1864 D.L. visited the Union troops under the command of Major General Oliver Howard, encamped near Cleveland, Tennessee. These troops were preparing to join General Sherman on his march into Georgia. D.L. preached day and night among the troops, urging them to give their lives to Christ before they once again headed into battle.

Back in Chicago D.L. kept busy reaching out to the poor of the city with the gospel. He encouraged other Christians to do likewise in engaging ways. In a talk he gave on the subject to a group of church people, he said, “We don’t make our services interesting enough to get unconverted people to come. We don’t expect them to come—we’d be surprised enough if they did. To make the services interesting and profitable, ask the question, How can this be done? You must wake the people up. If you can’t talk, read a verse of Scripture and let God speak. Bring up the question, What more can we do in our district? Get those who never do anything to say what they think ought to be done and then ask them if they are doing it. Don’t get in a rut. I abominate ruts. Perhaps I dread them too much, but there is nothing I fear more.”

In this regard, D.L. found himself in a predicament as 1864 progressed. His Sunday school had become so successful that many parents became Christians and wanted the evening meetings he held to become a real church. D.L. tried as hard as he could to interest the new converts to attend the churches around Chicago, but these new Christians refused. They felt uncomfortable in these churches with “all the trimmings” and were self-conscious wearing their cheap, worn clothing while everyone else had on his or her Sunday best. Worst of all, as far as D.L. was concerned, they found the sermons at these churches to be too complicated, and they could not understand what the pastor was saying.

As D.L. pondered what to do about the situation, news from the Civil War battlefields continued to reach Chicago. In March 1864 General Grant had been promoted and given command of the Union army. Now he was in Virginia fighting around Richmond and Petersburg, where he had engaged Robert E. Lee and his Confederate army in a series of skirmishes known as the Siege of Petersburg. Grant and the Union army were trying to cut Confederate supply lines and capture the Confederate capital of Richmond.

Meanwhile, farther south, Union troops under the command of General Sherman had pushed into Georgia from Tennessee, and on September 2, 1864, they captured the city of Atlanta. By fall, Sherman’s troops were on the march again, headed from Atlanta across Georgia to Savannah and the sea. As they marched, they left behind a swath of destruction, tearing up railway lines, burning factories, and confiscating grain and cattle to feed the troops. News continued to filter in from the Union campaign in Georgia, and D.L. thought about the men he had preached to near Cleveland, Tennessee. He hoped none of them had died in the fighting without first giving their life to Christ.

On October 24, 1864, Emma gave birth to a curly-haired little girl, whom they named Emma Reynolds Moody. D.L. was delighted. At the age of twenty-seven he was finally a father. “Both her little fingers are as crooked as mine,” D.L. wrote in a letter to his mother in Northfield, telling her of the arrival of her newest granddaughter.

Not long after the birth of his daughter, D.L. realized that the problem he was having in getting converts to attend other churches in the city had only one solution. If the people would not go to other churches, he would just have to start his own church, a place where poor people could feel comfortable and where the sermons were relevant and engaging. It was not an easy decision for D.L. to come to. Nearly all of the churches in Chicago belonged to large, prestigious denominations. Chicago had few independent churches, and as a layman D.L. didn’t really want to start one. But he knew that the new converts needed a good spiritual home.

As D.L. made plans to found a church, news arrived in Chicago of another victory in the Civil War. On the morning of December 21, 1864, General Sherman’s Union army took control of Savannah, Georgia, after fighting its way across the state from Atlanta. Sherman intended to turn north and march through the Carolinas on his way to link up with Grant’s army, still fighting around Richmond and Petersburg. It was obvious to D.L. and almost everyone in the North that the Union was well on its way to victory over the Confederacy.

On December 30 the new Illinois Street Church was dedicated. It was a great moment for D.L. The church was established as a nondenominational independent church. From the beginning, people flocked to it. D.L. took pains to make it clear that the Illinois Street Church was not his church. He may have been instrumental in getting it started, but the church belonged to everybody who attended regularly. And since it belonged to everybody, D.L. managed to find small jobs for many in the congregation to do to help keep the place running, from cleaning and organizing to being one of his “Yokefellows,” a group of young men who went out into the streets each Sunday to hand out fliers and invite people to services.

Nor was D.L. the pastor of the church. In fact, at first he did none of the preaching at the new church. Because he was a layman, he invited students from the Chicago Theological Seminary to come and preach to the congregation each Sunday. This worked well until one Sunday evening when one of the students failed to show up, forcing D.L. to speak that night. His sermon was well received. Before long, D.L. was the main speaker at the evening services, and the seminary students continued to take turns preaching at the morning service.

D.L. agreed that preparing sermons was not the easiest of tasks. He would much rather have preached the way he did when he went out to speak to the troops, talking directly from his heart and saying whatever seemed appropriate for the moment. But he knew that preaching each Sunday in the church required a more thorough and systematic approach, especially if new converts were to grow and mature in their faith. As much as he disliked preparing sermons, he pushed himself on. Before long, some kind of meeting or service was being held at the church every evening.

In late March 1865 D.L. and Emma left their five-month-old daughter in the care of Emma’s mother in Chicago to visit Union forces. They went to Virginia, where General Grant’s army was making headway in the Siege of Petersburg. D.L. preached the gospel to the soldiers and encouraged them on in the fight, and he paid close attention to those soldiers wounded in the fighting.

On April 2, while D.L. was still visiting the troops in Virginia, a decisive battle was fought at Petersburg as the Union army broke through Confederate defenses and ended the siege of the town. During the night, Confederate President Jefferson Davis fled Richmond, and Robert E. Lee and his army escaped to the west, but not before setting fire to a good part of the Confederate capital at Richmond. The following day the Union army captured Richmond and helped to extinguish the fire. D.L. rode with General Grant’s troops into the beleaguered city, and he began to minister to the wounded soldiers of both sides. The most memorable thing for D.L. that day was the church service he attended in the evening. Later, he wrote about the experience:

We had been there but a few hours before I heard that the colored people were going to have a jubilee meeting down in the great African church that night; and I thought to myself, although I am a white man, I will get in there somehow. I had a hard fight to get in, but I did succeed at last. It was probably the largest church in the South. There were supposed to be three or four thousand black people there, and they had some chaplains of our Northern regiments for their orators on the occasion. Talk about eloquence, I never heard better. It seemed as if they were raised up for the occasion. I remember one of them, as he stood there on the platform, pointed down to the mothers and said: “Mothers, you rejoice today that you are forever free, all your posterity is free; that little child has been taken from your bosom and sold to some distant State for the last time.” And some of those women shouted right out in the meeting, “Glory to God!” They could not keep the good news to themselves. They believed they were delivered. They believed the good news. Then this man turned to the young men and said: “Young men, rejoice today! It is a day of jubilee, a day of glad tidings. We come to proclaim to you that you are free. You have heard the crack of the slave-trader’s whip for the last time.” And they shouted and clapped their hands and said, “Glory to God!” Then he turned to the young ladies and said: “Rejoice today! You have been on the auction-block and sold into captivity for the last time.” And then the young maidens clapped their hands and shouted for joy. It was a jubilee. What made them so glad? They believed they were liberated, and that is what made them so joyful. People want to know why Christians are so joyful. It is because they have been delivered from Satan.

Following the fall of Richmond, D.L. and Emma returned to Chicago. They had been back only two days when news came of the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and his Confederate army to General Grant at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9, 1865. The Civil War had ended.

The following weekend was Easter, and D.L. had a lot to celebrate: not only Christ’s death and resurrection but also the end of the war, and with it, the end of slavery in the United States. The Union had been saved, though it was going to take the best efforts of President Lincoln to heal the deep wounds the Civil War had inflicted on the nation. But D.L. knew that if anybody could do it, Abraham Lincoln could. And so the news that reached Chicago on April 15, 1865, stunned both D.L. and the entire nation. The night before, while attending a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., Lincoln had been shot in the head. The president had survived the night but had died early in the morning. Vice President Andrew Johnson had already been sworn in as the new president.

Along with the rest of the nation, the people at the Illinois Street Church mourned their assassinated president, who had successfully guided the country through its greatest challenge. D.L. recounted for the congregation Lincoln’s visit to the North Market Hall Mission Sunday school back in November 1860.

With the end of the Civil War, soldiers began to stream back to Chicago, and a number of them became a part of the Illinois Street Church. Given the carnage the war had inflicted on the nation, the best outcome of the war, as far as D.L. was concerned, was the new openness of people to consider the gospel. And D.L. redoubled his efforts to tell the gospel to everyone he came in contact with, though these efforts and his sometimes brash and unorthodox way of going about it earned him the nickname “Crazy Moody,” even among other Christians. Although he shrugged this off publicly, privately the nickname stung. Because his involvement with the Christian Commission and his tireless effort on behalf of the troops during the Civil War had won him the respect of most of the city, it was hard to hear himself referred to as Crazy Moody so soon after the end of the war. Nonetheless, D.L. kept busy. He had committed his life to proclaiming the gospel, and that is what he would continue to do, Crazy Moody or not.

D.L. threw some of his effort back into the YMCA. In 1866 he was elected president of the YMCA in Chicago, with John Farwell as vice president. Until now the organization had been housed in rented facilities, but under D.L.’s leadership, a drive began to raise money for the YMCA to erect its own building. He soon became well known to many of the wealthy men of Chicago, as he boldly asked them to donate money toward the building. In fact, some of these men were so impressed by D.L. that they became good friends. Among them were Cyrus Hall McCormick, who had made a fortune inventing a combined harvester, and George Armour, the wealthy owner of a large meat-packing business.

Before long the new building on Madison Street in central Chicago, between Clark and LaSalle Streets, was taking shape. The building would seat three thousand people and have a large prayer room, a library, and offices.

Meanwhile, D.L. kept busy with the church and Sunday school. During this time his father-in-law became ill and died a short time later. This was a shock to the whole family, and D.L. did his best to comfort his wife and mother-in-law in the face of their loss.

While Emma was still dealing with the death of her father, she suffered an asthma attack in early winter. Her doctor recommended that she take a sea voyage to help her recover. D.L. saw the voyage as an opportunity. One place that he had considered visiting was England, not for any scenic reasons, or even for relaxation. What appealed to him about England was the opportunity to meet three particular people: George Williams, the founder of the YMCA; George Müller, founder of orphanages in Bristol; and Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great preacher in London. Soon D.L. was busy making the arrangements. Three-year-old Emma would stay with her grandmother Revell. This would give D.L.’s mother-in-law both a focus and company as she adjusted to her husband’s passing. Early in 1867, D.L. and Emma set off for New York City to sail on the City of Washington across the Atlantic Ocean to England.

Chapter 9

England

Early in the morning on February 24, 1867, D.L. stood on the deck of the City of Washington. As the ship steamed down the Hudson River toward the open sea, D.L. watched the skyline of New York City drift by. Beside him Emma wiped away tears with her handkerchief. D.L. patted her arm. “All will be well,” he said. “We’ve placed little Emma in God’s hands. Your mother will look after her, and it will be good for her to have a distraction.”

Emma nodded and smiled through her tears. “I know, but saying good-bye to her has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. She’s only three years old. What if she doesn’t remember us when we return? If only I didn’t have this asthma.”

“Let’s not look at it that way,” D.L. replied. “While the doctor did say a sea voyage would help your sickness, we don’t know what God has for us in England. Just think, God willing, we will see Müller, Spurgeon, and Williams, great men of faith whom I never imagined I would meet.”

D.L. and Emma stood in silence for a while. The chill of the sea breeze on that cold, dreary morning seemed to cut right through their clothing.

As the City of Washington left the calm waters of the Hudson River and headed out into the ocean, the vessel began to roll gently. All of D.L.’s exuberance was suddenly replaced by the queasiness of seasickness. Before the coastline had even slipped from view, D.L. was down in the cabin, lying in bed with a basin beside him. “This is going to be a very long voyage,” he told Emma.

“I hope not,” she said. “You’ll get your sea legs in a couple of days and be back up on deck in no time.”

D.L., it turned out, was right. He spent the entire fourteen-day voyage from New York to Liverpool flat on his back in the cabin fighting nausea. Sometimes he was barely aware of Emma coming and going from the cabin, bringing him a little food, and telling him what was going on above deck.

When the City of Washington arrived in Liverpool, D.L. was anxious to have his feet on something solid that did not pitch and roll beneath him. He and Emma spent a night in Liverpool. The next morning they took the train to London, where they stayed with Emma’s younger sister, Mary. When the Revell family immigrated to the United States eighteen years before, they had left two-year-old Mary behind with an aunt, hoping that once they had settled in America, Mary would be sent to join them. Regrettably, that did not happen, and Mary grew up an English girl with no memories of her American sisters. Two years before, she had traveled to the United States to see her family but had returned to England after the visit. Now it was Emma’s turn to visit her twenty-year-old sister in the environment in which she had grown up. D.L. watched as the two sisters enjoyed a wonderful reunion and then introduced him to many of their relatives.

The weather in England was especially miserable at the time of the Moodys’ arrival in March. It snowed most of the first week, and D.L. wrote to his mother, saying, “I do not like the old country as well as our own. I must tell you how glad I am I was born and brought up in America. I shall be glad when I get back. I am not sorry I came, for I very much value the information I am gaining here. But it is a horrible place to live in.”

On their first Sunday in London, D.L. and Emma made their way to the Metropolitan Tabernacle in South London. This large, stone building was a Baptist church whose pastor was Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Nicknamed the “Prince of Preachers,” Spurgeon was also a prolific writer, having published a number of books, all of which D.L. had read. D.L. and Emma arrived early for the morning service to get a seat and quickly discovered that they were not the only ones to do so. They joined the throng of people waiting outside the church to get in and made their way to seats in the gallery.

Inside, the church was cavernous. The main floor was packed with row upon row of pews, and two balconies above with inclined seating ran completely around the inside of the hall. D.L. learned from a member of the congregation that the church could seat five thousand people, with standing room for another thousand. It wasn’t long before every seat was taken. At the appointed time for the service to begin, the hall became silent, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon walked out onto the platform. D.L. was staring at the man he had admired greatly for so long. At thirty-three years of age, Spurgeon was only three years older than D.L., who noted that like himself, Charles Spurgeon was a heavyset man with a beard.

D.L. marveled at the acoustics inside the Metropolitan Tabernacle. When the congregation sang a hymn together, it sounded like angels singing. And when Spurgeon began to speak, even in the gallery his voice was crisp and clear. Spurgeon’s sermon was eloquent, simple, and engaging. D.L. could see firsthand why this man had been dubbed the Prince of Preachers. Spurgeon had an extraordinary gift for presenting his message clearly. As D.L. listened to the sermon that morning, he found himself praying a silent prayer: “Lord, help me to preach and minister like Charles Spurgeon.” After the service, D.L. confided to Emma that seeing Spurgeon and hearing him preach was like a dream come true for him.

Several days later D.L. enjoyed another treat as he visited George Williams, the London draper who had founded the YMCA movement. Williams explained how he had felt led to start the organization. He then invited D.L. to speak at the original Aldersgate Street YMCA in London. D.L. was delighted to be asked. He spoke on the text “To every man his work.” He challenged the hundred men present at the meeting to find some work he could do for God and then faithfully do it. He also urged the group to begin a daily noon prayer meeting, as the men at the Chicago YMCA had done. The men followed D.L.’s urging, and soon several noon prayer groups were meeting throughout London.

While in London, D.L. contacted Fountain Hartley, secretary of the London Sunday School Union. Hartley had visited D.L. in Chicago to see his Sunday school work firsthand. When he learned that D.L. was in England, he invited him to speak at the Sunday School Union anniversary meeting in Exeter Hall in London. At the meeting D.L. was introduced by the vice chairman, who said, “We are glad to welcome our American cousin, the Reverend Mr. Moody of Chicago, and I forward a vote of thanks to the noble earl for being our chairman this evening.”

D.L. shot out of his seat and walked to the podium. He cleared his throat and said, “The chairman has made two mistakes. To begin with, I’m not the ‘Reverend’ Mr. Moody at all. I’m plain Dwight L. Moody, a Sabbath-school worker. And I’m not your American cousin. By the grace of God, I’m your brother, who is interested with you in our Father’s work for His children. And now, about this vote of thanks to the ‘noble earl.’ I don’t see why we should thank him any more than he should thank us. When at one time they offered to thank our Mr. Lincoln for presiding over a meeting in Illinois, he stopped it. He said he had tried to do his duty, and they had tried to do theirs. He thought it was an even thing all around.”

The room went completely quiet. No one moved. All eyes were on the Earl of Shaftsbury, chief patron of the Sunday School Union. When the earl laughed, the crowd relaxed. D.L. certainly had their attention.

Later in the week D.L. learned that the Earl of Shaftsbury was one of the most tireless advocates for children’s rights in England and had given his life to helping and teaching the poorest children. D.L. wished that he had spent more time talking with him.

Next, D.L. and Emma headed for Bristol, determined to see firsthand the work of George Müller. D.L. was not disappointed. As the train pulled into the station at Bristol, the large orphanage buildings on Ashley Down Hill dominated the landscape. D.L. recalled reading about orphaned children who were sent to Bristol by train from various parts of England. Sometimes the young boys and girls arrived at the station with nothing but the phrase, “Bound for Müller’s Orphanage, Bristol,” scribbled on a card pinned to their clothing.

From the train station the Moodys made their way to the orphanage, where they were introduced to George Müller, a tall, thin man with graying hair and thick, bushy sideburns. In his German accent, Müller warmly welcomed D.L. and Emma to the orphanage and took them on a tour of the facility. Three large buildings were in use, and work was well under way on a fourth. Müller was housing, feeding, and clothing over twelve hundred orphans, and the number kept growing. As they walked around the expansive facility and saw the orphans, D.L. had to remind himself that Müller had asked no one except God for the money to build and run the orphanage, and God had supplied his need—abundantly. For a few minutes D.L. got to talk in a missions class for boys being held at the orphanage, and after praying with Müller, he and Emma headed back to London.

After a brief stay in London, the Moodys headed for Ireland, where D.L. had been invited to speak in several Plymouth Brethren Assemblies. After one of these meetings in Dublin, a young man came up to him. “My name is Harry Moorehouse,” the young man said in a thick Lancashire accent, “and I want to come to America to preach in your church.”

D.L. took a deep breath. He had read about Harry Moorehouse, dubbed the “Boy Preacher from Lancashire.” In person, Harry looked even younger than D.L. had imagined. “So you would like to preach at my church,” D.L. said, stalling in a response to the young man’s request.

“Yes, I would, and I should like to travel on the same ship back to America with you. When are you departing?”

D.L. was flabbergasted by the young man in front of him. The last thing he wanted was to be responsible for him in America. “We haven’t booked passage back yet, but if you are ever in America, do write to me and let me know you are there,” he said as he hurriedly turned to talk to the next person. He supposed that he would never hear from young Moorehouse again.

From Ireland D.L. and Emma traveled on to Edinburgh, Scotland, for a fleeting visit to see the Christian work being done there by Dr. Duff and Dr. Guthrie. D.L. found the trip to Scotland very worthwhile, and he was encouraged by the local efforts to preach the gospel in and around Edinburgh.

D.L. and Emma then set out on the long train ride south back to London. By now the biting winter had given way to the first signs of spring, and the couple were delighted by the green countryside sprinkled with old castles and fortifications that passed their window. At last D.L. was beginning to enjoy England. And he was certainly appreciating travel on English trains, which not only went twice as fast as trains in the United States but were also not constantly stopping for long periods so the steam engine could take on more water. D.L. was fascinated by the way English steam locomotives ingeniously scooped up water from a ditch beside the tracks as they moved along.

After several days of rest in London, D.L. and Emma headed across the English Channel to Paris for ten days. They attended prayer meetings and visited the Exposition Universelle Paris. This “world’s fair” was the greatest to be held so far, with 50,226 exhibitors from around the world. The show attracted the wealthy and the leaders of many countries. D.L. was greatly taken with the exposition. It was the world in miniature, squeezed into exhibit halls along the River Seine, where one could see princes, viceroys, even sultans dressed in their national garb.

When the Moodys returned to England, it was almost time for them to go back to the United States. Before they left, D.L. spoke once again at the YMCA in London. In the course of his talk, he said:

It has been my privilege to be in your city two months…. I have longed to see the founder of the Young Men’s Christian Association. Far away in the western part of America I have often prayed for this Association, and my heart has been full this morning as I sat here listening to my friends and looking them in the face. I do not know that I shall ever have this privilege again; it is not likely that I shall; next month I return to my home, but I shall always remember this morning. It is said that Napoleon, after his army had accomplished a great victory, ordered a medal to be struck with these words: “I was there”—that was all. In after years when I am far away in the western prairies of America, and when May comes, I shall think that in 1867 “I was there,” and as the years roll on, if it shall be my privilege to meet in yonder City any that are here this morning, we may there sit down by the banks of the beautiful river of the water of life that flows from the throne of God and talk of this morning. It will give us pleasure then to think that we were together in the fight.

On July 1, 1867, the eve of D.L. and Emma’s departure from England, a farewell reception was arranged in London. One of D.L.’s new English friends stood to speak. He addressed D.L. as a brother rather than a cousin and went on to add, “Few men who have visited a foreign shore have endeared themselves to so many hearts in so short a time, or with an unknown name and without letters of commendation won their way so deeply into the affections of a multitude of Christian brethren as has Mr. Moody. Few had ever heard of him before, but having talked with him or heard him speak of Jesus, asked for no other warrant to yield him a large measure of their love.”

D.L. smiled as he listened to the kind words. Yes, it was time to go home, but he was glad that he had stayed in England long enough to meet and work with so many wonderful Christian men and women. His first impression of the English as an uninspiring people living in a dreary place had been turned around. While D.L. was quite sure that he would never return to England, he knew that the country would always hold a special place in his heart.

Chapter 10

A Partner

As the train steamed into the Chicago station, D.L. let out a whoop of excitement. He was home again, and waiting on the platform were his mother-in-law and little Emma. His daughter had grown in the nearly six months they were away, yet she still recognized him as he stepped from the train.

Not only was it ideal for D.L. to be back in Chicago, but a wonderful surprise also awaited him and Emma. John Farwell had built a row of fashionable townhouses on State Street and had quietly set one of them aside for D.L. and Emma to live in. While the Moodys were away in England, John had organized with D.L. and Emma’s close friends and supporters to furnish the house from basement to attic. When D.L. walked into the new home for the first time, he could scarcely believe his eyes. Everything imaginable was in the house, from plush carpeting to beds with sheets and blankets, a beautiful dining room table and crockery, silverware and napkins, and a kitchen filled with pots and pans and utensils. Nothing had been overlooked. There were even two life-size portraits hanging on the wall: one of D.L. and the other of Emma. D.L. was speechless. As he walked around the house, he was deeply touched by the generosity of his friends. He tried to offer a few sentences of thanks, but his speech was halting, and tears streamed down his face.

The new house had three bedrooms, one for D.L. and Emma, one for young Emma, and one for Emma’s brother, Fleming, who had asked to board with them while he completed his apprenticeship as a printer.

Things at the Illinois Street Church seemed to have gone well during D.L.’s absence. While D.L. retained the role of superintendent of the church, J. H. Harwood, a student from Chicago Theological Seminary, had been appointed the church’s first full-time pastor the year before, in 1866. As far as D.L. was concerned, J.H. had done an admirable job in keeping the ministry running and growing.

When D.L. returned to Chicago, the new YMCA building on Madison Street was nearing completion. It was the first building to be erected solely for YMCA use in the United States. D.L. made daily inspections of the cavernous five-story structure, encouraging the workers to completion. In his imagination the building had been grand, but in reality it was more than D.L. could take in. The building contained five shops at street level that would be rented out; the largest auditorium in Chicago; a large prayer room that could seat one thousand people; a reading room and library; a forty-two-bed dormitory; and plenty of office space, some of which was to be leased by the Chicago Police and Fire Departments.

Since D.L. had been the driving force behind the building project, it was decided during his absence in England to call the new building Moody Hall. D.L., though, had other ideas.

On September 29, 1867, the new building was officially opened and dedicated. The three-thousand-seat auditorium was packed to capacity with people from all denominations and levels of society. As president of the Chicago YMCA, D.L. took to the podium to make a speech. In the course of his remarks, he challenged his audience:

And now, because we have obeyed Him and gone to work His way, Christ has helped us to build this hall.

But it seems to me the Association has just commenced its work. There are those, indeed, who say we have reached the limit of our power. But we must rally round the Cross; we must attack and capture the whole city for Christ.

When I see young men, by thousands, going in the way of death, I feel like falling at the feet of Jesus, and crying out to Him with prayers and tears to come and save them, and to help us bring them to Him.

His answer to our prayers and His blessing on our work give me faith to believe that a mighty influence is yet to go out from us, that shall extend through this county and every county in the State; through every State in the Union; and finally, crossing the waters, shall help to bring the whole world to God.

We have been on the defensive too long. It is time we went into the conflict with all our might: straight into the enemy’s camp.

Speeches from other dignitaries followed, including a speech by John Farwell, the YMCA vice president and chairman of the building committee, who detailed the cost of the building and how the money raised for it had been spent.

As the dedication service drew to a close, D.L. again took the podium. Raising his voice, he said, “It was the generous subscription of thirty thousand dollars by the chairman of our Building Committee, which purchased this land and gave us at the outset a good hope of all we see tonight. Now, by way of giving honor to whom honor is due, I propose that we name this building Farwell Hall. All in favor say, ‘Aye!’”

A hearty chorus of “ayes” went up from the audience as the new facility came to be called Farwell Hall.

The new facility was put to good use. The midday prayer meeting continued, and sometimes so many people showed up for it that they had to abandon the thousand-seat prayer room for the larger auditorium. Various meetings were also held in the auditorium in the evenings.

Four months later, on January 7, 1868, things took a turn for the worse. Just before the start of the midday prayer meeting, fire broke out in Farwell Hall. It was a blustery day, and a stiff breeze blowing off Lake Michigan fanned the flames. It wasn’t long before the whole building was engulfed in fire. As alarm bells clanged, firemen and bystanders managed to rescue most of the furniture from the building, along with the YMCA records and five hundred books from the library. Even as the fire blazed, D.L. had his mind on rebuilding. As he rushed from the building, he noticed David Borrell, one of the young boarders, heaving a trunk onto his shoulders. “Put it down, Borrell. Throw it away and help me. We want to have a prayer meeting in the Methodist church,” D.L. yelled as he ran past David.

David did as D.L. instructed. Soon the midday prayer meeting had convened at the nearby church. As Farwell Hall burned to the ground, the gathered group, many of them weeping, prayed fervently. Before the meeting was over, participants had pledged thousands of dollars to build a new hall. After the prayer meeting, while firemen doused the smoldering ruins, D.L. began going from business to business to raise more money for the replacement hall. The sympathy of the city flowed freely, and in no time at all, enough money had been pledged to build a replacement Farwell Hall on the foundation of the old one.

Several weeks after the fire at Farwell Hall, D.L. received a letter from Harry Moorehouse saying that he was in New York City and wanted to speak at D.L.’s church. D.L. was surprised, even a little annoyed, to hear from the young man. He hadn’t expected him to come all the way from the British Isles. In response to the letter, he wrote a note to Harry telling him it was good to hear that he was in America and that if he came west, he should pay D.L. a visit. He did not, however, directly invite the Lancashire preacher to speak at the church.

D.L. soon learned how persistent the young man was. Two weeks later he received another letter from Harry, giving the exact dates he would be in Chicago. Because the dates coincided with a convention D.L. was to attend, D.L. told the elders of the church that Harry would be coming during his absence and that they should judge the man. If they thought he was a suitable person to address the church, they should let him address the congregation at the Thursday night meeting. If Harry failed, D.L. would take him off their hands when he got back.

D.L. set off by train to St. Louis for the Missouri Christian Convention. The purpose of the convention was to bring together men and women from all denominations and from opposing sides in the Civil War to build Christian unity among them. When he arrived at the convention, D.L. was nominated to be the chairman of the event. He was kept so busy speaking and leading meetings that he hardly had time to think about what was going on in Chicago.

When he arrived home a week later, D.L. was anxious to find out how Harry Moorehouse had done. After greeting Emma he asked, “How was Moorehouse’s preaching? How do the people like him?”

“They like him very much,” Emma replied.

“Did you hear him?” D.L. inquired.

“Yes. I’ve heard him preach two sermons from John 3:16. As he preaches, he tells sinners that God loves them.”

“Well,” D.L. said, “he is wrong.”

“I think you will agree with him when you hear him,” Emma replied. “He backs up everything he says with the Word of God. You think if a man doesn’t preach as you do, he is wrong.”

“That’s not exactly true,” D.L. wanted to reply, but he decided not to. The problem was not the preaching style but the message. As far as D.L. was concerned, God hated sinners; sinners were bound for hell. God loves those who do His will. And now someone was preaching the opposite in his church.

D.L. accompanied Emma to the service on Saturday night. As the congregation filed in, D.L. noticed something odd—the people were all carrying Bibles. This was something he had never insisted upon.

Harry rose to speak, looking gangly and awkward as he told the congregation to open their Bibles to John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Starting with the book of Genesis and ending in Revelation, he directed the congregation to scripture after scripture that illustrated that God loved sinners.

As D.L. sat and listened, he was moved in a way he had never been moved before. Tears welled in his eyes as he listened to Harry explain God’s love for the world. By the end of the sermon, D.L. knew that Harry was right and he was wrong. God didn’t hate sinners; He loved them. Harry had proved it through Scripture. It was a moment of great revelation, one that D.L. knew was a turning point in his life.

The other thing about Harry was that he didn’t preach sermons in the way D.L. was used to. Harry started with a verse, and then moving through his Bible, he used other verses to elaborate on that verse. In short, Harry used the Bible to explain the Bible. D.L.’s method of preaching was a lot more hit and miss. D.L. found a verse he liked, linked it to a good story or two, and then preached.

When Harry had finished speaking, D.L. jumped to the pulpit and announced that Harry would be speaking every night that week. Each night, D.L. was there to listen and marvel at the love of God and the effective way Harry got the message across to his audience.

Over the week D.L. got to know more about Harry. Even though Harry looked only seventeen and was known as the “Boy Preacher,” he was, in fact, twenty-seven years old. He had even less education than D.L. and was an ex-convict and pickpocket. D.L. had to laugh when Harry explained how after he became a Christian he had worn boxing gloves in the street to help him break his pickpocket habit. After his conversion Harry joined the Plymouth Brethren, a denomination known for studying the Bible methodically.

D.L. asked Harry to help him study the Bible and preach as he preached. Day after day Harry sat with D.L. and showed him how to study the Bible, how to follow a theme from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation. For D.L. the Bible had always been a textbook, a collection of proof texts from which to construct sermons and harangue sinners. Because he tended to use his Bible in this manner, D.L. had big gaps in his Bible knowledge—gaps that Harry helped him to fill. “It is the Word of God, not our comment upon it, that saves souls,” Harry told him.

Eventually Harry moved on, but he had left an indelible mark on D.L.’s heart and life. D.L. marveled at how wrong he had been in his initial assessment of Harry when they first met in Ireland. Now D.L. spent at least two hours each day, not so much studying the Bible as a collection of texts, but reading it as he would read a regular book, letting the words wash over his heart and mind. His knowledge of the Bible grew, as did the way he preached. Like Harry, he used Scripture to explain Scripture. A constant theme began to run through his sermons—God loves sinners.

In early 1869 the new Farwell Hall was completed, and D.L. thought it better than the original hall. A capacity crowd gathered in the new auditorium for the dedication service and to hear D.L. preach.

Shortly afterward, on March 25, 1869, Emma gave birth to a son, whom they named William Revell Moody. William was tiny, and D.L. was unsure whether he would live, but with careful nursing from Emma and her mother, William began to grow.

In June 1870 D.L. traveled to Indianapolis, Indiana, to attend the International Convention of the YMCA. At the convention he was asked to lead the early morning prayer meeting, which he enjoyed, apart from the singing. No one had been assigned to lead the singing at the meeting, which normally was the role of the leader. Since D.L. was partially tone-deaf, he had others lead the singing for him. As the prayer meeting began, someone struck up a hymn. It was a particularly slow hymn, and everyone dragged through it. This bothered D.L. a great deal. In England he had seen the power of singing to move the soul and how effectively singing could be used in partnership with prayer and preaching. But that day the hymn had been sung so badly it moved nothing.

Someone near the front of the group prayed aloud, and then an amazing thing happened. A baritone voice rose in song from the back of the church:

There is a fountain filled with blood,

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,

And sinners plunged beneath that flood,

Lose all their guilty stains.

The words of the hymn rang through the building. D.L. waited for the rest of the gathered crowd to join in the singing, but no one sang a note. This one single voice was mesmerizing. And so the singer finished the hymn alone:

Redeeming love has been my theme,

and shall be till I die.

As the prayer meeting continued, D.L. was preoccupied with one thought: That man with the golden baritone voice has to be my partner.

At the end of the prayer meeting, one of the other delegates, the Reverend McMillen, came to the front with the singer. The man was impeccably dressed, with mutton-chop sideburns. “D.L., I would like to introduce Mr. Ira Sankey, who greatly enriched our singing this morning.”

D.L. shook the singer’s hand vigorously. “Where do you come from?” he asked.

“Pennsylvania,” Ira Sankey replied.

D.L. quickly learned that Ira was three years younger than he, was married with one son and another on the way, and was a government official connected with the Internal Revenue Service.

“You will have to give your job up. I’ve been looking for you for eight years!” D.L. blurted.

Ira opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out. He tried again. “What do you mean by that?”

“You will have to give up your government position and come with me to Chicago. You’re just the man I’ve been looking for. I want you to come with me. You can do the singing, and I will do the talking,” D.L. explained.

“I’m honored by your proposal, sir, but it’s not something I can accept. I did not come here looking for a change of work. I am well employed by God in my own church, leading the singing and special meetings at the YMCA.”

“But you must come,” D.L. pressed. “You have a gift that the world needs.”

Ira looked flustered. “I will consider the matter if you insist,” he said. “And though I do not think it at all likely, I am willing to pray about it.”

D.L. smiled. “Then the matter is as much as settled,” he said.

As both men left the prayer meeting, D.L. could hardly contain his excitement. He was sure he had finally found a partner. A year or so before, he had worked with a promising young song leader named Phillip Bliss, but Phillip had taken a job at the First Congregational Church and was no longer available to help at the meetings at Farwell Hall.

The following night D.L. held an impromptu street meeting. He sent an invitation for Ira to join him, and at six o’clock that night, Ira showed up with several friends. D.L. borrowed a box from a nearby dry-goods store and pushed it out to the curb. Then he beckoned to Ira. “Come, stand on this and sing something.”

Without hesitating, Ira stepped forward, climbed onto the box, and began singing:

Am I a soldier of the cross,

A follower of the Lamb,

And shall I fear to own his cause,

Or blush to speak his name?

As Ira sang, a crowd of workmen on their way home from nearby mills and factories began to gather. When the song ended, D.L. took Ira’s place on the box and preached about not being ashamed to be called a Christian.

The crowd grew so large around the box that it blocked the street. Because D.L. wanted to say more, he invited the listeners to follow him and Ira to the Academy of Music, where the convention was being held. Arm in arm with Ira, D.L. marched down the street singing hymns. For the first time, he felt he was following in the steps of William Booth and his Salvation Army, and he liked the feeling. The crowd followed close behind.

At the Academy of Music, D.L. spoke and prayed first, and Ira finished by singing the hymn, “Shall We Gather at the River?”

At the end of the meeting Ira said to D.L., “I’m deeply affected by the power of your inspiring message, but I have not made up my mind whether I shall join you in Chicago. I will write to you when I have spoken with my wife.”

“Have you ever been to Chicago?” D.L. asked.

“No,” came the reply.

“Then I propose that you come next month and spend a week there with me. We can visit saloons and drinking dens, and together we will bring light to the discouraged and sinful. Then we shall pray and see what God wants you to do.”

Not long after the YMCA convention in Indianapolis, Ira sent word that he was coming to Chicago. He and D.L. worked well together. During this time D.L. learned that Ira was the son of David Sankey, who had been elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 1843 and to the U.S. Senate in 1847. Ira’s father was also on the Senate Board of Equalization, was president of the Bank of New Castle, and was the Collector of Internal Revenue for the Twenty-fourth Congressional District. Despite the fact that their upbringings were worlds apart, D.L. was amazed at how well he and Ira understood each other and flowed together.

After his week in Chicago, Ira returned to Pennsylvania. D.L. continued to pray that Ira would join him in ministry. Six months after their initial meeting, Ira quit his job and moved to Chicago. He temporarily left his wife and son in Pennsylvania and took up residence in the new Farwell Hall. The D. L. Moody and Ira D. Sankey partnership had been born.

The two men were soon in high demand. Although they were based in Chicago, D.L. and Ira traveled to meetings all over the country, going as far as California and Maine. In early October 1871 D.L. began a series of Sunday night meetings on the life of Christ. On October 8 Farwell Hall was overflowing with listeners as D.L. preached on the text, “What shall we do with Jesus which is called Christ?”

Normally at the end of a meeting, D.L. would urge listeners to accept Christ on the spot, but this night he concluded his sermon with an unusual challenge: “I wish you would take this text home with you and turn it over in your minds for a week, and next Sabbath we will come to Calvary and the Cross and we will decide what to do with Jesus of Nazareth.”

As Ira went to the organ for the closing hymn, D.L. had no idea that by next Sunday everything would be different.

Chapter 11

Fire

From his seat on the platform, D.L. watched Ira play the organ and sing the final hymn solo:

Today the Savior calls:

O listen now!

Within these sacred walls

To Jesus bow.

Today the Savior calls:

For refuge fly;

The storm of justice falls,

And death is nigh.

As Ira sang the last verse, his voice was partially drowned out by the commotion drifting in from outside. Fire bells were clanging in the distance, and the hooves of galloping horses beat against the street as they pulled fire engines and pumps past Farwell Hall. Then the great city bell began to toll. D.L. looked at the congregation in front of him. The people were whispering among themselves, and some stood and hurried toward the main doors. As soon as Ira finished singing the closing hymn, D.L. dismissed the meeting. As people streamed out of the building, he and Ira went to the back entrance of the hall, which gave them a good view of the city. The sky to the southwest was glowing red.

“I’ll go and see what can be done,” Ira said, nodding in the direction of the fire.

D.L. reached out and shook Ira’s hand. “Yes, I would love to come with you, but Emma and the children will need me. I fear things will not go well tonight.”

D.L. ran through the dark toward the bridge over the Chicago River. Soon D.L. was holding his hat and squinting against the dust that was being kicked up. He saw sparks flying in the wind and shuddered at the dangerous sight. Before he reached the bridge, he encountered people streaming from their homes into the street, yelling, crying, and staring as house roofs suddenly caught fire.

D.L. raced on. Crossing the bridge, he headed up State Street toward his house and found Emma waiting for him at the door. “The city is doomed, I fear,” he told her. “Nothing will save it now in the face of this wind.”

“What about us? Should I wake the children?” Emma asked.

D.L. shook his head. “Thankfully, we have the river between us. I doubt the fire will cross over. You stay here. I’m going to see what will become of the church. And lock the doors. There will be looters out tonight.”

With that, D.L. hugged his wife and waited until she was safely locked in the house. He set out westward to the church on Illinois Street. As he neared the building, the wind carried thick smoke overhead and the air was hot. The church was still standing. Inside, his secretary, Katherine Abbott, was throwing files into a large canvas bag. D.L. began to help her. When they had packed all of the important papers, D.L. headed back toward his house. Crowds of panicking people pushed past him: men with wheelbarrows filled with books; children screaming and clinging to their mothers; and old couples carried along by the throng. They were all headed out of the city.

Back on State Street, D.L. was relieved to find his house unscathed. The north side of the river appeared to be untouched by the fire to the south. As D.L. approached his house, a policeman assured him that the place was not in danger and expressed the hope that the firefighters were getting the fire under control.

Given the policeman’s assurance that they were in no immediate danger, the Moodys decided to stay put, that is, until the early hours of the morning. D.L. heard a loud knock, hurried downstairs, and opened the front door. Standing before him was another policeman. “Time to go, sir,” he said. “The fire’s out of control and headed this way. Be as quick as you can. The wind is whipping things up.”

D.L. closed the door and raced upstairs to warn Emma. They woke the children, and Emma hurriedly dressed them in two sets of clothing. As D.L. grabbed the old baby carriage and threw some books and family papers into it, he could hear his two-and-a-half-year-old son Willie talking excitedly.

Emma came running down the stairs carrying a pile of clothes. “Get your portrait. We can’t leave that behind!” she said, throwing the clothes into the baby carriage.

Despite the situation, D.L. laughed. “We can’t do that, Emma. Just think. What if I met some of my congregation and they saw me? It wouldn’t do if the only thing I thought worth saving was a portrait of myself!”

“Please,” Emma begged.

D.L. looked out the window toward the south. The glow of the fire was growing brighter. Just then three men rushed into the living room. Emma screamed.

“Don’t mind us,” one of the men said. “We’re only taking things ahead of the flames. All of this will go up in flames in a few minutes. You’d best be gone.”

D.L. didn’t have time to argue. What the man said made sense.

Emma pointed to the portrait. “You can have the gilded frame,” she said, pointing to the portrait of D.L., “but can you kick out the painting for me?”

One of the men pulled the portrait from the wall, flipped it over, and brought his boot down on the frame. The painting popped free. “Here you are, missus,” he said as he handed it to her.

Emma rolled up the portrait and placed it in the baby carriage.

“We have to go,” D.L. said as he scooped up William. “Where’s Emma?”

“Emma?” his wife asked. “She was here a minute ago.”

“The front door’s open,” Emma yelled as D.L. dashed toward it. D.L. was just in time to see a gypsy woman let go of his daughter’s hand and run down the front steps into the street.

Seven-year-old Emma stood paralyzed with fear. “I just wanted to get out of the house before it burned,” she stammered. “And then that woman grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.”

Thankfully, the hem of Emma’s dress had caught on the front door handle, preventing the woman from running off with her. D.L. passed William to his wife, freed Emma’s dress, and picked up his daughter. He held her face toward his chest as embers flew around in the buffeting wind. “You poor thing,” he said comfortingly.

“We must go. Bring the baby carriage,” D.L. yelled to his wife.

Soon the Moody family was on the street, where D.L. recognized a neighbor and fellow Christian packing his family into a buggy. The horse was whinnying loudly. “Do you have room for my children?” D.L. shouted above the noise of the wind and the street.

“Hand them up,” the neighbor replied. “I’m off to Spafford’s house, hopefully out of harm’s way. I’ll take them with me.”

Tears streamed down D.L.’s cheeks as he lifted his children up and into the buggy. “God bless you and keep you safe!” D.L. yelled as the buggy rolled away. Soon it was out of sight. D.L. and Emma were caught up in the swirl of humanity headed away from the quickly spreading inferno that was engulfing more and more of Chicago.

D.L.’s plan was to head for Emma’s sister’s home in the northern suburb of Evanston. Grimly, the couple made their way up State Street, D.L. pushing the baby carriage. Even though it was now three in the morning, the encroaching fire made it appear as bright as midday. Everywhere D.L. looked, people were hurrying along, some discarding their belongings at the side of the road as they went so that they could go faster. As he walked, D.L. silently prayed that William and Emma would be safe with their neighbor.

D.L. and Emma finally reached the relative safety of Emma’s sister Sarah’s house. They watched and waited helplessly throughout the day as the fire consumed more of Chicago. People continued to flee the city, likening it to a war zone. The police even began to blow up entire buildings to try to stop them from being further fuel to the fire. By now D.L. was sure that the Illinois Street Church and Farwell Hall were burned to the ground. More than anything, though, he regretted giving those at his meeting at Farwell Hall on Sunday night the opportunity to delay their decision to accept Christ until the following Sunday. He agonized over the fact that some of them might be dead by now because of the fire. D.L. vowed never to leave another meeting without offering an invitation for salvation.

By Tuesday the stiff breeze that blew from the southwest began to die down, and light rain began to fall. With the change in the weather, the fire gave way to smoldering embers. Reports began to filter out of the charred city. A four-mile-long by three-quarter-mile-wide swath of the central city had been burned to the ground. People told of there being no buildings left in the central city from the Chicago River to Lake Michigan, except for the water tower that had survived unscathed.

As D.L. and Emma waited for more news, they prayed constantly for their children and for Ira Sankey. The last time D.L. had seen Ira, he was headed toward the flames.

A week later D.L. was able to arrange a ride to the Spafford house. When he got there, much to his relief, William and Emma were waiting for him. He thanked God for keeping his children safe and took them back to their mother in Evanston.

After a week, the Moody family had the opportunity to go back into the burned city. A friend offered them a horse and buggy, in which D.L. drove his family back into Chicago. Even though he had feared the worst, D.L. was still shocked to see the extent of the fire’s devastation. It was as if a huge bomb had gone off. Not a tree or building stood for miles. Streets that had been bustling centers of commerce were now unrecognizable. Families were setting up tents in the rubble, surrounded by fallen columns and the twisted copper strands of countless burned telegraph wires. The thick smell of acrid smoke permeated everything.

On State Street D.L. stood in front of what had been their house. The steps leading up to the front door were still there, along with a cracked, charred planter where Emma grew tulips. Everything else was gone, the two-story house reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash and charcoal. D.L. took a cane and began poking around in the rubble, hoping to find something salvageable. He found only a toy iron stove that his daughter Emma used to play with. He lifted the toy out of the ashes. It was in perfect condition.

Next, D.L. drove the buggy to the Illinois Street Church. The church, too, was nothing but a pile of ash and crumbled bricks. From Illinois Street the family made their way to Farwell Hall, which had also burned to the ground. D.L. had hoped to find a note from Ira somewhere at the site of the ruins, but he found nothing. He could only hope and pray that Ira had survived. Many others were facing the same harrowing task of trying to locate family members and friends.

D.L. was relieved to learn the next week that Ira had survived the fire. As the fire spread, Ira had returned to Farwell Hall, retrieved his belongings, and spent the night on the shore of Lake Michigan. The next day, as the fire burned to the lake edge, he had climbed into a rowboat and spent the day floating on the lake. When the fire finally died down, Ira boarded a train east to Pennsylvania to be with his wife and children.

Slowly the statistics were gathered about the extent of the fire. Three hundred people had lost their lives in the blaze, one hundred thousand were homeless, and property damage was estimated to be $222 million. Over seventeen thousand buildings, including fifty churches and mission halls, had been destroyed.

D.L. wasted no time in rallying Christians around the United States to help rebuild what had been lost. He wrote letters to his friends in the Christian Commission, the Sunday School Union, and the YMCA and visited Philadelphia and New York to plead for help and money.

People responded to D.L.’s pleas. Soon D.L. had raised $3,000 to build a replacement church. Although much of central Chicago was a charred wasteland, a vacant lot for the church was found at the corner of Wells and Ontario Streets, three blocks north of the charred remains of the Illinois Street Church. D.L. conceived of building a single-story tabernacle the entire size of the lot—109 feet long and 75 feet wide. The new building would be constructed from rough-hewn pine and have a flat tar roof held up by a line of posts supporting beams, similar to the way barns were built. The inside would be lined with tarpaper to hold back the cold.

As materials and money became available, work began on the structure. Many members of the congregation of the Illinois Street Church volunteered their labor to build the new tabernacle, and soon work was going on around the clock. By Christmas 1871, just two and a half months after the fire, the new building was complete. It was the only building in the area. The next closest standing building was a forty-five-minute walk away. As D.L. inspected the new simple but functional building, he was very pleased.

On Christmas Eve 1871, a dedication service for the new North Side Tabernacle was held. The crowd that attended the service was much bigger than D.L. had expected, much to his surprise and delight. Despite the fact that the building sat in the middle of total desolation, it was packed full of people, many of whom had to walk a good distance to get there.

Soon the Sunday school was up and running. The new building was also being used as a place to minister to the destitute who had lost everything in the fire. Food and clothing and other supplies were distributed from the North Side Tabernacle. The doors to the building were left unlocked so that those who were homeless could find shelter when they needed it. D.L. took up residence in one of the small Sunday school classrooms, while Emma and the children stayed in Evanston with Emma’s sister.

By mid-1872 the city was in the midst of a rebuilding frenzy. Rubble was being cleared away from the burned-out area of Chicago, and new buildings were starting to go up. Work was about to start on a third Farwell Hall, and a site had been chosen at the corner of LaSalle Street and Chicago Avenue on which to build a permanent brick church as a replacement for the temporary North Side Tabernacle. D.L. was interested in all of these projects, but only to a point. At the time the fire struck Chicago, he had been wondering whether his future really lay in the city. Was he called to lead a church and Sunday school in Chicago or to be an evangelist to the world? D.L. did not know the answer, but he felt a distinct urge to return to England and meet again with other men of God there whom he greatly respected. He hoped that their input could help direct him in making the decision.

Emma and the children stayed behind with Emma’s mother while D.L. set sail for England. D.L. expected again to be seasick on the voyage, and he was. Upon reaching England he was determined to keep a low profile. He had come not to preach but to learn.

D.L. first traveled to Ireland, where he met some of the friends he had made on his previous trip. In London he went several times to hear Charles Haddon Spurgeon preach at Metropolitan Tabernacle. While listening to Spurgeon preach, D.L. realized that Spurgeon’s spiritual power as a preacher was not in the elegance and simplicity of his words but in the power of God that flowed through him. When people responded to Spurgeon’s sermons, they were responding not to the man’s words but to God’s power that touched their hearts. It was God’s power, not eloquent words, that was important. Words alone were useless without the power of God flowing through the person delivering them.

While in London, D.L. attended a prayer meeting at the Old Bailey, where he encountered the pastor of a North London church in which he had preached during his previous visit. The pastor asked D.L. to preach in the morning and evening services the following Sunday. D.L. accepted the pastor’s invitation.

The morning service that Sunday was fairly standard, and D.L. did not expect anything extraordinary at the evening service. However, from the opening hymn the atmosphere in the church seemed electric. The congregation sat spellbound as D.L. preached to them. As the service reached its end, D.L. asked anyone who wanted to become a Christian to follow him out to the inquiry room. As he turned to lead the way, the entire church stood up to follow him. D.L. was astonished. Because he thought that the congregation had misunderstood him, he asked them to be seated while he explained that he wanted only those wanting to come to salvation in Christ to follow him. Again almost the entire church stood and followed. There were so many people, in fact, that it took a while to get enough chairs into the hall for everyone. D.L. then spoke to the group about faith and repentance and asked those who were ready to repent to stand. Everyone in the room stood. Because too many people were in the room for D.L. to counsel and pray with, he prayed for the group and then instructed them to come back the following evening to receive counsel from the pastor.

The following morning, still astonished at the events of the night before, D.L. left London to return to Ireland. However, on Tuesday, while en route, D.L. received an urgent telegram from the pastor in London. More people than had been saved on Sunday had shown up at the Monday night gathering to receive salvation, and the pastor needed D.L.’s help.

D.L. turned around and headed straight back to London. For the next ten nights he preached at the church, and more and more people streamed in to listen. When D.L. left London to return to Chicago two weeks later, over four hundred new members had been added to the church.

When he arrived back in Chicago, D.L. was surprised to learn that news of the experience at the North London church had reverberated around England. He soon began receiving requests to return to England on an extensive preaching and evangelizing tour. Three men were particularly persistent in having him come: the Reverend William Pennefather, rector of the Mildmay Park Church in London; Cuthbert Bainbridge, a tireless Methodist layworker from Newcastle upon Tyne; and Henry Bewley, in Dublin, Ireland. The three men had joined forces and offered to pay for D.L. and his traveling party to return to England.

D.L. prayed about the offer and felt strongly that he should go. He decided that spring the following year would be the best time to set out. He invited Emma and the children as well as Ira Sankey and his family to accompany him. Ira and his wife, Fanny, agreed to come, but they decided to leave their two young sons at home with relatives.

In early June 1873 the group set off from Chicago for New York City, confident that everything would go smoothly. D.L. had telegraphed ahead to William Pennefather and Cuthbert Bainbridge, asking that they wire him the money for the voyage as promised. When they reached New York, D.L. hurried to the telegraph office expecting a response from one or both of the Englishmen. But the clerk at the office just looked at him blankly and checked his books again. “No, Mr. Moody,” he said. “There is no telegram here for you.”

D.L. wondered what the problem could be. He was certain that God wanted him to preach in England and that the financial offer to cover his traveling expenses was God’s provision. What had gone wrong? And what should he do now?

Chapter 12

Ten Thousand Souls

A long walk through the crowded Manhattan streets—up the east side and down the west—gave D.L. time to pray. He asked God what he should do next. Had he made a mistake in setting out for England? A few miles later, D.L. had his answer. Yes, he believed that God was calling him to England—not just to preach but also to save ten thousand souls. As for the money for passage to the British Isles, D.L. remembered that before leaving Chicago he had asked a friend to invest $500 for him until he returned. D.L. headed for the telegraph office, hoping that he could retrieve the money and set sail on the SS City of Paris.

The money arrived in New York just in time, and on June 17, 1873, the Moody family, along with Ira and Fanny Sankey, walked up the gangplank onto the ship. A dockworker walked behind them carrying Ira’s portable organ. They were ready to take England by storm.

After a gentle crossing of the Atlantic Ocean—but not so gentle that D.L. could leave his bunk—the group arrived in Liverpool. Upon disembarking they took a carriage to the hotel, where everyone but D.L. went upstairs to settle in. D.L. had used the hotel as his forwarding address in England, and he was anxious to see whether the three men who were coordinating his visit to the country had sent word.

Ten minutes later, a shocked D.L. sat in a leather chair in the hotel lobby. Not one but two of the men who had invited him to England—William Pennefather and Cuthbert Bainbridge—had died, and Henry Bewley in Ireland appeared to have completely forgotten about the invitation. As a result, no preaching tour of the British Isles had been arranged, and no funds were available. D.L. was still stunned as he climbed the stairs to tell the group. After relaying the bad news, D.L. summed up his thoughts for them all. “God seems to have closed doors. We will not open them ourselves. If He opens the door, we will go in; otherwise we will return to America.”

Everyone nodded in agreement and sat in silence for a moment. Then Emma spoke up. “Are you sure you opened all the mail you received before we left New York? Those last days were confusing. Perhaps you overlooked some last letter, my dear.”

D.L. reached into his vest pocket, then his trouser pockets, and finally his jacket pocket, from which he pulled out an unopened letter. Quickly he tore it open and read it. “I believe this forgotten letter is an indication that God is watching over us to dispel our discouragement and disappointment,” he finally said.

“Who’s it from?” Ira asked.

“A Mr. George Bennett of the York YMCA, saying that if I ever come to England again, he hopes that I will speak for his association. The door is only ajar, but we will consider the letter God’s hand leading us to York, and we will go there,” D.L. announced.

The next morning D.L. sent a telegram to George that read, “Moody here. Are you ready for him?”

D.L. received a quick reply. “Please fix date when you can come to York.”

D.L. chuckled to himself when he got the reply. He could only imagine George’s surprise at the other end. “I will be in York tonight at ten o’clock. Make no arrangements till I come,” he telegraphed back.

Plans were quickly hatched. The Sankeys would stay in Liverpool while things were sorted out, and D.L. would head for York. The Moodys went to the railway station to buy tickets to London. In London, Emma’s sister Mary met Emma and the children, who stayed with Mary while D.L. transferred trains and headed north to York.

At the station in York, a frantic-looking George Bennett met D.L. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon. I haven’t set anything up. I don’t know if I can, but I have accommodations for you. You’re staying with a doctor…” His voice trailed off, and he looked awkward. “His home is attached to the insane asylum where he works.”

D.L. nodded. It did not matter to him where he laid his head at night, so long as he could preach the gospel to the poor and lost.

Realizing that he would have to take control of the situation, D.L. told George that he wanted to preach somewhere on Sunday, just three days away, and that he was sending a telegram to Liverpool to summon Ira. When Ira arrived the next day, D.L. said to him, “Here we are, a couple of white elephants. Bennett is away all over the city now to see if he can get us a place to preach and sing. He’s like a man who has a white elephant and doesn’t know what to do with it.”

George returned with mixed news. None of the ministers in York with whom he had spoken were excited about welcoming the Americans into their churches. They wondered what they were doing in the city and were shocked that they wanted to do mission work in summer, not in May like everyone else. They also were concerned about Ira Sankey and his modern hymn singing. Many of the pastors complained that it didn’t seem right to sing lively music in church, and the idea of accompanying the singing with an organ was a modern, ungodly notion.

Nonetheless, the pastor at the Salem Congregational Church was away, and the church elders had agreed to host D.L. and Ira on Sunday morning. George had also rented the cheapest building in town, the Corn Exchange, for a Sunday afternoon service. Now it was up to D.L. and Ira.

Neither event that Sunday went particularly well. Attendance was small, and the congregations were unenthusiastic. D.L. held a series of chapel meetings each night for the next week. Again, the response, as far as he was concerned, was unenthusiastic. But D.L. pressed on. He started a noon prayer meeting at the local YMCA.

During the second week, things began to change. At a meeting in a Methodist chapel in the heart of York, the building was filled to overflowing. Many people responded when D.L. gave an appeal at the end of the meeting for those who wanted salvation. The superintendent of the church later told D.L. that he had never experienced anything like this meeting in his life.

From the Methodist chapel, D.L. and Ira moved on to hold a series of meetings at a new Baptist church. D.L. knew that the young pastor of the church, Fredrick Brotherton (F. B.) Meyer, had been reluctant to turn the pulpit over to them and had questioned George as to what an evangelist could do that he himself could not. As D.L. spoke the first night, he noticed that the pastor sat stone-faced and unmoved. But as people began to come to Christ in the church and wept openly in repentance over their sin, D.L. noted that F. B. Meyer began to change too. Now instead of sitting stone-faced through the service, the pastor was engaged and attentive. In the evenings he and D.L. discussed revival and the power and love of God.

After five weeks of nightly meetings in York, D.L. and Ira felt they had accomplished all they could there. While many people had come to Christ during their time in the city, the turnout (especially at the beginning) and lack of support of many pastors had been disappointing. It was now time to move on.

D.L. and Ira chose to head north to Newcastle upon Tyne, a busy coal seaport. They arrived in the city on August 25, 1873, and set up a series of meetings. This time things got off to a better start than they had in York. The local paper praised the “wonderful religious phenomenon” and noted with admiration that the “jingle of money is never heard at these meetings.” Slowly the campaign, as D.L. called it, began to spread to the richest and poorest citizens of the city.

One night a young mother brought her baby with her to the meeting, and the baby cried loudly throughout the service. Some in the crowd grew restless and heckled the mother until she broke down in tears. Watching the scene unfold, D.L. said without thinking, “Tomorrow night we are going to have a special mothers’ meeting. No one will be admitted unless she has a baby in her arms.” The woman with the crying baby, who was on her way out of the meeting, turned and smiled at D.L. The next night the hall was filled with screaming babies and toddlers. D.L. didn’t mind that he had to raise his voice to preach over the children’s squeals and cries. He knew that this might be the only opportunity these women had to hear the gospel, and he considered enduring the crying a small price to pay.

Not only the mothers but also everyone else who attended the meetings in Newcastle loved singing the new hymns along with Ira. Many people asked him if he had copies of the sheet music. They were disappointed that Ira had but one copy of the music, the copy he used when he sang. Eventually the clamor for the sheet music became so great that D.L. and Ira arranged to have the music for the hymns published. The book, entitled Sacred Songs and Solos with Standard Hymns Combined, went on sale at sixpence for the sheet music version and a penny for the lyrics only.

Apart from the printing of the songbooks, nothing important seemed to be happening, at least not in the proportions D.L. had hoped and prayed for. D.L. began to doubt that he would see ten thousand converts to Christ during his time in the British Isles. It seemed an unrealistic goal. It was mid-October, he was four months into his six-month stay, and few major breakthroughs had taken place.

While passing through Newcastle, the Reverend John Kelman, a pastor in the Free Church of Scotland at Leith in Edinburgh, was greatly impressed by what he saw at D.L.’s meetings in the city. He was so impressed that he invited D.L. to come to Edinburgh to hold a series of meetings. He promised to put together a committee of clergymen in Edinburgh to organize and plan the occasion. When D.L. told Kelman that he had been invited to Dundee, Scotland, to preach, Kelman’s response was, “Edinburgh first. Then you will reach the nation.”

Impressed by Kelman’s enthusiasm and his willingness to bring other Christian leaders in the city together to support the meetings, D.L. agreed to go.

D.L. and Ira arrived in Edinburgh on Saturday, November 22, 1873. They were scheduled to hold their first meeting in the city the following evening. They were both apprehensive about how things would go. Church leaders in Scotland were all well-educated in theology, and D.L. fretted over the fact that he was a lay preacher with little schooling and no formal theological training. Meanwhile, Ira fretted over the music. The Scots did not allow musical accompaniment in their churches. In fact, they didn’t allow what they called “human hymns,” that is, any modern hymns. The only thing sung in Scottish churches were psalms set to chantlike music. Ira wondered how the Scots would take to his portable organ—his “fist full o’whistles,” as the Scots had already nicknamed it—not to mention the contemporary hymns he sang.

Things did not start well with the Edinburgh campaign. A huge crowd gathered to hear D.L. preach the first night, but D.L. had lost his voice and was unable to speak. A local pastor at the meeting spoke in his place. On the second night, D.L. had his voice back and was able to speak, but Ira’s organ had fallen off the back of a cab as it rounded a corner too fast on the way to the meeting. The organ was broken and in need of repair, and so there was no music the second night. On the third night, however, things came together. Ira sang and D.L. preached, and many people responded to the invitation to receive Christ. Night after night the crowd attending the meetings continued to grow, until there was not even standing room left.

As the campaign continued, everyone in Edinburgh knew who D. L. Moody and Ira Sankey were. In fact, the men’s names were soon known all over Scotland, and invitations to preach in other cities poured in.

It had been hard going at first, but D.L. noticed that after a couple of weeks, those coming to the meetings embraced the organ and the modern hymns that Ira sang. With the help of the Sacred Songs and Solos songbook, they were able to sing along with Ira on the choruses.

In mid-January 1874 D.L. and Ira reluctantly agreed it was time to move on. During their stay in Edinburgh, many newspapers around the country had reported on the “religious phenomenon” taking place in that city. As a result, when D.L. set up meetings in other places around Scotland, thousands came to hear him preach.

From Edinburgh D.L. and Ira went to Dundee and held meetings there and then moved on to Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city. In Glasgow D.L. and Ira held meetings in various churches, and when the crowds attending got too large, they moved to City Hall. When the crowds became too big for that venue, D.L. relocated the meetings to Kibble Palace in the Botanic Gardens, the largest hall in Glasgow, which they managed to fill night after night. From time to time D.L. and Ira would return to Edinburgh to hold more meetings there.

In August 1874 D.L. went alone on an extensive tour of northern Scotland while Ira stayed in Edinburgh to be with his wife. Ira’s father brought their two sons, Harry and Edward, over from the United States to be with them, since Ira and Fanny were now well past the original six months they had intended to stay in the British Isles. The boys arrived just in time for the birth of their brother, Allen. In all, D.L. and Ira spent nearly ten months in Scotland, preaching in churches and halls all over the country. D.L. rejoiced that in that time many thousands of Scottish people came to Christ.

From Scotland D.L. and Ira crossed the Irish Sea to Belfast, Ireland, to hold meetings. Huge crowds of Christians and non-Christians listened and responded to D.L.’s preaching and Ira’s singing. Belfast was in the Protestant-dominated north of Ireland, but D.L. also wanted to hold meetings in the Catholic-dominated south. A number of people advised against this, but D.L. was determined, and he and Ira headed to Dublin to hold a campaign there. The meetings were held in the Exhibition Palace. Thousands of people—Catholics, Protestants, and the unchurched—came to hear D.L. preach each night. So many Catholics were coming to the meetings that the Catholic prelate, Cardinal Cullen, issued an edict forbidding Catholics to attend the meetings. D.L. chuckled when he learned this, because it seemed to him that the edict had little effect. Thousands of Catholics continued to flock to the meetings.

From Ireland D.L. and Ira returned to England, where they held meetings in a number of cities, again with thousands turning up to hear D.L. preach. By now D.L. had his sights set on the greatest challenge of all that still lay before him—London.

Sprawling London was one of the world’s largest cities with a population of over five million people. To effectively preach the gospel in a city so big would take careful planning. Happily, D.L. was a detailed planner. He formed a committee of influential laymen to help with the task, and together they diligently prayed and then planned the best way to impact the entire city for Christ. They decided to divide the city into four quadrants and hold campaigns in each quadrant. The first was North London, where they held meetings in the huge Agricultural Hall in Islington. At the first meeting eighteen thousand people packed into the hall to hear D.L. and Ira. Even D.L. was stunned by the huge crowd and by the number of people wanting to come to Christ at the end of the meeting. Eighteen thousand people showed up the next night, and the night after that. Night after night they came, and night after night hundreds responded to the call for salvation.

D.L. and Ira moved on from North London to the poorer East End. Because this part of the city did not have a hall big enough for the meetings, Bow Street Hall was erected for that purpose. The hall was a large barnlike structure that could seat ten thousand people. It was sheathed in corrugated iron, and sawdust covered the dirt floor. From the start Bow Street Hall was packed each night. And each night several hundred people responded to the call to give their lives to Christ. After the main crowd had departed, small groups would be dotted about the hall as counselors talked and prayed and shared Bible passages with those wanting salvation.

Many Christians also attended the meetings, and D.L.’s message to them was always the same: “Many Christians are noted for their lack of activity in the service of their Master. They are always waiting for something to happen before they do a job for God. Let me tell you this, my English brothers and sisters. Don’t wait for something to turn up. Go and turn something up!”

And they did. All over London missions were opened, serving meals to the poor, running Sunday schools, distributing clothing and other items, and, of course, proclaiming the gospel to all who would listen.

While D.L. was grateful to see the fruit of these Christians’ labor among the poor and needy of the city, he also worked hard to bring the wealthy of London to Christ. At the same time that he was holding meetings at Bow Street Hall in the East End, he was running meetings at the Royal Opera House in Haymarket in central London. D.L. and Ira conducted the service in the East End at seven in the evening and then raced across the city in a horse-drawn carriage to hold a meeting at the Royal Opera House at nine. When they arrived at the Opera House, the main floor and the galleries were packed with the sophisticated people of the city. Even though these were people of privilege and money, they too responded to D.L.’s message of salvation.

While in London, D.L. was asked to speak at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. The five-thousand-seat auditorium was packed with students studying in Charles Spurgeon’s college, Baptist ministers gathering in the city for their annual conference, and members of the congregation. D.L. was greatly moved as he stood in the pulpit that Spurgeon occupied each Sunday. Now their roles were reversed. D.L. had come to the tabernacle in 1867 with Emma to hear Spurgeon preach. In the course of that sermon he had silently prayed that God would make him a great preacher like Spurgeon. Now, eight years later, here he was standing in Charles Spurgeon’s pulpit, preaching to him and his congregation.

In late summer 1875 the London campaign came to a successful conclusion, and it was time for the Americans to return home. D.L. had come intending to spend six months preaching in the British Isles but had ended up staying over two years. Although he didn’t have exact numbers, D.L. was certain that in that time he and Ira had met their goal of bringing ten thousand new converts to Christ. In London alone, D.L. had preached to nearly two and a half million people.

On August 4, 1875, D.L. led his family up the gangplank onto the SS Spain for the trip back across the Atlantic. His time in the British Isles had been rewarding but exhausting, and he looked forward to slipping back into the United States unnoticed and taking a well-earned rest. That rest would prove nearly impossible to take.

Chapter 13

Home

The ship docked in New York on the morning of August 14, 1875. D.L.’s fame had gone before him, and he was immediately surrounded by newspaper reporters clamoring to interview him. D.L. had little to say. When asked what he was going to do next, he replied, “Go home to Northfield to see my mother.”

The Moody family caught the train to Northfield and were met at the station by two of D.L.’s brothers, Samuel and Edwin, who still lived at home with their mother. D.L. sniffed the crisp country air. How much more he felt at home here than in the smoggy, grimy cities of industrial England. Soon D.L. was sitting in the parlor at the family farmhouse with his mother and brothers. After Emma and Willie had been introduced to all the relatives who gathered at the farmhouse to greet D.L. and his family, they headed out to play in the barn with their cousins.

The small house was crowded with the four members of D.L.’s family plus his mother and two brothers, but they all managed to fit. More than anything else, D.L. was thrilled to be home once again. He loved to walk and ride in the hills around the family home. He took Emma and the children on picnics high in the hills, where they could see for miles up and down the Connecticut River valley. He showed little Emma and Willie where he had pastured the cows as a boy and had picked berries and gathered chestnuts in the fall. A few days after arriving in Northfield, the entire Moody household took a boat ride on the Connecticut River to visit Uncle Cyrus.

D.L. was happy to find that his seventy-year-old mother, now with white hair, was still enjoying good health. His mother cooked and cleaned and tended the chickens, even though they were a source of frustration to her. She explained to D.L. how the chickens kept escaping into her neighbor’s cornfield. The neighbor, Elisha Alexander, was making quite an issue out of the chickens coming and eating his corn. Betsy Moody just wished the whole situation would go away, but it didn’t. The chickens just kept heading for Elisha’s cornfield.

D.L. enjoyed everything about being back in his hometown. In the evenings, after the children had gone to bed, he and his mother and brothers sat around talking. D.L.’s mother and younger brother Sam wanted to hear all about England. Betsy had proudly kept all of the newspaper clippings D.L. had sent her from the British Isles. Although D.L. could tell that his mother was proud of his achievements, Betsy was also fiercely opposed to the religious message he preached. “I was born a Unitarian, and I will die a Unitarian,” was all she would say, “so don’t you waste your breath on me.”

There were, however, those in Northfield and the surrounding area who were eager to hear D.L. preach, and he agreed to preach one Sunday afternoon at the local Trinitarian church. When the meeting started, the old church was packed beyond capacity. D.L. announced the opening hymn. As they sang, his brother George hurriedly made his way to the front. He whispered into D.L.’s ear that so many people were in the church that the foundations were starting to give way and the church was in danger of collapse. Knowing that he had to act quickly before someone got hurt, D.L. said a quick prayer. At the end of the first verse of the hymn, he raised his hand and, with a smile, calmly announced that since it was such a beautiful afternoon and there were so many people outside who couldn’t get in, they would all move outside and he would preach from the church porch. The crowd moved outside and sat on the grass. Ira, who had also come to the meeting, set up his portable organ on the narrow porch, and D.L. took his place next to him. The people sang and D.L. preached. Afterward people a mile away reported having heard the singing and D.L.’s voice, like a gentle breeze carrying them down the Connecticut River valley.

The response to the Sunday afternoon meeting was so great that it led to a campaign like nothing Northfield had seen before. The old church building was shored up to stop it from collapsing. Night after night hundreds of people streamed in from town and the surrounding area to hear D.L. At first D.L.’s mother refused to attend the meetings, but his brothers came out of curiosity. Eventually curiosity also got the better of his mother, who came to a meeting one night. D.L. preached his heart out and at the end of the meeting asked those who wanted to receive Christ as their Savior to stand and he would pray for them. People all over the church stood, and when D.L. looked up, he could scarcely believe what he saw: one of the people standing was his mother. He was so deeply moved that he could barely get the words out as he asked another pastor to pray for those standing. On the last night of the campaign, D.L.’s brother Sam stood to receive Christ.

One day as D.L. was riding in a buggy, he passed Elisha Alexander tending his corn. He pulled the buggy to a halt and went to talk with his neighbor, hoping to settle the issue with his mother’s chickens.

“I want to buy the piece of this field that runs along our boundary,” D.L. said.

“I don’t care to sell a piece unless it is the whole property,” came Elisha’s terse reply.

“How many acres?” D.L. asked.

“Twelve.”

“How much?”

“I’ll take thirty-five hundred dollars for the whole place with house and barns,” Elisha replied.

“I’ll take it!” D.L. exclaimed.

A shocked Elisha stared at D.L.

Edward Studd, a wealthy British nobleman who had been converted at one of D.L.’s meetings at the Royal Opera House in London, had sent D.L. a check as a donation. Not wanting to accept a personal donation, D.L. had twice sent the check back. But when Edward sent the check to him a third time, D.L. decided he had better keep it in case he might offend him by sending it back yet again. D.L. put the money to work buying Elisha’s farm. He supposed that he would separate the piece of the cornfield along the boundary line and one day sell the remaining land and house.

While at home in Northfield, D.L. prayed and thought about what he should do next. He wanted to impact the United States in the same way that he had impacted England with the gospel, but how?

In the end he decided to begin with a campaign in Brooklyn in October. He chose this city because, as he explained to Ira, “Water runs downhill, and the highest hills in America are the great cities. If we can stir them, we shall stir the whole country.”

Before the campaign got under way, meetings were held among the various denominational groups in Brooklyn. The groups pledged to work together to gather the crowds and find a site large enough to hold meetings. Five hundred men and women volunteered to be ushers and counselors, and another six hundred volunteers made up the choir.

The building chosen for the campaign meetings was a large skating rink on Clermont Avenue. The venue could hold five thousand people, and on the opening night it was filled to overflowing. The newspapers reported on the meetings and gave favorable coverage. The New York Tribune commented, “They are not money-makers; they are not charlatans. Decorous, conservative England, which reprobated both their work and the manner of it, held them in the full blaze of scrutiny for months, and could not detect in them a single motive which was not pure. Earnest and sincere men are rare in these days. Is it not worth our while to give to them a dispassionate, unprejudiced hearing? …If the Christian religion is not the one hope for our individual and social life, what is?”

After a month of packed meetings in Brooklyn, D.L. and Ira went to Philadelphia, where 180 pastors of every denomination in the city had signed a petition asking them to come and pledging their support. John Wanamaker, a rich merchant and friend of D.L.’s, had recently bought an abandoned freight depot from the Pennsylvania Railroad for his business and refitted it for D.L. to hold his meetings in. The doors to the facility were opened one and a half hours before the meetings, and within ten minutes the place was filled to capacity with twelve thousand people.

On Sunday, January 19, 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant and members of his cabinet, who were in Philadelphia for the Centennial Exhibition, attended one of D.L.’s meetings.

Night after night D.L. preached, and as had happened in England at the end of each meeting, a large number of people responded to the call to give their lives to Christ. Each Friday afternoon D.L. held a special meeting for alcoholics, many of whom were despondent Civil War veterans. D.L. also held special women’s and men’s meetings.

The Philadelphia campaign came to a close at the end of January 1876, and D.L. and Ira moved on to New York City. The campaign meetings in New York were held in the Hippodrome, a large arena in which P. T. Barnum held his circus. From the start, as in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, the number of people coming to the meetings was enormous, with the huge venue packed for almost every meeting. People arrived in the city by the trainload from outlying areas to attend the meetings. D.L. did not like to keep a tally of the numbers of those attending his campaign meetings, and when a pastor asked him how many people he estimated had been led to Christ in the campaign, D.L. replied, “I don’t know anything about that. I thank God I don’t have to. I don’t keep the Lamb’s Book of Life.”

After two months in New York City, D.L. and Ira moved on to Baltimore, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. After three years away, and before moving on to a campaign in Boston, D.L. returned to Chicago for a visit. He found it hard to adjust to the rebuilt city, which was so different from the Chicago he had known before the fire. Nonetheless, the people of Chicago were glad to have their evangelist back. D.L. had left town as “Crazy Moody,” but he was no longer called that. The city embraced him with reverence and respect.

Before his trip to England, D.L. had purchased land at the corner of Chicago Avenue and LaSalle Street for a new church. On June 1, 1876, the church officially opened, with D.L. preaching at the first service. D.L. marveled at the magnificent brick church that had been built in his absence, though he had played a key role in helping the building project along. He and Ira had agreed not to take any money from royalties on their songbook. Instead, they poured the money back into their work. As a result, thousands of British pounds had been sent back to Chicago to help pay for the church construction. On July 16 the official dedication ceremony for the new church building was held, and D.L. preached at this service.

It felt both wonderful and strange to D.L. to be back in Chicago. The city no longer felt like home. Perhaps, D.L. told himself, it was because he and Emma no longer had a place of their own here. D.L. also wondered whether God might be sending him in another direction.

While D.L. was in Chicago, his old friends and pastors urged him to hold a campaign in the city. John Farwell offered to build a large hall for the event. So D.L. decided to postpone his Boston campaign until later and hold a campaign in Chicago starting in early October. While the city prepared and John oversaw the construction of the hall, D.L. and his family returned to Northfield for two months.

The Moody family moved in to the farmhouse D.L. had bought next to his mother’s property in Northfield. The farmhouse was solid, and the family enjoyed being in a place of their own after more than three years. While in Northfield, D.L. got to spend time with Sam, his favorite brother. Since his conversion, Sam had become an active Christian. He was involved with the local branch of the YMCA and was not bashful telling others about his faith. One day as the two of them were out riding on a wagon around Northfield, Sam spoke about some of his concerns for the physical and spiritual well-being of the community. One thing that greatly concerned Sam was the plight of girls in the town. Often these girls received inadequate, if any, high school education and instead were kept at home to work and take care of domestic duties. Sam told D.L. about his dream of one day starting a quality high school in Northfield just for girls. D.L. agreed with his younger brother that this was an admirable plan.

On September 30 D.L. and Ira arrived in Chicago for the campaign. Everything was in place, and D.L. looked forward to a fruitful time in the city. Sure enough, from the start, the crowds were huge. The local omnibus company even organized special buses to transport people to the venue.

On the afternoon of October 6, 1876, during a meeting with a group of deacons from the Chicago Avenue Church, D.L. received a telegram. As he read the message, he let out a wail and burst into tears. His brother Sam had died. Heartbroken, D.L. asked a fellow evangelist to take over preaching at the campaign meetings in Chicago while he rushed to Northfield by train to bury his brother. On the train ride, D.L. recalled how Sam had told him about his dream of starting a school for girls, and he promised himself that he would find a way to make Sam’s dream come true.

A week later D.L. returned to preaching in the Chicago campaign. Throughout October, November, December, and into January, the meetings continued. D.L. invited the hymn writer and musician Phillip Bliss and his wife to join him for a special meeting he had planned for New Year’s Eve. Neither Phillip nor his wife made it to Chicago. On the way there, they were both killed, along with over one hundred other passengers, in a train wreck at Ashtabula, Ohio. It was a brutally cold night, and the train fell off a bridge onto the frozen stream below, where it caught fire. D.L. learned that Phillip initially escaped from the wrecked carriage but crawled back inside to free his wife. Both had perished in the flames. The special New Year’s Eve service went on as planned, but in his heart, D.L. grieved deeply for his talented friend.

The Chicago campaign ended in mid-January 1877, and D.L. and Ira headed straight to Boston to hold the campaign there. As he left Chicago, D.L. was still unsettled as to whether the city would ever be his home again.

In Boston over ninety churches had banded together to support the campaign, and a six-thousand-seat tabernacle had been built for the occasion. On January 28 meetings began in the tabernacle, and as in the other places where D.L. had held campaigns in the United States, people packed the building at every meeting.

A week after starting the Boston campaign, D.L. celebrated his fortieth birthday on February 5, 1877, with a special meeting for young men—anyone under forty! As he celebrated his birthday, D.L. marveled at the course his life had taken so far. Boston was where he had accepted Christ. It was the city he had escaped to from Northfield as a seventeen-year-old. Then he’d had the dream of becoming a wealthy businessman and making something of himself. But God had other ideas for him. Instead of business, evangelism was to be his life’s work, at least so far. Now here he was, back at the place where he had dreamed of going into business, as an evangelist. Instead of escaping from Northfield to Boston, D.L. was very much looking forward to the end of the campaign and escaping back to Northfield.

Chapter 14

Schools

After his return to Northfield, D.L. couldn’t get Boston out of his mind—not the campaign, but his interesting conversations with Henry Fowle Durant. Henry had been a friend and supporter of D.L.’s for many years, and D.L. had stayed with him throughout the Boston campaign. Henry had been a prominent Boston lawyer, but when his only son died, he retired to devote himself to establishing a college for girls at Wellesley, his large estate on the northwestern outskirts of Boston.

D.L. wanted to learn all he could about the school and plied Henry with all sorts of questions. He learned that the college was designed for girls from families with moderate incomes and was intended to give them an education equal to that offered at Harvard University across the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The girls paid $250 a year in fees, which was half of what it cost the college to educate them. The college paid for the other half of the girls’ education. To help defray some of the costs, the girls also shared the daily domestic chores around the college. Henry explained to D.L. that the college was designed not only to educate the girls academically but also to nurture them spiritually in the Christian faith.

Now back in Northfield, D.L. thought a lot about Wellesley and what Henry had told him. He thought about his brother Sam’s dream to start a girls’ high school in Northfield. His time with Henry had opened his eyes to the practical steps involved in doing such a thing. D.L. decided he was going to devote himself to making his brother’s dream a reality. However, it would take time and money, and right then D.L. did not have much of either.

After a break in Northfield, D.L. and Ira again hit the campaign trail. For the rest of that year and well into 1878, they traveled around New England, holding meetings in the towns and cities throughout the region. While D.L. was away, his mind was never far from the idea of founding a girls’ high school in Northfield.

When he returned to Northfield in the early summer of 1878, he threw his effort into establishing the new school. The school would be for young women of humble means who would otherwise never get a Christian education. D.L. wrote to Henry explaining what he wanted to do, and Henry promptly sent H. F. N. Marshall to assist D.L. in creating the framework for the new school.

The next question was where to site the school. Next to D.L.’s property was a sixteen-acre parcel of land owned by the local tinsmith. The property was overgrown and the farmhouse tumbled down. D.L. quietly approached the tinsmith and asked him whether he would sell the land. The man agreed to sell it for $2,500. Mr. Marshall bought up more land adjacent to the tinsmith’s property until they had one hundred acres on which to build the school. Plans were then drawn up.

At the end of summer, as the planning continued, D.L. learned some startling news—Emma was pregnant again. Their last child, Willie, was going on ten years old. Paul Dwight Moody was born on April 11, 1879, and once again D.L. was a proud father.

Four months later, on August 21, D.L. laid the cornerstone for Recitation Hall, the first building for the new school, on the site of the tinsmith’s demolished house. For the occasion, D.L. used one of his father’s old working trowels to spread the mortar. He wondered what his father would have thought of his son now.

D.L. stressed that the new school, called the Northfield Seminary for Girls, would be based on three important principles. First, the Bible would be a vital part of the curriculum. Second, every girl enrolled would share the domestic duties involved in running the school. And third, the cost of tuition would be low. D.L. set yearly fees at $100, which, following Henry Durant’s example at Wellesley, was half the cost of educating each girl. The school would pay the other half of the cost. Following Henry’s advice, D.L. appointed Harriet Tuttle, a young woman from Wellesley, as the school’s first principal.

As fall rolled around, D.L. left Northfield with Ira to spend the winter and spring holding campaign meetings in several cities. In D.L.’s absence, Mr. Marshall oversaw the establishing of the girls’ school, and D.L.’s older brother George managed the school property. Of course, while he was away, D.L. corresponded constantly with both men to make sure everything was on track.

On November 3 the first students arrived at the school. Because the new dormitory had not yet been built, the barn on D.L.’s property was turned into a makeshift dormitory.

When D.L. returned in the spring from his preaching campaign, one hundred girls were enrolled in the school. The new dormitory was finished late in the summer, and a formal opening ceremony was held at the start of the new school year. At the ceremony D.L. told the girls, “My lack of education has always been a great disadvantage to me. I shall suffer from it as long as I live. I hope after all of us who are here today are dead and gone this school may live and be a blessing to the world and that missionaries may go out from here and preach the gospel to the heathen, and it may be recognized as a power in bringing souls to Christ.”

In typical fashion, while he was away preaching around the country over the next winter and spring, D.L. began to dream about what he could do with the girls’ dormitory during the summer months while school was out. He was preaching in a church in Cleveland, Ohio, when the answer came to him like a thunderbolt. He would hold a prayer conference in Northfield. His enthusiasm carried the project along, and by the end of August everything was arranged. The conference ran from September 1 through September 10, 1880. Participants were encouraged to pray and seek God’s will for their lives rather than be entertained. D.L. was not sure how many people would find such a conference appealing, but in the end over three hundred people poured into Northfield. They came from thirty-seven states as well as England and Canada. D.L. had a huge tent pitched on a hill in which to hold the event, and every bed in the dormitory was filled. Every spare bed in Northfield was also rented out.

The prayer conference was more than D.L. could have hoped for, and on the last day of the event he made an announcement: during the prayer times at the conference, D.L. began to feel that God was directing him to open a school for boys.

The following morning a donor generously gave $25,000 toward establishing the school for boys. D.L. wasted no time getting started on the project. Within days he had purchased 275 acres of farmland five miles away on the other side of the Connecticut River for the new school, which was to be called Mount Hermon. H. F. N. Marshall returned to Northfield to oversee the building of the new school.

By this time it was clear to D.L. that Northfield, not Chicago, was where God wanted him. D.L. was happy with the new direction. The Chicago Avenue Church was in the hands of a mature group of elders and overseen by capable pastors. D.L. kept in contact with the church and its members through the long letters he regularly wrote to them. Since Northfield was D.L.’s new home base, Ira also bought a house there and supported the development of the schools.

While the boys’ school was being established, D.L., Emma, and little Paul headed west, all the way to California. D.L. held campaigns up and down the West Coast and helped raise $82,000 to build a YMCA facility in San Francisco. The family was gone all winter. When D.L. returned in the spring, progress on the Mount Hermon School was heartening. The north farmhouse had been enlarged to accommodate thirteen boys, and a matron was appointed to oversee the school. Classes began May 1, 1881.

D.L. was thrilled that Northfield now had two schools. He only wished his brother Sam could have been there to see them. Sam’s dream had become a reality.

With the schools now up and running, it was time for D.L. to respond to the stream of invitations to return to the British Isles. On September 22, 1881, D.L. and Emma; their daughter Emma, now nearly seventeen; her cousin Fanny Holton; twelve-year-old Willie; and two-year-old Paul set out for England. Accompanying them were Ira and Fanny Sankey. The Moody/Sankey evangelism team was back in action.

The ship docked in Liverpool. When D.L. disembarked, customs officers and dock workers shook his hand and told him how glad they were that he was back in England. The same thing happened with the workers at the railway station as they caught the train to Newcastle. It seemed people all over England were glad to see D.L. and Ira back among them.

The duo began their time in the British Isles with a campaign in Newcastle, and then they moved on to Edinburgh for six weeks. Many things had changed in the six years since their previous visit. Following the example D.L. had set, many churches now held regular winter evangelism campaigns, which lessened the novelty of the two American evangelists. As a result, the crowds that attended their meetings were not as large as before. That was fine with D.L. It meant that many of their meetings could be held in large churches instead of massive halls. D.L. was happy to labor in churches in the poorest, most desperate towns, bringing the gospel to those he felt needed it most. However, when D.L. and Ira returned to Glasgow, Scotland, the crowd that turned out to welcome them was so big that it blocked the streets of the city for hours. And as it had before, Glasgow responded warmly to D.L. and the message he preached, so much so that D.L. spent five months there preaching in churches throughout the city.

While in Scotland, D.L. received a letter from Kynaston Studd, the son of Edward Studd, who had provided most of the money to buy Elisha Alexander’s property back in Northfield. Kynaston had signed the letter as president of the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union and was inviting D.L. to come to Cambridge to preach. Letters from clergymen and university dons in the city endorsing the invitation accompanied Kynaston’s letter. D.L. accepted the invitation and arranged to be in Cambridge in early November 1882.

As November approached, D.L. was a little nervous about the upcoming campaign. He was a man with little formal education headed off to preach to a group of university students and professors from wealthy and privileged English families. He prayed fervently for the meeting in Cambridge, but at the first meeting on Sunday, November 5, 1882, he wondered whether his prayers had fallen on deaf ears.

The meeting was held in the large hall at the Corn Exchange, which D.L. regarded as a rather ugly building with poor acoustics. Seventeen hundred undergraduates dressed in caps and gowns filed into the building for the meeting, and from the start they were an unruly group. They heckled the choir, and when D.L. and Ira came to the platform, they heckled them.

As the meeting proper got under way, the students listened quietly as Ira sang the first verse of “The Ninety and Nine.” Then they began to get rowdy, calling out “encore, encore” after each verse. D.L. could see that Ira was beginning to get flustered by the students’ actions.

When D.L. got up to preach, he, too, began to feel sickened. Students heckled and interrupted his preaching. D.L. fixed his gaze on a young man in the front row who seemed to be one of the ringleaders of the students’ bad behavior in the hall, but it appeared to have little effect on the man. To make matters worse, November 5 was Guy Fawkes Day in England, a day that was celebrated with bonfires and fireworks. As the meeting progressed, students outside began to throw exploding fireworks at the windows of the Corn Exchange. D.L. could not think of a more disruptive crowd he had ever preached to. Despite his frustration, he remained calm and finished his sermon.

After the disruptive service, D.L. and Ira returned to their room at a lodging house. The next morning D.L. heard a knock on the door. When he opened the door, a bellboy handed him a card and said, “Mr. Gerald Lander. Trinity College. He wishes a word with you, sir.”

“Show him up,” D.L. said.

Moments later Gerald Lander was standing at the door. D.L. immediately recognized him as the disruptive ringleader in the front row at the meeting the night before.

“I have come to apologize, sir,” he said to D.L. “I’ve also brought a letter of apology from the men.”

“Come in. Sit down,” D.L. said, reaching out to shake Gerald’s hand. He could tell the young man was uncomfortable.

The two men sat in armchairs facing each other. “I appreciate your apology, Mr. Lander,” D.L. said. “I wonder, as proof of the sincerity of your apology, would you attend the night meetings we are holding in the gymnasium at Market Passage this week? They are especially for Cambridge students. Why, you can bring your student friends too.”

D.L. watched as Gerald squirmed in his chair. “Well…ah…Mr. Moody…I am rather busy with…ah…study at the moment,” the young man sputtered uncomfortably.

“Nonsense,” D.L. said. “I’m sure you can spare two hours. And bring your friends.”

“As I…ah…said, Mr. Moody, I…ah…really don’t think I can. But thank you for inviting me. If you will excuse me, I must be going now.” With that Gerald stood to leave.

“Thank you again for the apology, Mr. Lander. Do try to make it to the meetings,” D.L. said as he shook the young man’s hand again.

As Gerald bolted from the room, D.L. let out a chuckle. The young man wasn’t quite as bold when confronted face-to-face.

Rain poured down that night as D.L. headed to the gymnasium at Market Passage near Great St. Mary’s Church. The gym had been set up with enough seating for five hundred students, but as D.L. entered, barely one hundred students had gathered for the meeting. Among them was Gerald Lander. Despite the small group, Ira sang and D.L. preached, and the audience remained attentive throughout the evening.

The next day D.L. called together 150 mothers from Cambridge and asked them to pray for the individual students as though they were their own children.

That night when D.L. arrived at the gym at Market Passage, although the place was not packed, it was fuller than the night before. Once again Gerald was in attendance. Ira sang and played his portable organ, and then D.L. preached. As on the night before, no one in the gym was rude or disruptive. Each of the students was well behaved and courteous. At the end of his sermon, D.L. decided to make a call for those who wanted to accept Christ to stand and walk up to the inquiry room.

The gallery of the gymnasium was also the fencing room, which was reached by walking up a noisy iron staircase in the middle of the room in full view of everyone. It was this gallery that D.L. had designated the inquiry room. As Ira sang, D.L. asked those who were ready to accept Christ to go up the stairs to the gallery. No one moved. Again D.L. made the same appeal, and still no one moved. In fact, he made the appeal four times before one student left his place and bounded up the clanking stairs two at a time. Then another student followed, and another, and soon a rush of students made their way up the stairs to the gallery inquiry room to accept Christ. In all, fifty-two young men had made their way upstairs. Among them was Gerald Lander.

The following night, and the night after that, more students, some of them Cambridge’s best and brightest, made their way up the noisy iron staircase.

Sunday, November 12, 1882, was the final meeting of the Cambridge campaign held in the Corn Exchange. D.L. marveled at what a difference a week and fervent prayer had made. More than two thousand Cambridge students were seated in the hall, and not one of them was rude or disruptive. They listened reverently and attentively, both when Ira sang and when D.L. preached from the Gospel of Luke. At the end of his sermon D.L. said to the crowd, “One last word. I shall never forget this week, though you may forget me. I thank God I came to Cambridge.”

At the close of the meeting as the choir sang, “Just as I am, without one plea,” D.L. asked those who had given their lives to Christ over the past week to stand. More than two hundred Cambridge students stood. Some of them, like Gerald Lander, had been disruptive during the meeting the previous Sunday night.

Tears gathered in D.L.’s eyes as he looked out on the young men standing before him. He murmured to himself, “My God, this is enough to live for.”

Chapter 15

A Busy Man

Exhausted and in need of a rest, D.L. departed England in the spring of 1883. He planned to spend the summer in Northfield tending to the needs of his schools. However, he and Ira planned to return to England in the winter for a large campaign centered on London.

On the trip back across the Atlantic Ocean, D.L. suffered the usual bouts of seasickness. As he lay on the bunk in his cabin, he thought about the meetings in Cambridge and an interesting encounter he’d had afterward while preaching in Stratford. While there, Charlie (C. T.) Studd, Kynaston Studd’s younger brother and one of the best cricket players in all of England, had sought D.L. out. C.T. and his two older brothers had all become Christians on the same day, but while his brothers grew in their faith, C.T.’s faith languished. Cricket, rather than God, had become the most important thing in his life. However, when his brother George nearly died, C.T. was shaken to the core. He realized the need to get his life right with God and had traveled to Stratford to do so. He and D.L. had talked, discussed Bible passages, and prayed together, and when C.T. left Stratford to return to Cambridge, he was a different man. D.L. thanked God as he thought about his new friend; the young man had so much zeal and talent. D.L. was sure that C.T. would have a great impact for God wherever he was.

It felt good to be back in Northfield. Both the Northfield Seminary for Girls and the Mount Hermon School were progressing well. New housing had gone up for the boys at Mount Hermon in D.L.’s absence, and D.L. had arranged for twelve boys from Manchester, England, to attend the school. At the girls’ school, Harriet Tuttle had left the position of principal, and in her place D.L. appointed Evelyn Hall, another woman from Wellesley, as principal.

The Moodys and Sankeys set out for London in early November 1883 for an eight-month campaign. D.L. longed to reach even more of London’s destitute people, but the poorest areas had no buildings large enough to hold campaign meetings. Therefore, D.L. and his organizing committee in London had come up with an ingenious plan: Tin Tabernacles.

Tin Tabernacles were large buildings made from wooden posts and beams, with corrugated iron sheets covering the outer walls. Each tabernacle could seat about six thousand people. The tabernacle buildings were made to be portable. Each sheet of iron and piece of wood was numbered so that the building could easily be taken down and reassembled somewhere else. The first Tin Tabernacle was set up on open ground in Islington, where D.L. commenced his campaign, once again to packed crowds. While D.L. was holding campaign meetings in Islington, the second Tin Tabernacle was being erected in the working-class area of Wadsworth. It took about three weeks to tear a Tin Tabernacle down, move it to the next location, and reassemble it. When D.L. moved on to Wadsworth, the Islington Tin Tabernacle was torn down and reassembled in the East End. In this way, over eight months, D.L. preached in the Tin Tabernacles at eleven different sites around London.

On one occasion a local atheist club challenged D.L. to preach to them. To their surprise, he took them up on the offer. He set aside several of the front rows at one of the meetings and offered them to the atheists, who gladly filled the seats. Throughout his sermon D.L. was aware of the atheist men staring at him blankly, and he wondered whether any of what he was saying was getting through to them. He got his answer at the end of the meeting when several of the atheist men stood to receive Christ. D.L. could tell that they did so, much to the consternation of their fellow atheist club members.

A short while after the meeting, the president of the atheist club invited D.L. to his home for tea. D.L. smiled as he walked down the street to the man’s house. People had gathered outside every house, scarcely believing that D.L. was going to have tea with a notorious atheist. The president of the club shook D.L.’s hand and invited him into the house. As they drank tea together and conversed, D.L. said to the man, “If I lived here, I should not try by argument to win you over, but I should try by kindness to win your affection and make you respect me.”

The president of the atheist club looked directly at D.L. and replied, “You have done that already.”

By the time D.L. and Ira left London to return to the United States, the Pall Mall Gazette estimated that D.L. had preached to over two million residents of London.

Back in Northfield, D.L. took a well-earned rest, though he always managed to find something to do. He particularly enjoyed visiting and encouraging the students at the two schools that he had established in Northfield. Then, with the approach of winter 1884, D.L. and Ira set out again. This time they focused on preaching the gospel in smaller cities around the United States. Usually they would spend three days in a town, and D.L. would preach in meetings three times a day.

While he was away on this campaign, D.L. continued to hear news of stirrings at Cambridge University. C. T. Studd seemed to be the leader. He had become an enthusiastic evangelist, proclaiming the gospel to his fellow students and cricket players. As a result, many students had given their lives to Christ. C.T. and six other students from Cambridge had committed themselves to go to China as missionaries. This had created quite a stir in England. These were not ordinary men going to be missionaries. They were young men of wealth, privilege, and sports ability. D.L. read with interest about a meeting the Cambridge Seven, as the group was called, had held in London the night before they set sail for China on February 4, 1885. Many people had been challenged with the call to missionary service as a result of the meeting.

When D.L. arrived back in Northfield, he was already formulating a plan for another summer prayer conference, now with an emphasis on missions. The conference began in August 1885. To D.L.’s delight, a large crowd showed up, including Kynaston Studd and a group of students from Cambridge. On August 11, Arthur Pierson, a noted authority on world missions from Philadelphia, addressed the crowd. He challenged individuals and churches to take up the work of sending and supporting missionaries so that the whole world could be evangelized. At the end of Arthur’s spirited address, D.L. and six men were given the task of drawing up the document “An Appeal to Disciples Everywhere.” Among the men in the group was Kynaston, and they all met in D.L.’s house, which Kynaston’s father had helped D.L. pay for.

After three days the document was ready and read aloud to the conference attendees. “The whole world is now accessible; the last of the hermit nations welcomes missionaries,” the appeal proclaimed. “And yet the Church of God is slow to move in response to the providence of God. Nearly a thousand million of the human race are yet without the gospel; vast districts are wholly unoccupied.” The appeal then called for the immediate occupation and evangelization of every country without the gospel.

“An Appeal to Disciples Everywhere” greatly challenged many of the young men and women present at the conference. It also helped D.L. to focus on the need to recruit and send out missionaries.

As autumn rolled on, D.L. and Ira hit the evangelism campaign trail for the winter and spring, as was now their practice. They picked up where they left off, going to small cities and proclaiming the gospel in each city over a three-day period. D.L. also spoke at Princeton, Yale, and Dartmouth. In meetings on these university campuses, he challenged students not only to give their lives to Christ but also to go as missionaries to other countries that had not yet had the opportunity to hear the gospel. Many students, like those who had been at the summer conference in Northfield, were deeply inspired with a vision of world missions.

During July and August 1886, another conference was held in Northfield. At this conference, which was to focus solely on missions, 250 students from a range of universities showed up. Several students announced their desire to serve as foreign missionaries, and they wanted to encourage another thousand students to volunteer to do the same. To D.L.’s delight, this led to the formation of the Student Volunteer Movement.

On December 31, 1886, D.L. arrived in Chicago to begin a four-month campaign in the city. No special hall was built for this campaign as in previous times. Instead, large meetings were held in roller-skating rinks that could seat several thousand people. Most of the time, however, D.L. used a different strategy, going from church to church throughout the city and holding smaller, more intimate meetings. Whether in large meetings or small, D.L. found that those who attended were spiritually hungry and ready to respond to his message.

As the campaign in Chicago proceeded, D.L. met with his old friend John Farwell and several other men in the city who formed the Chicago Evangelization Society. The aim of the society was twofold: to continue systematic evangelization of the city, and to provide Bible training for those involved.

The men decided that the best way to maintain the evangelistic momentum D.L. had built up in the city was to purchase a large tent. This gospel tent was eighty feet in diameter and could be pitched in various locations around the city. It would be manned around the clock by groups of assistants who would hold evangelism meetings in the tent and would be available for counsel any time of the day or night. The first location for the gospel tent was a notorious area of the city known as “Little Hell.” In the winter, when the biting Chicago weather made the tent impractical, the meetings would be held in churches.

After he returned to Northfield, D.L. continued to receive good reports about the work of the Chicago Evangelization Society. Not only were many people coming to Christ as a result of the gospel tent, but the volunteers who manned the tent were also getting thorough Bible training from talented pastors and teachers in what were being called Bible institutes.

In May 1889 D.L. was back in Chicago to speak at a conference. He also taught at one of the Chicago Evangelization Society’s Bible institutes that was now being held in the Chicago Avenue Church. D.L. had expected to find perhaps thirty people at the Bible institute, but when he arrived at the church, two hundred young people were eagerly awaiting his presentation. Immediately D.L. could see the need for a more established Bible institute in the city. Once again he approached his old friends for support, and the Chicago Bible Institute was formed.

Land and buildings next door to the Chicago Avenue Church were quickly purchased for the new institute. The existing buildings were fitted out as dormitories, and a three-story brick building was erected to provide classrooms and study rooms. The Chicago Bible Institute formally opened on September 26, 1889. The Reverend Reuben Archer (R. A.) Torrey was appointed superintendent of the new Bible institute. He was a graduate of Yale University and Seminary and was a practical Bible teacher. D.L. left Chicago confident that the new Chicago Bible Institute was in the hands of a very competent leader.

During the summer conference at Northfield in 1891, D.L. was presented with a very distinctive invitation to again visit Scotland. The invitation came in the form of a long scroll containing twenty-five hundred signatures, representing fifty Scottish cities and towns and all the churches in Scotland. D.L. was unsure when he could make a return visit to Scotland, since at that time he was planning a trip to India with his family and Ira.

The group set out for India in early November, but by the time they reached London, D.L. was not feeling particularly well. While in London, he consulted a doctor, who, along with a number of British friends, dissuaded him from going on to India. Because of the heat and disease in India, the doctor feared that D.L. might have a stroke. As it was, the doctor noted an irregularity in the function of D.L.’s heart and recommended that he see a specialist. Following the doctor’s advice, D.L. visited Sir Andrew Clarke, one of England’s foremost authorities on the heart. Sir Andrew confirmed the first doctor’s diagnosis and suggested that D.L. take things a little easier. When he inquired as to how many times D.L. preached, D.L. replied that he usually preached three times a day, five days a week, and four times on Sunday. Sir Andrew was flabbergasted at D.L.’s workload and suggested that he cut back significantly. “I take Saturday to rest,” was D.L.’s reply.

Since it was unwise for him to go on to India, and now that he was back in the British Isles, D.L. decided to take up the invitation to visit Scotland. He conferred with surprised clergymen in Edinburgh, and on November 23, 1891, he and Ira set out on a tour through Scotland, preaching and singing wherever they went. Despite being told of a heart condition and that he should slow down, D.L. set a furious pace. In ninety days in Scotland he and Ira visited and preached in ninety-nine places.

By the time the tour of Scotland was over, D.L. was ready for a rest, and what better place to rest than the Holy Land? D.L.’s Scottish friends, the McKinnons, invited D.L. and his family to join them on a tour of Palestine. The Moodys traveled overland across Europe to Rome, where they joined the McKinnons. From Rome they took a steamer to Egypt and then traveled on by train to Palestine.

From the start, D.L. enjoyed everything about the Holy Land. He was amazed while walking the streets of Jerusalem, which for so many years he had read about in his Bible. D.L.’s favorite places, though, were the small village of Bethany and the Mount of Olives, to which he returned repeatedly. Perhaps D.L.’s most moving experience in the Holy Land occurred on Easter Sunday, when he preached to a crowd of about three hundred people at Calvary. The experience was deeply emotional, and afterward D.L. thought that he had preached better that day than he had in thirty years.

Following the three-week vacation in the Holy Land, the Moodys returned to the British Isles, where D.L. and Ira picked up their evangelistic campaign again. They traveled around England, holding meetings, and then returned again to Scotland. They also crossed the Irish Sea and held meetings in Dublin and Belfast.

Meanwhile, Emma and young Paul returned to the United States ahead of D.L., leaving Will, now twenty-three years old, to travel home with his father. Will and D.L. set sail from Southampton bound for New York aboard the steamer SS Spree. The journey did not go well. As usual, D.L. suffered from seasickness, but two days into the journey the propeller shaft on the Spree broke, damaging the hull and causing water to flood the aft compartments of the vessel. The ship lay low in the water and was pounded by heavy seas. For a while it was unclear whether or not the vessel would sink, but by using pumps and closing watertight compartments, the captain and crew were able to keep the ship afloat. But the ship was adrift in the cold North Atlantic Ocean and slowly moving away from shipping lanes. The crew regularly fired flares, and after being adrift for three days, the Lake Huron, bound from Montreal to Liverpool, sighted one of the flares and came to the Spree’s rescue. The Lake Huron towed the Spree one thousand miles back across the Atlantic to Queenstown, Ireland.

D.L. was grateful when he once again felt dry land under his feet. In Queenstown D.L. and Will transferred to another ship, the Etruria, for the trip to New York. To D.L.’s great surprise, the experience of nearly sinking on the Spree had cured him of seasickness. He enjoyed the trip back to New York like no other sea voyage he had ever taken, although he was glad to be back in the United States when the Etruria docked in New York. He had quite a tale to tell everyone when he finally arrived in Northfield.

D.L. had no time to slow down. The World’s Colombian Exhibition was to be held in Chicago in five months. To coincide with it, D.L. was planning a large evangelism campaign. To help him prepare for the campaign, D.L. persuaded Percy Fitt, who was training to be a lawyer in Dublin, to give up a year of his university studies and come to the United States to be his personal assistant. When Percy arrived, D.L. kept him busy.

The World’s Colombian Exhibition would bring tens of thousands of people from all over the world to Chicago, and D.L. wanted to preach the gospel to as many of them as possible. He also wanted to reach out to the rest of Chicago. The plan called for public evangelism meetings to be held throughout the city, and many churches and missions in Chicago cooperated closely to make this happen.

When D.L. arrived in Chicago for the campaign, he was amazed by the exhibition complex, or the “White City,” as it was being called. The White City rose beside Lake Michigan on the site near the location of Camp Douglas during the Civil War. The site had changed much from the boggy camp D.L. had come to daily to minister to the troops. But D.L. wasn’t in Chicago to sightsee. He had come to evangelize, and evangelize he did. Day after day he moved around Chicago, preaching in various halls and tents, to which people flocked.

One of the more interesting places where D.L. preached during this time was in Forepaugh’s Circus tent. The tent could seat ten thousand people and was set up on the lakefront. The circus owner agreed to let D.L. rent the tent for Sunday morning meetings since the circus used it for shows in the afternoon and evening. Soon the circus manager had hung a huge banner on the front of the tent. The banner read, “Ha! Ha! Ha! Three Big Shows! Moody in the Morning! Forepaugh in the Afternoon and Evening!”

With the sound of circus animals in the background and with clowns and other circus performers and personnel darting around, D.L. preached to capacity crowds each Sunday morning.

When the World’s Colombian Exhibition wrapped up six months later, D.L. estimated that the message of the gospel had been preached to millions of people, and thousands had given their lives to Christ. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, he had preached multiple times every day except two, and on those two days he had been out of town preaching elsewhere. D.L. was ready to head to Northfield for a rest.

The World’s Colombian Exhibition did produce one very unexpected consequence—two new family members.

Chapter 16

Grandfather

Following the campaign during the World’s Colombian Exhibition, Percy Fitt did not return to his law studies in Dublin. Instead, he stayed on in the United States to marry D.L.’s daughter, Emma Moody. The two had fallen in love during the campaign and were married on May 16, 1894. The marriage ceremony was held in the Northfield church, decked with boughs of apple blossoms. D.L. was delighted to welcome the earnest young Irishman into his family. Percy and Emma’s marriage was followed three months later by a second wedding when Will Moody married May Whittle, the daughter of an old friend and supporter of D.L.’s.

Now that their two oldest children were married, D.L. and Emma looked forward to grandchildren.

Meanwhile, D.L. had plenty to keep him busy. In the fall of 1894 he headed to the West Coast to preach. While there, he decided to give away some Christian books. He called on a local bookstore, but it did not have a single Christian title in stock. When D.L. asked why this was, the bookstore owner told him that people did not buy religious books because they were too expensive. D.L. took that as a challenge. “The price must come down!” he declared.

As he thought about the situation, D.L. realized that the only way the price could be reduced was if Christian books were printed in large print runs. In conjunction with the Chicago Bible Institute, he organized the Colportage Association. D.L. was very selective about which books were mass-produced by the association. The books had to be written by well-known Christians, be strictly nondenominational, and be presented in a popular, readable style. Each physical book had to be well crafted and able to stand up to being handled and read many times. The books that were produced became wildly popular. Soon they spread around the world, and D.L. was obliged to print editions in German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish, Polish, Dutch, and French.

In 1895 two grandchildren were born. Irene was the daughter of Will and May; and Emma IV, the daughter of Emma and Percy. D.L. loved both of his new granddaughters and especially enjoyed taking them for buggy rides through Northfield. He was a very proud grandfather.

Not long after the birth of D.L.’s granddaughters, D.L.’s mother died in February 1896. Betsy Moody had lived to be ninety years old. Although D.L. was sad at his mother’s passing, he thanked God for her strength and courage in bringing up nine children alone. D.L. spoke at Betsy’s funeral, saying, “Friends, it is not a time of mourning. I want you to understand we do not mourn. We are proud that we had such a mother. We have a wonderful legacy left us. What more can I say? You have lived with her, and you know about her. I want to give you one verse, her creed. It was very short.…When everything went against her, this was her stay: ‘My trust is in God.’”

Dwight Moody Jr. was born on November 7, 1897. He was Will and May’s second child, and D.L. was delighted to have a grandson and a namesake. Sadly, a year later, little Dwight died suddenly. D.L. and Emma were in California when they heard the news. D.L. wrote back to his grieving son and daughter-in-law: “I cannot think of him [Dwight] as belonging to earth. The more I think of him, the more I think he was only sent to us to draw us all closer to each other and up to the world of light and joy. I could not wish him back, if he could have all [that] earth could give him. And then the thought that the Savior will take such good care of him! No going astray, no sickness, no death. Dear, dear little fellow! I love to think of him, so sweet, so safe, and so lovely!”

D.L. was deeply saddened when Will wrote back to say that little Irene was also unwell and doctors predicted that she might die. When D.L. and Emma arrived back in Northfield, Irene was feeling much better, but it did not last. Irene was diagnosed with tuberculosis and died on August 22, 1899. This was followed by more difficult news: in September D.L.’s mother-in-law, Emma Revell, also died.

Throughout all of this, D.L. continued to preach. In early November 1899 he began a series of meetings in Kansas City at Convention Hall, a huge building used for horse shows that seated fifteen thousand people. The hall was filled to capacity as D.L. preached in it six times a day. However, something was wrong. Although D.L. hated to admit it, his chest was sore and his body grew weak. Sometimes he barely had the energy to stand upright, and walking was an effort for him.

While in Kansas City, D.L. received a telegram that boosted his spirits. He had a new granddaughter, Mary Whittle Moody. D.L. prayed that Mary would ease Will and May’s pain at having lost their first two children. He wrote immediately to his son: “My dear Will, I am full of praise and thanksgiving today and am delighted to think of [you and] May with a daughter. Dear little child, I already feel my heart going out toward her. Kiss the dear baby for me. I do feel as if our prayers have been answered. Thank God for another grandchild.”

D.L. then cut a clipping from the newspaper that contained a photograph of him preaching in Convention Hall. He enclosed the clipping in a letter to his three-year-old granddaughter Emma:

My dear Emma,

I am glad that you have a little cousin. Will you kiss her for me, and will you show her your grandfather’s picture? I do not think she will know me, but you can tell her all about me, so she will know me when she gets older, and we will play together with her. I am going to send her a little kiss, just one little one.

Your grandfather,

D. L. Moody

Within two days of hearing the good news of his granddaughter’s birth, D.L. took a turn for the worse. His chest hurt. A doctor came and applied mustard packs to D.L.’s chest, but the packs did not ease the pain. By the end of the week D.L. agreed that he should go home to Northfield and rest. His assistant and a doctor accompanied him on the long train ride. Along the way D.L. sent telegrams to his wife describing his state of health.

November 17, 1899, Kansas City. Doctors think I need rest. Am on my way home. Have three friends with me. Will wire often.

November 18, Taylorville, Ill. Improving rapidly. Have not felt so well for a week.

November 18, Montpelier, Ohio. Have had a splendid day. No fever. Heart growing better all the time. No pain, I am taking good care of myself, not only for the loved ones, but for the work I think God has for me to do on this earth. If they will keep the wires open (on Sunday) I will wire in the morning.

D.L. arrived in Northfield on the evening of November 19, 1899. He rested awhile before climbing the stairs to his bedroom. D.L. hoped to be up and about the next morning. Meeting his new granddaughter was at the top of his agenda, followed by checking up on the boys’ and girls’ schools, inspecting the barn, and hunting for eggs with little Emma. However, D.L. never again walked down the stairs.

For the next five weeks D.L. lay in bed. Sometimes he felt well enough to write and receive visitors. At other times he was weak and tired. His son Will brought the new baby, Mary, to visit, which cheered D.L. greatly, as did the daily visits from Emma Fitt.

On the morning of December 22, 1899, D.L. began to fade fast. Looking at Emma and reaching for her hand, he said, “You have been a good, dear wife.” Then he looked away. “No pain, no valley! It’s bliss!” he said before lapsing into unconsciousness.

Waking up, D.L. saw his whole family surrounding the bed. “Why are you all here?” he asked.

“We’ve gathered because you are not well,” Will replied.

“I must have been in a trance,” D.L. told them all. “I went to the gates of heaven. Why, it is wonderful, and I saw the children!“

“Father, did you really see them?” Will asked.

“Yes, I saw Irene and Dwight.”

At this, Will broke down in tears. “If only I could go.”

D.L. comforted his son. “Will, you must not cry. Your work is before you.”

But Dwight Lyman Moody’s work was over. A few minutes later he was dead.

On December 26, 1899, five days before the dawn of a new century, D. L. Moody was buried. Following a brief family service at the house, his casket was placed upon a stand and carried by thirty-two Mount Hermon students to the Congregational Church half a mile away. A huge funeral service was held, at which many of D.L.’s prominent friends spoke. The Mount Hermon boys then carried D.L.’s casket up Round Top Hill to D.L.’s final burial place, within view of the house where he had been born sixty-two years before.

As the mourners stood surveying the snowy scene, they recalled D.L.’s words:

Someday you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now. I shall have gone up higher, that is all, out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal; a body that death cannot touch, that sin cannot taint, a body fashioned like unto His glorious body. I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in 1856. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which is born of the Spirit will live forever.

Throughout his life, D. L. Moody would allow no building to be named in honor of him. Following his death, however, the Chicago Avenue Church was renamed Moody Church in his honor, and the Chicago Bible Institute was renamed Moody Bible Institute.

Bibliography

Bailey, Faith Coxe. D. L. Moody: The Greatest Evangelist of the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: Moody Press, 1987.

Bennett, David. D. L. Moody. Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House, 1994.

Daniels, W. H. D. L. Moody and His Work. Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1876.

Fitt, A. P. The Life of D. L. Moody. Chicago: Moody Press, 1976.

Harvey, Bonnie C. D. L. Moody: The American Evangelist. Uhrichsville, Ohio: Barbour, 1997.

Mann, Chester. D. L. Moody: Soul Winner. Emerald House, 1997.

Moody, William R. The Life of D. L. Moody. Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1900.

Pollock, John. Moody without Sankey. N.p.: Christian Focus Publications, 1963.

Powell, Emma Moody Fitt. Heavenly Destiny: The Life Story of Mrs. D. L. Moody. Chicago: Moody Press, 1943.

About the Authors

Janet and Geoff Benge are a husband and wife writing team with more than twenty years of writing experience. Janet is a former elementary school teacher. Geoff holds a degree in history. Originally from New Zealand, the Benges spent ten years serving with Youth With A Mission. They have two daughters, Laura and Shannon, and an adopted son, Lito. They make their home in the Orlando, Florida, area.

Also from Janet and Geoff Benge…

More adventure-filled biographies for ages 10 to 100!

Christian Heroes: Then & Now

Gladys Aylward: The Adventure of a Lifetime

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Nate Saint: On a Wing and a Prayer

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Hudson Taylor: Deep in the Heart of China

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Amy Carmichael: Rescuer of Precious Gems

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Eric Liddell: Something Greater Than Gold

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Corrie ten Boom: Keeper of the Angels’ Den

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William Carey: Obliged to Go

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George Müller: Guardian of Bristol’s Orphans

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Jim Elliot: One Great Purpose

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Mary Slessor: Forward into Calabar

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David Livingstone: Africa’s Trailblazer

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Betty Greene: Wings to Serve

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Adoniram Judson: Bound for Burma

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Cameron Townsend: Good News in Every Language

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Jonathan Goforth: An Open Door in China

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Lottie Moon: Giving Her All for China

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John Williams: Messenger of Peace

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William Booth: Soup, Soap, and Salvation

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Rowland Bingham: Into Africa’s Interior

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Ida Scudder: Healing Bodies, Touching Hearts

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Wilfred Grenfell: Fisher of Men

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Lillian Trasher: The Greatest Wonder in Egypt

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Loren Cunningham: Into All the World

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Florence Young: Mission Accomplished

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Sundar Singh: Footprints Over the Mountains

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C. T. Studd: No Retreat

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Rachel Saint: A Star in the Jungle

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Brother Andrew: God’s Secret Agent

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Clarence Jones: Mr. Radio

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Count Zinzendorf: Firstfruit

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John Wesley: The World His Parish

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C. S. Lewis: Master Storyteller

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David Bussau: Facing the World Head-on

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Jacob DeShazer: Forgive Your Enemies

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Isobel Kuhn: On the Roof of the World

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Elisabeth Elliot: Joyful Surrender

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D. L. Moody: Bringing Souls to Christ

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Paul Brand: Helping Hands

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Another exciting series from Janet and Geoff Benge!

Heroes of History

George Washington Carver: From Slave to Scientist

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Abraham Lincoln: A New Birth of Freedom

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Meriwether Lewis: Off the Edge of the Map

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George Washington: True Patriot

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William Penn: Liberty and Justice for All

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Harriet Tubman: Freedombound

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John Adams: Independence Forever

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Clara Barton: Courage under Fire

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Daniel Boone: Frontiersman

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Theodore Roosevelt: An American Original

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Douglas MacArthur: What Greater Honor

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Benjamin Franklin: Live Wire

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Christopher Columbus: Across the Ocean Sea

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Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Storybook Life

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Orville Wright: The Flyer

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John Smith: A Foothold in the New World

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Thomas Edison: Inspiration and Hard Work

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Alan Shepard: Higher and Faster

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Ronald Reagan: Destiny at His Side

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Also available:

Unit Study Curriculum Guides

Turn a great reading experience into an even greater

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Table of Contents

Who Would Have Guessed?

Northfield

“My Fortune Lies Beyond These Hills”

A New Life in Boston

Chicago

A Growing Sunday School

A Cloud of War

Crazy Moody

England

A Partner

Fire

Ten Thousand Souls

Home

Schools

A Busy Man

Grandfather

Bibliography

About the Authors