On Sunday morning Dwight found himself in a somewhat expectant mood. Well, at least I haven’t had to prepare a message today, he thought. I am tired from my trip. I just hope this Moorhouse fellow isn’t too bad. But I can tolerate him for at least one message!
Emma, with enthusiasm, reassured Dwight. “Mr. Moorhouse backs up everything he says with the Bible. I think you will agree with him when you hear him preach.”
Hearing a strange sound at the service, Dwight realized the people were all carrying Bibles. He had never told them that lay-people should bring Bibles, and it seemed odd to see the people coming in with Bibles and to listen to the flutter of Bible pages as the scripture was announced.
Then the service began and Moorhouse declared his text: “John 3:16: ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.’ ” Instead of dividing the text into three parts in ministerial fashion, Moorhouse went from Genesis to Revelation, proving that God loves the sinner. Before he finished, Dwight noted that “he spoiled two or three of my sermons!”
Dwight’s teaching that God hates the sinner as well as the sin suddenly lay in shambles at his feet. Admitting to a friend later, Dwight said, “I never knew up to that time that God loved us so much. This heart of mine began to thaw out; I could not keep back the tears.”
“I NEVER KNEW UP TO THAT TIME THAT GOD LOVED US SO MUCH.”
Dwight’s young brother-in-law, Fleming Revell, observed Dwight that Sunday and “saw him just drinking in the message that Sunday morning, February 8, 1868. Then Sunday evening, little Harry Moorhouse stood swaying from one foot to another in his seeming awkwardness, but you forgot all about it as you heard the message coming from his lips.” Again, Sunday night, Moor-house used the same text and unfolded from Genesis to Revelation God’s love for man. It was not so much a sermon as a Bible reading, consisting of a string of related texts or passages.
As Moorhouse concluded, Dwight jumped to his feet and announced, “Mr. Moorhouse will speak every night this week. Everybody come. Tell your friends to come!”
So it continued. Night after night as Moorhouse spoke, he reaffirmed the love of God for sinners. One night he haltingly stated, “My friends, for a whole week I have been trying to tell you how much God loves you, but I cannot do it with this poor stammering tongue.”
Gradually, as the truth of Moorhouse’s messages broke in on Dwight, he found himself being transformed into an apostle of love. No more would he preach the wrenchingly bitter and fearful sermons about God’s hatred for man. How could he have so misunderstood God’s Word? From then on, he would do his best to remedy whatever ills he had committed in his sermons.
During the daytime, Moorhouse enjoyed the place of honored guest in the Moody household. His little ways and comic sayings and Lancashire accent enhanced his charm, but more than those, he taught Dwight how to read and study the Bible.
Dwight had always looked on the Bible as a textbook—and as a weapon. German Higher Criticism had scarcely penetrated the theological world of Chicago, much less Dwight’s world, so he was unaware of the critical problems and disputes that went on in some circles over the Bible. To him it was the Word of God, but he regarded it as an armory of well-worn texts on which to peg talks and sermons or to throw at individuals. He was curiously ignorant of much that the Bible taught.
DWIGHT HAD ALWAYS LOOKED ON THE BIBLE AS A TEXTBOOK—AND AS A WEAPON.
Gently, Harry Moorhouse told Dwight that he didn’t know his Bible; he showed him how to treat it as an entity and to trace the unfolding themes of scripture. He helped him see that “it is God’s Word, not our comment upon it, that saves souls.” Above all, Moorhouse warned Dwight that he needed to take in more than he gave out. It wasn’t long before Dwight rose very early in the morning while the rest of the household slept. He lit and trimmed the oil lamp in the study and pored for an hour or more over his big Bible, scribbling notes in the margin.
After Moorhouse left, Fleming Revell recorded in his diary, “D. L. Moody had great power before, but nothing like what he had after dear Harry Moorhouse came into our lives and changed the character of the teaching and preaching in the chapel.”
Almost as a footnote, Dwight said in addressing the Illinois State Sunday School Convention at Du Quoin that same summer of 1868, “Be kind—conquer by love. If a man has his heart full of love and a little common sense, he will succeed.”
The years 1870 and 1871 were ones of major change for Dwight. He had long realized the importance of song in gospel meetings. Although he himself was virtually tone deaf and definitely not a singer, he could be powerfully impressed by a hymn. He saw that singing created a mood of worship and response, especially among the semiliterate poor; however, because of his background, he was suspicious about music such as oratorios and operatic renditions.
Dwight enjoyed conducting the singing during the meetings, using hymn singing as a weapon. “You sing over there!” he would call out. “Now you sing. Now you sing down there. And now everybody sing.” When asked why he did this, Dwight replied earnestly, “They will forget what I say, but if they learn ‘Jesus, Lover of My Soul,’ and will sing it to themselves, they will get it in their mouths at least, and they will get the Gospel along with it!”
For a few years, Dwight had searched off and on for a song leader. Sometimes an older man, Philip Phillips, known as the “Pilgrim Singer,” sang at Dwight’s meetings. Phillips, unfortunately, did not live in Chicago.
Then in the summer of 1869, Dwight met another song leader, Philip Paul Bliss. Bliss was a lovable, cheerful man with beautiful manners and could write hymns that children and semiliterate people learned easily. Through Philip Bliss, Dwight’s sense of the power of singing in gospel work crystallized.
IN THE SUMMER OF 1869, DWIGHT MET PHILIP PAUL BLISS.
Bliss helped Dwight on Sunday evenings when in Chicago, but in July he was lured away to become choirmaster of the First Congregational Church. One outstanding gospel song that Bliss wrote while working with Dwight was “Hold the Fort: I Am Coming,” based on the defense of Altoona during the Civil War’s Atlanta Campaign. Sherman had signaled the message “Hold the Fort” in the presence of the fierce defense. But the message took on Christian connotations and became popular in America and Great Britain.
Later in July, Dwight attended the YMCA International Convention held in Indianapolis. One morning when leading an early prayer meeting, Dwight saw Ira David Sankey, a participant, arrive late and sit near the door. A fastidious, well-groomed man, Sankey had every hair of his handsome, muttonchop whiskers in place. A long-winded man droned on and on in prayer, and the others began to get restless. Sankey’s neighbor, a Presbyterian minister, whispered, “The singing here has been abominable. I wish you would start up something when that man stops praying, if he ever does.”
When the man quit, Sankey started “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” The congregation joined in, and the meeting continued forward.
Afterward, the minister introduced Sankey to Dwight. As was his custom, Dwight sized him up in a second.
“Where are you from? Are you married? What is your business?”
Sankey, taken aback, quickly responded, “New Castle, Pennsylvania. I am married, two children. In government service, revenue.”
Dwight shot back, “You will have to give that up.”
Sankey could scarcely believe his ears. He stood amazed and at a loss to understand why this man told him he would have to give up a good position.
“What for?” gasped Sankey.
“To come to Chicago to help me in my work.”
Over Sankey’s protest that he could not leave his business, Dwight insisted: “You must. I have been looking for you the last eight years.”
“I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU THE LAST EIGHT YEARS.”
Sankey conceded finally to pray with Dwight briefly in the vestry but had no thought of giving up his position. He had just become aware only a day or two earlier while listening to someone else of the tremendous power in a simple gospel hymn when the singer put his whole heart and soul into it. The influence of the hymn had imparted to Sankey a great desire to use his own voice in a similar manner. He had not expected his desire to be fulfilled so quickly.
The following afternoon he received an urgent note requiring him to come to a street corner. As factory crowds left for home, Dwight told Sankey to get on a soapbox, a comedown of sorts for this handsome young man. Commanded to sing, Sankey proceeded, and a crowd gathered. As Dwight began to talk, more and more people came to hear him. Twenty-five minutes later, Dwight told the people they would continue in the Opera House rented by the YMCA International Convention. Sankey and his friends led the way singing “Shall We Gather at the River?”
Sankey left Indianapolis completely unsettled about the matter of joining Moody. In a tumult, he prayed, recalling later: “I presume I prayed one way, and he prayed another.” It took just six months for Dwight to pray Sankey out of business!
Sankey had been born in Edinburg, Pennsylvania, on August 28, 1840. He had lived most of his life in a neighboring area, New Castle, and belonged to the Methodist Church.
He served briefly in the Civil War, and it was said that he owed his life to his voice. On sentry duty one night, he began to sing a favorite hymn when a Confederate sniper got him in his sights; the sniper was so moved by the singing that he lowered his rifle.
Consenting to a trial week with Dwight in 1871, Sankey resigned his job with the Civil Service. His wife agreed, despite never having lived so far from New Castle. So Sankey and Moody joined forces, but local buffs were not impressed. John Hitch-cock called Sankey “a comparatively obscure man whose presence amongst us is not regarded in musical circles as a great acquisition to their forces.” Time would prove him to be wrong.
The Moody whom Sankey joined was a man facing a dilemma. He stood at a crossroads in his life as postwar America vacillated between greed in the North and resentment in the South. The country had not yet come together in renewed unity following the war.
Of course, Dwight’s energies remained undiminished and his zeal for men’s souls unsurpassed, but he was uncertain about remaining in Chicago with the mission school, the church, and his other activities and commitments. And his popularity and demand as a speaker continued unabated.
In the summer of 1868, because of his success in Chicago’s slums, a national convention held at the Marble Church in New York City extended an invitation to him. Some people objected to Dwight’s name being on the roster with well-known preachers like Dr. John Hall and Henry Ward Beecher, but his address was well received. Someone at the meeting observed that Dwight “claimed attention at once, and I believe you could have heard a pin drop all through that hour. It seemed to me that he just grew larger and larger. Mr. Moody was a revelation to us on ‘how to reach the masses.’ ”
Then there was the political maneuvering…when certain individuals wanted Dwight to run for Congress, for governor, and even for president! Dwight’s response to all these ideas remained, “I have got a higher service than that!”
CERTAIN INDIVIDUALS WANTED DWIGHT TO RUN FOR CONGRESS, FOR GOVERNOR, AND EVEN FOR PRESIDENT!
But where did God want him to be? He enjoyed his home, and while he had considered being an itinerant evangelist, he couldn’t bear the thought of being gone so much of the time. He thrived on quick trips to this city or that for evangelistic-type forays but always looked forward to coming back home. Once little William Revell Moody put in his appearance on March 25, 1869, Dwight had even more reason not to stray too far from home.
Always uppermost in Dwight’s mind was the plight of Chicago’s poor. On New Year’s Day, John Hitchcock accompanied Dwight and the church officers as they called on two hundred families. Hitchcock remembered the day’s hectic pace: “On reaching a family belonging to his congregation, he would spring out of the bus, lead up the stairways, rush into the room, and pay his respects: ‘You know me: I am Moody; this is Deacon De Golyer, this is Deacon Thane, this is Brother Hitchcock. Are you all well? Do you all come to church and Sunday school? Have you all the coal you need for the winter? Let us pray.’ And down we would go upon our knees, while Mr. Moody offered from fifteen to twenty words of earnest, tender sympathetic supplication that God would bless the man, his wife, and each of the children. Then, springing to his feet, he would dash on his hat, dart through the doorway and down the stairs throwing a hearty ‘good-bye’ behind him, leap into the bus, and off to the next place on his list; the entire exercise occupying about one minute and a half.”
Hitchcock continues: “Before long the horses were tired out, for Moody insisted on their going at a run, so the omnibus was abandoned and the party proceeded on foot. One after another his companions became exhausted with running upstairs and downstairs and across the streets and kneeling on bare floors and getting up in a hurry; until the tireless pastor was left to make the last of the two hundred calls alone; after which feat he returned home in the highest spirits, and with no sense of fatigue, to laugh at his exhausted companions for deserting him.”
As usual, ceaseless activity filled Dwight’s days. Activities such as the tract campaign at the YMCA where the men carried over a million tracts to Chicago’s inhabitants gratified him. He also participated in endless fund-raising to keep all the projects going and organized a “Yokefellows” group that would frequent saloons, boardinghouses, and street corners to bring people into Farwell Hall.
He had much detested office work as a result of these projects but tended to put it off. Eventually he was on ten or twelve committees, and the situation finally became critical. Sadly, Dwight realized, “My hands were full. If a man came to talk about his soul I would say: ‘I haven’t time: got a committee to attend.’ ”
Dwight knew his life had gotten much too complicated. His involvement in various activities used to satisfy him, but now he sensed an inner struggle. He knew God was calling him into a higher service, “to go out and preach the Gospel all over the land instead of staying in Chicago. I fought against it.”
HE KNEW GOD WAS CALLING HIM INTO A HIGHER SERVICE.
The tension building within Dwight spilled over into his preaching. He realized that his preaching was no longer as effective. The inner tension, the half-recognized rebellion against God’s will, the tangled objectives, and the utter lack of integration combined to ensure that Dwight’s speaking and preaching were no longer like St. Paul’s, “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.”
God began to intervene in Dwight’s life through two women: Sarah Anne Cooke, an Englishwoman, and her widow friend, Mrs. Hawxhurst.