Returning to Chicago within a short time, Dwight had three thousand dollars to start building a pine tabernacle. Incredibly, the building opened on Christmas Eve as a center of relief and evangelism. Dwight, his assistants, and Sankey slept in the drafty building. They placed boots over cracks to keep out some of the cold.
The whole area around the tabernacle still lay in a heap of rubble, but the tabernacle appeared as a beacon of light to many. Dwight had decided to “do the thing at hand,” so he had dutifully returned to Chicago to rebuild the mission work. But he had determined not to be involved in any more committees!
A young man who visited the tabernacle for the New Year’s Eve Watch Night Service on December 31, 1871, recorded his impression: “Consider the desolation all about. The midnight, the midwinter stillness, the yawning cellars and gaunt walls one had to pass walking southward for 45 minutes before reaching buildings and inhabited houses again. Then below zero, a clear sky, a full moon overhead and absolute quiet,” In the midst of the devastation, the young man came to the tabernacle, almost like a beacon to desperate souls. Filled almost to its 1,400-seat capacity, the tabernacle represented hope.
In January, Dwight traveled to Brooklyn, New York, to hold a series of meetings in a new mission chapel. Afterward, a well-to-do layman, Morris K. Jessup, expressed his appreciation of Dwight: “The more I see of Moody the more I like him. I believe God is making him the instrument of a great work among the people.” Jessup wanted Dwight to come to New York to live and work, but Dwight would have none of it.
Emma and Dwight continued on to Northfield following the New York meetings. On Sunday morning they attended the Trinitarian Congregational Church where the minister asked Dwight to speak.
A young girl, Eva Stebbins Callender, was impressed with the message. She usually became bored with the sermon, but “as soon as Mr. Moody began to talk I found to my surprise that I could understand him and I liked it. He told stories—and it was Sunday too—stories when he knew people could not help but laugh, and then it might be a story when the grownups would cry. He didn’t preach, he only talked using the simplest language, sometimes with a loud voice that denounced wrong doing.” When Dwight pounded his fists on the pulpit cushion, raising a cloud of dust and a tiny feather, everyone struggled to suppress their laughter!
“HE DIDN’T PREACH, HE ONLY TALKED USING THE SIMPLEST LANGUAGE.”
That summer Dwight went by himself to the British Isles. He wanted, as he put it, “to study the English Christians” and to attend conventions and conferences, but primarily he desired to rest. Near Dublin a wealthy Plymouth Brother opened his mansion for a “Believers’ Meeting,” and here Dwight met “Butcher” Henry Varley again. Altogether, some twenty people met to spend a night in prayer. As Dwight left with Varley the next day, Varley let slip a remark that inspired Dwight: “The world has yet to see what God will do with a man fully consecrated to Him.”
As Dwight pondered the phrase, he determined by the grace of God to be that man. Later, as he sat in Spurgeon’s church, he realized for the first time that “it was not Spurgeon who was preaching: it was God. And if God could use Spurgeon, why could He not use me?”
Following this revelation, Dwight received an invitation to preach at Arundel Square near Pentonville Prison, in a lower-middle-class district of London. Visiting during the Sunday morning sermon, Dwight was irritated at the congregation’s indifference. The people seemed to be lifeless and uninterested in anything the minister had to say. Dwight was tempted not to preach that night and wondered what message he could possibly bring in the evening service that would have meaning for them. What could he say that would have an impact on the people’s lives?
But that evening, as Dwight brought the message, the entire atmosphere seemed charged with electricity, and the congregation listened attentively and in quietness. In closing, he urged any who wanted “to have your lives changed by the power of God through faith in Jesus Christ as a personal Savior,” wanted “to become Christians,” to stand so he could pray for them. People stood all over the chapel.
PEOPLE STOOD ALL OVER THE CHAPEL.
Astonished, Dwight thought they had not understood and asked them to sit down. He stated again what becoming a Christian meant and then invited those who wished to do so to depart to an adjoining hall. He watched in amazement as scores of men, women, and older children made their way quietly to the connecting door. A schoolroom had been prepared as an inquiry room by setting out one or two dozen chairs. Many more chairs had to be added to seat the overflow crowd of people who expressed an interest in salvation.
Addressing the crowd, Dwight enlarged on repentance and faith, and again asked the people about becoming Christians. Once more, the whole room stood. In shock, Dwight told them to meet with their minister the following night.
The next morning, he left London, going to another part of England, but on Tuesday he received a telegram urging him to come back to the London church. More people had come to the minister’s meeting on Monday night than had been in the room on Sunday!
Returning to London, Dwight spoke at the Arundel Square Church each night for two weeks. Some fifty-three years later, a Baptist minister, James Sprunt, recalled that the results were staggering: “Four hundred were taken into the membership of that church, and by the grace of God I was one of that number.”
Following this experience, Dwight returned to Chicago, but with several doors left ajar for him to come back to preach in England. He also wanted to return with a singer for any future meetings.
A wide-open door soon appeared in the form of a letter from William Pennefather in England. Mr. Pennefather, an outstanding evangelical Anglican, had heard Dwight preach and “was strongly impressed with the conviction that Mr. Moody was one for whom God had prepared a great work.” In his letter to Dwight he told him “of the wide door open for evangelistic effort in London and elsewhere” and promised to help in whatever ways he could to guarantee the success of the venture.
Oddly, Dwight made no response to the letter. In fact, he had received invitations of a sort from two other individuals in England as well, Henry Bewley and Cuthbert Bainbridge, who had told him they would help with his expenses when he returned to England.
In Chicago, during the winter and spring of 1872–1873, Dwight made it plain that he would not remain with the mission and tabernacle. He had helped rebuild and reestablish the work and felt no more desire to stay.
His heart now lay across the sea. Speaking at a conference held in Chicago’s Second Presbyterian Church in the spring of 1873, Dwight said he wanted to dream great things for God—“To get back to Great Britain and win ten thousand souls!” When his elderly “Auntie” Cooke asked him, “Are you going to preach to the miserable poor?” Dwight responded, “Yes, and to the miserable rich, too!”
HIS HEART NOW LAY ACROSS THE SEA.
Although Dwight had not answered Pennefather’s letter or responded to Bewley and Bainbridge, he thought an evangelistic tour was being organized for him, so he made plans to leave for England.
In the meantime, a letter came from a young chemist in the city of York, George Bennett, founder-secretary of the local YMCA. He and Dwight had met earlier, and he invited Dwight to speak at York. But Dwight failed to answer Bennett.
Even so, he continued to prepare for an evangelistic tour in England—one he thought was being organized for him. He tried to find a singer to accompany him, and unable to get Phillips or Bliss, finally settled on Sankey, who was considered an amateur compared to the others.
No more letters came from England except another one from George Bennett in York. Dwight responded to the letter indirectly through Morgan and Scott, religious publishers in London. Dwight’s response was quite vague, stating he had “thought of coming,” and since Bennett seemed earnest about having him preach, he might begin his tour at York.
With so little actual preparation, Dwight booked steamship passage for himself, Emma, their two children, and for Sankey and his wife on June 7, 1873. Farwell brought a gift of five hundred dollars; Dwight kept just fifty dollars, believing all his expenses would be paid!
The families managed to get to New York on the fifty dollars, but then Dwight had to wire Farwell to send the rest of the money.
At least while in New York, Dwight had notified Harry Moor-house of his plans, so the small Englishman met the Moodys and Sankeys in Liverpool. He came on board ship and told them that Pennefather and Bainbridge had both died recently, and Henry Bewley must have forgotten his commitment to Dwight.
The families were stranded three thousand miles from home. Dwight looked at Sankey and observed, “God seems to have closed the doors. We’ll not open any ourselves. If He opens the door we’ll go in. If He don’t we’ll return to America.”
As the Moodys and Sankeys talked and prayed about what to do, Dwight fired off a telegram to George Bennett in York. It read: MOODY HERE ARE YOU READY FOR HIM? Upon receiving the telegram, a shocked Mr. Bennett tried to decide what to do.
MOODY HERE ARE YOU READY FOR HIM?