During their stay at Northfield, Dwight and Sankey made plans for their future campaigns. Dwight desired to reach America for Christ—but would America receive him and his message? “Water runs downhill and the highest hills are the great cities,” said Dwight. “If we can stir them we shall stir the whole country.”
Others also wondered if the evangelistic team would be effective in their own land. Many of the New York newspapers expressed skepticism, and the famous Brooklyn preacher DeWitt Talmage had wondered whether his weekly journal should support or discourage the meetings.
America needed a religious awakening. The wounds created by the Civil War a mere decade past had not totally healed. In the North, an obsession with money prevailed, while in the South, reconstruction had failed and people struggled in the midst of poor living conditions. Numerous immigrants had also altered the texture of the nation. And most Americans, whether newcomers or those with deep roots, looked to some technological utopia to cast aside old moralities.
AMERICA NEEDED A RELIGIOUS AWAKENING.
Dwight had reluctantly decided not to start in Chicago because he was afraid the ministers would not come together and support him. Instead, he chose Brooklyn as his jumping-off place, much to the chagrin of numerous pessimists. His detractors were bewildered when an overflow crowd of between twelve and twenty thousand people pressed into and around the rink on Clermont Avenue to hear him.
Streetcar companies had laid extra tracks to the building, and at the close of the service thousands had to walk to their homes because of the many extra passengers on the cars. Dwight wrote Farwell in Chicago, “Pray daily for me. I never needed the help of my friends as much as now.”
Some of these detractors soon had to admit that Dwight had held some of the largest assemblies in America in rapt attention. Of course Dwight realized that some people came out of curiosity, but the Lord could still reach them. After a month’s duration, when the Brooklyn meetings closed, Dwight’s heart was heavy because of vast numbers of still unreached, unchurched people living there. But the Brooklyn meetings launched him with a bang that proved that clergy would unite “zealously and harmoniously and intelligently to carry on the work.”
Dwight and Sankey went from Brooklyn to Philadelphia in November 1875. Great preparation had taken place for the mission, and John Wanamaker, a good friend of Dwight’s, had bought the old freight depot of the Pennsylvania Railroad, completely refitting it and offering it rent free for the campaign.
One hundred eighty ministers of every denomination had signed the invitation for Dwight to come and worked diligently to make the campaign a success. A Philadelphian who attended wrote an English friend about the meetings, telling him, “The doors open about 1 ½ hours before the time and it takes about 10 minutes to fill with at least 12,000 persons. It is wonderful.”
Every Friday Dwight held special meetings for alcoholics. He also had women’s meetings, but as in Scotland and England, his delight was in the young men’s meetings. He wrote his friend Henry Drummond in Scotland on December 4: “The work among young men in this country is growing splendidly. I am glad I went to England to learn how to reach young men. Could you come over and help us? I think you would get a few thousand souls on these shores if you should come. I miss you more than I can tell, you do not know how much I want you with me.” Drummond, still a college student, declined to interrupt his studies this time, although he and Dwight were very close, and he loved to work with him.
EVERY FRIDAY DWIGHT HELD SPECIAL MEETINGS FOR ALCOHOLICS.
Princeton University issued Dwight a “special request” to come for a day, which he gladly did. Dwight said later, “I have not seen anything in America that pleases me like what I have seen in Princeton. They have got a Holy Ghost revival there. The President of the college told me he had never seen anything like it in Princeton.”
Working in Philadelphia, Dwight showed himself to be the same unaffected, integrated personality his friends in Britain had known. As usual, he was utterly absorbed in his work. One of his Chicago church officers came to the platform at the close of an evening service as the inquiry meeting began. “I touched Mr. San-key on the shoulder, and he did the undignified thing of embracing me,” he said. “After a little conversation with him I went to where Moody was, and touched him on the shoulder also, when he turned and quickly and earnestly said, ‘Talk to that woman! ’ ”
President Grant and several of his Cabinet, visiting Philadelphia for the Centennial Exhibition, sat on the platform on Sunday, January 19, 1876. Dwight made no attempt to be introduced afterward; he had a bad cold and a hoarse voice but even if well would not have sought out the president.
Even as a serious evangelist, Dwight retained his playful side. He and his family stayed at the Wanamaker mansion during the Philadelphia campaign, and when his work was over for the day or evening, he had the ability to relax in the moment. One of the Wanamaker children said of him: “The thing I remember most was Mr. Moody and father playing bears with us children. Such wild exciting times as we had. They would get down on all fours and chase us. We would shriek and scream and run. It was pandemonium!”
The end of January 1876 brought a close to the Philadelphia campaign. Dwight and Sankey traveled to New York to begin a long-awaited series of meetings. Dwight arrived just a day before the campaign was to open, but he had let the committee of laymen and ministers know exactly what should be done, and they had organized it with true New York business skill. The treasurer, J. Pierpont Morgan, was the same age as Dwight; and thirty-two-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. was one of the private guarantors who advanced money against expenses.
The committee had leased Barnum’s “Great Roman Hippodrome,” which stood on Madison Avenue, the future site of Madison Square Garden. The Hippodrome provided a dividing line between the very wealthy and the very poor. On the one side, said an observer, “lie the homes of wealth, the avenues of fashion, and the great hotels; on the other, the masses of the middle class and a little beyond, the crowded abodes of the poor and the dens of wretchedness and vice.” Dwight’s heart always went out to the poor, but he also saw the same spiritual needs in the very rich.
DWIGHT’S HEART ALWAYS WENT OUT TO THE POOR, BUT HE ALSO SAW THE SAME SPIRITUAL NEEDS IN THE VERY RICH.
The campaign chairman, William E. Dodge, informed a friend: “We are fitting up two large halls opening into each other; one, holding about eight or nine thousand and the other about six thousand.” They had allowed for inquiry rooms, and an up-to-date touch was an internal electric telegraph whereby orders could be sent to regulate lighting, heating, and ventilation.
A thousand-voice choir led a song service for a half hour before the little door opened behind the wide platform and Dwight Moody stepped on stage. An onlooker said that Dwight seemed “to cover the space between the door and the pulpit in one step! Mr. Moody was a meteor. He was at the little railing in front, his hand raised, our heads bowed in prayer and we all saying ‘Amen’ almost before we knew it. How lithe, springy, and buoyant he was. How full of life and spirit!”
Dwight’s weight was still mostly muscle and bone, not fat. Since he had no time for open-air exercise, he used a health-lift every day to try to stay somewhat fit. The papers described Dwight as “short, stout-built, square shouldered with bullet-shaped head close on the shoulders, black eyes that twinkle merrily at times, and full but not heavy beard and moustache.”
New Yorkers responded enthusiastically to the meetings. The new chairman, Mr. Dodge, wrote an English friend: “Nothing has ever reached our great masses of non-church-going people as these meetings have. Our ministers have been warmed and helped, cold Christians restored, and many careless persons brought to Christ. I do not think the work has been truer or larger in any place Mr. Moody has visited. He is staying with me and I find his cheery whole-souled humble consecration a great spur and help.”
Dwight preached the same message as in England but adapted it to his American audience. Even though he knew his calling to be an evangelist to the masses, he relished dealing with individuals in the inquiry room. He had long outgrown the habit of tossing off scripture texts to an inquirer; instead, “His questionings speedily determined whether an inquirer was sincere and genuine, or hypocritical and evasive. With astonishing rapidity he could turn a man mentally and morally inside out, expose his fallacies, moral inconsistencies, perversions, willfulness and alienation from God.” He desired that lay people “learn the art of personally winning souls.”
“THE WORK ACCOMPLISHED BY MR. MOODY IN THIS CITY FOR PRIVATE AND PUBLIC MORALS WILL LIVE.”
At the campaign’s close, even the New York Times conceded that “the work accomplished this winter by Mr. Moody in this city for private and public morals will live. The drunken have become sober, the vicious virtuous, the worldly and self-seeking unselfish, the ignoble noble and the impure pure. A new hope has lifted up hundreds of human beings, a new consolation has come to the sorrowful, and a better principle has entered the sordid life of the day, through the labors of these plain men.”
A troubling incident bothered Dwight at the end of the New York campaign. Several ministers left on vacation, and Dwight was distressed, thinking they should have been as interested in conversion in New York as he was. He made a terrible mistake in one of his Bible readings when he lashed out at the New York Ledger, the society gossip paper to which several fashionable ministers contributed. Even Dr. Hall, the meeting chairman, was a staunch supporter. Dwight said later, “I didn’t mean to say anything against the paper but somehow it popped up.” The moment he finished preaching he turned to apologize, but Dr. Hall had left the chair in a huff and did not see Dwight again for some time.
The incident caused Dwight to close the Hippodrome mission two weeks before the assigned three months were up. Almost at once, he realized he had done the wrong thing. He realized that in closing the meeting early, “I grieved the Holy Spirit.” In spite of his mistake, Dwight never looked back with regret; he always looked ahead and retained an effervescent optimism.
Emma and the children had already left for Augusta, Georgia, because the New York weather had been too hard on young Willie. Their friend D. W. Whittle was holding a mission there, and Dwight soon joined them. Although Dwight came to Augusta to rest, he soon involved himself in Whittle’s work. Whittle fought a slight temptation to resent his intrusion. But he calmed himself as he thought, I have considered that Moody is an almighty man of God, the Whitefield of this century, owned and honored of God, and if he has been led of God to come here and speak it is a very petty spirit that would think of self in connection with the work.
Whittle’s understanding of Dwight paid off. Dwight took him into his confidence as they walked along the banks of the Savannah River in the spring sunshine. “I don’t know that I will ever go to England again,” Dwight said. “I am entirely bankrupt as to sermons and material—I have used up everything. I am going to study and make new sermons but I think it will be three or four years before I shall go—if I ever go. You and Bliss had better wait until next year before going, and you must study all you can.”
Dwight felt empty— and spiritually bankrupt, as he put it. At the pinnacle of his influence in the United States, he stood in danger of spiritual burnout.
AT THE PINNACLE OF HIS INFLUENCE IN THE UNITED STATES, HE STOOD IN DANGER OF SPIRITUAL BURNOUT.
Not requiring much sleep, Dwight would rise early to read his Bible and pray, and he had the unique ability to catnap anytime of the day or night. His original filing system consisted of using a large envelope for each sermon. Then he would put a scrawled sheet of headings and notes and stories clipped from papers or jotted on paper for illustrations. He would label each envelope with the place and date of each delivery. This method enabled Dwight’s sermons to be fresh. He might preach on the same topic, but he would vary it each time.
He also worried about divisions, jealousies—everything that hindered the cause of Christ. His desire was that Christians, especially ministers of the Gospel, would put aside their differences and work together. It always saddened Dwight when a minister or leading Christian got caught in a scandal, and he made it a policy not to repeat any gossip or hearsay that could damage the cause of Christ.
When it was alleged that a leading minister had committed adultery, Dwight’s comment was “I hope if he is guilty, it will never be known; it would have an awful effect.” However, Whittle also knew that if it fell to Dwight’s lot to deliver such a person to justice once the truth were known, he would not fail to do so.
At that time, Dwight’s influence in the country was enormous. In fact, Farwell advised Cyrus McCormick, who thought of running for vice president in June of 1876, that five thousand dollars given to Moody’s cause in Chicago and widely advertised would do more “than all the money you could put into the hands of political wire-pullers.”
But Dwight’s opinion of himself continued to be an honest, humble one. On one occasion, he told a reporter, “I am the most overestimated man in America.” He thought of himself simply as “the mouthpiece and expression of a deep and mysterious wave of religious feeling now passing over the nation. The disasters and disappointments of the year, the reaction against the skepticism and selfish greed of the day have prepared the minds of the people for a profound religious transformation or impulse.” Nevertheless, everyone in the country, whether in log cabins of the Appalachians, in frontier wagons in some remote Montana valley, or in the soot and grime of Detroit or Pittsburgh, knew and loved Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey.
ON ONE OCCASION, HE TOLD A REPORTER, “I AM THE MOST OVERESTIMATED MAN IN AMERICA.”
Another problem the two had to contend with were imitators. “Moody and Sankey meetings are advertised, at which Moody’s sermons will be read, Moody and Sankey Hymnbooks used, then somebody dashes out like Brother Moody, or tries to sing a solo like Brother Sankey,” complained a New York Methodist minister.
Moody and Sankey also had to deal with exploiters. “Perhaps you noticed,” Dwight told one audience, “that there is someone at the door selling photographs of Mr. Sankey and myself. I want to say that this is one of the thorns we have in the flesh. These are no more photographs of Mr. Sankey and myself than they are of you or anyone else.” With press photography in its infancy, only people who attended the meetings could know what they looked like. And no one could photograph them unless they consented and sat still.
Exasperated, Dwight added that they had tried to stop these people legally, but “couldn’t do it. And now we ask you, if you have any regard for us, not to patronize them. I hope I will never have to refer to it again, for I always feel like a fool when I have to talk about myself.”
Leaving Augusta, the Moodys and Whittles stopped in Atlanta, then went on to Chattanooga, where Dwight spoke at a large gathering. On the way, Whittle enjoyed pointing out various battlefields and fortifications as the “reversed” Sherman’s March to the Sea.
The rest of May, Dwight preached all over the Midwest: Nashville, St. Louis, Kansas, Omaha, and even in Council Bluffs, Iowa. At one of the meetings in St. Louis, a stranger to the area, James G. Butler, wandered into an after-meeting. Butler said that Dwight “came down where I was sitting, and said: ‘Are you a Christian?’ ”
“ ‘Yes, sir!’ I replied, rather expecting he would say something courteous and cordial. But, no. He only said, pointing to another man just across: ‘Talk to that man about his soul.’ I did. There was just nothing else for me to do. If the man was blessed as I was, he is a happy man today.”
“TALK TO THAT MAN ABOUT HIS SOUL.”
At Des Moines, the ministers had decided to cancel all Sunday services and tell their congregations to attend Moody’s meetings at the campaign headquarters. However, F. G. Ensign, Dwight’s friend from the previous decade, warned them he would not approve.
When a determined group met Dwight on arrival, they told him their plans for the meeting. “Mr. Moody, we have decided, our association has voted, that we will not have any services on Sunday. We want all our people to go to the rink at ten thirty.”
“No, I can’t do that,” Dwight protested.
“But we have decided it,” committee members declared.
“I can’t do it! You will have to have your church services. You must have your church services, and then at two thirty, so as not to interfere with the services, we have the meeting in the rink.”
Dwight admitted to a friend: “I have often to do a shabby thing. A committee takes a great deal of trouble about something, I see it will not suit, so I cut discussion short by saying I am going to do it another way. It is very mean of me, but it would take a tremendous time in committee and I have to do it.”
Sometimes his brusqueness offended others. Whittle said that Dwight’s reception of a campaign committee was based on his ability to turn a situation around and have them think his idea was theirs: “About fifteen persons of the committee have been grieved because Moody has ignored them and gone ahead with meetings as he pleased. He keeps quiet, drawing out in full all the complaints and injured feelings and then explains and rights everything, suggesting what he thinks best and drawing out the ministers to adopt it as from themselves.”
As the Midwest evangelistic tour came to a close, Dwight was again nominated to be president of the Illinois State Sunday School Association, which he presided over for their four-day conference in Jacksonville, Illinois. Sankey remained with him, but he was quite ill by the time they finally returned to Chicago after three years of travel.
Dwight had come to a crossroad in his life. Where would he put down permanent roots? Would he put them down in Chicago or in Northfield? He loved both places—and his family badly needed a place to settle down. Much depended on his making the right choice, but for the moment he was in a quandary as to which decision was best.