20. The Education
20
THE EDUCATION
During Sam’s last summer, the two brothers had taken the buggy to look at cattle near Warwick. Sam was a library patron, had founded a debating club, and was outspoken at town meetings on Northfield’s lack of good education—especially for girls, such as his twin sister. As leader of the local YMCA and a lay evangelist making amends for twenty years of antagonism toward Christianity, his hopes and dreams for Northfield now blended with Dwight’s.
On their return trip past a mountain lane, the brothers found a crippled, frail man standing in front of his cabin door and stopped to chat with him. He had been reading the Greek New Testament to his young daughters as they braided straw hats to earn a living. A pile of well-worn books—Thomas à Kempis, Madam Guyon, John Bunyan, and others—were stacked close to Horace Parmelee Sikes’s position on the couch.
Dwight asked him, “Where have you taken your education? How did you get along?”
Sikes replied: “I went to Oberlin College for four years in the 1840s and attended Wilbraham College some. I taught for awhile at a good school, but then became paralyzed and had to quit.” Sikes lamented that his daughters, Jennie and Julia, could not hope to have a similar education. Smiling, he said, “We don’t have much roast turkey or plum pudding, but we get along!”
Mrs. Sikes stepped in just then, wiping soapsuds from her hands. “We just have to take things right out of the hand of God.”
“WE JUST HAVE TO TAKE THINGS RIGHT OUT OF THE HAND OF GOD.”
One of the girls added happily, “But we have a real home!”
As Sam and Dwight drove home, they discussed the Sikes’s plight. Mr. Sikes could teach his daughters Greek, but what future could they have with no education beyond that and the little district school in the hills? They could not pay board for the girls to attend the public high school at Greenfield. The girls’ future could only hold a life of married drudgery on the mountain farm or as factory hands.
Sam said, “I tell you, Dwight, we’ve got to have a girls’ school in Northfield! Not only for my sister to attend, but for the girls like Jennie and Julia Sikes. Otherwise their lives will be wasted!”
Dwight responded with a nod. Deep in thought, they continued home in silence.
Now with Sam gone, his dream became a sacred trust for Dwight. He might never have done anything toward its fulfillment had he not been a guest of Henry Fowle Durant in Boston during the first part of 1877.
Durant, a prominent wealthy Boston lawyer, had retired from the law to devote himself to Christian causes after the death of his only son. Dwight considered him one of “my old friends and one that stood by me in days before I was much known. All through the Boston work he was with me every night, and did a great work.”
Durant had opened Wellesley College on part of his estate in the northwestern section of Boston. He wanted Wellesley to be a first-class college where girls of moderate means might receive “opportunities for education equivalent to those offered at Harvard.” Durant had also adopted the idea from Mount Holyoke Seminary that every girl should do a regular share of domestic service. He said he did not want “velvet girls” but “calico girls.” The fees charged were 250 dollars a year, or half the cost, the other half being made up by the college. Durant also required every teacher to possess not only academic skill but what he termed “vital Christianity,” and Bible training became part of the compulsory requirements.
Dwight’s stay with Durant crystallized his determination to organize a preparatory seminary “for young women in the humbler walks of life who would never get a Christian education but for a school like this.”
Contrary to one of his favorite proverbs, “Don’t wait for something to turn up. Go and turn up something,” Dwight did not act on his dream right away.
“DON’T WAIT FOR SOMETHING TO TURN UP. GO AND TURN UP SOMETHING.”
After finishing the Boston campaign in the spring of 1877, Dwight and Sankey had shorter missions in several New England cities. They were thankful the tide had not turned against them, and they conducted several successful campaigns in places like Hartford, Connecticut, where the Hartford Religious Herald had positive things to say: “The wave of sympathy with them has been so strong that it seems to have flowed out and covered everything. We have come to a time when, for a season at least, Religion has come to the front.”
Dwight even received an invitation to preach at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut; he preached to eleven hundred students for two weeks in a specially constructed building. The students were respectful and receptive to the message Dwight preached.
But the dream of a girls’ school in Northfield did not disappear, and by the fall of 1878 Dwight was in Northfield discussing the school project with H. N. F. Marshall of Boston. Just then, the owner of sixteen acres adjoining Dwight’s home passed by.
Dwight called to him, “Would you sell your property?”
Within minutes the papers had been exchanged and signed. Soon more adjoining lots were bought, and before long a hundred acres were available for the school.
While planning for the school continued, another great event took place in the Moody family. April 11, 1879, brought the birth of Paul Dwight Moody. He was ten years younger than Dwight’s son, Will, and thirteen and a half years younger than Emma. How Dwight rejoiced over this newest addition to his family! How good God was to him!
Four months later, on August 21, Dwight laid the cornerstone for the recitation hall, using not a proffered silver trowel, but his father’s old working trowel, and Sankey sang “The Ninety and Nine.” Durant gave the dedication address, emphasizing the need for such a school and its aims and ideals: “It will be a thorough school, it will be non-sectarian, and it will be Christian. Working together, the Christian home, the Christian Church, and this Christian school will turn out young women of the type greatly needed to do the Lord’s work in the world.” They placed in the cornerstone a Bible, national and local newspapers, two histories of Northfield, some Moody heirlooms, and a piece of the early eighteenth century Parson Doolittle’s gravestone—the good parson’s grave was on the same site as the school.
Dwight decided that if Wellesley College could fix its annual fee at 250 dollars, his secondary school need require no more than 100 dollars, half the estimate for keeping and educating the students. He asked friends, acquaintances, and wealthy philanthropists for money for his project, stressing the school’s threefold basis: the Bible as a vital part of the curriculum; every girl to take regular share in domestic duties whatever her home background, thus inculcating a right sense of proportion while keeping down the cost of running the school; and the low fee.
After Dwight appointed as principal a young Wellesley woman, Harriet Tuttle, the school commenced its first term despite the unfinished recitation hall. To meet the need for boarding pupils since the dormitory had not yet been built, Dwight adapted part of the coach house on his property, forming cubicles for up to twenty-five girls.
The Moodys left in the fall for the Midwest, and on November 3 the first pupils arrived during a record blizzard that laid snow sixteen inches deep. Jennie Sikes, the girl from the mountain, got the highest marks on the entrance examination.
The recitation hall remained unfinished for another month, and lessons were done in the Moodys’ parlor. From St. Louis, Dwight wrote continuously about the school: “Has the children got into the new school building yet?” and “How do they like it?” and “How do they like the teachers?”
Finally in the spring of 1880, Dwight could see his school taking shape. The recitation hall had been finished and the foundation laid for the first dormitory, East Hall. A hundred girls were enrolled, and Dwight ran races with them and addressed them at school prayers. The dream took shape despite setbacks.
FINALLY IN THE SPRING OF 1880, DWIGHT COULD SEE HIS SCHOOL TAKING SHAPE.
Dwight spoke of his dream at the formal dedication of East Hall during summer vacation. “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.” He declared as the school motto a verse from Isaiah 27:3: “I the LORD do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.”
Last of all, Dwight prayed for the school. “The words of that prayer,” said a participant from Boston, “burned into our souls.” Dwight thanked God for the urge to found the school, for the friends whose gifts had raised it. Then he prayed, “O Lord, we pray that no teachers may ever come within its walls except as they have been taught by the Holy Spirit; that no scholars may ever come here except as the Spirit of God shall touch their hearts. O God, we are Thine, this building is Thine! We give it over to Thee. Take it and keep it and bless it, with Thy keeping power!”
Ever since the girls’ school had started, Dwight had felt prodded to start something for boys—either that or admit boys into the present school. Why, Dwight wondered, should he “add to his troubles”? But the demands increased. One day wealthy Hiram Camp, befriended by Dwight in his 1878 New Haven campaign, appeared in Northfield. Would Dwight help him make out his will?
“Why not be your own executor?” Dwight asked. “You’ve had all the work of acquiring your means; why not have the fun of seeing it do good?”
“Well, to what should I give?” queried Camp.
“What is your denomination?”
“I am a Congregationalist,” Camp responded.
“Well, then, give to some one of the many societies of your church. They are well manned and it will be wisely used,” suggested Dwight.
“But,” protested Camp, “I wish to give to something specific; I want to see what I do.”
“All right,” said Dwight. “Here is the very thing: People have been after me to take boys into Northfield. I’m not going to increase my troubles that way. Then they want me to start a school for boys on the same lines as Northfield, but I want someone else to do it. Now, Mr. Camp. There is something for you to do.”
The elderly Mr. Camp scarcely thought he could launch such a project, but he urged Dwight to undertake it and offered twenty-five thousand dollars as a starter. What an awkward position this presented to Dwight! He felt he was already spread too thin. How would he finance yet another school? But he had been so convincing, he found himself with no other recourse than to start it himself!
With the money from Mr. Camp, Dwight looked for a suitable site, and finally found 275 acres five miles across the river from the girls’ school (called the seminary). Ironically, the acreage belonged to Ezra Purple, the heartless mortgager who, when Dwight’s father died, had demanded of the sick widow a quitclaim deed to the homestead.
Mr. Camp suggested the name Mount Hermon for the boys’ school based on Psalm 135:3: “For there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.” The first boys, from eight to twelve years old, arrived on May 4, 1881. Three years later, with increasing applications from older boys and increasing troubles with the younger ones, Dwight decided to accept no applicants under sixteen. Like the seminary, the Bible was central, costs were one hundred dollars a year, and “manual labor” was required of all.
MR. CAMP SUGGESTED THE NAME MOUNT HERMON FOR THE BOYS’ SCHOOL.
Student John T. Tildsey recalled his daily stint: “Moody was a realist. He would give each boy some touch with the working world which had been the main means of his own education. So I each day, for example, went from my Greek, Latin, or Mathematics class to my class in Pig Nurture. In this class I speedily acquired the art of tackling, which stood me in good stead on the football field.”
The following year, Tildsey served as boss on the sanitary squad; after that, he was first officer of a cottage—responsible for the care of the building and for the conduct of twenty boys living in it. He finally became assistant librarian in charge of evening study in the library.
Each student was graded on the performance of his “dirty work,” this grade being considered just as important an indication of character and future success as classroom grades.
The daily schedule from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. left little time for loafing, and unlike the seminary, Mount Hermon kept in session through the summer months, making three terms of four months each, partly due to the fact that the livestock and gardens needed tending all year. Within four years, with accommodations for only eighty, Dwight was besieged yearly with three hundred applications. A more cosmopolitan student body would have been hard to find. At one time, there were students from nearly every state and from thirty-two nations!
At first the school was little more than a fair grammar school. However, in 1883, after two years at Mount Hermon, two brothers announced to Dwight they were leaving for home because their mother wanted them to prepare for college.
Dwight begged them to stay, telling them, “The world has too many college men—too many men with book learning—too many smart men. The college is not turning out men needed for today. What we want is men who can go out as colporteurs, YMCA secretaries, Bible readers, and city missionaries. Take a short cut through a preparatory school and get to work.”
He believed and preached that education could make one only a more clever rascal! He shared with a friend that “education does not save a man. An educated rascal is the worst rascal of all. I have over 1100 students in my school, and I have often said that if I knew they were going to turn out bad I wouldn’t educate them.”
HE BELIEVED THAT EDUCATION COULD MAKE ONE ONLY A MORE CLEVER RASCAL!
In keeping with his views, Dwight made a point of notifying all applicants and their parents that Mount Hermon was no refuge for delinquents. “The school is for young men of sound bodies, good minds, and high aims. Vicious or idle boys are not wanted. It is neither a reformatory for the depraved nor an asylum for the exposed,” he said on one occasion.
Gradually, as he worked increasingly with colleges and college students, Dwight’s ideas changed, and Northfield began to take on more academic distinction. As long as he lived, however, his primary concern for each student was a spiritual one. He said, “I want to help the students into lives that will count for the cause of Christ.”
Toward this end as each school year began, before he left for his winter season of big-city campaigning, Dwight urged the student body to become “out-and-out believers in Christ.” There was no undue pressure, but Dwight wished every student to be a “wholesome, happy Christian.”
Many students who could not have otherwise afforded even the very low cost of the schools were granted tuition-free scholarships, provided they met the preliminary conditions. But Dwight remained a strict disciplinarian regarding the rules set down.
With his evangelistic work and other obligations, the problem of school financing was not easy. The students helped with their manual labor to keep costs down, but still their one hundred dollars was but half the cost of providing their education, and how Dwight got the rest of the funds did not matter particularly to the resourceful educator. One afternoon, in the midst of a seminary trustees’ meeting, a member left early and was about to enter his carriage when Dwight raised a window and yelled, “Will you give a thousand dollars if I will do the same?”
“All right,” agreed the trustee.
Dwight closed the window, confessing he did not have the thousand dollars but would raise it “one way or another.” At this, another trustee smiled and remarked that such a proceeding was, to say the least, irregular. Dwight answered, “Oh well, we do everything up here differently from other people.”
Dwight was short on protocol but long on effectiveness. One day he heard that Pittsburgh’s William Thaw was giving away his money. He packed his bag and went to see him, only to find a long line of people ahead of him. He learned the philanthropist was giving a maximum of three hundred dollars to each case. When it came Dwight’s turn he introduced himself as “Mr. Moody, from Northfield.”
DWIGHT WAS SHORT ON PROTOCOL BUT LONG ON EFFECTIVENESS.
“What, the great evangelist! Well, I’m delighted to see you here.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Dwight, “you won’t be, when you learn what I’m here for. We are trying to give poor young men a Christian education, and we have to turn away hundreds of applicants each year. I’d like you to give us ten thousand dollars toward a building.”
“But I’m not giving more than three hundred dollars to each case.”
“But, this is a special case.”
“Yes, I know, and I’ll give five thousand dollars.”
“Don’t you believe in me and this work? Why not at once give the money? I can stand in line and beg three hundred dollars at a time, but I must be off and build this building.”
Of course, Dwight got his money!
Increasingly Dwight resorted to letters to request funds, but he refused to use a rubber stamp of his signature, insisting on signing each one carefully, spreading them all over his room so as not to blot them before they dried. With each letter he sent a little book, describing the school, went on with a paragraph or two of his own description, and closed by noting:
I hope to live long enough to have one thousand friends, each subscribing a hundred dollars a year for the support of one student. Will you not join the list? Or if not, will you not set aside a contribution—however small—for this purpose between now and June?
A great surprise happened at “Temptation Hill,” so named by Dwight that some friend might be tempted to give money enough to erect a chapel. By 1897, Dwight’s sixtieth birthday year, nobody had taken the hint, so F. B. Meyer and Henry Moore took matters into their own hands and raised enough money in England and America to put up a memorial chapel. Dwight, however, refused to consider it a memorial for him, and would not permit a note of this on the bronze tablet in the vestibule:
THIS CHAPEL WAS ERECTED BY CONTRIBUTIONS OF CHRISTIAN FRIENDS IN GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES, FOR THE GLORY OF GOD AND TO BE A PERPETUAL WITNESS TO THEIR UNITY IN THE SERVICE OF CHRIST.
Two other things Dwight refused were to raise the tuition and to have either school endowed. By raising the tuition he felt he would defeat the very purpose for which he had ordained the schools, that of helping the underprivileged, and by endowing them, he felt they would wither.
When asked why he didn’t operate his schools on faith in a fashion like George Müller of Bristol, England, Dwight replied, “I do. I always have and always will. As an evidence of it you will tell me of any Christian man who had money to whom I have not written or on whom I have not called, I will do so at once. I show my faith when I go to men and ask them to give to God’s work.”
Dwight’s parting words to the public regarding his beloved schools were given in New York City at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church just before leaving for the Kansas City campaign:
You may read in the papers that Moody is dead. It will not be so. God has given me the gift of life everlasting. Five and twenty years ago in my native village of Northfield I planted two Christian schools for the training of boys and maidens in Christian living and consecration as teachers and missionaries of Jesus Christ. I bequeath as my legacy those training schools for Jesus to the churches of America, and I only ask that visitors to the beautiful native village where my ashes slumber on consecrated Round Top when they go there shall not be pained with the sight of melancholy ruins wrought by cruel neglect, but rather shall be greeted by the spectacle of two great, glorious lighthouses of the Lord, beaming out over the land, over the continent, over the world.
“GOD HAS GIVEN ME THE GIFT OF LIFE EVERLASTING.”
Much of Dwight’s original dream had already been fulfilled at the time of his death—due in no small part to his wisdom, drive, and sacrifice.