8. The Builder
8
THE BUILDER
Returning to Chicago, Dwight found his work cut out for him. The war had brought disruption to his Sunday school mission work, and part of the North Market Hall where they met had burned in the fall of 1862.
When Dwight transferred his Sunday school to the dilapidated Kinzie Hall, enrollment went down. So once more, he set out to bring students in.
He never tired of thinking up new gimmicks and ways to lure boys and girls to the mission. This time, he picked a dozen or so of the most ragged-looking boys he could find, their names reflecting their individuality: Smikes, Madden the Butcher, Darby the Cobbler, Jackey Candles, and Black Stove Pipe. Dwight promised a new suit to each one who attended every Sunday until Christmas.
DWIGHT NEVER TIRED OF THINKING UP NEW GIMMICKS AND WAYS TO LURE BOYS AND GIRLS TO THE MISSION.
Dwight organized them into a class under John Farwell, and he deemed the boys “Moody’s Bodyguard.” He had the boys’ picture taken before and after the issue of their new outfits. He captioned the before photo “Does It Pay?” The after photo stated: “It Does Pay.” All except one of the boys earned his new suit of clothes—a fact that made Dwight proud.
But he began to have doubts about bribery. His City Relief Society was fooled too often. He shared with a colleague: “I have come to the conclusion that a loaf of bread in one hand and the Gospel in the other is wrong.” However, the succor of the sick and destitute continued to have priority with Dwight in his work. He had little patience with those who preached bliss in heaven while doing little to alleviate misery on earth.
Another way Dwight used to interest students in Sunday school was his picnics, and he became well known for those alone. He himself loved contests and games of skill. Farwell only attended one picnic because he claimed that “the physical exercise to keep up with Mr. Moody in a race was too much for me.” An assistant at the picnics recalled that “few at the picnics were his equal in racing, jumping, or other sports.”
His practical jokes were also well known, and if a person could best Dwight in a joke, he was highly regarded, although this reversal seldom happened. When some of his teachers wanted to swim in the lake during a picnic, it was necessary to cross through a muddy bog. Dwight spoke to one young man dressed in fine clothes: “Mr. C., you get on my back and I will carry you across.” Everything went well until they reached the middle of the swamp. Dwight dumped Mr. C., complete with white vest and lavender pants, into the muddy water, and Mr. C. had to manage as best he could to reach shore.
Dwight especially enjoyed jokes with a cruel barb even to the end of his life. His son, Paul, recalled: “While the tenderest-hearted man in the world, he would enjoy laughing at something the victim did not consider so excruciatingly funny. When I was a teenager, I got into a swarm of bees and was being stung numerous times. Worse than the stings of the bees was the sight of my father actually rolling on the ground with laughter, but at a safe distance.” This episode bears out the truth in a Moody family proverb: “No Moody ever laughs at anything unless blood is drawn.”
By December 26, 1863, Emma wrote to Dwight’s brother Sam that the new Sunday school building was almost completed. She said they hoped to be in the building within a few weeks; she affirmed the tremendous need for the new building and mentioned a roster of several prominent clergymen from different cities who would come to preach.
The new building, the very first to be owned by the Mission School, was built on Illinois Street between La Salle and Wells Streets at a cost of twenty-four thousand dollars. Underwritten by several wealthy patrons and with lesser amounts donated from parents and scholars, the building was completely paid for when it opened in the early months of 1864.
People commented on the building’s odd shape, calling it “a queer-looking brick building” with some semblance to a church. Someone else noticed that “houses crowd it in on either side so as to scarcely leave room for it to stand upon. It looks almost as if pains had been taken to make it as plain as possible so that no one, however poor, might be driven away by any outward display.”
A huge gilded sign appeared on the right side of the entrance: EVER WELCOME TO THIS HOUSE OF GOD ARE STRANGERS AND THE POOR. A smaller sign read: THE SEATS ARE FREE. On the inside, various scripture texts were posted in strategic places on the walls. The wall behind the platform, for example, had GOD IS LOVE affixed to it.
EVER WELCOME TO THIS HOUSE OF GOD ARE STRANGERS AND THE POOR.
A visitor to the new building enjoyed what could have been called the school song: “Do You Know Any Little Barefoot Boy?” a song which evoked the very atmosphere and tone of the school.
Go bring him in, there is room to spare,
Here are food and shelter and pity;
And we’ll not shut the door
’Gainst one of Christ’s poor
Though you bring every child in the city.
While listening to the song, the visitor looked down and “noticed most of the boys and girls were poor-looking, some barefoot, and most of the teachers seemed to be well dressed and altogether different from the scholars, and I said to myself ‘Well, there isn’t much looking after money here. They won’t get much pay for looking after those boys and girls,’ and I made up my mind I would come again. It wasn’t long before I put my hand in Jesus Christ’s hand, where it has been ever since.”
Asking a small boy why he walked three miles every week to Illinois Street when there was a school near his home, Farwell was surprised to hear: “They love a fellow over here.”
When Dwight’s school had met in the North Market Hall, Dwight always urged the new converts to find city churches to join. But some of the poorer people tended to feel out of place in the more beautiful church buildings. And now that the mission had its very own building, many of these individuals wished to see the mission become an independent church.
The gathering of a new church was neither unusual nor difficult under Congregational custom. But Dwight hesitated. His mission was not Congregationalist, but united, its one formal link being to the YMCA. He frequently repeated, “If I thought I had one drop of sectarian blood in my constitution, I would open a vein and let it out.”
“IF I THOUGHT I HAD ONE DROP OF SECTARIAN BLOOD, I WOULD OPEN A VEIN AND LET IT OUT.”
The pressure from the converts mounted toward Dwight to form a church. Otherwise, they said, they would be sheep scattered and unfed.
Finally, Dwight gave in. A church was formed, and the official Manual of Illinois Street Church, printed in 1867, reads: “All were agreed that the church must be independent of all denominational connection, since those already gathered in the work represented nearly every evangelical denomination. It was therefore voted that the church be an Independent Church.” Dwight and two friends drew up a simple doctrinal statement and articles of organization based on Congregationalist custom. At Emma’s request, a baptistery along with a baptismal font were installed to accommodate both adult and infant baptism.
At first, Dwight invited students from nearby Chicago Theological Seminary, a Congregationalist Seminary, to fill the pulpit. One Sunday, when the designated student failed to show up, Dwight himself had to preach. Farwell called it “providential.”
Talking with children never seemed a problem for Dwight, but when it came to grownups, he thought he needed to switch gears and would try to imitate other preachers of the day. On one occasion, a minister looking for Dwight “found him in his room trying to get up a sermon. He had thrown off his coat and was struggling with his Bible and a concordance, while the sweat ran down his face.”
About this same time, Dwight wondered if he should be ordained as a Congregationalist minister. The Chicago Seminary wanted to ordain him, especially since the Illinois Street Mission had become an independent church. Dwight asked his friend G. S. F. Savage what he thought about his being ordained. His friend replied, “Don’t. If you are ordained you will be on the level with the rest of us. Now you are a preaching layman and that gives you an advantage. You are on the right road; keep to it.” With that advice, Dwight declined ordination.
His very inadequacies and lack of proper grammar continued to drive him toward bettering himself. In 1865 he enrolled as a student in the newly formed Baptist Theological Seminary. How many lectures he attended is obscure; he did not proceed and was never ordained. If Dwight had been ordained in one denomination, he probably would not have drawn broad support from ministers in other denominations.
Dwight remained a lay pastor at the Illinois Street Independent Church until 1866, when a young seminary graduate was ordained to be minister. Dwight retained the title of superintendent—and effective control.
Still trying to conform to the ecclesiastical image of the day, Dwight’s sermons tended to be clerical, his tone strident, and his themes evocative of fire and brimstone. So pronounced were his depictions of divine judgment, Emma said she cringed when listening to them.
When ministering only to children, Dwight had not had to face man’s degradation as much as he did later. Dealing with people of all ages, he saw human nature at its worst and reacted in the fashion typical of mission preachers of his day. He unabashedly confessed: “I preached that God hated sinners; that He was standing behind sinners with a double-edged sword ready to cut their heads off.”
“I PREACHED THAT GOD HATED SINNERS.”
Dwight seemed to be two different people. From the pulpit he pounded and preached the wrath of God in the tradition of the old camp meetings. But in his basic personality at home, he remained genial, buoyant, bubbling with love and merriment.
One of the Illinois Street Church deacons, Watts de Golyer, tells of visiting the Moody home: “It was not an infrequent occurrence to hear peals of laughter over some joke administered mainly by the host, or somebody trying to get even with him. I remember a rule adopted and passed by himself that any person failing to hang up his hat or coat on the rack would find it in the yard. Shortly afterwards, I was busily employed finding and separating my belongings in the yard.”
The birth of the Moodys’ first child, Emma Reynolds, on October 24, 1864, contributed much to the joy and happiness in the Moody household. Dwight expressed his delight upon realizing that “both of her little fingers are as crooked as mine.” Writing to his mother, he gushed: “They all say she looks like me but I must say I cannot see any resemblance.”
However, Emma had no difficulty in seeing it. In some distress she confided to a friend regarding little Emma when she was two: “She is so full of mischief. You would certainly think she was a second edition of D. L. Moody in his childhood.” Despite her mischievous streak, Emma soon became the darling of her parents’ hearts.