Mr. Moody questioned after his conversion the effect his new life would have upon his business prospects, but he found his experience of genuine Bible salvation to be a real asset. From the very beginning he had entered upon his duties with characteristic energy, and in three months’ time he had sold more goods than any one of his fellow-clerks. At first he thought that perhaps truthfulness might be a hindrance to his success. But he soon found that Christian principles were an aid in business. Customers, finding that they could rely upon his word, preferred to deal with him. Just at this time, Chicago, the new city of the West, was attracting the young men of the East. Moody felt the attraction of its appeal, and without informing anyone, decided to cast his lot with the new West. The great accomplishments that were to accompany this move could not be foreseen. In speaking of it Mr. Moody said, “I have always been a man of impulse. Almost everything I ever did in my life that was a success was done on the impulse, and I suppose when I get ready to die I will be up and off.” The thousand miles to Chicago seemed a cruel distance to his mother, and it was a long time before she could be reconciled to the move. During the years that followed, when “Widow Moody’s”
light burned late, the neighbors knew she was praying for her boy far away. Moody arrived in Chicago in 1856. In two days he had secured a position better than the one he had left. The same earnest Christian spirit that had shown itself in Boston characterized his life in Chicago, and from Chicago he wrote: “God is the same here as he was in Boston, and in him I can find peace.” He began to look about for some definite Christian service. He had been a successful Sunday-school recruiting agent, so he at once hired a pew in Plymouth Church, which he undertook to fill each Sunday. He would hail young men on the street corners, get them from their boarding-houses, or even call them out of saloons to share his pew. Before long he was renting four pews and filling them all every Sunday with his strangely assorted guests. At this time a great revival broke out in Chicago, and Moody in writing to his mother said: “I have nothing to write that will interest you unless it is that there is a great revival of religion in this city. I go to meeting every night. Oh, how I do enjoy it!... Mother, pray for us.” This was in 1857. Moody was just twenty years of age. Already he was entering deeply and whole-heartedly into the work that was to be his life-work and that was to claim his time and best energies to within a few days of his death. One joke that Mr. Moody used to tell about himself occurred at this period. It was during President Lincoln’s first presidential campaign. Mr. Moody’s train had stopped at a village in southern Illinois. A farmer was sauntering up and down the platform. Mr. Moody stuck his head out of the window and inquired of the farmer: “Did you know that Lincoln was on this train?” “No! is he?”
“I don’t think he is,” answered Moody. “I only asked you if you knew that he was.” The farmer said nothing, but continued his walk on the platform. As he came opposite the window again, he remarked to Mr. Moody that their town had had some excitement recently. “What’s the matter?” Mr. Moody asked. “The authorities wouldn’t let some folks bury a woman,” the farmer replied. “Why not?” asked Moody. “She wasn’t dead,” was the laconic reply. Early in his work in Chicago he devoted Sunday afternoons to a little mission Sunday-school. He offered to take a class. The superintendent told him that he had sufficient teachers, but that if he could work up a class of his own he would be welcome. Next Sunday Moody appeared with eighteen dirty and ragged “hoodlums,” gathered off the streets, but all needing salvation. Turning these boys over to others, he went out and gathered more recruits, until he had filled the mission to overflowing. Mr. Moody then started a Sunday-school of his own in a vacant saloon. Larger quarters were immediately needed. The mayor of the city gave him free use of the North Market Hall for Sunday-school work. This hall was in the saloon district and was used nearly every Saturday night for balls, when liquor flowed
Recruiting for the Mission School
freely. In preparing the hall for the balls, the chairs, class banners, and other Sunday-school equipment were thrown into a miscellaneous heap in a corner of the room. Mr. Moody and a crowd of the boys whom he had made his “partners” got around at 6 A. M. on Sundays to sweep the hall, remove the beer barrels, cigar-stumps, and other debris, and rearrange their furniture and banners for the 3 P. M. service. Sweeping the floors was in his eyes as true service for God as superintending the school. The boys that made up this school were for the most part a “rough bunch.” One Sunday Mr. John B. Farwell came by invitation to visit the school. About half of the boys rushed forward to shine his shoes. Presently Mr. Moody invited him to make a speech, at the close of which he was elected superintendent by acclamation. Said Mr. Moody to one man, “I want you to teach these lambs.” “Lambs? Wolves, you mean,” replied the other. Mr. Moody’s devices for running the school were successful. He issued stock certificates of the “North Market Sabbath School Association; capital, ten thousand dollars; forty thousand shares at twenty-five cents each.” These certified the purchase of shares “for the erection of a new building. For dividends apply at the school each Sabbath at 3 P. M.” His plan for disposing of unfit teachers was automatic. Pupils were allowed by permission of the superintendent to transfer from one class to another. The inevitable result was that teachers who failed to interest their pupils were speedily left without a class. Thirteen street arabs were promised a new suit each at Christmas if they would attend regularly every Sunday until that time. Here are some of their nicknames: Red Eye, Smikes, Madden
the Butcher, Jackey Candles, Giberick, Billy Blucannon, Darby the Cobbler. In this work Mr. Moody had some interesting and thrilling experiences. An older brother of one of the school pupils who was in the South, hearing of Mr. Moody’s influence over his brother, wrote home that he would “whip Moody within an inch of his life.” When he got back home he was taken down with typhoid fever, and Mr. Moody helped to nurse him back to health. This so touched him that he became converted and remained a firm friend of the work. One day a forgetful or careless pupil took his seat with his cap on. One of Moody’s “bodyguards” a boy who was Moody’s partner, discovered him, planted a stunning blow between his eyes, and sent him sprawling to the floor, with the remark, “I’ll teach you not to enter Moody’s Sunday-school with your hat on.” On one of his recruiting excursions Mr. Moody reached a house where there were not only children, but also a jug of whisky. Mr. Moody emptied the whisky into the street. Next Sunday when he returned, bent on a similar errand, the man was awaiting him. The man took off his coat to fight him, but Mr. Moody said: “I emptied the jug for the good of yourself and your family. If I am to be thrashed for it, let me pray for you all before you do it.” Falling on his knees he prayed earnestly. When he arose the father’s anger had cooled, and he was permitted to have the children for his school. This school grew to a membership of fifteen hundred.