Recruiting For Sunday Schools
RECRUITING FOR SUNDAY SCHOOLS
It seemed as if no church could give him enough to do; therefore he began to attend a Sunday morning class in the First Methodist Church, and to work with its Mission Band, which was composed of a number of devoted young men, who every Sunday morning used to visit various public places and invite strangers to attend church services. It will be seen that Mr. Moody's Christian work was purely practical. This was a characteristic determined by his temperament. Theorizing had no place in his energetic mind, but his whole heart was bent to secure the best results from the means at hand and when means were lacking to find them. We are struck with his method of making use of every opportunity, however slight. He never ignored small things; he felt it as incumbent upon him to to help the clerk who worked beside him in the store, and the stranger hw met casually upon the street, as to endeavor to sway large audiences from the rostrum. As a matter of fact, it is doubtful if, in these humble beginnings of his efforts, he had any realization of the great work that lay in store for him. He simply saw men and children sinking in the moral lazaretto of a great city and stretched out his hand to help them.
A scientific study of the principles of education has impressed upon our the necessity of dealing with children, if we desire to effect any permanent change in the mental or moral condition of the world; for the children of to-day are the fathers and the mothers of the next generation. Without theorising, Mr. Moody must have had an understanding of this principle. It was not long after he came to Chicago that he began to work among the children. His success in recruiting for the Sunday schools was wonderful. On one occasion he found a little mission Sunday school on the North side, and offered to take a class. The superintendent pointed out that they already had almost as many teachers as pupils, but added that, if Mr. Moody would get his own pupils, he would be at liberty to conduct a class. The next Sunday Mr. Moody appeared with eighteen ragamuffins. They were dirty, unkempt, many of them barefoot, but as the young teacher said, "each had a soul to save".
HIS SUNDAY SCHOOL ON "THE SANDS"
Mr. Moody's missionary explorations led him into the most evil parts of the city. His face became familiar in the worst saloon districts, among the sailors'
boarding houses, and on the docks. It was on one of these excursions that he fell in with Mr. J. B. Stillson, a business man who was employing his spare time in the same missionary work. The two men cast in their lot together, and, according to one historian, during a single summer helped to recruit twenty mission Sunday schools.
Mr. Moody recognised that the average mission school was not calculated to reach the lowest strata of society. There was too large a requirement of order, too little allowance for the homes from which the pupils had come. Accordingly, he decided to begin a mission school of his own, On the north side of the Chicago River was a district called "The Sands", sometimes also known as "Little Hell". To-day, some of the finest residences of Chicago stand there where, in the early fifties and sixties, crime and debauchery reigned supreme. It was to this home of vice Mr. Moody went to begin his work. He found a deserted shanty which had formerly been a saloon and hiring this ramshackle place, started out to drum up children to fill it. At first he found it hard to get at the young street Arabs; then he filled his pockets with maple sugar, and, judiciously distributing it among those who promised to come, soon had his little room overflowing with barbarians. One who visited the school in those days has described his experiences. "When I came to the little old shanty and entered the door," he said, "the first thing I saw by the light of the few candles, was a man standing up, holding in his arms a Negro boy, to whom he was trying to read the story of the Prodigal Son. A great many words the reader could not make out and was obliged to skip. My thought was, If the Lord can ever use such an instrument as that for His honour and glory it will astonish me! When the meeting was over, Mr Moody said to me, 'I have got only one talent. I have no education, but I love the Lord Jesus Christ, and I want to do something for Him.' I have watched him since, and have come to know him thoroughly, and for consistent walk and conversation I have never met a man equal to him."