Result Of His First Year'S Work
RESULT OF HIS FIRST YEAR'S WORK
He had found the Association made up of conservative men of middle or advanced years, but his advent among them was, as an officer of the Association has said, "like a stiff north-west breeze," and under his influence the institution became free and popular, and its influence was extensively widened. His abilities were especially eminent in raising money, but of the thousands of dollars he secured he would take nothing for himself. Among other schemes devised by him was one which federated the mission schools of the city under the Association, and brought them under the care of the stronger churches. The report of the first year of the work of his committee on visitation gives the number of families visited as 554, and the amount of money used for charitable purposes as $2350.
Meanwhile, the growing strength of the North Market Mission taxed the ingenuity of the young superintendent to provide room for its expansion. He set himself to work to secure a suitable edifice, and, collecting personally about $20,000, saw a neat chapel rise in Illinois Street, not far from the old North Market Hall. This was in 1863. Mr. Moody had ever aimed, as the converts of the Mission grew in number, to recommend them to regular church homes, but an increasing unwillingness on the part of the converts to leave the influences of his personal presence seemed to necessitate the organisation of a regular church to be made up of the converts of the Mission.