Preparatory Arrangements
PREPARATORY ARRANGEMENTS
About forty thousand dollars was spent in reconstruction and equipment of the building. Chairs were provided for about ten thousand persons, which leaves out of count the space upon the platform occupied by a chorus of six hundred singers. The expenses were met by voluntary contributions. Three hundred Christians were chosen to act as ushers while a like number of workers were selected to serve in the three inquiry rooms. The original intention had been to engage the Academy of Music, but this was overruled in favor of the depot, largely because of the suggestion that the novelty of such an auditorium would alone draw thousands of people.
The first day it rained; moreover the burning of Market Street bridge, the night before, had stopped the streetcars running on the chief thoroughfare to the place of meeting. Still the great improvised tabernacle was filled by an audience of 10,000. In Philadelphia, as elsewhere, Mr. Moody began by seeking to arouse the Christians to a sense of their responsibility. On one occasion, he spoke of the "dumb people in the churches who had said nothing for Christ for ten or fifteen years ', and of the "dwarfs who had not grown since they were converted". On the second evening, a young men's meeting was conducted in Arch Street Methodist Church, by Mr. John Wanamaker. With a few exceptions the clergy of the city took hearty interest in all the services. Many of them, whose acquaintance with Mr. Moody's methods was based entirely upon vague report, had looked forward with dread of sensational methods, but the quiet yet thorough way in which Mr. Moody entered upon his work brought to these doubters a feeling of gratified disappointment. On November 26th, the morning prayer meeting had an attendance of 8,000. A Methodist minister said, "If we had a hundred Moodys and Sankeys in the country all the Protestant sects would unite within ten years."