D.L. looked out the window toward the south. The glow of the fire was growing brighter. Just then three men rushed into the living room. Emma screamed.
“Don’t mind us,” one of the men said. “We’re only taking things ahead of the flames. All of this will go up in flames in a few minutes. You’d best be gone.”
D.L. didn’t have time to argue. What the man said made sense.
Emma pointed to the portrait. “You can have the gilded frame,” she said, pointing to the portrait of D.L., “but can you kick out the painting for me?”
One of the men pulled the portrait from the wall, flipped it over, and brought his boot down on the frame. The painting popped free. “Here you are, missus,” he said as he handed it to her.
Emma rolled up the portrait and placed it in the baby carriage.
“We have to go,” D.L. said as he scooped up William. “Where’s Emma?”
“Emma?” his wife asked. “She was here a minute ago.”
“The front door’s open,” Emma yelled as D.L. dashed toward it. D.L. was just in time to see a gypsy woman let go of his daughter’s hand and run down the front steps into the street.
Seven-year-old Emma stood paralyzed with fear. “I just wanted to get out of the house before it burned,” she stammered. “And then that woman grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.”
Thankfully, the hem of Emma’s dress had caught on the front door handle, preventing the woman from running off with her. D.L. passed William to his wife, freed Emma’s dress, and picked up his daughter. He held her face toward his chest as embers flew around in the buffeting wind. “You poor thing,” he said comfortingly.
“We must go. Bring the baby carriage,” D.L. yelled to his wife.
Soon the Moody family was on the street, where D.L. recognized a neighbor and fellow Christian packing his family into a buggy. The horse was whinnying loudly. “Do you have room for my children?” D.L. shouted above the noise of the wind and the street.
“Hand them up,” the neighbor replied. “I’m off to Spafford’s house, hopefully out of harm’s way. I’ll take them with me.”
Tears streamed down D.L.’s cheeks as he lifted his children up and into the buggy. “God bless you and keep you safe!” D.L. yelled as the buggy rolled away. Soon it was out of sight. D.L. and Emma were caught up in the swirl of humanity headed away from the quickly spreading inferno that was engulfing more and more of Chicago.
D.L.’s plan was to head for Emma’s sister’s home in the northern suburb of Evanston. Grimly, the couple made their way up State Street, D.L. pushing the baby carriage. Even though it was now three in the morning, the encroaching fire made it appear as bright as midday. Everywhere D.L. looked, people were hurrying along, some discarding their belongings at the side of the road as they went so that they could go faster. As he walked, D.L. silently prayed that William and Emma would be safe with their neighbor.
D.L. and Emma finally reached the relative safety of Emma’s sister Sarah’s house. They watched and waited helplessly throughout the day as the fire consumed more of Chicago. People continued to flee the city, likening it to a war zone. The police even began to blow up entire buildings to try to stop them from being further fuel to the fire. By now D.L. was sure that the Illinois Street Church and Farwell Hall were burned to the ground. More than anything, though, he regretted giving those at his meeting at Farwell Hall on Sunday night the opportunity to delay their decision to accept Christ until the following Sunday. He agonized over the fact that some of them might be dead by now because of the fire. D.L. vowed never to leave another meeting without offering an invitation for salvation.
By Tuesday the stiff breeze that blew from the southwest began to die down, and light rain began to fall. With the change in the weather, the fire gave way to smoldering embers. Reports began to filter out of the charred city. A four-mile-long by three-quarter-mile-wide swath of the central city had been burned to the ground. People told of there being no buildings left in the central city from the Chicago River to Lake Michigan, except for the water tower that had survived unscathed.
As D.L. and Emma waited for more news, they prayed constantly for their children and for Ira Sankey. The last time D.L. had seen Ira, he was headed toward the flames.
A week later D.L. was able to arrange a ride to the Spafford house. When he got there, much to his relief, William and Emma were waiting for him. He thanked God for keeping his children safe and took them back to their mother in Evanston.
After a week, the Moody family had the opportunity to go back into the burned city. A friend offered them a horse and buggy, in which D.L. drove his family back into Chicago. Even though he had feared the worst, D.L. was still shocked to see the extent of the fire’s devastation. It was as if a huge bomb had gone off. Not a tree or building stood for miles. Streets that had been bustling centers of commerce were now unrecognizable. Families were setting up tents in the rubble, surrounded by fallen columns and the twisted copper strands of countless burned telegraph wires. The thick smell of acrid smoke permeated everything.
On State Street D.L. stood in front of what had been their house. The steps leading up to the front door were still there, along with a cracked, charred planter where Emma grew tulips. Everything else was gone, the two-story house reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash and charcoal. D.L. took a cane and began poking around in the rubble, hoping to find something salvageable. He found only a toy iron stove that his daughter Emma used to play with. He lifted the toy out of the ashes. It was in perfect condition.
Next, D.L. drove the buggy to the Illinois Street Church. The church, too, was nothing but a pile of ash and crumbled bricks. From Illinois Street the family made their way to Farwell Hall, which had also burned to the ground. D.L. had hoped to find a note from Ira somewhere at the site of the ruins, but he found nothing. He could only hope and pray that Ira had survived. Many others were facing the same harrowing task of trying to locate family members and friends.
D.L. was relieved to learn the next week that Ira had survived the fire. As the fire spread, Ira had returned to Farwell Hall, retrieved his belongings, and spent the night on the shore of Lake Michigan. The next day, as the fire burned to the lake edge, he had climbed into a rowboat and spent the day floating on the lake. When the fire finally died down, Ira boarded a train east to Pennsylvania to be with his wife and children.
Slowly the statistics were gathered about the extent of the fire. Three hundred people had lost their lives in the blaze, one hundred thousand were homeless, and property damage was estimated to be $222 million. Over seventeen thousand buildings, including fifty churches and mission halls, had been destroyed.
D.L. wasted no time in rallying Christians around the United States to help rebuild what had been lost. He wrote letters to his friends in the Christian Commission, the Sunday School Union, and the YMCA and visited Philadelphia and New York to plead for help and money.
People responded to D.L.’s pleas. Soon D.L. had raised $3,000 to build a replacement church. Although much of central Chicago was a charred wasteland, a vacant lot for the church was found at the corner of Wells and Ontario Streets, three blocks north of the charred remains of the Illinois Street Church. D.L. conceived of building a single-story tabernacle the entire size of the lot—109 feet long and 75 feet wide. The new building would be constructed from rough-hewn pine and have a flat tar roof held up by a line of posts supporting beams, similar to the way barns were built. The inside would be lined with tarpaper to hold back the cold.
As materials and money became available, work began on the structure. Many members of the congregation of the Illinois Street Church volunteered their labor to build the new tabernacle, and soon work was going on around the clock. By Christmas 1871, just two and a half months after the fire, the new building was complete. It was the only building in the area. The next closest standing building was a forty-five-minute walk away. As D.L. inspected the new simple but functional building, he was very pleased.
On Christmas Eve 1871, a dedication service for the new North Side Tabernacle was held. The crowd that attended the service was much bigger than D.L. had expected, much to his surprise and delight. Despite the fact that the building sat in the middle of total desolation, it was packed full of people, many of whom had to walk a good distance to get there.
Soon the Sunday school was up and running. The new building was also being used as a place to minister to the destitute who had lost everything in the fire. Food and clothing and other supplies were distributed from the North Side Tabernacle. The doors to the building were left unlocked so that those who were homeless could find shelter when they needed it. D.L. took up residence in one of the small Sunday school classrooms, while Emma and the children stayed in Evanston with Emma’s sister.
By mid-1872 the city was in the midst of a rebuilding frenzy. Rubble was being cleared away from the burned-out area of Chicago, and new buildings were starting to go up. Work was about to start on a third Farwell Hall, and a site had been chosen at the corner of LaSalle Street and Chicago Avenue on which to build a permanent brick church as a replacement for the temporary North Side Tabernacle. D.L. was interested in all of these projects, but only to a point. At the time the fire struck Chicago, he had been wondering whether his future really lay in the city. Was he called to lead a church and Sunday school in Chicago or to be an evangelist to the world? D.L. did not know the answer, but he felt a distinct urge to return to England and meet again with other men of God there whom he greatly respected. He hoped that their input could help direct him in making the decision.
Emma and the children stayed behind with Emma’s mother while D.L. set sail for England. D.L. expected again to be seasick on the voyage, and he was. Upon reaching England he was determined to keep a low profile. He had come not to preach but to learn.
D.L. first traveled to Ireland, where he met some of the friends he had made on his previous trip. In London he went several times to hear Charles Haddon Spurgeon preach at Metropolitan Tabernacle. While listening to Spurgeon preach, D.L. realized that Spurgeon’s spiritual power as a preacher was not in the elegance and simplicity of his words but in the power of God that flowed through him. When people responded to Spurgeon’s sermons, they were responding not to the man’s words but to God’s power that touched their hearts. It was God’s power, not eloquent words, that was important. Words alone were useless without the power of God flowing through the person delivering them.
While in London, D.L. attended a prayer meeting at the Old Bailey, where he encountered the pastor of a North London church in which he had preached during his previous visit. The pastor asked D.L. to preach in the morning and evening services the following Sunday. D.L. accepted the pastor’s invitation.
The morning service that Sunday was fairly standard, and D.L. did not expect anything extraordinary at the evening service. However, from the opening hymn the atmosphere in the church seemed electric. The congregation sat spellbound as D.L. preached to them. As the service reached its end, D.L. asked anyone who wanted to become a Christian to follow him out to the inquiry room. As he turned to lead the way, the entire church stood up to follow him. D.L. was astonished. Because he thought that the congregation had misunderstood him, he asked them to be seated while he explained that he wanted only those wanting to come to salvation in Christ to follow him. Again almost the entire church stood and followed. There were so many people, in fact, that it took a while to get enough chairs into the hall for everyone. D.L. then spoke to the group about faith and repentance and asked those who were ready to repent to stand. Everyone in the room stood. Because too many people were in the room for D.L. to counsel and pray with, he prayed for the group and then instructed them to come back the following evening to receive counsel from the pastor.
