The following morning, still astonished at the events of the night before, D.L. left London to return to Ireland. However, on Tuesday, while en route, D.L. received an urgent telegram from the pastor in London. More people than had been saved on Sunday had shown up at the Monday night gathering to receive salvation, and the pastor needed D.L.’s help.
D.L. turned around and headed straight back to London. For the next ten nights he preached at the church, and more and more people streamed in to listen. When D.L. left London to return to Chicago two weeks later, over four hundred new members had been added to the church.
When he arrived back in Chicago, D.L. was surprised to learn that news of the experience at the North London church had reverberated around England. He soon began receiving requests to return to England on an extensive preaching and evangelizing tour. Three men were particularly persistent in having him come: the Reverend William Pennefather, rector of the Mildmay Park Church in London; Cuthbert Bainbridge, a tireless Methodist layworker from Newcastle upon Tyne; and Henry Bewley, in Dublin, Ireland. The three men had joined forces and offered to pay for D.L. and his traveling party to return to England.
D.L. prayed about the offer and felt strongly that he should go. He decided that spring the following year would be the best time to set out. He invited Emma and the children as well as Ira Sankey and his family to accompany him. Ira and his wife, Fanny, agreed to come, but they decided to leave their two young sons at home with relatives.
In early June 1873 the group set off from Chicago for New York City, confident that everything would go smoothly. D.L. had telegraphed ahead to William Pennefather and Cuthbert Bainbridge, asking that they wire him the money for the voyage as promised. When they reached New York, D.L. hurried to the telegraph office expecting a response from one or both of the Englishmen. But the clerk at the office just looked at him blankly and checked his books again. “No, Mr. Moody,” he said. “There is no telegram here for you.”
D.L. wondered what the problem could be. He was certain that God wanted him to preach in England and that the financial offer to cover his traveling expenses was God’s provision. What had gone wrong? And what should he do now?
Chapter 12
Ten Thousand Souls
A long walk through the crowded Manhattan streets—up the east side and down the west—gave D.L. time to pray. He asked God what he should do next. Had he made a mistake in setting out for England? A few miles later, D.L. had his answer. Yes, he believed that God was calling him to England—not just to preach but also to save ten thousand souls. As for the money for passage to the British Isles, D.L. remembered that before leaving Chicago he had asked a friend to invest $500 for him until he returned. D.L. headed for the telegraph office, hoping that he could retrieve the money and set sail on the SS City of Paris.
The money arrived in New York just in time, and on June 17, 1873, the Moody family, along with Ira and Fanny Sankey, walked up the gangplank onto the ship. A dockworker walked behind them carrying Ira’s portable organ. They were ready to take England by storm.
After a gentle crossing of the Atlantic Ocean—but not so gentle that D.L. could leave his bunk—the group arrived in Liverpool. Upon disembarking they took a carriage to the hotel, where everyone but D.L. went upstairs to settle in. D.L. had used the hotel as his forwarding address in England, and he was anxious to see whether the three men who were coordinating his visit to the country had sent word.
Ten minutes later, a shocked D.L. sat in a leather chair in the hotel lobby. Not one but two of the men who had invited him to England—William Pennefather and Cuthbert Bainbridge—had died, and Henry Bewley in Ireland appeared to have completely forgotten about the invitation. As a result, no preaching tour of the British Isles had been arranged, and no funds were available. D.L. was still stunned as he climbed the stairs to tell the group. After relaying the bad news, D.L. summed up his thoughts for them all. “God seems to have closed doors. We will not open them ourselves. If He opens the door, we will go in; otherwise we will return to America.”
Everyone nodded in agreement and sat in silence for a moment. Then Emma spoke up. “Are you sure you opened all the mail you received before we left New York? Those last days were confusing. Perhaps you overlooked some last letter, my dear.”
D.L. reached into his vest pocket, then his trouser pockets, and finally his jacket pocket, from which he pulled out an unopened letter. Quickly he tore it open and read it. “I believe this forgotten letter is an indication that God is watching over us to dispel our discouragement and disappointment,” he finally said.
“Who’s it from?” Ira asked.
“A Mr. George Bennett of the York YMCA, saying that if I ever come to England again, he hopes that I will speak for his association. The door is only ajar, but we will consider the letter God’s hand leading us to York, and we will go there,” D.L. announced.
The next morning D.L. sent a telegram to George that read, “Moody here. Are you ready for him?”
D.L. received a quick reply. “Please fix date when you can come to York.”
D.L. chuckled to himself when he got the reply. He could only imagine George’s surprise at the other end. “I will be in York tonight at ten o’clock. Make no arrangements till I come,” he telegraphed back.
Plans were quickly hatched. The Sankeys would stay in Liverpool while things were sorted out, and D.L. would head for York. The Moodys went to the railway station to buy tickets to London. In London, Emma’s sister Mary met Emma and the children, who stayed with Mary while D.L. transferred trains and headed north to York.
At the station in York, a frantic-looking George Bennett met D.L. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon. I haven’t set anything up. I don’t know if I can, but I have accommodations for you. You’re staying with a doctor…” His voice trailed off, and he looked awkward. “His home is attached to the insane asylum where he works.”
D.L. nodded. It did not matter to him where he laid his head at night, so long as he could preach the gospel to the poor and lost.
Realizing that he would have to take control of the situation, D.L. told George that he wanted to preach somewhere on Sunday, just three days away, and that he was sending a telegram to Liverpool to summon Ira. When Ira arrived the next day, D.L. said to him, “Here we are, a couple of white elephants. Bennett is away all over the city now to see if he can get us a place to preach and sing. He’s like a man who has a white elephant and doesn’t know what to do with it.”
George returned with mixed news. None of the ministers in York with whom he had spoken were excited about welcoming the Americans into their churches. They wondered what they were doing in the city and were shocked that they wanted to do mission work in summer, not in May like everyone else. They also were concerned about Ira Sankey and his modern hymn singing. Many of the pastors complained that it didn’t seem right to sing lively music in church, and the idea of accompanying the singing with an organ was a modern, ungodly notion.
Nonetheless, the pastor at the Salem Congregational Church was away, and the church elders had agreed to host D.L. and Ira on Sunday morning. George had also rented the cheapest building in town, the Corn Exchange, for a Sunday afternoon service. Now it was up to D.L. and Ira.
Neither event that Sunday went particularly well. Attendance was small, and the congregations were unenthusiastic. D.L. held a series of chapel meetings each night for the next week. Again, the response, as far as he was concerned, was unenthusiastic. But D.L. pressed on. He started a noon prayer meeting at the local YMCA.
During the second week, things began to change. At a meeting in a Methodist chapel in the heart of York, the building was filled to overflowing. Many people responded when D.L. gave an appeal at the end of the meeting for those who wanted salvation. The superintendent of the church later told D.L. that he had never experienced anything like this meeting in his life.
From the Methodist chapel, D.L. and Ira moved on to hold a series of meetings at a new Baptist church. D.L. knew that the young pastor of the church, Fredrick Brotherton (F. B.) Meyer, had been reluctant to turn the pulpit over to them and had questioned George as to what an evangelist could do that he himself could not. As D.L. spoke the first night, he noticed that the pastor sat stone-faced and unmoved. But as people began to come to Christ in the church and wept openly in repentance over their sin, D.L. noted that F. B. Meyer began to change too. Now instead of sitting stone-faced through the service, the pastor was engaged and attentive. In the evenings he and D.L. discussed revival and the power and love of God.
After five weeks of nightly meetings in York, D.L. and Ira felt they had accomplished all they could there. While many people had come to Christ during their time in the city, the turnout (especially at the beginning) and lack of support of many pastors had been disappointing. It was now time to move on.
D.L. and Ira chose to head north to Newcastle upon Tyne, a busy coal seaport. They arrived in the city on August 25, 1873, and set up a series of meetings. This time things got off to a better start than they had in York. The local paper praised the “wonderful religious phenomenon” and noted with admiration that the “jingle of money is never heard at these meetings.” Slowly the campaign, as D.L. called it, began to spread to the richest and poorest citizens of the city.
One night a young mother brought her baby with her to the meeting, and the baby cried loudly throughout the service. Some in the crowd grew restless and heckled the mother until she broke down in tears. Watching the scene unfold, D.L. said without thinking, “Tomorrow night we are going to have a special mothers’ meeting. No one will be admitted unless she has a baby in her arms.” The woman with the crying baby, who was on her way out of the meeting, turned and smiled at D.L. The next night the hall was filled with screaming babies and toddlers. D.L. didn’t mind that he had to raise his voice to preach over the children’s squeals and cries. He knew that this might be the only opportunity these women had to hear the gospel, and he considered enduring the crying a small price to pay.
Not only the mothers but also everyone else who attended the meetings in Newcastle loved singing the new hymns along with Ira. Many people asked him if he had copies of the sheet music. They were disappointed that Ira had but one copy of the music, the copy he used when he sang. Eventually the clamor for the sheet music became so great that D.L. and Ira arranged to have the music for the hymns published. The book, entitled Sacred Songs and Solos with Standard Hymns Combined, went on sale at sixpence for the sheet music version and a penny for the lyrics only.
Apart from the printing of the songbooks, nothing important seemed to be happening, at least not in the proportions D.L. had hoped and prayed for. D.L. began to doubt that he would see ten thousand converts to Christ during his time in the British Isles. It seemed an unrealistic goal. It was mid-October, he was four months into his six-month stay, and few major breakthroughs had taken place.
While passing through Newcastle, the Reverend John Kelman, a pastor in the Free Church of Scotland at Leith in Edinburgh, was greatly impressed by what he saw at D.L.’s meetings in the city. He was so impressed that he invited D.L. to come to Edinburgh to hold a series of meetings. He promised to put together a committee of clergymen in Edinburgh to organize and plan the occasion. When D.L. told Kelman that he had been invited to Dundee, Scotland, to preach, Kelman’s response was, “Edinburgh first. Then you will reach the nation.”
Impressed by Kelman’s enthusiasm and his willingness to bring other Christian leaders in the city together to support the meetings, D.L. agreed to go.
