Now back in Northfield, D.L. thought a lot about Wellesley and what Henry had told him. He thought about his brother Sam’s dream to start a girls’ high school in Northfield. His time with Henry had opened his eyes to the practical steps involved in doing such a thing. D.L. decided he was going to devote himself to making his brother’s dream a reality. However, it would take time and money, and right then D.L. did not have much of either.
After a break in Northfield, D.L. and Ira again hit the campaign trail. For the rest of that year and well into 1878, they traveled around New England, holding meetings in the towns and cities throughout the region. While D.L. was away, his mind was never far from the idea of founding a girls’ high school in Northfield.
When he returned to Northfield in the early summer of 1878, he threw his effort into establishing the new school. The school would be for young women of humble means who would otherwise never get a Christian education. D.L. wrote to Henry explaining what he wanted to do, and Henry promptly sent H. F. N. Marshall to assist D.L. in creating the framework for the new school.
The next question was where to site the school. Next to D.L.’s property was a sixteen-acre parcel of land owned by the local tinsmith. The property was overgrown and the farmhouse tumbled down. D.L. quietly approached the tinsmith and asked him whether he would sell the land. The man agreed to sell it for $2,500. Mr. Marshall bought up more land adjacent to the tinsmith’s property until they had one hundred acres on which to build the school. Plans were then drawn up.
At the end of summer, as the planning continued, D.L. learned some startling news—Emma was pregnant again. Their last child, Willie, was going on ten years old. Paul Dwight Moody was born on April 11, 1879, and once again D.L. was a proud father.
Four months later, on August 21, D.L. laid the cornerstone for Recitation Hall, the first building for the new school, on the site of the tinsmith’s demolished house. For the occasion, D.L. used one of his father’s old working trowels to spread the mortar. He wondered what his father would have thought of his son now.
D.L. stressed that the new school, called the Northfield Seminary for Girls, would be based on three important principles. First, the Bible would be a vital part of the curriculum. Second, every girl enrolled would share the domestic duties involved in running the school. And third, the cost of tuition would be low. D.L. set yearly fees at $100, which, following Henry Durant’s example at Wellesley, was half the cost of educating each girl. The school would pay the other half of the cost. Following Henry’s advice, D.L. appointed Harriet Tuttle, a young woman from Wellesley, as the school’s first principal.
As fall rolled around, D.L. left Northfield with Ira to spend the winter and spring holding campaign meetings in several cities. In D.L.’s absence, Mr. Marshall oversaw the establishing of the girls’ school, and D.L.’s older brother George managed the school property. Of course, while he was away, D.L. corresponded constantly with both men to make sure everything was on track.
On November 3 the first students arrived at the school. Because the new dormitory had not yet been built, the barn on D.L.’s property was turned into a makeshift dormitory.
When D.L. returned in the spring from his preaching campaign, one hundred girls were enrolled in the school. The new dormitory was finished late in the summer, and a formal opening ceremony was held at the start of the new school year. At the ceremony D.L. told the girls, “My lack of education has always been a great disadvantage to me. I shall suffer from it as long as I live. I hope after all of us who are here today are dead and gone this school may live and be a blessing to the world and that missionaries may go out from here and preach the gospel to the heathen, and it may be recognized as a power in bringing souls to Christ.”
In typical fashion, while he was away preaching around the country over the next winter and spring, D.L. began to dream about what he could do with the girls’ dormitory during the summer months while school was out. He was preaching in a church in Cleveland, Ohio, when the answer came to him like a thunderbolt. He would hold a prayer conference in Northfield. His enthusiasm carried the project along, and by the end of August everything was arranged. The conference ran from September 1 through September 10, 1880. Participants were encouraged to pray and seek God’s will for their lives rather than be entertained. D.L. was not sure how many people would find such a conference appealing, but in the end over three hundred people poured into Northfield. They came from thirty-seven states as well as England and Canada. D.L. had a huge tent pitched on a hill in which to hold the event, and every bed in the dormitory was filled. Every spare bed in Northfield was also rented out.
The prayer conference was more than D.L. could have hoped for, and on the last day of the event he made an announcement: during the prayer times at the conference, D.L. began to feel that God was directing him to open a school for boys.
The following morning a donor generously gave $25,000 toward establishing the school for boys. D.L. wasted no time getting started on the project. Within days he had purchased 275 acres of farmland five miles away on the other side of the Connecticut River for the new school, which was to be called Mount Hermon. H. F. N. Marshall returned to Northfield to oversee the building of the new school.
By this time it was clear to D.L. that Northfield, not Chicago, was where God wanted him. D.L. was happy with the new direction. The Chicago Avenue Church was in the hands of a mature group of elders and overseen by capable pastors. D.L. kept in contact with the church and its members through the long letters he regularly wrote to them. Since Northfield was D.L.’s new home base, Ira also bought a house there and supported the development of the schools.
While the boys’ school was being established, D.L., Emma, and little Paul headed west, all the way to California. D.L. held campaigns up and down the West Coast and helped raise $82,000 to build a YMCA facility in San Francisco. The family was gone all winter. When D.L. returned in the spring, progress on the Mount Hermon School was heartening. The north farmhouse had been enlarged to accommodate thirteen boys, and a matron was appointed to oversee the school. Classes began May 1, 1881.
D.L. was thrilled that Northfield now had two schools. He only wished his brother Sam could have been there to see them. Sam’s dream had become a reality.
With the schools now up and running, it was time for D.L. to respond to the stream of invitations to return to the British Isles. On September 22, 1881, D.L. and Emma; their daughter Emma, now nearly seventeen; her cousin Fanny Holton; twelve-year-old Willie; and two-year-old Paul set out for England. Accompanying them were Ira and Fanny Sankey. The Moody/Sankey evangelism team was back in action.
The ship docked in Liverpool. When D.L. disembarked, customs officers and dock workers shook his hand and told him how glad they were that he was back in England. The same thing happened with the workers at the railway station as they caught the train to Newcastle. It seemed people all over England were glad to see D.L. and Ira back among them.
The duo began their time in the British Isles with a campaign in Newcastle, and then they moved on to Edinburgh for six weeks. Many things had changed in the six years since their previous visit. Following the example D.L. had set, many churches now held regular winter evangelism campaigns, which lessened the novelty of the two American evangelists. As a result, the crowds that attended their meetings were not as large as before. That was fine with D.L. It meant that many of their meetings could be held in large churches instead of massive halls. D.L. was happy to labor in churches in the poorest, most desperate towns, bringing the gospel to those he felt needed it most. However, when D.L. and Ira returned to Glasgow, Scotland, the crowd that turned out to welcome them was so big that it blocked the streets of the city for hours. And as it had before, Glasgow responded warmly to D.L. and the message he preached, so much so that D.L. spent five months there preaching in churches throughout the city.
While in Scotland, D.L. received a letter from Kynaston Studd, the son of Edward Studd, who had provided most of the money to buy Elisha Alexander’s property back in Northfield. Kynaston had signed the letter as president of the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union and was inviting D.L. to come to Cambridge to preach. Letters from clergymen and university dons in the city endorsing the invitation accompanied Kynaston’s letter. D.L. accepted the invitation and arranged to be in Cambridge in early November 1882.
As November approached, D.L. was a little nervous about the upcoming campaign. He was a man with little formal education headed off to preach to a group of university students and professors from wealthy and privileged English families. He prayed fervently for the meeting in Cambridge, but at the first meeting on Sunday, November 5, 1882, he wondered whether his prayers had fallen on deaf ears.
The meeting was held in the large hall at the Corn Exchange, which D.L. regarded as a rather ugly building with poor acoustics. Seventeen hundred undergraduates dressed in caps and gowns filed into the building for the meeting, and from the start they were an unruly group. They heckled the choir, and when D.L. and Ira came to the platform, they heckled them.
As the meeting proper got under way, the students listened quietly as Ira sang the first verse of “The Ninety and Nine.” Then they began to get rowdy, calling out “encore, encore” after each verse. D.L. could see that Ira was beginning to get flustered by the students’ actions.
When D.L. got up to preach, he, too, began to feel sickened. Students heckled and interrupted his preaching. D.L. fixed his gaze on a young man in the front row who seemed to be one of the ringleaders of the students’ bad behavior in the hall, but it appeared to have little effect on the man. To make matters worse, November 5 was Guy Fawkes Day in England, a day that was celebrated with bonfires and fireworks. As the meeting progressed, students outside began to throw exploding fireworks at the windows of the Corn Exchange. D.L. could not think of a more disruptive crowd he had ever preached to. Despite his frustration, he remained calm and finished his sermon.
After the disruptive service, D.L. and Ira returned to their room at a lodging house. The next morning D.L. heard a knock on the door. When he opened the door, a bellboy handed him a card and said, “Mr. Gerald Lander. Trinity College. He wishes a word with you, sir.”
“Show him up,” D.L. said.
Moments later Gerald Lander was standing at the door. D.L. immediately recognized him as the disruptive ringleader in the front row at the meeting the night before.
“I have come to apologize, sir,” he said to D.L. “I’ve also brought a letter of apology from the men.”
“Come in. Sit down,” D.L. said, reaching out to shake Gerald’s hand. He could tell the young man was uncomfortable.
The two men sat in armchairs facing each other. “I appreciate your apology, Mr. Lander,” D.L. said. “I wonder, as proof of the sincerity of your apology, would you attend the night meetings we are holding in the gymnasium at Market Passage this week? They are especially for Cambridge students. Why, you can bring your student friends too.”
D.L. watched as Gerald squirmed in his chair. “Well…ah…Mr. Moody…I am rather busy with…ah…study at the moment,” the young man sputtered uncomfortably.
“Nonsense,” D.L. said. “I’m sure you can spare two hours. And bring your friends.”
“As I…ah…said, Mr. Moody, I…ah…really don’t think I can. But thank you for inviting me. If you will excuse me, I must be going now.” With that Gerald stood to leave.
“Thank you again for the apology, Mr. Lander. Do try to make it to the meetings,” D.L. said as he shook the young man’s hand again.
