As Gerald bolted from the room, D.L. let out a chuckle. The young man wasn’t quite as bold when confronted face-to-face.
Rain poured down that night as D.L. headed to the gymnasium at Market Passage near Great St. Mary’s Church. The gym had been set up with enough seating for five hundred students, but as D.L. entered, barely one hundred students had gathered for the meeting. Among them was Gerald Lander. Despite the small group, Ira sang and D.L. preached, and the audience remained attentive throughout the evening.
The next day D.L. called together 150 mothers from Cambridge and asked them to pray for the individual students as though they were their own children.
That night when D.L. arrived at the gym at Market Passage, although the place was not packed, it was fuller than the night before. Once again Gerald was in attendance. Ira sang and played his portable organ, and then D.L. preached. As on the night before, no one in the gym was rude or disruptive. Each of the students was well behaved and courteous. At the end of his sermon, D.L. decided to make a call for those who wanted to accept Christ to stand and walk up to the inquiry room.
The gallery of the gymnasium was also the fencing room, which was reached by walking up a noisy iron staircase in the middle of the room in full view of everyone. It was this gallery that D.L. had designated the inquiry room. As Ira sang, D.L. asked those who were ready to accept Christ to go up the stairs to the gallery. No one moved. Again D.L. made the same appeal, and still no one moved. In fact, he made the appeal four times before one student left his place and bounded up the clanking stairs two at a time. Then another student followed, and another, and soon a rush of students made their way up the stairs to the gallery inquiry room to accept Christ. In all, fifty-two young men had made their way upstairs. Among them was Gerald Lander.
The following night, and the night after that, more students, some of them Cambridge’s best and brightest, made their way up the noisy iron staircase.
Sunday, November 12, 1882, was the final meeting of the Cambridge campaign held in the Corn Exchange. D.L. marveled at what a difference a week and fervent prayer had made. More than two thousand Cambridge students were seated in the hall, and not one of them was rude or disruptive. They listened reverently and attentively, both when Ira sang and when D.L. preached from the Gospel of Luke. At the end of his sermon D.L. said to the crowd, “One last word. I shall never forget this week, though you may forget me. I thank God I came to Cambridge.”
At the close of the meeting as the choir sang, “Just as I am, without one plea,” D.L. asked those who had given their lives to Christ over the past week to stand. More than two hundred Cambridge students stood. Some of them, like Gerald Lander, had been disruptive during the meeting the previous Sunday night.
Tears gathered in D.L.’s eyes as he looked out on the young men standing before him. He murmured to himself, “My God, this is enough to live for.”
Chapter 15
A Busy Man
Exhausted and in need of a rest, D.L. departed England in the spring of 1883. He planned to spend the summer in Northfield tending to the needs of his schools. However, he and Ira planned to return to England in the winter for a large campaign centered on London.
On the trip back across the Atlantic Ocean, D.L. suffered the usual bouts of seasickness. As he lay on the bunk in his cabin, he thought about the meetings in Cambridge and an interesting encounter he’d had afterward while preaching in Stratford. While there, Charlie (C. T.) Studd, Kynaston Studd’s younger brother and one of the best cricket players in all of England, had sought D.L. out. C.T. and his two older brothers had all become Christians on the same day, but while his brothers grew in their faith, C.T.’s faith languished. Cricket, rather than God, had become the most important thing in his life. However, when his brother George nearly died, C.T. was shaken to the core. He realized the need to get his life right with God and had traveled to Stratford to do so. He and D.L. had talked, discussed Bible passages, and prayed together, and when C.T. left Stratford to return to Cambridge, he was a different man. D.L. thanked God as he thought about his new friend; the young man had so much zeal and talent. D.L. was sure that C.T. would have a great impact for God wherever he was.
It felt good to be back in Northfield. Both the Northfield Seminary for Girls and the Mount Hermon School were progressing well. New housing had gone up for the boys at Mount Hermon in D.L.’s absence, and D.L. had arranged for twelve boys from Manchester, England, to attend the school. At the girls’ school, Harriet Tuttle had left the position of principal, and in her place D.L. appointed Evelyn Hall, another woman from Wellesley, as principal.
The Moodys and Sankeys set out for London in early November 1883 for an eight-month campaign. D.L. longed to reach even more of London’s destitute people, but the poorest areas had no buildings large enough to hold campaign meetings. Therefore, D.L. and his organizing committee in London had come up with an ingenious plan: Tin Tabernacles.
Tin Tabernacles were large buildings made from wooden posts and beams, with corrugated iron sheets covering the outer walls. Each tabernacle could seat about six thousand people. The tabernacle buildings were made to be portable. Each sheet of iron and piece of wood was numbered so that the building could easily be taken down and reassembled somewhere else. The first Tin Tabernacle was set up on open ground in Islington, where D.L. commenced his campaign, once again to packed crowds. While D.L. was holding campaign meetings in Islington, the second Tin Tabernacle was being erected in the working-class area of Wadsworth. It took about three weeks to tear a Tin Tabernacle down, move it to the next location, and reassemble it. When D.L. moved on to Wadsworth, the Islington Tin Tabernacle was torn down and reassembled in the East End. In this way, over eight months, D.L. preached in the Tin Tabernacles at eleven different sites around London.
On one occasion a local atheist club challenged D.L. to preach to them. To their surprise, he took them up on the offer. He set aside several of the front rows at one of the meetings and offered them to the atheists, who gladly filled the seats. Throughout his sermon D.L. was aware of the atheist men staring at him blankly, and he wondered whether any of what he was saying was getting through to them. He got his answer at the end of the meeting when several of the atheist men stood to receive Christ. D.L. could tell that they did so, much to the consternation of their fellow atheist club members.
A short while after the meeting, the president of the atheist club invited D.L. to his home for tea. D.L. smiled as he walked down the street to the man’s house. People had gathered outside every house, scarcely believing that D.L. was going to have tea with a notorious atheist. The president of the club shook D.L.’s hand and invited him into the house. As they drank tea together and conversed, D.L. said to the man, “If I lived here, I should not try by argument to win you over, but I should try by kindness to win your affection and make you respect me.”
The president of the atheist club looked directly at D.L. and replied, “You have done that already.”
By the time D.L. and Ira left London to return to the United States, the Pall Mall Gazette estimated that D.L. had preached to over two million residents of London.
Back in Northfield, D.L. took a well-earned rest, though he always managed to find something to do. He particularly enjoyed visiting and encouraging the students at the two schools that he had established in Northfield. Then, with the approach of winter 1884, D.L. and Ira set out again. This time they focused on preaching the gospel in smaller cities around the United States. Usually they would spend three days in a town, and D.L. would preach in meetings three times a day.
While he was away on this campaign, D.L. continued to hear news of stirrings at Cambridge University. C. T. Studd seemed to be the leader. He had become an enthusiastic evangelist, proclaiming the gospel to his fellow students and cricket players. As a result, many students had given their lives to Christ. C.T. and six other students from Cambridge had committed themselves to go to China as missionaries. This had created quite a stir in England. These were not ordinary men going to be missionaries. They were young men of wealth, privilege, and sports ability. D.L. read with interest about a meeting the Cambridge Seven, as the group was called, had held in London the night before they set sail for China on February 4, 1885. Many people had been challenged with the call to missionary service as a result of the meeting.
When D.L. arrived back in Northfield, he was already formulating a plan for another summer prayer conference, now with an emphasis on missions. The conference began in August 1885. To D.L.’s delight, a large crowd showed up, including Kynaston Studd and a group of students from Cambridge. On August 11, Arthur Pierson, a noted authority on world missions from Philadelphia, addressed the crowd. He challenged individuals and churches to take up the work of sending and supporting missionaries so that the whole world could be evangelized. At the end of Arthur’s spirited address, D.L. and six men were given the task of drawing up the document “An Appeal to Disciples Everywhere.” Among the men in the group was Kynaston, and they all met in D.L.’s house, which Kynaston’s father had helped D.L. pay for.
After three days the document was ready and read aloud to the conference attendees. “The whole world is now accessible; the last of the hermit nations welcomes missionaries,” the appeal proclaimed. “And yet the Church of God is slow to move in response to the providence of God. Nearly a thousand million of the human race are yet without the gospel; vast districts are wholly unoccupied.” The appeal then called for the immediate occupation and evangelization of every country without the gospel.
“An Appeal to Disciples Everywhere” greatly challenged many of the young men and women present at the conference. It also helped D.L. to focus on the need to recruit and send out missionaries.
As autumn rolled on, D.L. and Ira hit the evangelism campaign trail for the winter and spring, as was now their practice. They picked up where they left off, going to small cities and proclaiming the gospel in each city over a three-day period. D.L. also spoke at Princeton, Yale, and Dartmouth. In meetings on these university campuses, he challenged students not only to give their lives to Christ but also to go as missionaries to other countries that had not yet had the opportunity to hear the gospel. Many students, like those who had been at the summer conference in Northfield, were deeply inspired with a vision of world missions.
During July and August 1886, another conference was held in Northfield. At this conference, which was to focus solely on missions, 250 students from a range of universities showed up. Several students announced their desire to serve as foreign missionaries, and they wanted to encourage another thousand students to volunteer to do the same. To D.L.’s delight, this led to the formation of the Student Volunteer Movement.
On December 31, 1886, D.L. arrived in Chicago to begin a four-month campaign in the city. No special hall was built for this campaign as in previous times. Instead, large meetings were held in roller-skating rinks that could seat several thousand people. Most of the time, however, D.L. used a different strategy, going from church to church throughout the city and holding smaller, more intimate meetings. Whether in large meetings or small, D.L. found that those who attended were spiritually hungry and ready to respond to his message.
As the campaign in Chicago proceeded, D.L. met with his old friend John Farwell and several other men in the city who formed the Chicago Evangelization Society. The aim of the society was twofold: to continue systematic evangelization of the city, and to provide Bible training for those involved.
