On October 24, 1864, Emma gave birth to a curly-haired little girl, whom they named Emma Reynolds Moody. D.L. was delighted. At the age of twenty-seven he was finally a father. “Both her little fingers are as crooked as mine,” D.L. wrote in a letter to his mother in Northfield, telling her of the arrival of her newest granddaughter.
Not long after the birth of his daughter, D.L. realized that the problem he was having in getting converts to attend other churches in the city had only one solution. If the people would not go to other churches, he would just have to start his own church, a place where poor people could feel comfortable and where the sermons were relevant and engaging. It was not an easy decision for D.L. to come to. Nearly all of the churches in Chicago belonged to large, prestigious denominations. Chicago had few independent churches, and as a layman D.L. didn’t really want to start one. But he knew that the new converts needed a good spiritual home.
As D.L. made plans to found a church, news arrived in Chicago of another victory in the Civil War. On the morning of December 21, 1864, General Sherman’s Union army took control of Savannah, Georgia, after fighting its way across the state from Atlanta. Sherman intended to turn north and march through the Carolinas on his way to link up with Grant’s army, still fighting around Richmond and Petersburg. It was obvious to D.L. and almost everyone in the North that the Union was well on its way to victory over the Confederacy.
On December 30 the new Illinois Street Church was dedicated. It was a great moment for D.L. The church was established as a nondenominational independent church. From the beginning, people flocked to it. D.L. took pains to make it clear that the Illinois Street Church was not his church. He may have been instrumental in getting it started, but the church belonged to everybody who attended regularly. And since it belonged to everybody, D.L. managed to find small jobs for many in the congregation to do to help keep the place running, from cleaning and organizing to being one of his “Yokefellows,” a group of young men who went out into the streets each Sunday to hand out fliers and invite people to services.
Nor was D.L. the pastor of the church. In fact, at first he did none of the preaching at the new church. Because he was a layman, he invited students from the Chicago Theological Seminary to come and preach to the congregation each Sunday. This worked well until one Sunday evening when one of the students failed to show up, forcing D.L. to speak that night. His sermon was well received. Before long, D.L. was the main speaker at the evening services, and the seminary students continued to take turns preaching at the morning service.
D.L. agreed that preparing sermons was not the easiest of tasks. He would much rather have preached the way he did when he went out to speak to the troops, talking directly from his heart and saying whatever seemed appropriate for the moment. But he knew that preaching each Sunday in the church required a more thorough and systematic approach, especially if new converts were to grow and mature in their faith. As much as he disliked preparing sermons, he pushed himself on. Before long, some kind of meeting or service was being held at the church every evening.
In late March 1865 D.L. and Emma left their five-month-old daughter in the care of Emma’s mother in Chicago to visit Union forces. They went to Virginia, where General Grant’s army was making headway in the Siege of Petersburg. D.L. preached the gospel to the soldiers and encouraged them on in the fight, and he paid close attention to those soldiers wounded in the fighting.
On April 2, while D.L. was still visiting the troops in Virginia, a decisive battle was fought at Petersburg as the Union army broke through Confederate defenses and ended the siege of the town. During the night, Confederate President Jefferson Davis fled Richmond, and Robert E. Lee and his army escaped to the west, but not before setting fire to a good part of the Confederate capital at Richmond. The following day the Union army captured Richmond and helped to extinguish the fire. D.L. rode with General Grant’s troops into the beleaguered city, and he began to minister to the wounded soldiers of both sides. The most memorable thing for D.L. that day was the church service he attended in the evening. Later, he wrote about the experience:
We had been there but a few hours before I heard that the colored people were going to have a jubilee meeting down in the great African church that night; and I thought to myself, although I am a white man, I will get in there somehow. I had a hard fight to get in, but I did succeed at last. It was probably the largest church in the South. There were supposed to be three or four thousand black people there, and they had some chaplains of our Northern regiments for their orators on the occasion. Talk about eloquence, I never heard better. It seemed as if they were raised up for the occasion. I remember one of them, as he stood there on the platform, pointed down to the mothers and said: “Mothers, you rejoice today that you are forever free, all your posterity is free; that little child has been taken from your bosom and sold to some distant State for the last time.” And some of those women shouted right out in the meeting, “Glory to God!” They could not keep the good news to themselves. They believed they were delivered. They believed the good news. Then this man turned to the young men and said: “Young men, rejoice today! It is a day of jubilee, a day of glad tidings. We come to proclaim to you that you are free. You have heard the crack of the slave-trader’s whip for the last time.” And they shouted and clapped their hands and said, “Glory to God!” Then he turned to the young ladies and said: “Rejoice today! You have been on the auction-block and sold into captivity for the last time.” And then the young maidens clapped their hands and shouted for joy. It was a jubilee. What made them so glad? They believed they were liberated, and that is what made them so joyful. People want to know why Christians are so joyful. It is because they have been delivered from Satan.
Following the fall of Richmond, D.L. and Emma returned to Chicago. They had been back only two days when news came of the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and his Confederate army to General Grant at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9, 1865. The Civil War had ended.
The following weekend was Easter, and D.L. had a lot to celebrate: not only Christ’s death and resurrection but also the end of the war, and with it, the end of slavery in the United States. The Union had been saved, though it was going to take the best efforts of President Lincoln to heal the deep wounds the Civil War had inflicted on the nation. But D.L. knew that if anybody could do it, Abraham Lincoln could. And so the news that reached Chicago on April 15, 1865, stunned both D.L. and the entire nation. The night before, while attending a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., Lincoln had been shot in the head. The president had survived the night but had died early in the morning. Vice President Andrew Johnson had already been sworn in as the new president.
Along with the rest of the nation, the people at the Illinois Street Church mourned their assassinated president, who had successfully guided the country through its greatest challenge. D.L. recounted for the congregation Lincoln’s visit to the North Market Hall Mission Sunday school back in November 1860.
With the end of the Civil War, soldiers began to stream back to Chicago, and a number of them became a part of the Illinois Street Church. Given the carnage the war had inflicted on the nation, the best outcome of the war, as far as D.L. was concerned, was the new openness of people to consider the gospel. And D.L. redoubled his efforts to tell the gospel to everyone he came in contact with, though these efforts and his sometimes brash and unorthodox way of going about it earned him the nickname “Crazy Moody,” even among other Christians. Although he shrugged this off publicly, privately the nickname stung. Because his involvement with the Christian Commission and his tireless effort on behalf of the troops during the Civil War had won him the respect of most of the city, it was hard to hear himself referred to as Crazy Moody so soon after the end of the war. Nonetheless, D.L. kept busy. He had committed his life to proclaiming the gospel, and that is what he would continue to do, Crazy Moody or not.
D.L. threw some of his effort back into the YMCA. In 1866 he was elected president of the YMCA in Chicago, with John Farwell as vice president. Until now the organization had been housed in rented facilities, but under D.L.’s leadership, a drive began to raise money for the YMCA to erect its own building. He soon became well known to many of the wealthy men of Chicago, as he boldly asked them to donate money toward the building. In fact, some of these men were so impressed by D.L. that they became good friends. Among them were Cyrus Hall McCormick, who had made a fortune inventing a combined harvester, and George Armour, the wealthy owner of a large meat-packing business.
Before long the new building on Madison Street in central Chicago, between Clark and LaSalle Streets, was taking shape. The building would seat three thousand people and have a large prayer room, a library, and offices.
Meanwhile, D.L. kept busy with the church and Sunday school. During this time his father-in-law became ill and died a short time later. This was a shock to the whole family, and D.L. did his best to comfort his wife and mother-in-law in the face of their loss.
While Emma was still dealing with the death of her father, she suffered an asthma attack in early winter. Her doctor recommended that she take a sea voyage to help her recover. D.L. saw the voyage as an opportunity. One place that he had considered visiting was England, not for any scenic reasons, or even for relaxation. What appealed to him about England was the opportunity to meet three particular people: George Williams, the founder of the YMCA; George Müller, founder of orphanages in Bristol; and Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great preacher in London. Soon D.L. was busy making the arrangements. Three-year-old Emma would stay with her grandmother Revell. This would give D.L.’s mother-in-law both a focus and company as she adjusted to her husband’s passing. Early in 1867, D.L. and Emma set off for New York City to sail on the City of Washington across the Atlantic Ocean to England.
Chapter 9
England
Early in the morning on February 24, 1867, D.L. stood on the deck of the City of Washington. As the ship steamed down the Hudson River toward the open sea, D.L. watched the skyline of New York City drift by. Beside him Emma wiped away tears with her handkerchief. D.L. patted her arm. “All will be well,” he said. “We’ve placed little Emma in God’s hands. Your mother will look after her, and it will be good for her to have a distraction.”
Emma nodded and smiled through her tears. “I know, but saying good-bye to her has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. She’s only three years old. What if she doesn’t remember us when we return? If only I didn’t have this asthma.”
“Let’s not look at it that way,” D.L. replied. “While the doctor did say a sea voyage would help your sickness, we don’t know what God has for us in England. Just think, God willing, we will see Müller, Spurgeon, and Williams, great men of faith whom I never imagined I would meet.”
D.L. and Emma stood in silence for a while. The chill of the sea breeze on that cold, dreary morning seemed to cut right through their clothing.
As the City of Washington left the calm waters of the Hudson River and headed out into the ocean, the vessel began to roll gently. All of D.L.’s exuberance was suddenly replaced by the queasiness of seasickness. Before the coastline had even slipped from view, D.L. was down in the cabin, lying in bed with a basin beside him. “This is going to be a very long voyage,” he told Emma.