Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous

"From this," says Mr. Moody, "I got the first impulse to work solely for the conversion of men."

When he told his employer that he was going to give up business, he was asked, "Where will you get your support?"

"God will provide for me if he wishes me to keep on, and I shall keep on till I am obliged to stop," was the reply.

To keep his expenses as low as possible, he slept at night on a hard bench in the rooms of the Young Men's Christian Association, and ate the plainest food. Thus was the devoted work of this Christian hero begun. He was soon made city missionary for a time. Then the civil war began, and a camp was established near Chicago. He saw his wonderful opportunity now to reach men who were soon to be face to face with death. The first tent erected was used as a place of prayer. Ministers and friends came to his aid. He labored day and night, sometimes eight or ten prayer-meetings being held at the same time in the various tents.

He did not desert these men on the field of battle. He was with the army at Pittsburgh Landing, Shiloh, Murfreesboro', and Chattanooga. Nine times, in the interests of the Christian Commission, he visited our men at the front, on his errands of mercy. He tells this incident in a hospital at Murfreesboro'.

"One night after midnight, I was woke up and told that there was a man in one of the wards who wanted to see me. I went to him, and he called me 'chaplain,' – I wasn't a chaplain, – and he said he wanted me to help him die. And I said, 'I'd take you right up in my arms and carry you into the kingdom of God, if I could; but I can't do it; I can't help you to die.'

"And he said, 'Who can?'

"I said, 'The Lord Jesus Christ can. He came for that purpose.' He shook his head and said, 'He can't save me; I have sinned all my life.'

"And I said, 'But he came to save sinners.' I thought of his mother in the north, and I knew that she was anxious that he should die right, and I thought I'd stay with him. I prayed two or three times, and repeated all the promises I could, and I knew that in a few hours he would be gone. I said I wanted to read him a conversation that Christ had with a man who was anxious about his soul. I turned to the third chapter of John. His eyes were riveted on me, and when I came to the fourteenth and fifteenth verses, he caught up the words, 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.'

"He stopped me, and said, 'Is that there?' I said, 'Yes;' and he asked me to read it again, and I did so. He leaned his elbows on the cot and clasped his hands together, and said, 'That's good; won't you read it again?' I read it the third time, and then went on with the rest of the chapter. When I finished his eyes were closed, his hands were folded, and there was a smile on his face. Oh, how it was lit up! What a change had come over it. I saw his lips quiver, and I leaned over him, and heard in a faint whisper, 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.'

"He opened his eyes and said, 'That's enough; don't read any more.' He lingered a few hours, and then pillowed his head on those two verses, and went up in one of Christ's chariots and took his seat in the kingdom of God."

On the 28th of August, 1862, Mr. Moody married Miss Emma C. Revell, a most helpful assistant in his meetings, and a young lady of noble character. A daughter and a son came to gladden their simple cottage, and there was no happier home in all Chicago. One morning he said to his wife, "I have no money, and the house is without supplies. It looks as if the Lord had had enough of me in this mission work, and is going to send me back again to sell boots and shoes." But very soon two checks came, one of fifty dollars for himself, and another for his school. Six years after his marriage, his friends gave him the lease of a pleasant furnished house.

This home had a welcome for all who sought the true way to live. One day a gentleman called at the office, bringing a young man who had recently come out of the penitentiary. The latter shrunk from going into the office, but Mr. Moody said, "Bring him in." Mr. Moody took him by the hand, told him he was glad to see him, and invited him to his house. When the young man called, Mr. Moody introduced him as his friend. When his little daughter came into the room, he said, "Emma, this is papa's friend." She went up and kissed him, and the man sobbed aloud.

When she left the room, Mr. Moody said, "What is the matter?"

"Oh sir," was the reply, "I have not had a kiss for years. The last kiss I had was from my mother, and she was dying. I thought I would never have another kiss again."

No wonder people are saved from sin by visiting a home like this!

In 1863, those who had been converted under this beloved leader wanted a church of their own where they could worship together. A building was erected, costing twenty thousand dollars. Four years later, Mr. Moody was made President of the Young Men's Christian Association, and Farwell Hall was speedily built.

He was loved and honored everywhere. Once he was invited to the opening of a great billiard hall. He saw the owners, and asked if he might bring a friend. They said yes, but asked who he was. Mr. Moody said it wasn't necessary to tell, but he never went without him. They understood his meaning, and said, "Come, we don't want any praying."

"You've given me an invitation, and I am going to come," he replied.

"But if you come, you needn't pray."

"Well, I'll tell you what we'll do," was the answer; "we'll compromise the matter, and if you don't want me to come and pray for you when you open, let me pray for you both now," to which they agreed.

Mr. Moody prayed that their business might go to pieces, which it did in a very few months. After the failure, one of the partners determined to kill himself; but when he was about to plunge the knife into his breast, he seemed to hear again the words of his dying mother, "Johnny, if you get into trouble, pray." That voice changed his purpose and his life. He prayed for forgiveness and obtained it.

In 1871, the terrible fire in Chicago swept away Moody's home and church. Two years later, having been invited to Great Britain by two prominent Christian men, he decided to take his friend, Mr. Ira D. Sankey, who had already won a place in the hearts of the people by his singing, and together they would attempt some work for their Lord. They landed in Liverpool, June 17. The two friends who had invited them were dead. The clergy did not know them, and the world was wholly indifferent. At their first meeting in York, England, only four persons were present, but Mr. Moody said it was one of the best meetings they ever held. They labored here for some weeks, and about two hundred were converted.

From here they went to Sunderland and Newcastle, the numbers and interest constantly increasing. Union prayer meetings had been held in Edinburgh for two months in anticipation of their coming. When they arrived, two thousand persons crowded Music Hall, and hundreds were necessarily turned away. As a result of these efforts, over three thousand persons united with the various churches. In Dundee over ten thousand persons gathered in the open air, and at Glasgow nearly thirty thousand, Mr. Moody preaching from his carriage. The press reported all these sermons, and his congregations were thus increased a hundred-fold all over the country. The farmer boy of Northfield, the awkward young convert of Mount Vernon Church, Boston, had become famous. Scholarly ministers came to him to learn how to influence men toward religion. Infidels were reclaimed, and rich and poor alike found the Bible precious, from his simple and beautiful teaching.

In Ireland the crowds sometimes covered six acres, and inquiry meetings lasted for eight hours. Four months were spent in London, where it is believed over two and a half million persons attended the meetings.

Mr. Moody had been fearless in his work. When a church member who was a distiller became troubled in conscience over his business, he came and asked if the evangelist thought a man could not be an honest distiller.

Mr. Moody replied, "You should do whatever you do for the glory of God. If you can get down and pray about a barrel of whiskey, and say when you sell it, 'O Lord God, let this whiskey be blessed to the world,' it is probably honest!"

On his return to America, Mr. Moody was eagerly welcomed. Philadelphia utilized an immense freight depot for the meetings, putting in it ten thousand chairs, and providing a choir of six hundred singers. Over four thousand conversions resulted. In New York the Hippodrome was prepared by an expenditure of ten thousand dollars, and as many conversions were reported here. Boston received him with open arms. Ninety churches co-operated in the house-to-house visitation in connection with the meetings, and a choir of two thousand singers was provided. Mr. Moody, with his wonderful executive ability and genius in organizing, was like a general at the head of his army.

Chicago received him home thankfully and proudly, as was her right. A church had been built for him during his absence, costing one hundred thousand dollars.

For the past ten years his work has been a marvel to the world and, doubtless, to himself. Great Britain has been a second time stirred to its centre by his presence. His sermons have been scattered broadcast by the hundreds of thousands. He receives no salary, never allowing a contribution to be taken for himself, but his wants have been supplied. A pleasant home at his birthplace, Northfield, has been given him by his friends, made doubly dear by the presence of his mother, now over eighty years old. He has established two schools here, one for boys and another for girls, with three hundred pupils, trained in all that ennobles life.

The results from Mr. Moody's work are beyond computing. In his first visit to London a noted man of wealth was converted. He at once sold his hunting dogs and made his country house a centre of missionary effort. During Mr. Moody's second visit the two sons at Cambridge University professed Christianity. One goes to China, having induced some other students to accompany him as missionaries; the other, just married to a lord's daughter, has begun mission work among the slums in the East End of London.

The work of such a life as Mr. Moody's goes on forever. His influence will be felt in almost countless homes after he has passed away from earth. He has wrought without means, and with no fortuitous circumstances. He is a devoted student of the Bible, rising at five o'clock for study in some of his most laborious seasons. He is a man consecrated to a single purpose, – that of winning souls.

Mr. Moody died at his home at East Northfield, Mass., at noon, Friday, December 22, 1899. He was taken ill during a series of meetings at Kansas City, a few weeks previously, and heart disease resulted from overwork. He was conscious to the last. He said to his two sons who were standing by his bedside: "I have always been an ambitious man, not ambitious to lay up wealth, but to leave you work to do, and you're going to continue the work of the schools in East Northfield and Mount Hermon and of the Chicago Bible Institute." Just as death came he awoke as if from sleep and said joyfully, "I have been within the gate; earth is receding; heaven is opening; God is calling me; do not call me back," and a moment later expired. He was buried Tuesday, December 26, at Round Top, on the seminary grounds, where thousands have gathered yearly at the summer meetings conducted by the great evangelist.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

In Gentryville, Indiana, in the year 1816, might have been seen a log cabin without doors or window-glass, a dirt floor, a bed made of dried leaves, and a stool or two and table formed of logs. The inmates were Thomas Lincoln, a good-hearted man who could neither read nor write; Nancy Hanks, his wife, a pale-faced, sensitive, gentle woman, strangely out of place in her miserable surroundings; a girl of ten, Sarah; and a tall, awkward boy of eight, Abraham.

The family had but recently moved from a similar cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky, cutting their way through the wilderness with an ax, and living off the game they could obtain with a gun.

Mrs. Lincoln possessed but one book in the world, the Bible; and from this she taught her children daily. Abraham had been to school for two or three months, at such a school as the rude country afforded, and had learned to read. Of quick mind and retentive memory, he soon came to know the Bible wellnigh by heart, and to look upon his gentle teacher as the embodiment of all the good precepts in the book. Afterward, when he governed thirty million people, he said, "All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother. Blessings on her memory!"

When he was ten years old, the saintly mother faded like a flower amid these hardships of pioneer life, died of consumption, and was buried in a plain box under the trees near the cabin. The blow for the girl, who also died at fifteen, was hard; but for the boy the loss was irreparable. Day after day he sat on the grave and wept. A sad, far-away look crept into his eyes, which those who saw him in the perils of his later life well remember.

Nine months after this, Abraham wrote a letter to Parson Elkins, a good minister whom they used to know in Kentucky, asking him to come and preach a funeral sermon on his mother. He came, riding on horseback over one hundred miles; and one bright Sabbath morning, when the neighbors from the whole country around had gathered, some in carts and some on horseback, he spoke, over the open grave, of the precious, Christian life of her who slept beneath. She died early, but not till she had laid well the foundation-stones in one of the grandest characters in history.

The boy, communing with himself, longed to read and know something beyond the stumps between which he planted his corn. He borrowed a copy of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and read and re-read it till he could repeat much of it. Then some one loaned him "Æsop's Fables" and "Robinson Crusoe," and these he pored over with eager delight. There surely was a great world beyond Kentucky and Indiana, and perhaps he would some day see it.

After a time Thomas Lincoln married a widow, an old friend of Nancy Hanks, and she came to the cabin, bringing her three children; besides, she brought what to Abraham and Sarah seemed unheard-of elegance, – a bureau, some chairs, a table, and bedding. Abraham had heretofore climbed to the loft of the cabin on pegs, and had slept on a sack filled with corn-husks: now a real bed would seem indeed luxurious.

The children were glad to welcome the new mother to the desolate home; and a good, true mother she became to the orphans. She put new energy into her somewhat easy-going husband, and made the cabin comfortable, even attractive. What was better still, she encouraged Abraham to read more and more, to be thorough, and to be somebody. Besides, she gave his great heart something to love, and well she repaid the affection.

He now obtained a much-worn copy of Weem's "Life of Washington," and the little cabin grew to be a paradise, as he read how one great man had accomplished so much. The barefoot boy, in buckskin breeches so shrunken that they reached only half way between the knee and ankle, actually asked himself whether there were not some great place in the world for him to fill. No wonder, when, a few days after, making a noise with some of his fun-loving companions, a good woman said to him, "Now, Abe, what on earth do you s'pose'll ever become of ye? What'll ye be good for if ye keep a-goin' on in this way?" He replied slowly, "Well, I reckon I'm goin' to be President of the United States one of these days."

The treasured "Life of Washington" came to grief. One stormy night the rain beat between the logs of the cabin, and flooded the volume as it lay on a board upheld by two pegs. Abraham sadly carried it back to its owner, and worked three days, at twenty-five cents a day, to pay damages, and thus made the book his own.

The few months of schooling had already come to an end, and he was "living out," hoeing, planting, and chopping wood for the farmers, and giving the wages to his parents. In this way, in the daytime he studied human nature, and in the evenings he read "Plutarch's Lives" and the "Life of Benjamin Franklin." He was liked in these humble homes, for he could tend baby, tell stories, make a good impromptu speech, recite poetry, even making rhymes himself, and could wrestle and jump as well as the best.

While drinking intoxicants was the fashion all about him, taught by his first mother not to touch them, he had solemnly carried out her wishes. But his tender heart made him kind to the many who, in this pioneer life, had been ruined through drink. One night, as he was returning from a house-raising, he and two or three friends found a man in the ditch benumbed with the cold, and his patient horse waiting beside him. They lifted the man upon the animal, and held him on till they reached the nearest house, where Abraham cared for him through the night, and thus saved his life.

At eighteen he had found a situation in a small store, but he was not satisfied to stand behind a counter; he had read too much about Washington and Franklin. Fifteen miles from Gentryville, courts were held at certain seasons of the year; and when Abraham could find a spare day he walked over in the morning and back at night, listening to the cases. Meantime he had borrowed a strange book for a poor country-lad, – "The Revised Statutes of Indiana."

One day a man on trial for murder had secured the able lawyer, John A. Breckenridge, to defend him. Abraham listened as he made his appeal to the jury. He had never heard anything so eloquent. When the court adjourned the tall, homely boy, his face beaming with admiration for the great man, pressed forward to grasp his hand; but, with a contemptuous air, the lawyer passed on without speaking. Thirty years later the two met in Washington, when Abraham Lincoln was the President of the United States; and then he thanked Mr. Breckenridge for his great speech in Indiana.

In March, 1828, the long-hoped-for opportunity to see the world outside of Gentryville had come. Abraham was asked by a man who knew his honesty and willingness to work, to take a flat-boat down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. He was paid only two dollars a week and his rations; and as a flat-boat could not come up the river, but must be sold for lumber at the journey's end, he was obliged to walk the whole distance back. The big-hearted, broad-shouldered youth, six feet and four inches tall, had seen in this trip what he would never forget; had seen black men in chains, and men and women sold like sheep in the slave-marts of New Orleans. Here began his horror of human slavery, which years after culminated in the Emancipation Proclamation.

Two years later, when he had become of age, Abraham helped move his father's family to Illinois, driving the four yoke of oxen which drew the household goods over the muddy roads and through the creeks. Then he joined his adopted brothers in building a log house, plowed fifteen acres of prairie land for corn, split rails to fence it in, and then went out into the world to earn for himself, his scanty wages heretofore belonging legally to his father. He did not always receive money for his work, for once, for a Mrs. Miller, he split four hundred rails for every yard of brown jeans, dyed with white walnut bark, necessary to make a pair of trowsers.

He had no trade, and no money, and must do whatever came to hand. For a year he worked for one farmer and another, and then he and his half-brother were hired by a Mr. Offutt to build and take a flat-boat to New Orleans. So pleased was the owner, that on Abraham's return, he was at once engaged to manage a mill and store at New Salem. Here he went by the name of "Honest Abe," because he was so fair in his dealings. On one occasion, having sold a woman a bill of goods amounting to two dollars and six and a quarter cents, he found that in adding the items, he had taken six and a quarter cents too much. It was night, and locking the store, he walked two or three miles to return the money to his astonished customer. Another time a woman bought a half pound of tea. He discovered afterward that he had used a four-ounce weight on the scales, and at once walked a long way to deliver the four ounces which were her due. No wonder the world, like Diogenes, is always looking for an honest man.

He insisted on politeness before women. One day as he was showing goods, a boorish man came in and began to use profanity. Young Lincoln leaned over the desk, and begged him to desist before ladies. When they had gone, the man became furious. Finding that he really desired to fight, Lincoln said, "Well, if you must be whipped, I suppose I may as well whip you as any other man," and suiting the action to the word, gave him a severe punishing. The man became a better citizen from that day, and Lincoln's life-long friend.

Years afterward, when in the Presidential chair, a man used profanity in his presence, he said, "I thought Senator C. had sent me a gentleman. I was mistaken. There is the door, and I wish you good-night."

Hearing that a grammar could be purchased six miles away, the young store-keeper walked thither and obtained it. When evening came, as candles were too expensive for his limited wages, he burnt one shaving after another to give light, and thus studied the book which was to be so valuable in after years, when he should stand before the great and cultured of the land. He took the "Louisville Journal," because he must be abreast of the politics of the day, and made careful notes from every book he read.

Mr. Offutt soon failed, and Abraham Lincoln was again adrift. War had begun with Blackhawk, the chief of the Sacs, and the Governor of Illinois was calling for volunteers. A company was formed in New Salem, and "Honest Abe" was chosen captain. He won the love of his men for his thoughtfulness of them rather than himself, and learned valuable lessons in military matters for the future. A strange thing now happened, – he was asked to be a candidate for the State Legislature! At first he thought his friends were ridiculing him, and said he should be defeated as he was not widely known.

"Never mind!" said James Rutledge, the president of their little debating club. "They'll know you better after you've stumped the county. Any how, it'll do you good to try."

Lincoln made some bright, earnest stump speeches, and though he was defeated, the young man of twenty-three received two hundred and seventy-seven votes out of the two hundred and eighty cast in New Salem. This surely was a pleasant indication of his popularity. It was a common saying, that "Lincoln had nothing, only plenty of friends."

The County-surveyor needed an assistant. He called upon Lincoln, bringing a book for him to study, if he would fit himself to take hold of the matter. This he did gladly, and for six weeks studied and recited to a teacher, thus making himself skilled and accurate for a new country. Whenever he had an hour's leisure from his work, however, he was poring over his law-books, for he had fully made up his mind to be a lawyer.

He was modest, but ambitious, and was learning the power within him. But as though the developing brain and warm heart needed an extra stimulus, there came into his life, at this time, a beautiful affection, that left a deeper look in the far-away eyes, when it was over. Ann Rutledge, the daughter of his friend, was one of the most intelligent and lovely girls in New Salem. When Lincoln came to her father's house to board, she was already engaged to a bright young man in the neighborhood, who, shortly before their intended marriage, was obliged to visit New York on business. He wrote back of his father's illness and death, and then his letters ceased.

Mouths passed away. Meantime the young lawyer had given her the homage of his strong nature. At first she could not bring herself to forget her recreant lover, but the following year, won by Lincoln's devotion, she accepted him. He seemed now supremely happy. He studied day and night, eager to fill such a place that Ann Rutledge would be proud of him. He had been elected to the Legislature, and, borrowing some money to purchase a suit of clothes, he walked one hundred miles to the State capitol. He did not talk much in the Assembly, but he worked faithfully upon committees, and studied the needs of his State.