pter, a man the opposite in many ways of the great clergyman whose
career we have just noted, and yet, like him, of broadest sympathies and
most sincere convictions; a man whose life was more picturesque, whose
battle against fate was harder, and whose achievement was even more
remarkable--the greatest evangelist the modern world has ever produced,
Dwight L. Moody. If ever a man labored for his fellow-men, he did, and
the story of his life reads almost like a romance.

He was born at Northfield, Massachusetts, in 1837, the son of a
stone-mason, who, disheartened and worn out by business reverses, died
when the boy was only four years old. There were nine children, the
oldest only fifteen, and when the father's creditors came and took every
possession they had in the world, the future looked dark indeed. The
mother was urged to place the children in various homes, but she managed
to keep them together by doing housework for the neighbors and tilling a
little garden.

As soon as he was old enough, Dwight was put to work on a farm, but his
earnings were small, and finally, when he was seventeen, he started for
Boston to look for something better. He managed to get a position in a
shoe-store, and there came under the influence of Edward Kimball, who
persuaded him to become a Christian and to join a church. But he was not
admitted to membership for nearly a year; so poor was his command of
language and so awkward his sentences that it was doubted if he
understood Christianity at all, and even when he was admitted, the
committee stated that they thought him "very unlikely ever to become a
Christian of clear and decided views of gospel truth; still less to fill
any extended sphere of public usefulness." How blind, indeed, we often
are to the possibilities in human nature!

At the age of nineteen, Dwight removed to Chicago, secured another
position as shoe-salesman, and offered his services to a mission school
as a teacher. His appearance made anything but a favorable impression,
but finally he was told that he might teach provided he brought his own
scholars. The next Sunday he walked in at the head of a score of
ragamuffins he had gathered up along the wharves. The divine fire seems
to have been working in him; he was finding words with which to express
himself, and burning for a wider field. So he rented a room in the slum
districts which had been used as a saloon and opened a Sunday school
there. It was an immense success