The Conversion of D. L. Moody

When seventeen-year-old Dwight L. Moody arrived in Boston in 1854, he was not looking for God. He was looking for success.

Dwight had left his family’s farm in Northfield, Massachusetts, determined to make something of himself. His uncle, Samuel Holton, finally gave him a job in his shoe store, but with certain conditions. One of them was that Dwight attend church and Sunday school. And so the young shoe salesman began attending Mount Vernon Congregational Church in Boston, where Dr. Edward Norris Kirk was pastor.

The church had been organized in 1842, only a little more than a decade earlier, and Kirk had served as its pastor from the beginning. He was already known as an earnest evangelistic preacher.

At first, Dwight knew remarkably little about the Bible. When he entered the Sunday school class taught by Edward Kimball, he could not even find the Gospel of John. Some of the other young men noticed his difficulty, but Kimball quietly handed Moody an open Bible and took the closed one himself, sparing the young man further embarrassment. That simple act of kindness made an impression upon Dwight.

Over the months that followed, Dwight listened to sermon after sermon from Dr. Kirk. The pastor emphasized the sinfulness of man and man’s inability to save himself. Man was like a lost sheep, going his own way. He preached Christ’s death for sinners, His resurrection from the dead, and the necessity of personally coming to Christ in faith. He also solemnly warned those who neglected so great a salvation.

As Pastor Kirk’s preaching and Edward Kimball’s Sunday school teaching combined in Dwight’s mind, he found himself caught up in a spiritual struggle.

Dwight later remembered his thinking during this period:

“I thought I would wait till I died and then become a Christian. I thought if I had the consumption or some lingering disease, I would have plenty of time to become one, and in the meantime I would enjoy the best of the pleasures of the world.”

Dwight knew that the issue was not merely understanding Christian teaching. It was a matter of surrender. He sensed that the Gospel was true, yet he seemed unable—or unwilling—to yield himself completely to God.

Then came Saturday, April 21, 1855.

Edward Kimball had become increasingly burdened about the soul of his young Sunday school pupil. That day he determined that he would go to the shoe store and speak personally to Dwight about Christ.

But as Kimball approached the store, his courage almost failed him.

“I began to wonder whether I ought to go just then during business hours,” he later recalled.

He worried that his visit might embarrass Dwight. What if the other clerks discovered that his Sunday school teacher had come to speak to him about his soul? Would they laugh at him? Would they taunt him afterward?

For a moment, Kimball considered turning back.

Then he decided otherwise.

“I decided to make a dash for it and have it over at once.”

Kimball entered the store and found eighteen-year-old Dwight in the back, wrapping shoes.

It was hardly the place one would expect for the conversion of a man who would one day preach the Gospel to enormous crowds on both sides of the Atlantic.

Kimball walked over to him.

“I placed my hand on his shoulder, leaned over, and placed my foot on a shoe box.”

Looking into Dwight’s eyes, Kimball spoke simply to him about Christ. He urged him to come to the Saviour who loved him and wanted his heart and life.

There was no great sermon.

There was no crowded revival meeting.

There was no famous evangelist standing behind a pulpit.

There was only a Sunday school teacher, a young shoe salesman, and the Gospel.

“My plea was a very weak one,” Kimball later admitted, “but I was sincere.”

But Dwight was ready.

“The young man was just ready for the light that broke upon him,” Kimball remembered.

There, in the back of his uncle’s shoe store in Boston, Dwight Lyman Moody surrendered himself to Christ.

The change in Moody was immediate and deeply personal.

The following morning, as he left his room, everything seemed different. The sun appeared brighter. The birds sounded sweeter. The ordinary world around him seemed transformed because something within him had changed.

Moody later recalled:

“The old sun shone a good deal brighter than it ever had before—I felt that it was just smiling upon me; and as I walked out upon Boston Common and heard the birds singing in the trees, I thought they were all singing a song to me.”

Even his attitude toward other people had changed.

“I had not a bitter feeling against any man, and I was ready to take all men to heart.”

Yet conversion did not suddenly turn Dwight Moody into a polished theologian.

When he later applied for membership at Mount Vernon Church, the examining committee questioned him about his faith and was not initially satisfied with his ability to explain Christian doctrine and his experience of conversion. His admission was delayed, and he was eventually received into membership in May 1856.

There is something remarkable about that.

The young man who struggled to explain his faith clearly enough to satisfy a church membership committee would eventually spend his life explaining the Gospel in simple language to millions.

Moody would become one of the best-known evangelists of the nineteenth century. He would preach throughout America and Britain, minister among soldiers during the American Civil War, establish schools, and leave behind institutions that continued his work long after his death.

But it began very quietly.

Edward Kimball was not preaching to thousands that Saturday.

He was seeking one young man.

He almost turned around.

He worried that he might embarrass him.

He considered his own words weak.

But he went.

And in the back of a Boston shoe store, on April 21, 1855, an ordinary Sunday school teacher put his hand on the shoulder of an eighteen-year-old shoe salesman and faithfully pointed him to Jesus Christ.

Neither of them could possibly have known how far the influence of that simple conversation would reach.