p. 164 | How to Work by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 25, 1875

How to Work.

By Uriah Smith

A SKETCH of the conversion and early labors of D. L. Moody, by J. B. T. Marsh in The Christian at Work, states some facts touching the manner and methods of his labors, from which all who wish to work successfully for Christ may learn some profitable lessons.

Passing over his conversion, we commence with him in the boot and shoe business in Chicago. Here he entered earnestly into Sunday-school work. His first act was to rent four pews in the church with which he was connected, and from Sunday to Sunday fill them with young men whom he picked up in the boarding-houses and in the streets. Each Sunday he would scour the streets and lanes, and by personal contact with individuals and labor for them, drum up recruits for the Sunday-school, not only for his own church but for others also.

While engaged in this regular recruiting business for the established church Sunday-schools, he conceived the idea of starting a school of his own, where those who could not be persuaded to go into the fashionable and well-dressed schools of the church might feel free to come.

Selecting as the field of his operation a locality called the “The Sands,” which rivaled in squalor and crime the celebrated “Five Points” of New York, he found an empty room which had been used as a saloon, hired it, and started out to drum up a school. He had to resort to all means to conquer an acquaintance with the urchins, and gain their confidence. During the day he sold boots and shoes, and by night he scouted through the alleys enlisting members for his Sunday-school, gaining access to the more shy and reserved by a free distribution of maple sugar. His school within a year reached an average attendance of six hundred and fifty, and soon swelled to a thousand.

Great was the wrath of the Romanists against him, and many were the threats to take his life. On one occasion three enraged men cornered him in a room, closed the door, and notified him that his time had come. “Look here,” said Mr. M., “give a fellow a chance to say his prayers first, won’t you?” They could not well refuse that last request, whereupon he dropped upon his knees and prayed for them with such fervency that one by one they stole out of the room, leaving him to take off to his Sunday-school the children for whom he came.

At length his work so grew upon his hands that he decided to leave his secular business and devote his time wholly to it. Investing what little money he had not given away, in a pony to bear him from place to place, he opened a new era in his work. On Sunday morning he would start out, and, on his pony, head back a procession of scholars whom he had secured for his school. Refusing to use any means given him for his work, to defray his own personal expenses, he slept on the benches of the Y. M. C. Association rooms rather than to pay for lodgings elsewhere.

His Sunday-school at length grew into a church, of which he was the unordained pastor. But it was a busy hive of Bible readers, tract distributors, lay preachers, and missionary visitors. In his theory of the Christian life, the next thing for a man to do after he has turned to the Lord is to go to work for him.

How does this compare with the way some work in the cause of present truth? Does it not shame the efforts of many a one who goes out with the profession that he has the last message of mercy to herald to a perishing world, and that even this is almost ended. It is this intensely earnest personal effort that will win every time. The results of his efforts prove this. And if he in his work feels impelled thus to labor, how ought that people to engage in their work who have the last warning to sound abroad, and who are acting under the commission, Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled?

U. S.