Mr. Moody once told me this story long after the incident occurred. He went over to London in 1872, when his church lay in ashes, and while his new church in Chicago was building, not in order to preach, but to listen to others who, he thought, could preach better than he. One Sunday he was prevailed upon to preach. He got up that Sunday morning, and tried to preach. “I never had such a hard time preaching in my life. Everything was perfectly dead. I said to myself as I tried to preach, ‘What a fool I was to consent to preach. I came here to listen, and here I am preaching.’ As I drew towards the end of my sermon, I felt a sense of relief that I would be through in a few minutes. Then,” he said, “the awful thought came to me, ‘You have got to do it again tonight.’ I tried to get out of my night meeting, but I could not. I had promised to preach that night and I must keep my word.
“I went back to preach that night. The building was packed with people. There was a new atmosphere. The powers of an unseen world seemed to have fallen upon the audience. As I drew towards the close, I became emboldened to give out an invitation; so when I finished my sermon, I said, ‘If there is a man or woman here who will tonight accept Jesus Christ, please stand up.’ About five hundred people arose to their feet. I thought there must be some mistake, and I asked the people to be seated. Then I repeated the invitation in a stronger form and they all arose again. Again I asked them to be seated, still thinking there must be some mistake. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘if there are any of you who really mean to accept Christ tonight, please pass into the vestry and your pastor and I will meet you there.’ They commenced to stream in through the two doors. I said, ‘Mr. L., who are these people?’ He said, ‘Don’t know.’ ‘Are they your people, Mr. L.?’ ‘Some of them.’ ‘Are they Christians?’ ‘Not so far as I know.’
“We went into the vestry and I stood up and gave out a stronger invitation, and I asked all that really meant to accept Christ then and there to stand up. They all arose, about five hundred of them. I asked them to be seated again. I still thought there must be some mistake, so I said, ‘I am going to leave London tomorrow for Dublin, but your pastor will be here tomorrow night. If you really mean it come back and meet him.’ I went to Dublin. No sooner had I got there than I received a telegram from Mr. L. It was Tuesday morning and he said, ‘There was a bigger crowd out Monday night than Sunday. A great revival has broken out in my church. You must come back and help me.’”
Mr. Moody hurried back to London. There was a revival there that added hundreds of souls to the churches of North London. That was before he came here in 1873 for his great work—his introduction to England.
When he had finished the story I said to him, “Mr. Moody, somebody must have been praying.” “Oh,” he said, “didn’t I tell you that? That is the point of the story. There was a woman in the congregation that morning who had an invalid sister. She went home and said to her, ‘Who do you think preached for us this morning?’ and her sister guessed all the preachers who were in the habit of exchanging with Mr. L., and she said, ‘No, Mr. Moody from Chicago.’ When she said that, the invalid turned pale. She said, ‘What, Mr. Moody from Chicago? I read about him some time ago in an America paper, and I have been praying God to send him to London and to our church. If I had known he was going to preach this morning, I would have eaten no breakfast. I would have spent the whole time in prayer. Now, sister, go out of the room, lock the door, send me no dinner; no matter who comes, don’t let them see me. I am going to spend the whole afternoon and evening in prayer.’” And while Mr. Moody stood in the pulpit where all was coldness and death in the morning, that bedridden saint was holding him up in prayer before God. And God, who delights to answer prayer, poured out His Spirit. While the multitude saw Mr. Moody, God was looking at that bedridden saint.