The Woman Who Shaped D L Moody

How many of us know about Emma Moody, wife of Dwight L Moody, the Billy Graham of the nineteenth century? D L Moody was the one who founded what is today known as the Moody Bible Institute.

Can a marriage succeed between people who are so different like the Moodys? Paul, their son said, “No two people were ever more in contrast. He was impulsive, outspoken, dominant, and informal and with little education at the time they met. She was intensely conventional and conservative, far better educated, fond of reading, with a discriminating taste, and self-effacing to the last degree.” It was a behind-the-scenes place that she enjoyed, out of the limelight. She refused to appear on the platform during her husband’s evangelistic campaigns and she faced criticism for it. But D L once said, “When I have an especially hard case, I turn him over to my wife. She can bring a man to a decision for Christ.” One of Moody’s most famous converts, E. P. Brown, a magazine editor and a notorious infidel, was led to Jesus Christ by a “shy and reserved” Emma Moody.

Emma had a way of tackling difficult problems. In fact, DL was sometimes unaware of all she was doing. She was practical and orderly. She made her husband eat regularly. She shunned the limelight although her gifts as a teacher were recognized. In Moody’s Sunday school she taught a class of about forty middle aged men! Moody was always doing the unexpected, acting on impulses, bringing home unusual visitors. Moody said once, “I have never ceased to wonder at two things – the use God has made of me despite my many handicaps, and the miracle of having won the love of a woman who is so completely my superior with such a different temperament and background.”

Some of Moody’s tough edges were smoothed under Emma’s gentle sandpapering. At times he was even learning to be courteous. His quick temper was usually kept under control, although occasionally he had to apologize for it in a public meeting. About her husband, Emma wrote, “I liked the combination of playfulness and seriousness in Mr Moody. He is so simple, unaffected and lovable, plays so heartily with the children, and makes fun with those who can receive it. He is brim-full of humour.” She even wrote to her mother-in-law, “Your son is a gem of a husband.”

As for Emma, Jack Mackinnon wrote, “One day was enough to show what a source of strength and comfort she was to her husband. Her independence of thought, her calmness, meeting so quietly his impulsiveness, her humility…She was so patient, quiet, bright, humble; one rarely meets just so many qualities in one woman.” Emma managed the house and, in her own quiet way, the entire family. She took responsibility for the spiritual teaching of their children, catechising them, memorising Scripture with them. Unlike DL, who didn’t read more than he had to, Emma enjoyed reading. As her children were growing up, she studied Latin grammar with them.

The one thing that angered Emma was people who took advantage of her husband. A son recalls, “Disloyalty to him was the unpardonable sin in her eyes, unforgivable, unforgettable and above all unmentionable. Here she was implacable.” DL and Emma often took buggy rides together into the woods and hills surrounding their home, and as their son put it, “going where fancy lead them, having as it were a renewed honeymoon.” Often during lengthy stays of several months to conduct evangelistic missions, usually Emma and the children travelled with him. When DL heard of his son Will accepting the Lord he said, “I do not think you will ever know until you have a son of your own how much good it did me to hear this!” However their younger son, Paul, gave his mother credit for the success of the home: “If our home seemed so ideal, the secret was my mother.”

Emma also deserves some credit for the founding of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Conflict developed between the board of directors and prospective staff members during the initial years. Moody felt frustrated by the continual bickering. He abruptly tendered his resignation as President, a move which would have doomed the entire project. When Emma heard about it, she wrote a nineteen-page letter to the people involved with the Bible Institute, and then got DL to send a wire, withdrawing his resignation.

When DL died in 1899, the spark in Emma’s life was gone. She began to fail physically. When neuritis plagued her right hand, she learnt to write with her left hand during the last two years of her life. It was rather typical of the way that Emma Moody handled obstacles. Willy Moody once wrote, “Moody found in his wife what he termed his balance wheel. With advice, sympathy and faith, this girl laboured with him, and by her judgement, tact and sacrifice, she contributed to his every effort.” She helped shape a man who changed the lives of millions.

I am motivated by the life of Emma. How can a woman trade her role of being a wife and a mother for anything/anyone else? A good woman would be passionate in these prime areas of hers. At the same time she deserves acknowledgement and appreciation from the 'man' in his life. D L Moody did that. No wonder this couple became famous and fabulous!



(I have copied lines from William J. Petersen’s “Martin Luther Had a Wife” for this article.)