A Reporter at Moody's

Proofed and corrected from the scanned original edition.

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Contents

First Glimpses
Miss Strong's Welcome
"Music Hath Charms"
Chicken and Other Things
"Rightly Dividing the Word"
How One Day Was Spent
Touching Human Souls
About the "White Fields"
Facts and Philosophy
"In Prison, and Ye Visited Me"
Miss Hall and the Young Idea
The Pound, "On Bell," and Thanksgiving Day
Moody, the Servant ok God
Words that I Treasure
The Safety of the Sheep
Telling Incidents of the Work
The Faith Delivered to the Saints

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An excerpt from the beginning:

CHAPTER I
FIRST GLIMPSES

"So this is the Bible Institute, is it?"

The cabman pockets his fee, and says: "No, that 'ere ain't—that's where the wimen students live, I b'lieve, and d'Institoot's round the corner. Say," (confidentially), "do you b'lieve wimen ought to preach?''

Now, being well aware that the best way to learn is to come unburdened with "set and sure" doctrines I answer:

"It all depends upon the woman I suppose. Perhaps I can tell you better a year from now."

"Then you intend to preach," he says very slowly, and before I can tell him that he takes my intentions for granted too easily, he adds, "yes, I suppose it all d'pends on de woman. Hope you'll do well."

"Thank you," I answer, and I shake his hand.

I would shake the hand of a pirate or a stray Fiji Islander to-night, for I am a stranger in the Windy City, tired after the weary ride from New York, and not at all certain what my life will be in the big building I am facing.
A bit of personal history may not be out of place here, and it may make my reader understand me and my conclusions better.

I have been a newspaper woman for seven years, and a Christian only four. Born and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith and nurtured in its bosom, I came easily to look upon it as the true church. A priest once told my father, after I had answered some catechism questions in a rather bright way, that I would yet be a defender of the faith. He did not know then how true God could make his words, or how He would teach me what the faith was.
If I could describe the way in which I drifted into agnosticism it would do no good, but I really cannot. I had a passion for knowledge, and a contempt for people who accepted as true what other people told them, without personal investigation. The only thing I firmly believed was that sex did not count in either goodness or brains, and that I was going to be as good and as brave as if I were a boy.

I was born in Ireland, and loved it as perhaps few girls ever loved their own land. I commenced to love it and study its tragic history when most girls are playing with dolls; and as church and state are closely intertwined in the past history of the country, I could not help questioning many things,' with the result that I dethroned some popular saints and heroes and elected others that it was even heresy to mention.