Emma Revell

Life

She was born in London, England, in 1843 to Fleming Revell and Emma Manning Revell. Some sources give her birth year as 1842. In 1849 she emigrated with her family to Chicago, where she grew up in a Baptist household. By about age fifteen she was already teaching children in Sunday school, and by about seventeen she is said to have been working as a public school teacher.

As a teenager, she met Dwight L. Moody, who was then engaged in Sunday school work in Chicago. She served in his Sunday school, and the two became engaged in 1859. They married on August 28, 1862, during the Civil War, after Moody had given up his business career to become an evangelist with no guaranteed income. The couple had a daughter, Emma, and two sons, William and Paul. During the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, she reportedly led the children to safety on her own while her husband was away preaching. She died in Northfield in 1903, four years after her husband's death in 1899, and was buried beside him on Round Top, a hill in Northfield.

Ministry and Contributions

• Support of the ministry: She personally handled most of the extensive correspondence connected with Moody's ministry and managed the finances of both the household and the ministry. After Moody became a prominent revivalist in the early 1870s, she accompanied him on his evangelistic tours across the country. As a result, she reportedly had no settled home until late in life. Some accounts also record that she played the organ at the meetings.
• Sunday school teaching: She taught children throughout her life and is said to have taken up a Sunday school class in Northfield again in the last year before her death.
• Founding of educational institutions: She was at her husband's side as he founded the Northfield Seminary for girls (1879), the Mount Hermon School for boys (1881), and the Chicago Bible Institute (1889; now the Moody Bible Institute).
• Family ties: Her younger brother, Fleming H. Revell, lived for a time in the Moodys' home as a young man. He later became a Christian publisher.

Influence on the Korean Church

No record has been found of any direct connection between Emma Revell and the Korean church or missions in Korea. Her connection to the Korean church may be regarded as indirect, through the ministry of her husband, Dwight L. Moody. This is discussed in the article on him.

Assessment

Emma Revell is generally portrayed as a woman whose calm, composed temperament balanced Moody's impulsive and emotional disposition, and this balance is seen as a pillar of his ministry. Moody himself reportedly remarked that he was amazed to have won the love of a woman so far superior to himself. Her life is known chiefly through Heavenly Destiny (reportedly published in 1943), a biography written by her descendant Emma Moody Powell. It should therefore be borne in mind that much of what is known about her rests on records from the family and from Moody-affiliated institutions. No significant criticism of her has been identified.