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W.W. Everts was minister of the First Baptist Church, which in the years before the fire
had sold its site opposite the Courthouse to the Chamber of Commerce and moved
beyond the range of the 1871 fire, but not of the 1874 conflagration. Everts's sermon was
one of many reported in the papers or, as in this case, published separately. Titled "The
Lesson of Disaster," it was delivered a year after the event, and its point was summed up in
the verse Everts cited from Deutoronomy: "The Lord thy God turned the curse into a
blessing unto thee, because the Lord thy God loved thee." As a result of the fire, there was
now no better-known city in the old or new world than Chicago, Everts claimed." Do you
think such distinction has no purpose?" he asked. "Mark how it places our city on a hill
that the world may behold the spectacle." While he agreed that the disaster had to be read as a
punishment for sin, the lesson did not pertain to Chicago alone: "We are no worse than
New York or Philadelphia, only here civilization is weak, and we are selected in order to
discipline the whole, and make an example for the whole, and thus when sin generally is
touched, sin particularly is touched." He then spoke in support of the movement for
Sabbath legislation.
Everts clearly believed that the fire was, in the end, good for the city, and he spoke at times
in language that sounded as if it came from the Chamber of Commerce rather than a
church pulpit. He told a story about a Chicago businessman traveling in Switzerland
before the fire, who saw there a map of the United States that included Milwaukee but not
Chicago. "Do you think another map will be published on this globe without Chicago?" he
wondered rhetorically. "Do you think that there will be any intelligent man in this world
who will not know about Chicago? Oh no! Will there be a man in this universe
anywhere,--in the islands of the sea, where a man of thought and curiosity would not know
about Chicago? Oh no! Then if material progress be a blessing at all, you see what a
distinction has been brought about by the fire. This distinction in rank is referred to, to
deepen our sense of responsibility. It is no mean city, and in the future it will outrank the
population of Rome, of London or of New York. The locality that can find the greatest
population will be the centre of the widest power; and this is possible here; and it is a
serious matter how to direct public sentiment,--in what groove or channel to direct the
forces of society, so as to turn into a blessing what was a great disaster."
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Stage, Story, and Song 