The Sunday School Teacher Who Found Him in the Shoe Store

In April 1855, Edward Kimball paced the sidewalk outside Holton's Shoe Store in Boston, nearly talking himself out of going inside. His Sunday school student, a nineteen-year-old stock boy named Dwight, was rough around the edges — barely literate, loud, and so theologically confused that he had once confused Moses with Paul. Some in the Mount Vernon Congregational Church whispered that the boy from rural Northfield, Massachusetts, would never amount to much in matters of faith.…