McCormick was nourished on this virile Calvinistic faith from the time when he first learned to read out of the Shorter Catechism and the Bible. It had been the faith of his fathers for generations, and it was bred into him from boyhood. Nevertheless, according to the practice of the Presbyterians, there had to come a time when he himself openly made his choice. This occasion came in 1834, when McCormick was twenty-five years of age. A four-day meeting was being held in the little stone church on his grandfather's farm. Three ministers were in charge. As was the custom, there was constant preaching from morning until sundown, with an hour's respite for dinner. At the close of the fourth day, all who wished to become avowed Christians were requested to stand up. Cyrus McCormick was there, and he was not a member of the church; yet he did not stand up. That night his father went to his bedside and gently reproached him. "My son," he said, "don't you know that your silence is a public rejection of your Saviour?" Cyrus was conscience-stricken. He leapt from his bed and began to dress himself. "I'll go and see old Billy McClung," he said. Half an hour later, old Billy McClung, who was a universally respected religious leader in the community, was amazed to be called out of his sleep by a greatly troubled young man, who wanted to know by what means he might make his peace with his Maker. The next Sunday this young man stood up in the church, and became in name what he already was by nature and inheritance—a Christian of the Presbyterian faith.
After he left home his letters to the members of his family are strewn with scraps of religious reflection. In 1845, for instance, he writes, "Business is not inconsistent with Christianity; but the latter ought to be a help to the former, giving a confidence and resignation, after using all proper means; and yet I have sometimes felt that I came so far short of the right feeling, so worldly-minded, that I could wish myself out of the world." On another occasion, when he was struggling with manufacturers who had broken their contracts, he wrote, "If it were not for the fact that Providence has seemed to assist me in our business, it has at times seemed that I would almost sink under the weight of responsibility hanging upon me; but I believe the Lord will help us out." And after his first visit to New York City, he summed up his impressions of the metropolis in the following sentence, "It is a desirable place and people, with regular and good Presbyterian preaching."
McCormick enjoyed with all his heart the logical, doctrinal sermon. His favorite Bible passage was the eighth chapter of Romans, that indomitable victorious chapter that ends like the blast of a trumpet:
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 'for Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.' Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us; for I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord."
His favorite hymn, which he sang often and with the deepest fervor, was that melodious prayer that begins—
"O Thou in whose presence my soul takes delight,
On whom in affliction I call,
My comfort by day, and my song in the night,
My hope, my salvation, my all."
In his earlier journeys through the Middle West, McCormick was distressed at the rough immorality of the new settlements. "I see a great deal of profanity and infidelity in this country, enough to make the heart sick," he wrote in 1845. These towns and villages needed more preachers, and better preachers, he thought. Consequently, soon after he had acquired his first million dollars, he determined to establish the best possible college for the education of ministers. He almost stunned with joy the Western friends of higher education for ministers, by offering them $100,000 with which to establish a school of theology in Chicago. This offer was made in 1859—half a century ago, and resulted in the removal of a moneyless and decaying Seminary at New Albany, Indiana, to Chicago. Thus was founded the Northwestern Theological Seminary, afterwards named the McCormick Theological Seminary, which, in its fifty years of life, has given a Christian education to thousands of young men.