is the only true road to riches which the owner can enjoy.
[Illustration: THE SAMARITAN HOSPITAL Showing the houses in which it was originally located, and part of the new building]
“To help a man to help himself is the wisest effort of human love. To have wealth and to have honestly earned it all, by labor, skill or wisdom, is an object of ambition worthy of the highest and best. Hence, to do the most good to the great classes, rich or poor, we must labor industriously. The lover of his kind must furnish them with the means of gaining knowledge while they work.
“Then there was a third class of mankind, starving, with their tables breaking with luscious foods, cold in warehouses of ready-made clothing of the most costly fabrics; seeing not in the moon-light, and restless to distraction on beds of eiderdown. They do not know the use or value of things. They are harassed with plenty they cannot appropriate. They are doubly poor. They need education. The library is a care, an expense and a disgrace to the owner who cannot read. To give education to those in the possession of property which they might use for the help of humanity and which they might enjoy, is as clear a duty and charity as it is to help the beggar. And, indeed, indirectly the education of the unwise wealthy to become useful may be the most practical way of raising the poor. There is a need for every dollar of the nation’s property, and it should be invested by men whose minds and hearts have been trained to see the human need and to love to satisfy it.
“The thought that in education of the best quality was to be found the remedy for hunger, loneliness, crime and weakness was most clearly emphasized to my mind by the coming of two young men who had felt the need from the under side. They had received but little instruction; they were over twenty years of age, and they wished to enter the ministry. Was there any way open for a poor, industrious laborer to get the highest education while he supported his mother, sister and himself? I urged them to try it for the good of many who would follow them if they made it a clear success. I was elated almost to uncontrollable enthusiasm the night they came to my study to begin their course. They brought five with them, and all proved themselves noble men. One is not, for God took him. But the others are moulding and inspiring their world.”
Thus was conceived the idea of the institution that is now educating annually three thousand men and women. The need for it has been plainly proven. Rev. Forest Dager, at one time Dean of Temple College, said in regard to the people who in later life crave opportunities for study:
“That the Temple College idea of educating working men and working women, at an expense just sufficient to give them an appreciation of the work of the Institution, covers a wide and long-neglected field of educational effort, is at once apparent to a thoughtful mind. Remembering that out of a total enrollment in the schools of our land of all grades, public and private, of 14,512,778 pupils, 96-1/2 per cent are reported as receiving elementary instruction only; that not more than 35 in 1,000 attend school after they are fourteen years of age; that 25 of these drop out during the next four years of their life; that less than 10 in 1,000 pass on to enjoy the superior instruction of a college or some equivalent grade of work, we begin to see the unlimited field before an Institution like this. Thousands upon thousands of those who have left school quite early in life, either because they did not appreciate the advantages of a liberal education, or because the stress of circumstances compelled them to assist in the maintenance of home, awake a few years later to the realization that a good education is more than one-half the struggle for existence and position. Their time through the day is fully occupied; their evenings are free. At once they turn to the evening college, and grasping the opportunities for instruction, convert those hours which to many are the pathway to vice and ruin, into stepping stones to a higher and more useful career … An illustration of the wide-reaching influence of the College work is the significant fact that during one year there were personally known to the president, no less than ninety-three persons pursuing their studies in various universities of our country, who received their first impulses toward a higher education and a wider usefulness in Temple College.”
In 1893, in an address on the Institutional church, delivered before the Baptist Ministers’ Conference in Philadelphia, Dr. Conwell said:
“At the present time there are in this city hundreds of thousands–to speak conservatively, (I should say at least five hundred thousand people) who have not the education they certainly wish they had obtained before leaving school. There are at least one hundred thousand people in this city willing to sacrifice their evenings and some of their sleep to get an education, if they can get it without the humiliation of being put into classes with boys and girls six years old. They are in every city. There is a large class of young people who have reached that age where they find they have made a mistake in not getting a better education. If they could obtain one now, in a proper way, they would. The university does not furnish such an opportunity. The public school does not.
“The churches must institute schools for those whom the public does not educate, and must educate them along the lines they cannot reach in the public schools.
“We are not to withdraw our support from, nor to antagonize, the public schools; they are the foundations of liberty in the nation. But the public schools do not teach many things which young men and young women need. I believe every church should institute classes for the education of such people, and I believe the Institutional church will require it. I believe every evening in the week should be given to some particular kind of intellectual training along some educational line; that this training should begin with the more evident needs of the young people in each congregation, and then be adjusted as the matter grows, to the wants of each.”
So, because one poor boy struggled so bitterly for an education, because a man, keen-eyed, saw others’ needs, reading the signs by the light of his own bitter experience, a great College for busy men and women has grown, to give them freely the education which is very bread and meat to their minds.
Most people use for their own benefit the lessons they have learned in the hard school of experience. They have paid for them dearly. They endeavor to get out of them what profit they can. Not so Dr. Conwell. He uses his dearly bought experiences for the good of others, turning the bitterness which he endured, into sweetness for their refreshment.
The Temple College was founded, as was stated in its first catalogue, for the purpose “of opening to the burdened and circumscribed manual laborer, the doors through which he may, if he will, reach the fields of profitable and influential professional life.
“Of enabling the working man, whose labor has been largely with his muscles, to double his skill through the helpful suggestions of a cultivated mind.
“Of providing such instruction as shall be best adapted to the higher education of those who are compelled to labor at their trades while engaged in study, or who desire while studying to remain under the influence of their home or church.
“Of awakening in the character of young laboring men and women a strong and determined ambition to be useful to their fellowmen.
“Of cultivating such a taste for the higher and most useful branches of learning as shall compel the students, after they have left the college, to continue to pursue the best and most practical branches of learning to the very highest walks of mental and scientific achievement.”
A broad, humanitarian purpose it is, one that grew out of the heart of a man who loved humanity, who believed in the practical application of the teachings of Christ, who knew a cause would succeed if it filled a need.
Dr. Conwell’s own experience, his observations of life had told him that this great need existed, but it was brought home to him practically in 1884, when these two young men of whom he speaks in the letter quoted came to him and said they wanted to study for the ministry but had no money. His mind leaped the years to those boyhood days when he longed for an education but had no money. He fixed an evening and told them he would teach them himself. When the night came, the two had become seven. The third evening, the seven had grown to forty. It was in the days when pastor and people were working hard for their new church and his hands were full. But he did not shirk this new task that came to him. Forty people eager to study, anxious to broaden their mental vision, to make their lives more useful, could not be disappointed, most assuredly not by a man who had known this hunger of the mind. Teachers were secured who gave their services free, the lower parts of the church where they were then worshipping at Berks and Mervine streets were used as class rooms and the work went forward with vigor.
The first catalogue was issued in 1887, and the institution chartered in 1888, at which time there were five hundred and ninety students. The College overflowed the basement of the church into two adjoining houses. When The Temple was completed the College occupied the whole building. When that was filled it moved into two large houses on Park Avenue. Still growing, it rented two large halls.
The news that The Temple College had enlarged quarters in these halls brought such a flood of students that almost from the start applicants were turned away. Nothing was to be done but to build. It was a serious problem. The church itself had but just been completed and a heavy debt of $250,000 hung over it. To add the cost of a college to this burden of debt required faith of the highest order, work of the hardest. But God had shown them their work and they could not shirk it.
“For seven years I have felt a firm conviction that the great work, the special duty of our church, is to establish the College,” said Dr. Conwell, in speaking of the matter to his congregation. “We are now face to face with it. How distinctly we have been led of God to this point! Never before in the history of this nation have a people had committed to them a movement more important for the welfare of mankind than that which is now committed to your trust in connection with the permanent establishment of The Temple College. We step now over the brink. Our feet are already in the water, and God says, ‘Go on, it shall be dryshod for you yet’; and I say that the success of this institution means others like it in every town of five thousand inhabitants in the United States.”
“One thing we have demonstrated–those who work for a living have time to study. Some splendid specimens of scholarship have been developed in our work. And there are others, splendid geniuses, yet undiscovered, but The Temple College will bring them to the light, and the world will be the richer for it. By the use of spare hours–hours usually running to waste–great things can be done. The commendation of these successful students will do more for the college than any number of rich friends can do. It will make friends; it will bring money; it will win honor; it will secure success.”
An investment fund was created and once more the people made their offerings. The same self-sacrificing spirit was evident as in the building of the church. One boy brought to the pastor fifty cents, the first money he had ever earned; a woman sent to the treasury a gold ring, the only gift she could make, which bore interest in the suggestion that all who chose might offer similar gifts as did the women in the day of Moses. A business man hearing of this said, “If a day is appointed, I will on that day give to the College all the gold and silver that comes into my store for purchases.” Every organization of Grace Church contributed time, work, money, and prayer to the building of the College. Small wonder then that obligations were met and payments made promptly.
One of the most successful methods by which money was raised for the College was the “Penny Talent” effort in 1893. Burdette, in his “Temple and Templars” has made a most painstaking record of the various ways in which the talent was used. He says:
“Each worker was given a penny, no more. Four thousand were given out at one service. One man put his penny in a neat box, took it to his office, and exhibited his ‘talent’ at a nickel a ‘peep.’ He gained $1.70 the first day of his ‘show,’ A woman bought a ‘job lot’ of molasses with her penny, made it into molasses candy, sold it in square inch cakes, after telling the customer her story; payments were generous and she netted $1.80. Then the man who sold her the molasses returned her penny. Another sister established a ‘cooky’ business, which grew rapidly. One boy kept his penny and went to work, earned 50 cents, the first money he ever earned in his life. It was a big penny, but he was bubbling over with enthusiasm and in it all went; he brought it straight to his pastor. One worker collected autographs and sold them. A boy sold toothpicks. One young man made silver buttonhooks and a young lady sold them. A woman traded her penny up to a dollar, made aprons from that time on until she earned $10. One class of seven girls in the Sunday-school united its capital and gave a supper at the Park and netted $50. The Young Men’s Bible Class constructed a model of the College building, which they exhibited. The children gave a supper in the Lower Temple, which added $100 to the College fund. There came into the treasury $1.00 ‘saved on carfares’; ‘whitewashing a cellar’ brought $3. Thrice, somebody walked from Germantown to The Temple and back, saving 75 cents; a wife saved $20 from household allowances. A little girl of seven years went into a lively brokerage business with her penny, and took several ‘flyers’ that netted her handsome margins. Here is her report–
“‘Sold the “talent penny” to Aunt Libby for seven cents; sold the seven cents to Mamma for 25 cents; sold the 25 cents to Papa for 50 cents. Aunt Caddie, 10 cents; Uncle Gilman, 5 cents; Cousin Walter, 4 cents; cash, 25 cents,–$1.04 and the penny talent returned.’
“‘Pinching the market-basket’ sent in $2.50; ‘all the pennies and nickels received in four months, $12.70’; ‘walking instead of riding, $6.50’; ‘singing and making plaster plaques, $7.’ A dentist bought of a fellow dentist one cent’s worth of cement filling-material; this he used, giving his labor, and earned 50 cents; with this he bought 50 cents’ worth of better filling, part of which he used, again giving his labor, and the College gained $3.00. A boy sold his penny to a physician for a dollar. The physician sold the ‘talent penny’ for 10 cents, which he exchanged at the Mint for bright new pennies. These he took to business friends and got a dollar apiece for them; added $5.00 of his own and turned in $15.00. Donations of one cent each were received through Mr. William P. Harding, from Governor Tillman of South Carolina, Governor McKinley of Ohio, Governor Russell of Massachusetts. From Governor Fuller of Vermont–a rare old copper cent, 1782, coined by Vermont before she was admitted to the Union; the governors’ letters were sold to the highest bidders. Everybody who worked, everybody who traded with the penny, did something, and every penny was blessed, so lovingly and so zealously was the trading done. It was the Master’s talent which they were working with. All the little things that went into the treasury; lead pencils, tacks, $3.00 in one case and $5.00 in another; ‘beefs liver, $14.00’–think of that! How tired the boarders must have grown of liver away out on Broad Street–stick pins, hairpins, and the common kind that you bend and lose; candy, pretzels, and cookies; ‘old tin cans,’ wooden spoons, pies; one man sent $50.00 as a gift because he said ‘his penny had brought him luck’; another found 16 pennies, which good fortune he ascribed to the penny in his pocket.
“So in October the workers who had received their pennies in April came together to show what they had done. Four thousand pennies had been given out; $6,000 came directly from the returns, and indirectly about $8,000 more.
“The ‘Feast of Tithes,’ held in December of the same year, was a great fair, extending through seven week days. The displays of goods and the refreshment booths were in the Lower Temple, while fine concerts and other entertainments were given in the auditorium. The Feast of Tithes netted $5,500 for the College fund.”
Thus the work progressed. No one could give large amounts, but many gave a little, and stone by stone the building grew. In August, 1893, the corner stone of the College building was laid. Taking up the silver trowel which had been used in laying the corner stone of The Temple, in 1889, Dr. Conwell said:
“Friends, to-day we do something more than simply lay the corner stone of a college building. We do an act here very simply that shows to the world, and will go on testifying after we have gone to our long rest, that the church of Jesus Christ is not only an institution of theory, but an institution of practice. It will stand here upon this great and broad street and say through the coming years to all passersby, ‘Christianity means something for the good of humanity; Christianity means not only a belief in things that are good and pure and righteous, but it also means an activity that shall bless those who need the assistance of others.’ It shall say to the rich man, ‘Give thou of thy surplus to those who have not.’ It shall say to the poor man, ‘Make thou the most of thy opportunities and thou shalt be the equal of the rich.’
“Now, in the name of the people who have given for this enterprise, in the name of the many Christians who have prayed, and who are now sending up their prayers to heaven, I lay this corner stone.”
The work went on. In May, 1894, a great congregation thronged The Temple to attend the dedication services of “Temple College,” for it was in its new home; a handsome building, presenting with The Temple a beautiful stone front of two hundred feet on the broad avenue which it faces. Robert E. Pattison, governor of Pennsylvania, presided, saying, in his introductory remarks, “Around this noble city many institutions have arisen in the cause of education, but I doubt whether any of them will possess a greater influence for good than Temple College.” Bishop Foss, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, offered prayer. The orator was Honorable Charles Emory Smith, of Philadelphia, ex-minister to Russia. Mr. James Johnson, the builder, gave the keys to the architect, Mr. Thomas P. Lonsdale, who delivered them to the pastor of Grace Church and president of Temple College, remarking that “it was well these keys should be in the hands of those who already held the keys to the inner temple of knowledge.”
President Conwell, receiving the keys, said that, “by united effort, penny by penny, and dollar by dollar, every note had been paid, every financial obligation promptly met. It is a demonstration of what people can do when thoroughly in earnest in a great enterprise.”
Academies were also started in distant parts of the city for the benefit of those who could not reach the college in time for classes. Unfortunately these academies were compelled to close on account of lack of funds. Many pitiful letters were received at the college from those who were thus shut out of educational advantages. One in particular, poorly spelled but breathing its bitter disappointment, said that the writer (a woman) was just beginning to hope she would get her head above water some day. But that now she must sink again. A little light had begun to glimmer for her through the blackness, but that light had been taken away. She was going down again into the depth of hopeless ignorance with no one to lend a helping hand–the tragedy of which Carlyle wrote when he penned “That there should be one man die ignorant who is capable of knowledge, this I call a tragedy.”
The College at first was entirely free, but as the attendance increased, it was found necessary to charge a nominal tuition fee in order to keep out those who had no serious desire to study, but came irregularly “just for the fun of the thing.” When it was decided to charge five dollars a year for the privilege of attending the evening classes, the announcement was received with the unanimous approbation of the students who honestly wished to study, and who more than any others were hindered by the aimless element.
Not only did the poor and those who were employed during the day come, but before long the sons and daughters of the well-to-do were knocking at the doors, not for admission to the evening classes but for day study. So the day department was opened. Not only has it proved most successful in its work, but it has helped the College to meet expenses.
The curriculum of the College is broad. A child just able to walk can enter the kindergarten class in the day department and receive his entire schooling under the one roof, graduating with a college degree, taking a special university course, or fitting himself for business.
Four university courses are given–theology, law, medicine, pharmacy. The Medical and Theological Departments take students to their graduation and upon presentation of their diploma before the State Board they are admitted to the State Examination. The Theological Course, of course, graduates a man the same as any other theological seminary.
Post-graduate courses are also given.
The college courses include–arts, science, elocution and oratory, business, music, civil engineering, physical education. The graduates of the college course are admitted to the post-graduate courses of Pennsylvania, Yale, Princeton and Harvard on their diplomas. Students pass from any year’s work of the college course to the corresponding course of other Institutions.
The preparatory courses are college preparatory, medical preparatory, scientific preparatory, law preparatory, an English course and a business preparatory course. Thus, if one is not ready to enter one of the higher courses, he can prepare here by night study for them.
The Business Course includes a commercial course, shorthand course, secretarial course, conveyancing course, telegraphy course, advertisement writing and proofreading.
There are normal courses for kindergarteners and elementary teachers, and in household science, physical training, music, millinery, dressmaking, elocution and oratory.
Special courses are given in civil engineering, chemistry, elocution and oratory, painting and drawing, sign writing, mechanical and architectural drawing, music, physical training, dressmaking, millinery, cooking, embroidery, and nursing, the last being given at the Samaritan Hospital.
All of these courses, excepting the Normal Kindergarten, can be studied day or evening, as best suits the student.
The kindergarten and model schools cover the work of the public schools from the kindergarten to the highest grammar grades, fitting the student to enter the first year of the preparatory department. These classes are held in the daytime only.
The power to confer degrees was granted in 1891. The teaching force has been greatly enlarged until at present there are one hundred and thirty-five teachers and an average of more than three thousand regular students yearly.
The number of students instructed at Temple College in proportion to money expended and buildings used is altogether out of proportion to any other college in America. Some idea of the breadth of study presented at Temple College may be had from a comparison with Harvard. Harvard has more than five thousand students, four hundred instructors, and presents five hundred courses of study. Its growth since 1860 has been wonderful. In 1860, while one man might not have been able in four years to master all the subjects offered, he could have done so in six. It was estimated in 1899 that the courses of study offered were so varied that sixty years would have been required. It would take one student ninety-six years to take all the courses presented by the Temple College.
From the time of the opening of Temple College up to the closing exercises of 1905, its students have numbered 55,656. If an answer is desired to the question, “Is such an institution needed,” that number answers is most emphatically. That more than fifty thousand people, the majority of them wording men and women, will give their nights after a day of toil, to study, proves that the institution that gives them the opportunity to study is sorely needed.
The life story of men and women who have studied here and gone on to lives of usefulness would make interesting reading. One young girl who lived in the mill district of Kensington was earning $2.50 a week, folding circulars, addressing envelopes and doing such work. Her parents were poor. She had the most meagre education, and the outlook for her to earn more was dark. Some one advised her to go to Temple College at night and study bookkeeping. A few years after, her well-wisher saw her one evening at the college, bright, happy, a different girl in both dress and deportment She had a position as bookkeeper at $10 a week and was going on now and taking other courses.
That is the ordinary story of the work Temple College does, multiplied in thousands of lives. Others are not so ordinary. One of the early students was a poor man earning $6.00 a week. To-day he is earning $6,000 a year in a government position at Washington, his rise in life due entirely to the opportunities of study offered him at Temple College. A lady who had been brought up in refined and cultured society was compelled to support herself, her husband and child through his complete physical breakdown. She took the normal course in dressmaking and millinery, and has this year been appointed the Director of the Domestic Science work in a large institution at a very good salary, being able to keep herself and family in comfort. One of the present college students was a weaver without any education at all, getting not only his elementary education and his preparatory education here, but will next year graduate from the college department. He has been entirely self-supporting in the meantime, and will make a fine teacher of mathematics. He has been teaching extra classes in the evening department of the College for several years.
One of the students who entered the classes in 1886 was a poor boy of thirteen. For nineteen long years he has studied persistently at night, passing from one grade to another until this summer (1905) his long schooling was crowned with success and he was admitted to the bar. All these weary years he has worked hard during the day, for there were others depending upon him, and at night despite his physical weariness, has faithfully pursued his studies. He deserves his success and the greater success that will come to him, for such a man in those long years has stored away experiences that will make him a power.
Another student in the early days of the college was a poor boy who had no education whatever, having been compelled to help earn the family living as soon as he was able, his father being a drunkard. For fifteen years he studied, passing from one grade to another until in 1899, he had the great joy of being ordained to the ministry, six of his ministerial brethren gathering around him in the great Temple and laying on his head the hands of ordination, feeling they were setting apart to the struggles and hardships of the Gospel ministry one who had shown himself worthy of his exalted calling.
One of the official stenographers connected with the Panama Canal Commission was a breaker boy who came to Philadelphia from the mining district poor and ignorant, and studied in Temple College at night, working during the day to earn his living.
Such records would fill a book. They prove better even than numbers the worth of such an institution. If only one such man or woman is lifted to a happier, more useful life, the work is worth while.
Such an institution can do much for the purification of politics. Before the students are ever held high ideals of right living, of honesty, of purity. All the associations of the College are conducive to clean character and high ideals. As the largest number of the students are men and women from active business life, they are keenly alive to the questions of the day. They know the responsibility for honest government rests with each voter, that to have clean politics every man and woman must individually do his share to uphold high standards in political and social life, that only men whose characters are above reproach should be elected to office. That the President of their college shares these views and knows also what a power lies in their hands, is shown by the following letter:
“Fraternal Greetings: The near approach of an important election leads me to suggest to you the following:
“First. There being now in this city over seven thousand voters who have been students in the Temple College, you have by your votes and your influence, either by combination or as individuals, a considerable political power. You should use it for the good of your city, state, and nation.
“Second. In city affairs I urge you to think first of the poor. The rich do not need your care. Vote only for such city candidates as will most speedily secure for the more needy classes pure water, clean streets, cheaper homes, cheaper and more useful education, healthier environment, cheap and quick transportation, the development of the labor-giving improvements, and the increase of sea-going and inland commerce. Select large-hearted, cool-headed men for city officers, regardless of national parties.
“Third. Let no man or party purchase your patriotic birthright for a fifty-cent tax bill or any other sum.
“Fourth. In selecting your candidates for state offices remember the needs of the people. Favor the granting to the submerged poor a more favorable opportunity to help themselves. Move in the most reasonable and direct way toward the ultimate abolition of the sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage, and for the increase of hospital and college privileges for the afflicted and the ignorant.
“Fifth. In national politics, remember that both parties have a measure of truth in their principles, and the need of the time is noble, conscientious lovers of humanity, who will not be led by party enthusiasm into any wild schemes in either direction which would result in the destruction of business and the degradation of national honor. Think independently, vote considerately, stand unflinchingly against any measure that is wrong, and vigorously in favor of every movement that is right. This is an opportunity to do a great, good deed. Quit you like men. With endearing affection,
“RUSSELL H. CONWELL.”
Even now the press of students is so great the trustees are planning larger things. The “Philadelphia Press,’ speaking of the new work to be undertaken, said:
“A city university, with a capacity of seven thousand students, more than are attending any other one seat of learning in the United States, is to be built in Philadelphia. It will be the university of the Temple College and will stand on the site of the old Broad Street Baptist Church at the southeast corner of Broad and Brown Streets, and the lot adjoining the church property on the south side on Broad Street.
“The new structure will cost $225,000, while the ground on which it will be built is worth $165,000, making the total value of the new institution $390,000.
“Rev. Russell H. Conwell, D.D., pastor of the Grace Baptist Church, at Broad and Berks Streets, and President of Temple College, said yesterday that the new university will be completed and ready for occupancy by September, 1906. In the twenty years of its existence Temple College has grown as have few educational institutions in America, until now it has more than three thousand students enrolled yearly.
“With the erection of the university building the institution will have facilities for educating four thousand more students, or a total of seven thousand.
“Some idea of how the other great universities of the country compare with regard to the number of students attending them with this new university of Philadelphia is shown by the following table:
Name. Number of Students,
Temple University 7,000
Harvard 5,393
Yale 2,995
Pennsylvania 2,692
Princeton 1,373
“The Temple University building will be eight stories high, at least that is the plan the trustees have in mind at present, but the structure will be so built that a height of two stories may be added at any time. It will have a frontage of 129 feet on Broad Street and 140 feet on Brown Street. The corner property was deeded as a gift to Temple College by the Broad and Brown Streets Church and the College then purchased the adjoining property on Broad Street. In appreciation of the gift the College has offered the use of the university chapel, which will be built in the building, to the Broad and Brown Streets Church congregation for a place of worship.
“The university will be built of stone, and while not an elaborate structure, it will be substantial and suitable in every respect and imposing in its very simplicity.
“In addition to the university offices there will be a large gymnasium, a free dispensary, departments of medicine, theology, law, engineering, sciences, and, in fact, all the branches of learning that are taught in any of the great universities. There will be a library and lecture room for every department, pathological and chemical laboratories and a sufficient number of classrooms to preclude crowding of students for the next ten or fifteen years.
“There are now one hundred and thirty-five instructors in Temple College, but when the university is opened this number will be increased to three hundred.
“The present college building, which adjoins the Baptist Temple, will continue to be used, but only for the normal classes and lower grade of work. The building will be remodeled. The dwelling adjoining the college which has been occupied as the theological department will be vacated when the university is completed.
“Dr. Conwell, the father of Temple College and who in years to come will be spoken of as the father of Temple University, said yesterday:
“‘It will be a university for busy people, the same as the college has been a college for busy people. Our institution reaches and benefits a class–in some respects the greatest class–of persons who want to study and enlarge their education, but cannot attend the other universities and colleges for financial reasons and because of their business.
“‘There’s many a man and woman, young and middle-aged, who is not satisfied with himself–he wants to go on farther, he wants to learn more. But his daily work won’t allow him to complete his education because of the inconvenient hours of the classes and lectures in other colleges. And he comes to Temple, as there classes are held practically all day and for several hours at night. The terms of the course at Temple College are reasonable, and thus many young men or women may prepare themselves for higher and more remunerative work, whereas they would not feel that they could afford to pay the tuition fee at some other institution. The Temple University will be similar to the London University, a city university for busy persons.'”
Thus Temple College grows because it is needed. And such an institution is needed in other cities as well as in Philadelphia. This is but the pioneer. It can have sister institutions wherever people want to study and Christian hearts want to help.
It grows also because in the heart of one man, its founder, is the bitter knowledge of how sorely such an institution is needed by those who want to study, and who himself works hand, heart and soul so that it shall never fail those who need it.
Says James M. Beck, the noted lawyer: “There have been very wealthy men who, out of the abundance of their resources, have founded colleges, but I can hardly recall a case where a man, without abundant means, by mere force of character and intellectual energy, has both created and maintained an institution of this size and character,'”
Far back in the dim light of the centuries, Confucius wrote, “Give instruction unto those who cannot obtain it for themselves.” This is the great and useful work the Temple College is doing and doing it nobly, a work that will count for untold good on future generations.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE SAMARITAN HOSPITAL
Beginning in Two Rooms. Growth. Number of Beds. Management. Temple Services Heard by Telephone. Faith and Nationality of Those Cared For.
His pastoral work among his church members and others of the neighborhood brought to Dr. Conwell’s mind constantly the needs of the sick poor. Scarcely a week passed that some one did not come to him for help for a loved one suffering from disease, but without means to secure proper medical aid. Sick and poor–that is a condition which sums up the height of human physical suffering–the body racked with pain, burning with fever, yet day and night battling on in misery, without medical aid, without nursing, without any of the comforts that relieve pain. Nor is the sick one the only sufferer. Those who love him endure the keenest mental anguish as they stand by helpless, unable to raise a finger for his relief because they are poor. Through the deep waters of both these experiences Dr. Conwell had himself passed. He knew the anguish of heart of seeing loved ones suffer, of being unable to secure for them the nourishing food, the care needed to make them well. He knew the wretchedness of being sick and poor and of not knowing which way to turn for help, while quivering flesh and nerves called in torture for relief. His heart went out in burning sympathy to all such cases that came to his knowledge, and generously he helped. But they were far too many for one man, big-hearted and open-handed as he might be. More and more the need of a hospital in that part of the city was impressed upon him. Accidents among his membership were numerous, yet the nearest hospital was blocks and blocks away, a distance which meant precious minutes when with every moment life was ebbing.
He laid the matter before his church people. Down through the centuries came ringing in their ears that command, “Heal the sick.” They knew it was Christ’s work–“Unto Him were brought all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and he healed them.”
So they decided to rent two rooms where the sick could be cared for, and later built a hospital for the poor, where without money and without price, the best medical aid, the tenderest nursing were at the command of those in need.
“The Hospital was founded,” says Dr. Conwell, “and this property purchased in the hope that it would do Christ’s work. Not simply to heal for the sake of professional experience, not simply to cure disease and repair broken bones, but to so do those charitable acts as to enforce the truth Jesus taught, that God ‘would not that any should perish, but that all should come unto Him and live.’ Soul and body, both need the healing balm of Christianity. The Hospital modestly and touchingly furnishes it to all classes, creeds, and ages whose sufferings cause them to cry out, ‘Have mercy on me!'”
So far as buildings were concerned, it began in a small way, though its spirit of kindness and Christian charity was large. After one year in rented rooms, a house was purchased on North Broad Street, near Ontario Street, and fitted up as a hospital with wards, operating room and dispensary. It was situated just where a network of railroads focuses and near a number of large factories and machine shops, where accidents were occurring constantly. Almost immediately its wards were filled. The name “Samaritan Hospital” was given as typical of its work and spirit, its projectors and supporters laying down their money and agreeing to pay whatever might be needed, as well as giving of their personal care and attention to the sufferer. But though Dr. Conwell’s heart is big, his head is practical. He does not believe in indiscriminate charity.
“Charity is composed of sympathy and self-sacrifice. There is no charity without a union of these two,” he said, in an address years ago at Music Hall, Boston. “To make a gift become a charity the recipient must feel that it is given out of sympathy; that the donor has made a sacrifice to give it; that it is intended only as assistance and not as a permanent support, unless the needy one he helpless; and that it is not given as his right. To accomplish this end desired by charitable hearts demands an acquaintance with the persons to be assisted or a study of them, and a great degree of caution and patience. It is not only unnecessary, but a positive wrong to give to itinerant beggars. There is no such thing as charity about a so-called state charity. It is statesmanship to rid the community of nuisances, to feed the poor and prevent stealing and robbery, but it should not be called ‘a charity.’ The paupers take their provision as their right, feel no gratitude, acquire no ambition, no industry, no culture. The state almshouse educates the brain and chills the heart. It fastens a stigma on the child to hinder and curse it for life. Any institution supported otherwise than by voluntary contribution, or in the hands of paid public officials, can never have the spirit of charity nor be correctly called a charity. Boston’s public charitable institutions, so called, are not charities at all; the motive is not sympathy, but necessity. The money for the support of paupers is not paid with benevolent intentions by the tax-payers, nor do the inmates of almshouses so receive it. I have been engaged in gathering statistics, and have found sixty-three per cent of all persons who applied for assistance at the various institutions were impostors, while many were swindlers and professional burglars.”
The sick poor are never turned away from Samaritan Hospital, but those who are able to pay are requested to do so. Dr. Conwell believes it would be a wrong to treat such people free, an injustice to physicians, as well as an encouragement of a wrong spirit in themselves. The hospital has a number of private rooms in which patients are received for pay. Many have been furnished by members of Grace Baptist Church in memory of some loved one “gone before,” or by Sunday School classes or church organizations.
It may have been the fact that it started in an ordinary house that gave the Hospital its cheery, homelike atmosphere. It may have been the spirit of the workers. But its homelike air is noticeable. While rules are strictly enforced, as they must be, there is a feeling of personal interest in each patient that makes the sick feel that she is something more than a “case” or a “number.”
“The lovely Christ spirit,” says Dr. Conwell, “which inclines men and women to care for their unfortunate fellowmen, is especially beautiful when in addition to the healing of wounds and disease, the afflicted sufferers are welcomed to such a home as the Samaritan Hospital has become. All such kind deeds become doubly sweet when done in the name of Christ, because they carry with them sympathy for those in pain, love for the loveless, a home for the homeless, friendship for the friendless, and a divine solace, which are often more than surgical skill or medical science. Such an institution the Samaritan Hospital is ever to be. It began in weakness and inexperience, but with Christian devotion and affection, its founders and supporters have conquered innumerable difficulties, and can now say unreservedly that they have a hospital with all the conveniences and all the influences of a Christian home.”
The hospital was opened February 1, 1892. It did not take long to prove the need of the work. Before the year was out it was so crowded that an addition had to be built, and now magnificent buildings stand adjoining the original “house” as a monument to the untiring work and zeal of Grace Church members and their friends. It is now an independent corporation.
The hospital is fitted with all modern appliances for caring for the sick. It has a hundred and seventy beds, and a large and competent staff of physicians numbering many of the best in the city. There is also a training school for nurses, the original hospital building being now fitted up and furnished as a nurses’ home. More than five thousand different cases are ministered to during the year in the beds and dispensary. The annual expense of running the hospital is more than forty thousand dollars, the value of the property more than three hundred thousand dollars.
In addition to the customary weekly visiting days, visitors are allowed on one evening during the week and on Sunday afternoons. These rather unusual visiting hours are an innovation of Dr. Conwell’s for the benefit of busy workers who cannot visit their sick friends or relatives on week days.
A novel feature of the hospital and one which brings great pleasure to the patients, is the telephone service connecting it with The Temple, whereby those who are able, can hear the preaching of the pastor Sunday morning and evening at the big church farther down Broad Street.
One of the most efficient aids in the hospital’s growth has been the Board of Lady Managers. When the hospital was opened in 1892, a committee of six ladies was appointed by Mr. Conwell to take charge of the housekeeping affairs, and from this committee has grown this Board which has done so much to aid the hospital, both by raising money and looking after its household affairs.
This committee had entire charge of the house department, visiting it weekly, inspecting the house, and making suggestions to the trustees for improving the work in that department.
The Board is divided into Finance, Visiting, Flower, Linen, Ward Supplies, House Supplies and Sewing Committee. The chairman of these committees, together with the five officers, constitute the Executive Committee, and meet with the trustees at their regular monthly meetings.
In addition to paying the housekeeping bills, the board has come many times to the assistance of the trustees, and by giving entertainments, holding sales, teas, receptions, has raised large sums of money for special purposes. In connection with this Board is the Samaritan Aid Society which annually contributes about three hundred new articles of clothing and bedding.
The Board of Trustees is composed of able, experienced business men who apply their knowledge of business affairs to the conduct of the hospital. It means a sacrifice of much time on their part, but it is cheerfully given.
The hospital is non-sectarian. Suffering and need are the only requisites for admission. During the past year among those who were cared for were:
Catholic 284
Baptist 134
Methodist 141
Episcopalian 112
Lutheran 97
Presbyterian 96
Hebrew 89
Protestant 54
Reformed 25
Friends 12
Confucianism 5
Congregational 4
United Brethren 3
Evangelist 3
Christian 2
Not recorded 60
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[Illustration: ATTENDING SERVICE IN BED]
The nativity of the patients showed that nearly all countries were represented–Russia, Poland, Italy, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Scotland, England, Germany, Ireland, China, Hungary, Australia, Switzerland, Jerusalem, Roumania and Armenia.
Never was the worth of its work better shown than in the terrible Ball Park accident, which happened in Philadelphia in 1904, when by the collapsing of the grandstand hundreds were killed and injured. Without a moment’s notice, more than a hundred patients were rushed to the hospital and cared for. When the wards were filled, cots were placed in the halls, in the offices, wherever there was room, and the injured tenderly treated.
Thus from small beginnings and a great need it has steadily grown, supported by contributions and upheld by the faithful work of those who labor for the love of the Master. Sacrifices of time and money have been freely made for it, for the people who have worked to support it are few of them rich. It still needs help, for “the poor ye have always with you.” And while there are poor people and sick people, Samaritan Hospital will always need the help of the more fortunate to aid it in its great work of relieving pain.
CHAPTER XXX
THE MANNER OF THE MAN
Boundless Love for Men. Utter Humility. His Simplicity and Informality. Keen Sense of Humor. His Unconventional Methods of Work. Power as a Leader. His Tremendous Faith.
What of the personality of the man back of all this ceaseless work, these stupendous undertakings? Much of it can be read in the work itself. But not all. One must know Dr. Conwell personally to realize that deep, abiding love of humanity which is the wellspring of his life and which shows itself in constant and innumerable acts of thoughtfulness and kindness for the happiness of others. He cannot see a drunkard on the street without his heart going out in a desire to help him to a better life. He cannot see a child in tears, but that he must know the trouble and mend it. From boyhood, it was one of the strongest traits of his character, and when it clasped hands with a man’s love of Christ, it became the ruling passion of his life. The woes of humanity touch him deeply. He freely gives himself, his time, his money to lighten them. But he knows that to do his best, is but comparatively little. To him it is a pitiful thing that so much of the world’s, misery cannot be relieved because of the lack of money; that people must starve, must suffer pain and disease, must go without the education that makes life brighter and happier, simply for the want of this one thing of so little worth compared with the great things of life it has the power to withhold or grant.
One must also be intimately associated with Dr. Conwell to realize the deep humility that rules his heart, that makes him firmly believe any man who will trust in God and go ahead in faith can accomplish all that he himself has done, and more.
“You do not know what a struggle my life is,” he said once to a friend. “Only God and my own heart know how far short I come of what I ought to be, and how often I mar the use He would make of me even when I would serve Him.”
And again, at the Golden Jubilee services, in honor of his fiftieth birthday, he said publicly what he many times says in private:
“I look back on the errors of by-gone years; my blunders; my pride; my self-sufficiency; my willfulness–if God would take me up in my unworthiness and imperfection and lift me to such a place of happiness and love as this–I say, He can do it for any man.
“When I see the blunders I unintentionally make in history, in mathematics, in names, in rhetoric, in exegesis, and yet see that God uses even blunders to save men–I sink back into the humblest place before Him and say, ‘If God can use such preaching as that, blunders and mistakes like these; if He can take them and use them for His glory, He can use anybody and anything.’ I let out the secret of my life when I tell you this: If I have succeeded at all, it has been with the conscious sense that as God has used even me, so can He use others. God saved me and He can save them. My very faults show me, they teach me, that any person can be helped and saved.”
Speaking of his sermons, which are taken down by a stenographer and typewritten for publication in the “Temple Review,” he said, with the utmost dejection, “Positively they make me sick. To think that I should stand up and undertake to preach when I can do no better than that”
He has ever that sense of defeat from which all great minds suffer whose high ideals ever elude them.
In manner and speech, he is simple and unaffected, and approachable at all times. When not away from the city lecturing, he spends a certain part of the day in his study at the church, where any one can see him on any matter which he may wish to bring to his attention. The ante-room is thronged at the hour when it is known that he will be there. People waylay him in the church corridors, and on the streets, so well known is his kindly heart, his attentive ear, his generous hand.
Not only do these visitors invade the church, but they come to his home. Early in the morning they are there. They await him when he returns late at night. As an instance of their number, one Saturday afternoon late in June he had one hour free which he hoped to take for rest and the preparation of the next morning’s sermon. During that one hour he had six callers, each staying until the next arrived. One of these was a young man whom Dr. Conwell had never seen, a boy no more than seventeen or eighteen. He had a few weeks before made a runaway marriage with a girl still younger than himself. Her parents had indignantly taken the bride home, and the young husband came to Dr. Conwell to ask him to seek out these parents and persuade them to let the child wife return to her husband.
He has a knack of putting everybody at ease in his presence, which perhaps accounts for the freedom with which people, even utter strangers, come to him and pour into his ear their life secrets. This earnest desire to help people, to make them happier and better, shines from his life with such force that one feels it immediately on entering his presence and opens one’s heart to him. He helps, advises, and, because he is so preeminently a man of faith and believes so firmly that all he has done has been accomplished by faith and perseverance, he inspires others with like confidence in themselves. They go away encouraged, hopeful, strengthened for the work that lies ahead of them, or for the trouble they must surmount It is little wonder the people throng to him for help.
His simple, informal view of life is shown in other things. During a summer vacation in the Berkshires he was scheduled to lecture in one of the home towns. His old friends and neighbors dearly love to hear him, and nearly always secure a lecture from him while he is supposed to be resting. Entirely forgetting the lecture, he planned a fishing trip that day. Just as the fishing party was ready to start, some one remembered the lecture. There would not be time to go fishing, return, dress and go to the lecture town. But Dr. Conwell is a great fisherman, and he disliked most thoroughly to give up that fishing trip. He thought about it a few minutes, and then in his informal, unconventional fashion, decided he would both fish and lecture. He packed his lecturing apparel in a suit case, tied a tub for the accommodation of the fish on the back of the wagon and started. All day he fished, happy and contented. When lecturing time drew near, rattling and splashing, with a tubful of fish, round-eyed and astonished at the violent upheavals of their usual calm abiding place, he drove up to the lecture hall, changed his clothes, and at the appointed time appeared on the platform and delivered one of the best lectures that section ever heard.
Some people call his methods sensational. They are not sensational in the sense of merely making a noise for the purpose of attracting attention. They are unconventional. Dr. Conwell pays no attention to forms if the life has gone out of them, to traditions, if their spirit is dead, their days of usefulness past. He lives in the present He sees present needs and adopts methods to fit them. No doubt, many said it was sensational to tear down that old church at Lexington himself. But there was no money and the church must come down. The only way to get it down and a new one built, was to go to work. And he went to work in straightforward, practical fashion. It takes courage and strength of mind thus to tear down conventions and forms. But he does not hesitate if he sees they are blocking the road of progress. This disregard of customs, this practical common-sense way of attacking evil or supplying needs is seen in all his church work. And because it is original and unusual, it brings upon him often, a storm of adverse criticism. But he never halts for that. He is willing to suffer misrepresentation, even calumny, if the cause for which he is working, progresses. He cares nothing for himself. He thinks only of the Master and the work He has committed to his hands.
Though the great masses in their ignorance and poverty appeal to him powerfully and incite him to tremendous undertakings for their relief, he does not, because his hands are so full of great things, turn aside from opportunities to help the individual. Indeed, it is this readiness to answer a personal call for help that has endeared him so to thousands and thousands. No matter what may he the labor or inconvenience to himself, he responds instantly when the appeal comes.
Two men, now members of the church, often tell the incident that led to their conversion. One evening they fell to discussing Dr. Conwell with some young friends who were members of the church. The young men stoutly maintained that “Conwell was like all the rest–in it for the almighty dollar.” The church members as stoutly asserted that he was actuated by motives far above such sordid consideration. But the men would not yield their point and the subject was dropped. A few evenings later, coming out of a saloon at midnight into a blinding snowstorm, they heard a man say, “My dear child, why did you not tell me before that you were in need. You know I would not let you suffer.”
“That’s Conwell,” said one of the young fellows.
“Nothing of the kind,” replied the other. “What’s the matter with you? Catch him out a night like this.”
“But I tell you that was Conwell’s voice,” said the first man. “I know it. Let’s follow him and see what he’s doing.”
Through the thickly falling snow, they could see the tall figure of Dr. Conwell with a large basket on one arm and leading a little child by the hand. Keeping a sufficient distance behind, they followed him to a poor home in a little street, saw him enter, saw the light flash up and knew that he was living out in deed the doctrine he preached. Silent, they turned away. What his spoken word in The Temple could not do his ministry at midnight had accomplished, and they became loyal and devoted members of the church.
In conversation with a street car conductor at one time, he found the man eager to hear of Christ and His love, but unable to give heed on the car because he might be reported for inattention to his duties and lose his place. Dr. Conwell asked him where he took dinner, and at the noon hour was there and, plainly and simply, as the man ate his lunch, told what Christ’s love in his heart and life would mean.
Such stories could be multiplied many times of this personal ministry that seeks day and night, in season and out, to make mankind better, to lift it up where it may grasp eternal truth.
Francis Willard says:
“To move among the people on the common street; to meet them in the market-place on equal terms; to live among them not as saint or monk, but as a brother man with brother men; to serve God not with form or ritual, but in the free impulse of the soul; to bear the burden of society and relieve its needs; to carry on its multitudinous activities in the city, social, commercial, political, and philanthropic–this is the religion of the Son of man.” This is the religion of Dr. Conwell.
As a leader and organizer he is almost without an equal in church work. He sees a need. His practical mind goes to work to plan ways to meet it. He organizes the work thoroughly and carefully; he rallies his workers about him and then leads them dauntlessly forward to success. He has weathered many a fierce gale of opposition, won out in many a furious storm of criticism. The greater the obstacles, the more brightly does his ability as a leader shine. He seems to call up from some secret storehouse reserves of enthusiasm. He gets everybody energetically and cheerfully at work, and the obstacles that seemed insurmountable suddenly melt away. As some one has said, “He attempts the impossible, yet finds practical ways to accomplish it”
The way he met an unexpected demand for money during the building of the church illustrates this:
The trustees had, as they thought, made provision for the renewal of a note of $2,000, due Dec. 27th. Late Friday, Dec. 24th, the news came that the note could not be renewed, that it must be paid Monday. They had no money, nothing could be done but appeal to the people on Sunday.
But it was not a usual Sunday. The Church, just the night before, had closed a big fair for the College. Many had served at the fair tables almost until the Sabbath morning was ushered in. They were tired. All had given money, many even beyond what they could afford. It was, besides, the day after Christmas, and if ever a man’s pocketbook is empty, it is then. To make the outlook still drearier, the day opened with a snowstorm that threatened at church time to turn into a drizzling rain. Here was truly the impossible, for none of the people at any time could give a large sum. Yet he faced the situation dauntlessly, aroused his people, and by evening $2,200 had been pledged for immediate payment, and of that $1,300 was received in cash that Sunday.
In a sermon once he said:
“Last summer I rode by a locality where there had been a mill, now partially destroyed by a cyclone. I looked at the great engine lying upon its side. I looked at the wheels, at the boilers so out of place, thrown carelessly together. I saw pieces of iron the uses of which I did not understand. I saw iron bands, bearings, braces, and shafting scattered about, and I found the great circular saw rusting, flat in the grass. I went on my way wondering why any person should abandon so many pieces of such excellent machinery, leaving good property to go to waste. But again, not many weeks ago, I went by that same place and saw a building there, temporary in its nature, but with smoke pouring out of the stack and steam hissing and puffing from the exhaust pipe. I heard the sound of the great saw singing its song of industry; I saw the teamsters hauling away great loads of lumber. The only difference between the apparently useless old lumber and scrap iron, piled together in promiscuous confusion, machinery thrown into a heap without the arrangement, and the new building with its powerful engine working smoothly and swiftly for the comfort and wealth of men, was that before the rebuilding, the wheels, the saw, the shafting, boilers, piston-rod, and fly wheel had no definite relation to each other. But some man picked out all these features of a complete mill and put them into proper relation; he adjusted shaft, boiler, and cogwheel, put water in the boiler and fire under it, let steam into the cylinders, and moved piston-rod, wheels, and saw. There were no new cogs, wheels, boilers, or saws; no new piece of machinery; there has only been an intelligent spirit found to set them in their proper places and relationship.
“One great difficulty with this world, whether of the entire globe or the individual church, is that it is made up of all sorts of machinery which is not adjusted; which is out of place; no fire under the boiler; no steam to move the machinery. There is none of the necessary relationship–there can he no affinity between cold and steam, between power wasted and utility; and to overcome this difficulty is one of the great problems of the earth to-day. The churches are very much in this condition. There are cogwheels, pulleys, belting, and engines in the church, but out of all useful relationship. There are sincere, earnest Christians, men and women, but they are adjusted to no power and no purpose; they have no definite relationship to utility. They go or come, or lie still and rust, and a vast power for good is unapplied. The text says “We are ambassadors for Christ”; that means, in the clearest terms, the greatest object of the Christian teacher and worker should be the bringing into right relations all the forces of men, and gearing them to the power of Christ”
He undoubtedly understands bringing men together, and getting them at work to secure almost marvelous results. A friend speaking of his ability once said: “I admire Mr. Conwell for the power of which he is possessed of reaching out and getting hold of men and grappling them to himself with hooks of steel.
“I admire him not only for the power he has of binding men not only to himself, but of binding men to Christ, and of binding them to one another; for the power he has of generating enthusiasm. His people are bound not only to the church, to the pastor, to God, but to one another.”
He never fails to appreciate the spirit with which a church member works, even if results are not always as anticipated, or even if the project itself is not always practical. He will cheerfully put his hand down into his pocket and pay the bill for some impractical scheme, rather than dampen the ardor of an enthusiastic worker. He knows that experience will come with practice, but that a willing, zealous worker is above price.
Those who know him most intimately find in him, despite his strong, practical common sense, despite his years of hard work in the world, despite the many times he has been deceived and imposed upon, a certain boyish simplicity and guilelessness of heart, a touch of the poetic, idealistic temperament that sees gold where there is only brass; that hopes and believes, where reason for hope and belief there is none. It is a winning trait that endears friends to him most closely, that makes them cheerfully overlook such imprudent benefactions as may result from it, though he himself holds it with a strong rein, and only reveals that side of his nature to those who know him best.
He studies constantly how he may help others, never how he may rest himself. At his old home at South Worthington, Mass., he has built and equipped an academy for the education of the boys and girls of the neighborhood. He wants no boy or girl of his home locality to have the bitter fight for an education that he was forced to experience. It is a commodious building with class-rooms and a large public hall which is used for entertainments, for prayer meetings, harvest homes and all the gatherings of the nearby farming community.
Many other enterprises besides those directly connected with the church grow out of Dr. Conwell’s desire to be of service to mankind. But like the organizations of the church, the need for them was strongly felt before they took form.
While officiating at the funeral of a fireman who had lost his life by the falling walls of a burning building and who had left three small children uncared for, Dr. Conwell was impressed with the need of a home for the orphans of men who risked their lives for the city’s good. Pondering the subject, he was called that same day to the bedside of a shut-in, who, while he was there, asked him if there was any way by which she could be of service to helpless children left without paternal care or support. She said the subject had been on her mind and such a work was dear to her heart. She was a gifted writer and wielded considerable influence and could, by her pen, do much good for such a work, not only by her writings but by personal letters asking for contributions to establish and support an orphanage. The coincidence impressed the matter still more strongly on Dr. Conwell’s mind. But that was not the end of it. Still that same day, a lady came to him and asked his assistance in securing for her a position as matron of an orphanage; and a woman physician came to his study and offered her services free, to care for orphan children in an institution for them.
Such direct leading was not to be withstood. Dr. Conwell called on a former chief of police and asked his opinion as to an orphanage for the children of fireman and policeman. The policeman welcomed the project heartily, said he had long been thinking of that very problem, and that if it were started by a responsible person, several thousand dollars would be given by the policeman for its support. Still wondering if he should take such leadings as indications of a definite need, Dr. Conwell went to his study, called in some of his church advisers and talked the matter over. Nothing at that meeting was definitely settled, because some work interrupted it and those present dispersed for other duties. But as they disbanded and Dr. Conwell opened his mail, a check fell out for $75 from Rev. Chas. M. Sheldon, which he said in the letter accompanying it, he desired to give toward a movement for helping needy children.
Dr. Conwell no longer hesitated, and the Philadelphia Orphans’ Home Society, of which he is president, was organized, and has done a good work in caring for helpless little ones, giving its whole effort to securing permanent homes for the children and their adoption into lonely families.
Although most of the money from his lectures goes to Temple College, he uses a portion of it to support poor students elsewhere. He has paid for the education of 1,550 college students besides contributing partly to the education of hundreds of others. In fact, all the money he makes, outside of what is required for immediate needs of his family, is given away. He cares so little for money for himself, his wants are so few and simple, that he seldom pays any attention as to whether he has enough with him for personal use. He found once when starting to lecture in New Jersey that after he had bought his ticket he hadn’t a cent left. Thinking, however, he would be paid when the lecture was over, he went on. But the lecture committee told him they would send a check. Having no money to pay a hotel bill, he took the train back. Reaching Philadelphia after midnight he boarded a trolley and told the conductor who he was and his predicament, offering to send the man the money for his fare next day. But the conductor was not to be fooled, said he didn’t know Dr. Conwell from Adam, and put him off. And Dr. Conwell walked twenty long blocks to his home, chuckling all the way at the humor of the situation.
He has a keen sense of humor, as his audiences know. Though the spiritual side of his nature is so intense, his love of fun and appreciation of the humorous relieves him from being solemn or sanctimonious. He is sunny, cheerful, ever ready at a chance meeting with a smile or a joke. Children, who as a rule look upon a minister as a man enshrouded in solemn dignity, are delightfully surprised to find in him a jolly, fun-loving comrade, a fact which has much to do with the number of young people who throng Grace church and enter its membership.
The closeness of his walk with God is shown in his unbounded faith, in the implicit reliance he has in the power of prayer. Though to the world he attacks the problems confronting him with shrewd, practical business sense, behind and underneath this, and greater than it all, is the earnestness with which he first seeks to know the will of God and the sincerity with which he consecrates himself to the work. Christ is to him a very near personal friend, in very truth an Elder Brother to whom he constantly goes for guidance and help, Whose will he wants to do solely, in the current of Whose purpose he wants to move. “Men who intend to serve the Lord should consecrate themselves in heart-searching and prayer,” he has said many and many a time. And of prayer itself he says:
“There is planted in every human heart this knowledge, namely, that there is a power beyond our reach, a mysterious potency shaping the forces of life, which if we would win we must have in our favor. There come to us all, events over which we have no control by physical or mental power. Is there any hope of guiding those mysterious forces? Yes, friends, there is a way of securing them in our favor or preventing them from going against us. How? It is by prayer. When a man has done all he can do, still there is a mighty, mysterious agency over which he needs influence to secure success. The only way he can reach that is by prayer.”
He has good reason to believe in the power of prayer, for the answers he has received in some cases have seemed almost miraculous.
When The Temple was being built, Dr. Conwell proposed that the new pipe organ be put in to be ready for the opening service. But the church felt it would be unwise to assume such an extra burden of debt and voted against it. Dr. Conwell felt persuaded that the organ ought to go in, and spent one whole night in The Temple in prayer for guidance. As the result, he decided that the organ should be built. The contract was given, the first payment made, but when in a few months a note of $1,500 came due, there was not a cent in the treasury to meet it. He knew it would be a most disastrous blow to the church interests, with such a vast building project started, to have that note go to protest. Yet he couldn’t ask the membership to raise the money since it had voted against building the organ at that time. Disheartened, full of gloomy foreboding, he came Sunday morning to the church to preach. The money must be ready next morning, yet he knew not which way to turn. He felt he had been acting in accordance with God’s will, for the decision had been made after a night of earnest prayer. Yet here stood a wall of Jericho before him and no divine direction came as to how to make it fall. As he entered his study, his private secretary handed him a letter. He opened it, and out fell a check for $1,500 from an unknown man in Massillon, Ohio, who had once heard Dr. Conwell lecture and felt strangely impelled to send him $1,500 to use in The Temple work. Dr. Conwell prayed and rejoiced in an ecstasy of gratitude. Three times he broke down during the sermon. His people wondered what was the matter, but said he had never preached more powerfully.
He is a man of prayer and a man of work. Loving, great-hearted, unselfish, cheery, practical, hard-working, he yet draws his greatest inspiration from that silent inner communion with the Master he serves with such single-hearted, unfaltering devotion.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE MANNER OF THE MESSAGE
The Style of the Sermons. Their Subject Matter. Preaching to Help Some Individual Church Member.
In the pulpit, Dr. Conwell is as simple and natural as he is in his study or in the home. Every part of the service is rendered with the heart, as well as the understanding. His reading of a chapter from the Bible is a sermon in itself. The vast congregation follow it with as close attention as they do the sermon. He seems to make every verse alive, to send it with new meaning into each heart. The people in it are real people, who have lived and suffered, who had all the hopes and fears of men and women of to-day. Often little explanations are dropped or timely, practical applications, and when it is over, if that were all of the service one would be repaid for attending.
The hymns, too, are read with feeling and life. If a verse expresses a sentiment contrary to the church feeling, it is not sung. He will not have sung what is not worthy of belief.
The sermons are full of homely, practical illustrations, drawn from the experiences of everyday life. Dr. Conwell announces his text and begins quite simply, sometimes with a little story to illustrate his thought. If Bible characters take any part in it, he makes them real men and women. He pictures them so graphically, the audience sees them, hears them talk, knows what they thought, how they lived. In a word, each hearer feels as if he had met them personally. Never again are they mere names. They are living, breathing men and women.
Dr. Conwell makes his sermons human because he touches life, the life of the past, the life of the present, the lives of those in his audience. He makes them interesting by his word pictures. He holds attention by the dramatic interest he infuses into the theme. He has been called the “Story-telling Preacher” because his sermons are so full of anecdote and illustrations. But every story not only points a moral, but is full of the interest that fastens it on the hearer’s mind. Children in their teens enjoy his sermons, so vivid are they, so full of human, every day interest. Yet all this is but the framework on which is reared some helpful, inspiring Biblical truth which is the crown, the climax, and which because of its careful upbuilding by story and homely illustration is fixed on the hearer’s mind and heart in a way never to be forgotten. It is held there by the simple things of life he sees about him every day, and which, every time he sees them, recall the truth he has heard preached. Dr. Thomas May Pierce, speaking of Dr. Conwell’s method of preaching, says:
“Spurgeon sought the masses and found them by preaching the gospel with homely illustrations; Russell H. Conwell comes to Philadelphia, he seeks out the masses, he finds them with his plain presentation of the old, old story.”
Occasionally he paints word pictures that hold the audience enthralled, or when some great wrong stirs him, rises to heights of impassioned oratory that bring his audience to tears. He never writes out his sermons. Indeed, often he has no time to give them any preparation whatever. Sometimes he does not choose his text until he comes on the platform. Nobody regrets more than Dr. Conwell this lack of preparation, but so many duties press, every minute has so many burdens of work, that it is impossible at times to crowd in a thought for the sermon. It is left for the inspiration of the moment. “I preach poor sermons that other men may preach good ones,” he remarked once, meaning that so much of his time was taken up with church work and lecturing that he has little to give his sermons, and almost all of the fees from his lectures are devoted to the education of men for the ministry.
His one purpose in his sermons is to bring Christ into the lives of his people, to bring them some message from the word of God that will do them good, make them better, lift them up spiritually to a higher plane. His people know he comes to them with this strong desire in his heart and they attend the services feeling confident that even though he is poorly prepared, they will nevertheless get practical and spiritual help for the week.
When he knows that some one member is struggling with a special problem either in business, in the home circle, in his spiritual life, he endeavors to weave into his sermon something that will help him, knowing that no heart is alone in its sorrow, that the burden one bears, others carry, and what will reach one will carry a message or cheer to many.
“During the building of The Temple,” says Smith in his interesting life of Dr. Conwell, “a devoted member, who was in the bookbinding business, walked to his office every morning and put his car-fare into the building fund. Dr. Conwell made note of the sacrifice, and asked himself the question, ‘How can I help that man to be more prosperous?’ He kept him in mind, and while on a lecturing trip he visited a town where improved machines for bookbinding were employed. He called at the establishment and found out all he could about the new machines. The next Sunday morning, he used the new bookbinder as an illustration of some Scriptural truth. The result was, the church member secured the machines of which his pastor had spoken, and increased his income many-fold. The largest sum of money given to the building of the new Temple was given by that same bookbinder.
“A certain lady made soap for a fair held in the Lower Temple. Dr. Conwell advised her to go into the soap-making business. She hesitated to take his advice. He visited a well known soap factory, and in one of his sermons described the most improved methods of soap-making as an illustration of some improved method of Christian work. Hearing the illustration used from the pulpit, the lady in question acted on the pastor’s previous advice, and started her nephew in the soap business, in which he has prospered.
“A certain blacksmith in Philadelphia who was a member of Grace Church, but who lived in another part of the city, was advised by Dr. Conwell to start a mission in his neighborhood. The mechanic pleaded ignorance and his inability to acquire sufficient education to enable him to do any kind of Christian work. On Sunday morning Dr. Conwell wove into his sermon an historical sketch of Elihu Burritt, that poor boy with meagre school advantages, who bound out to a blacksmith, at the age of sixteen, and compelled to associate with the ignorant, yet learned thirty-three languages, became a scholar and an orator of fame. The hesitating blacksmith, encouraged by the example of Elihu Burritt, took courage and went to work. He founded the mission which soon grew into the Tioga Baptist Church.”
In addition to helping his own church members, this method of preaching had other results. Smith gives the following instance:
“A few years ago the pastor of a small country church in Massachusetts resolved to try Dr. Conwell’s method of imparting useful information through his illustrations, and teaching the people what they needed to know. Acting on Dr. Conwell’s advice, he studied agricultural chemistry, dairy farming, and household economy. He did not become a sensationalist and advertise to preach on these subjects, but he brought in many helpful illustrations which the people recognized as valuable, and soon the meeting-house was filled with eager listeners. After careful study the minister became convinced that the farmers on those old worn-out farms in Western Massachusetts should go into the dairy business, and feed their cows on ensilage through the long New England winter. One bright morning he preached a sermon on ‘Leaven,’ and incidentally used a silo as an illustration. The preacher did not sacrifice his sermon to his illustration, but taught a great truth and set the farmers to thinking along a new line. As a result of that sermon one poor farmer built a silo and filled it with green corn in the autumn; his cows relished the new food and repaid him splendidly with milk. That farmer Is the richest man In the country to-day. This is only one of a great many ways in which that practical preacher helped his poor, struggling parishioners by using the Conwell method. What was the spiritual result of such preaching among the country people? He had a great, wide, and deep revival of religion, the first the church had enjoyed for twenty-five years.”
Thus Dr. Conwell weaves practical sense and spiritual truths together in a way that helps people for the span of life they live in this world, for the eternal life beyond. He never forgets the soul and its needs. That is his foremost thought. But he recognizes also that there is a body and that it lives in a practical world. And whenever and wherever he can help practically, as well as spiritually, he does it, realizing that the world needs Christians who have the means as well as the spirit to carry forward Christ’s work.
Speaking of his methods of preaching, Rev. Albert G. Lawson, D.D., says:
“He has been blessed in his ministry because of three things: He has a democratic, philosophic, philanthropic bee in his bonnet, a big one, too, and he has attempted to bring us to see that churches mean something beside fine houses and good music. There must be a recognition of the fact that when a man is lost, he is lost in body as well as in soul One needs, therefore, as our Lord would, to begin at the foundations, the building anew of the mind with the body; and I bless God for the democratic, and the philosophic, and the philanthropic idea which is manifest in this strong church. I hope there will be enough power in it to make every Baptist minister sick until he tries to occupy the same field that Jesus Christ did in his life and ministry; until every one of the churches shall recognize the privilege of having Jesus Christ reshaped in the men and women near them.”
CHAPTER XXXII
THESE BUSY LATER DAYS
A Typical Week Day. A Typical Sunday. Mrs. Conwell. Back to the Berkshires in Summer for Rest.
By the record of what Dr. Conwell has accomplished may be judged how busy are his days.
In early youth he learned to use his time to the best advantage. Studying and working on the farm, working and studying at Wilbraham and Yale, told him how precious is each minute. Work he must when he wanted to study. Study he must when he needed to work. Every minute became as carefully treasured as though it were a miser’s gold. But it was excellent training for the busy later days when work would press from all sides until it was distraction to know what to do first.
“Do the next thing,” is the advice he gives his college students. It is undoubtedly a saving of time to take the work that lies immediately at hand and despatch it. But when the hand is surrounded by work in a score of important forms, all clamoring for recognition, what is “the next thing” becomes a question difficult to decide.
Then it is that one must plan as carefully to use one’s minutes as he does to expend one’s income when expenses outrun it.
His private secretary gave the following account, in the “Temple Magazine,” of a week day and a Sunday in Dr. Conwell’s life:
“No two days are alike in his work, and he has no specified hour for definite classes of calls or kinds of work.
“After breakfast he goes to his office in The Temple. Here visitors from half a dozen to twenty await him, representing a great variety of needs or business.
“Visitors wait their turn in the ante-room of his study and are received by him in the order of their arrival. The importance of business, rank or social position of the caller does not interfere with this order.
[Illustration: THE CHORUS OF THE BAPTIST TEMPLE]
“Throughout the whole day in the street, at the church, at the College, wherever he goes, he is beset by persons urging him for money, free lectures, to write introductions to all sorts of books, for sermons, or to take up collections for indigent individuals or churches. Letters reach him even from Canada, asking him to take care of some aunt, uncle, runaway son, or needy family, in Philadelphia. Sometimes for days together he does not secure five minutes to attend to his correspondence. Personal letters which he must answer himself often wait for weeks before he can attend to them, although he endeavors, as a rule, to answer important letters on the day they are received. People call to request him to deliver addresses at the dedication of churches, schoolhouses, colleges, flag-raisings, commencements, and anniversaries, re-unions, political meetings, and all manner of reform movements. Authors urge him to read their work in manuscript; orators without orations write to him and come to him for address or sermon; applications flow in for letters of introduction highly recommending entire strangers for anything they want. Agents for books come to him for endorsements, with religious newspapers for subscriptions and articles, and with patent medicines urging him to be ‘cured with one bottle.’
“It is well known that he was a lawyer before entering the ministry, and orphans, guardians, widows, and young men entering business come to him asking him to make wills, contracts, etc., and to give them points of law concerning their undertakings. Weddings and funerals claim his attention. Urgent messages to visit the sick and the dying and the unfortunate come to him, and these appeals are answered first either by himself or the associate pastor; the cries of the suffering making the most eloquent of all appeals to these two busy men.”
Frequently he comes to the church again in the afternoon to meet some one by appointment. Both afternoon and evening are crowded with engagements to see people, to make addresses, to attend special meetings of various kinds, with College and Hospital duties.
“I am expected to preside at six different meetings to-night,” he said smilingly to a friend at The Temple one evening as the membership began to stream in to look after its different lines of work.
Much, of the time during the winter he is away lecturing, but he keeps in constant communication with The Temple and its work. By letter, wire or telephone he is ready to respond to any emergency requiring his advice or suggestion. These lecture trips carry him all over the country, but they are so carefully planned that with rare exceptions he is in the pulpit Sunday morning. Frequently, when returning, he wires for his secretary to meet him part way, if from the West, at Harrisburg or Altoona; if from the South, at Washington or beyond. The secretary brings the mail and the remaining hours of the journey are filled with work, dictating letters, articles for magazines or press, possibly material for a book, whatever work most presses.
Pastoral calls in the usual sense of the term cannot be made in a membership of more than three thousand. But visits to the sick, to the poor, to the dying, are paid whenever the call comes. To help and console the afflicted, to point the way to Christ, is the work nearest and dearest to Dr. Conwell’s heart and always comes first. Funerals, too, claim a large part of the pastor’s time, seven in one day among the Grace Church membership calling for the services of both Dr. Conwell and his associate. Weddings are not an unimportant feature, six having been one day’s record at The Temple.
Of his Sundays, his secretary says:
“From the time of rising until half-past eight, he gives special attention to the subject of the morning sermon, and usually selects his text and general line of thought before sitting down to breakfast. After family prayers, he spends half an hour in his study, at home, examining books and authorities in the completion of his sermon. Sometimes he is unable to select a text until reaching The Temple. He has, though rarely, made his selection after taking his place at the pulpit.
“At nine-thirty, he is always promptly in his place at the opening of the Young Men’s prayer-meeting or at the Women’s prayer-meeting in the Lower Temple. At the Young Men’s meeting he plays the organ and leads the singing. If he takes any other part in the meeting he is very brief, in talk or prayer.
“At half-past ten he goes directly to the Upper Temple, where as a rule he conducts all the exercises with the exception of the ‘notices’ and a prayer offered by the associate pastor, or in his absence at an overflow service in the Lower Temple, by the dean of the College or chaplain of the Hospital. The pastor meets the candidates for baptism in his study before service, for conference and prayer. In administering the ordinance, he is assisted by the associate pastor, who leads the candidates into the baptistry.
“The pastor reads the hymns. It is his custom to preach without any notes whatever; rarely, a scrap of paper may lie on the desk containing memoranda or suggestions of leading thoughts, but frequently even when this is the case the notes are ignored.
“A prominent–possibly the prevailing–idea in the preparation of his sermons is the need of individuals in his congregation. He aims to say those things which will be the most helpful and inspiring to the unconverted seeking Christ, or to the Christian desiring to lead a nobler spiritual life. It may be said of nearly all his illustrations that they present such a variety of spiritual teaching that different persons will catch from them different suggestions adapted to needs of each.
“The morning service closes promptly at twelve o’clock; then follows an informal reception for thirty minutes or it may be an hour, for hundreds, sometimes a thousand and more, many of them visitors from other cities and states, press forward to shake hands with him. This, Dr. Conwell considers an important part of his church work, giving him an opportunity to meet many of the church members and extend personal greetings to those whom he would have no possible opportunity to visit in their homes.
“He dines at one o’clock. At two, he is in The Temple; again he receives more callers, and if possible makes some preparation for services of the afternoon, in connection with the Sunday-school work. At two-thirty, he is present at the opening of the Junior department of the Sunday-school in the Lower Temple, where he takes great interest in the singing, which is a special feature of that department. At three o’clock, he appears promptly on the platform in the auditorium where the Adult department of the Sunday-school meets, gives a short exposition of the lesson for the day, and answers from the Question Box. These cover a great variety of subjects, from the absurdity of some crack-brained crank to the pathetic appeal of some needy soul. Some of these questions may be sent in by mail during the week, but the greater part of them are handed to the pastor by the ushers. To secure an answer the question must be upon some subject connected with religious life or experience, some theme of Christian ethics in everyday life.
“When the questions are answered, the pastor returns to the Lower Temple, going to the Junior, Intermediate, or Kindergarten department to assist in the closing exercises. At the close of the Sunday-school session, teachers and scholars surround him, seeking information or advice concerning the school work, their Christian experience or perhaps to tell him their desire to unite with the church.[A]
[Footnote A: Lately (1905), however, he has had to give up much of this Sunday-school work on account of the need of rest.]
“As a rule, he leaves The Temple at five o’clock If he finds no visitors with appeals for counsel or assistance waiting for him at his home, he lies down for half an hour. Usually the visitors are there, and his half-hour rest is postponed until after the evening service.
“Supper at five-thirty, after which he goes to his study to prepare for the evening service, selecting his subject and looking up such references as he thinks may be useful. At seven-fifteen, he is in The Temple again, often visiting for a few moments one of the Christian Endeavor societies, several of which are at that time in session in the Lower Temple. At half-past seven the general service is held in the auditorium. The evening sermon is published weekly in the “Temple Review.” He gives all portions of this service full attention.
“At nine o’clock this service closes, and the pastor goes once more to the Lower Temple, where both congregations, the ‘main’ and the ‘overflow’ unite, so far as is possible, in a union prayer service. The hall of the Lower Temple and the rooms connected with it are always overcrowded at this service meeting, and many are unable to get within hearing of the speakers on the platform. Here Dr. Conwell presides at the organ and has general direction of the evangelistic services, assisted by the associate pastor. As enquirers rise for prayers,–the prayers of God’s people,–Dr. Conwell makes note of each one, and to their great surprise recognizes them when he meets them on the street or at another service, long afterward. This union meeting is followed by another general reception especially intended for a few words of personal conversation with those who have risen for prayer and with strangers who are brought forward and introduced by members of the church. This is the most fatiguing part of the day’s work and occupies from one hour to an hour and a half. He reaches home about eleven o’clock and before retiring makes a careful memoranda of such people as have requested him to pray for them, and such other matters as may require his attention during the week. He seldom gets to bed much before midnight.”
In all the crowd and pressure of work, he is ably assisted by Mrs. Conwell. In the early days of his ministry at Grace Church she was his private secretary, but as the work grew for both of them, she was compelled to give this up.
She enters into all her husband’s work and plans with cheery, helpful enthusiasm. Yet her hands are full of her own special church work, for she is a most important member of the various working associations of the church, college and hospital. For many years she was treasurer of the large annual fairs of The Temple, as well as being at the head of a number of large teas and fairs held for the benefit of Samaritan Hospital. In addition to all this church and charitable work, she makes the home a happy centre of the brightest social life and a quiet, well-ordered retreat for the tired preacher and lecturer when he needs rest.
A writer in “The Ladies’ Home Journal,” in a series of articles on “Wives of Famous Pastors,” says of Mrs. Conwell:
“Mrs. Conwell finds her greatest happiness in her husband’s work, and gives him always her sympathy and devotion. She passes many hours at work by his side when he is unable to notice her by word or look; she knows he delights In her presence, for he often says when writing, ‘I can do better if you remain.’ Her whole life is wrapped up in the work of The Temple, and all those multitudinous enterprises connected with that most successful of churches.
“She makes an ideal wife for a pastor whose work is varied and whose time is as interrupted as are Mr. Conwell’s work and time. On her husband’s lecture tours she looks well after his comfort, seeing to those things which a busy and earnest man is almost sure to overlook and neglect. In all things he finds her his helpmeet and caretaker.”
From this busy life the family escape in summer to Dr. Conwell’s boyhood home in the Berkshires. Here amid the hills he loves, with the brook of his boyhood days again singing him to sleep, he rests and recuperates for the coming winter’s campaign.
The little farmhouse is vastly changed since those early days. Many additions have been made, modern improvements added, spacious porches surround it on all sides, and a green, velvety lawn dotted with shrubbery and flowers has replaced the rocks and stones, the sparse grass of fifty years ago. If Martin and Miranda Conwell could return and see the little house now with its artistic furnishings, its walls hung with pictures from those very lands the mother read her boy about, they would think miracles had indeed come to pass.
In front of the house where once flashed a little brook that “set the silences to rhyme” is now a silvery lake framed in rich green foliage. Up in the hill where swayed the old hemlock with the eagle’s nest for a crown rises an observatory. From the top one gazes in summer into a billowy sea of green in which the spire of the Methodist church rises like a far distant white sail.
It is a happy family that gathers in the old homestead during the summer days. His daughter, now Mrs. Tuttle, comes with her children, Mr. Turtle, who is a civil engineer, joining them when his work permits. Dr. Conwell’s son Leon, proprietor and editor of the Somerville (Mass.) “Journal,” with his wife and child, always spend as much of the summer there as possible. One vacant chair there is in the happy family circle. Agnes, the only child of Dr. and Mrs. Conwell, died in 1901, in her twenty-sixth year. She was the wife of Alfred Barker. A remarkably bright and gifted girl, clever with her pen, charming in her personality, an enthusiastic and successful worker in the many interests of church, college and hospital, her death was a sad loss to her family and friends.
Not only the beauty of the place but the associations bring rest and peace to the tired spirit of the busy preacher and lecturer, and he returns to his work refreshed, ready to take up with rekindled energy and enthusiasm the tasks awaiting him.
Thus his busy life goes on, full of unceasing work for the good of others. Over his bed hangs a gold sheathed sword which to him is a daily inspiration to do some deed worthy of the sacrifice which it typifies. “I look at it each morning,” said Dr. Conwell to a friend, “and pray for help to do something that day to make my life worthy of such a sacrifice.” And each, day he prays the prayer his father prayed for him in boyhood days, “May no person be the worse because I have lived this day, but may some one be the better.”
CHAPTER XXXIII
AS A LECTURER
His Wide Fame as a Lecturer. Date of Entrance on Lecture Platform. Number of Lectures Given. The Press on His Lectures. Some Instances of How His Lectures Have Helped People. Address at Banquet to President McKinley.
In the maze of this church, college and hospital work, Dr. Conwell finds time to lecture from one hundred to two hundred and twenty-five times in a year. Indeed, he frequently leaves Philadelphia at midnight after a Sunday of hard work, travels and lectures as far as Kansas and is back again for Friday evening prayer meeting and for his duties the following Sunday.
As a lecturer, he is probably known to a greater number of people than he is as a preacher, for his lecturing trips take him from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Since he began, he has delivered more than six thousand lectures.
He has been on the lecture platform since the year 1862, giving on an average of two hundred lectures in a year. In addition, he has addressed many of the largest conventions in America and preaches weekly to an audience of more than three thousand. So that he has undoubtedly addressed more people in America than any man living. He is to-day one of the most eminent and most popular figures on the lecture platform of this country, the last of the galaxy of such men as Gough, Beecher, Chapin. “There are but ten real American lecturers on the American platform to-day,” says “Leslie’s Weekly.” “Russell Conwell is one of the ten and probably the most eminent.”
His lectures, like his sermons, are full of practical help and good sense. They are profusely illustrated with anecdote and story that fasten the thought of his subject. He uses no notes, and gives his lecture little thought during the day. Indeed, he often does not know the subject until he hears the chairman announce it. If the lecture is new or one that he has not given for many years, he occasionally has a few notes or a brief outline before him. But usually he is so full of the subject, ideas and illustrations so crowd his mind that he is troubled with the wealth, rather than the dearth, of material. He rarely gives a lecture twice alike. The main thought, of course, is the same. But new experiences suggest new illustrations, and so, no matter how many times one hears it, he always hears something new. “That’s the third time I’ve heard Acres of Diamonds,” said one delighted auditor, “and every time it grows better.”
Perhaps the best idea of his lectures can be gleaned from the press notices that have appeared, though he never keeps a press notice himself, nor pays any attention to the compliments that may have been paid him. These that have been collected at random by friends by no means cover the field of what has been said or written about him.
Speaking of a lecture in 1870, when he toured England, the London “Telegraph” says:
“The man is weirdly like his native hills. You can hear the cascades and the trickling streams in his tone of voice. He has a strange and unconscious power of so modulating his voice as to suggest the roar of the tempest in rocky declivities, or the soft echo of music in distant valleys. The breezy freshness and natural suggestiveness of varied nature in its wild state was completely fascinating. He excelled in description, and the auditor could almost hear the Niagara roll as he described it, and listened to catch the sound of sighing pines in his voice as he told of the Carolinas.”
“The lecture was wonderful in clearness, powerful, and eloquent in delivery,” says the London “News.” “The speaker made the past a living present, and led the audience, unconscious of time, with him in his walks and talks with famous men. When engrossed in his lecture his facial expression is a study. His countenance conveys more quickly than his words the thought which he is elucidating, and when he refers to his Maker, his face takes on an expression indescribable for its purity. He seems to hold the people as children stare at brilliant and startling pictures.”
“It is of no use to try to report Conwell’s lectures,” is the verdict of the Springfield “Union.” “They are unique. Unlike anything or any one else. Filled with good sense, brilliant with new suggestions, and inspiring always to noble life and deeds, they always please with their wit. The reader of his addresses does not know the full power of the man.”
“His stories are always singularly adapted to the lecturer’s purpose. Each story is mirth-provoking. The audience chuckled, shook, swayed, and roared with convulsions of laughter,” says the “London Times.” “He has been in the lecture field but a few years, yet he has already made a place beside such men as Phillips, Beecher, and Chapin.”
“The only lecturer in America,” concludes the Philadelphia “Times,” “who can fill a hall in this city with three thousand people at a dollar a ticket.”
The most popular of all his lectures is “Acres of Diamonds,” which he has given 3,420 times, which is printed, in part, at the end of the book. But his list of lectures is a long one, including:
“The Philosophy of History.”
“Men of the Mountains.”
“The Old and the New New England.” “My Fallen Comrades.”
“The Dust of Our Battlefields.”
“Was it a Ghost Story?”
“The Unfortunate Chinese.”
“Three Scenes in Babylon.”
“Three Scenes from the Mount of Olives.” “Americans in Europe.”
“General Grant’s Empire.”
“Princess Elizabeth.”
“Guides.”
“Success in Life.”
“The Undiscovered.”
“The Silver Crown, or Born a King.” “Heroism of a Private Life.”
“The Jolly Earthquake.”
“Heroes and Heroines.”
“Garibaldi, or the Power of Blind Faith.” “The Angel’s Lily.”
“The Life of Columbus.”
“Five Million Dollars for the Face of the Moon.” “Henry Ward Beecher.”
“That Horrid Turk.”
“Cuba’s Appeal to the United States.” “Anita, the Feminine Torch.”
“Personal Glimpses of Celebrated Men and Women.”
His lecturing tours now are confined to the United States, as his church duties will not permit him to go farther afield, but so wide is his fame that a few years ago he declined an offer of $39,000 for a six months’ engagement In Australia. This year (1905) he received an offer of $50,000 for two hundred lectures in Australia and England.
He lectures, as he preaches, with the earnest desire ever uppermost to help some one. He never goes to a lecture engagement without a definite prayer to God that his words may be so directed as to do some good to the community or to some individual. When he has delivered “Acres of Diamonds,” he frequently leaves a sum of money with the editor of the leading paper in the town to be given as a prize for any one who advances the most practical idea for using waste forces in the neighborhood. In one Vermont town where he had lectured, the money was won by a young man who after a careful study of the products of the neighborhood, said he believed the lumber of that section was especially adapted to the making of coffins. A sum of $2,000 was raised, the water power harnessed and a factory started.
A man in Michigan who was on the verge of bankruptcy, having lost heavily in real estate speculation, heard “Acres of Diamonds,” and started in, as the lecture advises, right at home to rebuild his fortunes. Instead of giving up, he began the same business again, fought a plucky fight and is now president of the bank and a leading financier of the town.
A poor farmer of Western Massachusetts, finding it impossible to make a living on his stony place, had made up his mind to move and