Russell H. Conwell, Founder of the Institutional Church in America Part 1

Russell H. Conwell.

by Agnes Rush Burr.

AN APPRECIATION

The measure of greatness is helpfulness. We have gone back to the method of the Master and learned to test men not by wealth, nor by birth, nor by intellectual power, but by service. Wealth is not to be despised if it is untainted and consecrated. Ancestry is n.o.ble if the good survives and the bad perishes in him who boasts of his forebears.

Intellectual force is worthy if only it can escape from that cursed attendant, conceit. But they sink, one and all into insignificance when character is considered; for character is the child of G.o.dly parents whose names are self-denial and love. The man who lives not for himself but for others, and who has a heart big enough to take all men into its living sympathies--he is the man we delight to honor.

Biographies have a large place in present day literature. A woman long a.s.sociated with some foreign potentates tells her story and it is read with unhealthy avidity. Some man fights many battles, and his career told by an amiable critic excites temporary interest. Yet as we read we are unsatisfied. The heart and mind, consciously or unconsciously, ask for some deeds other than those of arms and sycophancies. Did he make the world better by his living? Were rough places smoothed and crooked things straightened by his energies? And withal, had he that tender grace which drew little children to him and made him the knight-attendant of the feeble and overborne amongst his fellows? The life from which men draw daily can alone make a book richly worth the reading.

It is good that something should be known of a man whilst he yet lives. We are overcrowded with monuments commemorating those into whose faces we cannot look for inspiration. It is always easy to strew flowers upon the tomb. But to hear somewhat of living realities; to grasp the hand which has wrought, and feel the thrill while we hear of the struggles which made it a beautiful hand; to see the face marked by lines cut with the chisel of inner experience and the sword of lonely misunderstanding and perchance of biting criticism, and learn how the brave contest spelt out a life-history on feature and brow;--this is at once to know the man and his career.

This life of a man justly honored and loved in Philadelphia will find a welcome seldom accorded to the routine biography. It is difficult for one who rejoices in Dr. Conwell's friends.h.i.+p to speak in tempered language. It is yet more difficult to do justice to the great work which Church and College and Hospital, united in a trinity of service, have accomplished in our very midst. G.o.d hath done mighty things through this His servant, and the end is not yet. To attend the Temple services on Sunday and feel the pulse of wors.h.i.+p is to enter into a blessed fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d and men. To see the thousands pursuing their studies during the week in Temple College and to realize the thoroughness of the work done is to gain a belief in Christian education. To move through the beautiful Hospital and mark the gentle ministration of Christian physician and nurse is to learn what Jesus meant when, quoting Hosea, He said: "I will have mercy and not sacrifice." And these all bring one very near to the great human heart, the intelligent and far-reaching judgment, the ripe and real religion of him whose life this volume tells.

May G.o.d bless Dr. Conwell in the days to come, and graciously spare him to us for many years! We need such men in this old sin-stained and weary world. He is an inspiration to his brothers in the ministry of Jesus Christ, He is a proof of the power in the world of pure Christianity. He is a friend to all that is good, a foe to all that is evil, a strength to the weak, a comforter to the sorrowing, a man of G.o.d.

He would not suffer these words to be printed if he saw them. But they come from the heart of one who loves, honors, and reverences him for his character and his deeds. They are the words of a friend.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Floyd W. Tomkins Church of the Holy Trinity Philadelphia, Oct. 6th 1905.]

FOREWORD

CONWELL THE PIONEER

Speaking of Russell Conwell's career, a Western paper has called it, "a pioneer life."

No phrase better describes it.

Dr. Conwell preaches to the largest Protestant congregation in America each Sunday. He is the founder and president of a college that has a yearly roll-call of three thousand students. He is the founder and president of a hospital that annually treats more than five thousand patients. Yet great as these achievements are, they are yet greater in prophecy than in fulfilment. For they are the first landmarks in a new world of philanthropic work. He has blazed a path through the dark, tangled wilderness of tradition and convention, hewing away the worthless, making a straight road for progress, letting in G.o.d's clear light to show what the world needs done and how to do it.

He has shown how a church can reach out into the home, the business, the social life of thousands of people until their religion is their life, their life a religion. He has given the word "church" its real meaning. No longer is it a building merely for wors.h.i.+p, but, with doors never closed, it is a vital part of the community and the lives of the people.

He has proven that the great ma.s.ses of people are hungry and thirsty for knowledge. The halls of Temple College have resounded to the tread of an army of working men and women more than fifty thousand strong.

The man with an hour a day and a few dollars a year is as eager and as welcome a student there, and has the same educational opportunities to the same grade of learning as though he had the birthright of leisure and money which opens the doors to Harvard and Yale.

He has shown that a hospital can be built not merely as a charity, not merely as a necessity, but as a visible expression of Christ's love and command, "Heal the sick."

In all these three lines he has blazed new paths, opened new worlds for man's endeavors--new worlds of religious work, new worlds of educational work. He has not only proven their need, demonstrated their worth, but he has shown how it is possible to accomplish such results from small beginnings with no large gifts of money, with only the hands and hearts of willing workers.

Not only has he done a magnificent pioneer work in these great fields, but from boyhood he has blazed trails of one kind or another, for the pioneer fever was in his blood--that burning desire to do, to discover, to strike out into new fields.

As a mere child, he organized a strange club called "Silence," also the first debating society in the district schoolhouse, and circulated the first pet.i.tion for the opening of a post-office near his home in South Worthington, Ma.s.s.

In his school days at Wilbraham Academy, he organized an original critics' club, started the first academy paper, organized the original alumni a.s.sociation.

In war time, he built the first schoolhouse for the first free colored school, still standing at Newport, N.C.; and started the first "Comfort Bag" movement at a war meeting in Springfield, Ma.s.s.

As a lawyer, he opened the first noon prayer meeting in the Northwest, called the first meeting to organize the Y.M.C.A. at Minneapolis, Minn., organized four literary and social clubs in Minneapolis, started the first library in that city, began the publication of the first daily paper there called "The Daily Chronicle," afterward "The Minneapolis Tribune."

In Boston, he started the "Somerville Journal," now edited by his son, Leon M. Conwell, one of the most quoted publications in the country.

He called the first meeting which organized the Boston Young Men's Congress, and was one of the first editors of the "Boston Globe."

He was the personal adviser of James Redpath, who opened the first Lecture and Lyceum Bureau in the United States.

He began a new church work in the old Baptist church building at Lexington, Ma.s.s., and he opened in a schoolhouse the mission from which grew the West Somerville (Ma.s.s.) Baptist church.

He was special counselor for four new Railroad companies and for two new National banks.

In Philadelphia, in addition to being the founder of the first Inst.i.tutional church in America, of a college practically free for busy men and women, and a hospital for the sick poor, he has organized twenty or more societies for religions and benevolent purposes including the Philadelphia Orphan's Home Society.

His pioneer work is not all. As a lecturer Dr. Conwell is known from the Atlantic to the Pacific, having been on the lecture platform for forty-three years, speaking from one hundred to two hundred and twenty-five nights each year.

As an author he has written books that have run into editions of hundreds of thousands, his "Life of Spurgeon" selling one hundred and twenty-five thousand copies in four months. He has been around the globe many times, counted among his intimate friends Garibaldi, Bayard Taylor, Stanley, Longfellow, Blaine, Henry Ward Beecher, John G.

Whittier, President Garfield, Horace Greeley, Alexander Stevens, John Brown, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John B. Gough and General Sherman.

He fought in the war of the Rebellion, was left for dead on the battlefield of Kenesaw mountain--in fact, he has had a career as picturesque and thrilling as a Scott or Dumas could picture.

Yet the man whose energy has reared enduring monuments of stone, and more lasting ones in the hearts of thousands whose lives he has made happier and brighter, fought his way upward alone and single-handed from a childhood of poverty. He rose by his own efforts, in the face of great and seemingly insurmountable obstacles and discouragements.

The path he took from that little humble farmhouse to the big church, the wide-reaching college, the kindly hospital, the head of the Lecture Platform, it is the purpose of this book to picture, in the hope that it may be helpful to others, either young or old, who desire to better their condition, or to do some work of which the inner voice tells them the world is in need.

Dr. Conwell believes, with George Macdonald, that "The one secret of life and development is not to devise or plan, but to fall in with the forces at work--to do every moment's duty aright--that being the part in the process allotted to us; and let come ... what the Eternal Thought wills for each of us, has intended in each of us from the first."

Or in the words of the greatest of Books, "See that thou make it according to the pattern that was shewed thee in the mount."

Every one at some time in his life has been "in the mount." To follow and obey the Heavenly Vision means a life of usefulness and happiness.

That obstacles and discouragements can be surmounted, the life of Russell Conwell shows. For this purpose it is written, that others who have heard the Voice may go forward with faith and perseverance to work of which the world stands in need.

CHAPTER I

ANCESTRY

John Conwell, the English Ancestor who fought for the Preservation of the English Language. Martin Conwell of Maryland. A Runaway Marriage.

The Parents of Russell Conwell.

When the Norman-French overran England and threatened to sweep from out the island the English language, many time-honored English customs, and all that those loyal early Britons held dear, a doughty Englishman, John Conwell, took up cudgels in their defence. Long and bitter was the struggle he waged to preserve the English language.

Insidious and steady were the encroachments of the Norman-French tongue. The storm centre was the Castle school, for John Conwell realized that the language of the child of to-day is the language of the man of to-morrow. Right royal was the battle, for it was in those old feudal days of strong feeling and bitter, b.l.o.o.d.y partisans.h.i.+p. But this plucky Briton stood to his guns until he won. Norman-French was beaten back, English was taught in the schools, and preserved in the speech of that day.

It was a tale that was told his children and his children's children.

It was a tradition that grew into their blood--the story of perseverance, the story of a fight against oppression and injustice.

"Blood" is after all but family traditions and family ideals, and this fighting ancestor handed down to his descendants an inheritance of greater worth than royal lineage or feudal castle. The centuries rolled away, a new world was discovered, and the progressive, energetic Conwell family were not to be held back when adventure beckoned. Two members of it came to America. Courage of a high order, enthusiasm, faith, must they have had, or the call to cross a perilous, pathless ocean, to brave unknown dangers in a new world would have found no response in their hearts. They settled in Maryland and into this fighting pioneer blood entered that strange magic influence of the South, which makes for romance, for imagination, for the poetic and ideal in temperament.