At one time in the early days of his church work in Philadelphia a payment of a thousand dollars was absolutely needed to prevent a law-suit in regard to a debt for the church organ. In fact, it was worse than a debt; it was a note signed by himself personally, that had become due--he was always ready to a.s.sume personal liability for debts of his church--and failure to meet the note would mean a measure of disgrace as well as marked church discouragement.
He had tried all the sources that seemed open to him, but in vain. He could not openly appeal to the church members, in this case, for it was in the early days of his pastorate, and his zeal for the organ, his desire and determination to have it, as a necessary part of church equipment, had outrun the judgment of some of his best friends, including that of the deacon who had gone to Ma.s.sachusetts for him. They had urged a delay till other expenses were met, and he had acted against their advice.
He had tried such friends as he could, and he had tried prayer. But there was no sign of aid, whether supernatural or natural.
And then, literally on the very day on which the holder of the note was to begin proceedings against him, a check for precisely the needed one thousand dollars came to him, by mail, from a man in the West--a man who was a total stranger to him. It turned out that the man"s sister, who was one of the Temple membership, had written to her brother of Dr.
Conwell"s work. She knew nothing of any special need for money, knew nothing whatever of any note or of the demand for a thousand dollars; she merely outlined to her brother what Dr. Conwell was accomplishing, and with such enthusiasm that the brother at once sent the opportune check.
At a later time the sum of ten thousand dollars was importunately needed. It was due, payment had been promised. It was for some of the construction work of the Temple University buildings. The last day had come, and Conwell and the very few who knew of the emergency were in the depths of gloom. It was too large a sum to ask the church people to make up, for they were not rich and they had already been giving splendidly, of their slender means, for the church and then for the university.
There was no rich man to turn to; the men famous for enormous charitable gifts have never let themselves be interested in any of the work of Russell Conwell. It would be unkind and gratuitous to suggest that it has been because their names could not be personally attached, or because the work is of an unpretentious kind among unpretentious people; it need merely be said that neither they nor their agents have cared to aid, except that one of the very richest, whose name is the most distinguished in the entire world as a giver, did once, in response to a strong personal application, give thirty-five hundred dollars, this being the extent of the a.s.sociation of the wealthy with any of the varied Conwell work.
So when it was absolutely necessary to have ten thousand dollars the possibilities of money had been exhausted, whether from congregation or individuals.
Russell Conwell, in spite of his superb optimism, is also a man of deep depressions, and this is because of the very fire and fervor of his nature, for always in such a nature there is a balancing. He believes in success; success must come!--success is in itself almost a religion with him--success for himself and for all the world who will try for it!
But there are times when he is sad and doubtful over some particular possibility. And he intensely believes in prayer--faith can move mountains; but always he believes that it is better not to wait for the mountains thus to be moved, but to go right out and get to work at moving them. And once in a while there comes a time when the mountain looms too threatening, even after the bravest efforts and the deepest trust. Such a time had come--the ten-thousand-dollar debt was a looming mountain that he had tried in vain to move. He could still pray, and he did, but it was one of the times when he could only think that something had gone wrong.
The dean of the university, who has been closely in touch with all his work for many years, told me of how, in a discouragement which was the more notable through contrast with his usual unfailing courage, he left the executive offices for his home, a couple of blocks away.
"He went away with everything looking dark before him. It was Christmas-time, but the very fact of its being Christmas only added to his depression--Christmas was such an unnatural time for unhappiness!
But in a few minutes he came flying back, radiant, overjoyed, sparkling with happiness, waving a slip of paper in his hand which was a check for precisely ten thousand dollars! For he had just drawn it out of an envelope handed to him, as he reached home, by the mail-carrier.
"And it had come so strangely and so naturally! For the check was from a woman who was profoundly interested in his work, and who had sent the check knowing that in a general way it was needed, but without the least idea that there was any immediate need. That was eight or nine years ago, but although the donor was told at the time that Dr. Conwell and all of us were most grateful for the gift, it was not until very recently that she was told how opportune it was. And the change it made in Dr. Conwell! He is a great man for maxims, and all of us who are a.s.sociated with him know that one of his favorites is that "It will all come out right some time!" And of course we had a rare opportunity to tell him that he ought never to be discouraged. And it is so seldom that he is!"
When the big new church was building the members of the church were vaguely disturbed by noticing, when the structure reached the second story, that at that height, on the side toward the vacant and unbought land adjoining, there were several doors built that opened literally into nothing but s.p.a.ce!
When asked about these doors and their purpose, Dr. Conwell would make some casual reply, generally to the effect that they might be excellent as fire-escapes. To no one, for quite a while, did he broach even a hint of the great plan that was seething in his mind, which was that the buildings of a university were some day to stand on that land immediately adjoining the church!
At that time the university, the Temple University as it is now called, was not even a college, although it was probably called a college.
Conwell had organized it, and it consisted of a number of cla.s.ses and teachers, meeting in highly inadequate quarters in two little houses.
But the imagination of Conwell early pictured great new buildings with accommodations for thousands! In time the dream was realized, the imagination became a fact, and now those second-floor doors actually open from the Temple Church into the Temple University!
You see, he always thinks big! He dreams big dreams and wins big success. All his life he has talked and preached success, and it is a real and very practical belief with him that it is just as easy to do a large thing as a small one, and, in fact, a little easier! And so he naturally does not see why one should be satisfied with the small things of life. "If your rooms are big the people will come and fill them," he likes to say. The same effort that wins a small success would, rightly directed, have won a great success. "Think big things and then do them!"
Most favorite of all maxims with this man of maxims, is "Let Patience have her perfect work." Over and over he loves to say it, and his friends laugh about his love for it, and he knows that they do and laughs about it himself. "I tire them all," he says, "for they hear me say it every day."
But he says it every day because it means so much to him. It stands, in his mind, as a constant warning against anger or impatience or over-haste--faults to which his impetuous temperament is p.r.o.ne, though few have ever seen him either angry or impatient or hasty, so well does he exercise self-control. Those who have long known him well have said to me that they have never heard him censure any one; that his forbearance and kindness are wonderful.
He is a sensitive man beneath his composure; he has suffered, and keenly, when he has been unjustly attacked; he feels pain of that sort for a long time, too, for even the pa.s.sing of years does not entirely deaden it.
"When I have been hurt, or when I have talked with annoying cranks, I have tried to let Patience have her perfect work, for those very people, if you have patience with them, may afterward be of help."
And he went on to talk a little of his early years in Philadelphia, and he said, with sadness, that it had pained him to meet with opposition, and that it had even come from ministers of his own denomination, for he had been so misunderstood and misjudged; but, he added, the momentary somberness lifting, even his bitter enemies had been won over with patience.
I could understand a good deal of what he meant, for one of the Baptist ministers of Philadelphia had said to me, with some shame, that at first it used actually to be the case that when Dr. Conwell would enter one of the regular ministers" meetings, all would hold aloof, not a single one stepping forward to meet or greet him.
"And it was all through our jealousy of his success," said the minister, vehemently. "He came to this city a stranger, and he won instant popularity, and we couldn"t stand it, and so we pounced upon things that he did that were altogether unimportant. The rest of us were so jealous of his winning throngs that we couldn"t see the good in him. And it hurt Dr. Conwell so much that for ten years he did not come to our conferences. But all this was changed long ago. Now no minister is so welcomed as he is, and I don"t believe that there ever has been a single time since he started coming again that he hasn"t been asked to say something to us. We got over our jealousy long ago and we all love him."
Nor is it only that the clergymen of his own denomination admire him, for not long ago, such having been Dr. Conwell"s triumph in the city of his adoption, the rector of the most powerful and aristocratic church in Philadelphia voluntarily paid lofty tribute to his aims and ability, his work and his personal worth. "He is an inspiration to his brothers in the ministry of Jesus Christ," so this Episcopalian rector wrote. "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. These words come from the heart of one who loves, honors, and reverences him for his character and his deeds."
Dr. Conwell did some beautiful and unusual things in his church, inst.i.tuted some beautiful and unusual customs, and one can see how narrow and hasty criticisms charged him, long ago, with sensationalism--charges long since forgotten except through the hurt still felt by Dr. Conwell himself. "They used to charge me with making a circus of the church--as if it were possible for me to make a circus of the church!" And his tone was one of grieved amazement after all these years.
But he was original and he was popular, and therefore there were misunderstanding and jealousy. His Easter services, for example, years ago, became widely talked of and eagerly antic.i.p.ated because each sermon would be wrought around some fine symbol; and he would hold in his hand, in the pulpit, the blue robin"s egg, or the white dove, or the stem of lilies, or whatever he had chosen as the particular symbol for the particular sermon, and that symbol would give him the central thought for his discourse, accented as it would be by the actual symbol itself in view of the congregation. The cross lighted by electricity, to shine down over the baptismal pool, the little stream of water cascading gently down the steps of the pool during the baptismal rite, the roses floating in the pool and his gift of one of them to each of the baptized as he or she left the water--all such things did seem, long ago, so unconventional. Yet his own people recognized the beauty and poetry of them, and thousands of Bibles in Philadelphia have a baptismal rose from Dr. Conwell pressed within the pages.
His constant individuality of mind, his constant freshness, alertness, brilliancy, warmth, sympathy, endear him to his congregation, and when he returns from an absence they bubble and effervesce over him as if he were some brilliant new preacher just come to them. He is always new to them. Were it not that he possesses some remarkable quality of charm he would long ago have become, so to speak, an old story, but instead of that he is to them an always new story, an always entertaining and delightful story, after all these years.
It is not only that they still throng to hear him either preach or lecture, though that itself would be noticeable, but it is the delightful and delighted spirit with which they do it. Just the other evening I heard him lecture in his own church, just after his return from an absence, and every face beamed happily up at him to welcome him back, and every one listened as intently to his every word as if he had never been heard there before; and when the lecture was over a huge bouquet of flowers was handed up to him, and some one embarra.s.sedly said a few words about its being because he was home again. It was all as if he had just returned from an absence of months--and he had been away just five and a half days!
VI. MILLIONS OF HEARERS
THAT Conwell is not primarily a minister--that he is a minister because he is a sincere Christian, but that he is first of all an Abou Ben Adhem, a man who loves his fellow-men, becomes more and more apparent as the scope of his life-work is recognized. One almost comes to think that his pastorate of a great church is even a minor matter beside the combined importance of his educational work, his lecture work, his hospital work, his work in general as a helper to those who need help.
For my own part, I should say that he is like some of the old-time prophets, the strong ones who found a great deal to attend to in addition to matters of religion. The power, the ruggedness, the physical and mental strength, the positive grandeur of the man--all these are like the general conceptions of the big Old Testament prophets. The suggestion is given only because it has often recurred, and therefore with the feeling that there is something more than fanciful in the com-parison; and yet, after all, the comparison fails in one important particular, for none of the prophets seems to have had a sense of humor!
It is perhaps better and more accurate to describe him as the last of the old school of American philosophers, the last of those st.u.r.dy-bodied, high-thinking, achieving men who, in the old days, did their best to set American humanity in the right path--such men as Emerson, Alcott, Gough, Wendell Phillips, Garrison, Bayard Taylor, Beecher; men whom Conwell knew and admired in the long ago, and all of whom have long since pa.s.sed away.
And Conwell, in his going up and down the country, inspiring his thousands and thousands, is the survivor of that old-time group who used to travel about, dispensing wit and wisdom and philosophy and courage to the crowded benches of country lyceums, and the chairs of school-houses and town halls, or the larger and more pretentious gathering-places of the cities.
Conwell himself is amused to remember that he wanted to talk in public from his boyhood, and that very early he began to yield to the inborn impulse. He laughs as he remembers the variety of country fairs and school commencements and anniversaries and even sewing-circles where he tried his youthful powers, and all for experience alone, in the first few years, except possibly for such a thing as a ham or a jack-knife!
The first money that he ever received for speaking was, so he remembers with glee, seventy-five cents; and even that was not for his talk, but for horse hire! But at the same time there is more than amus.e.m.e.nt in recalling these experiences, for he knows that they were invaluable to him as training. And for over half a century he has affectionately remembered John B. Gough, who, in the height of his own power and success, saw resolution and possibilities in the ardent young hill-man, and actually did him the kindness and the honor of introducing him to an audience in one of the Ma.s.sachusetts towns; and it was really a great kindness and a great honor, from a man who had won his fame to a young man just beginning an oratorical career.
Conwell"s lecturing has been, considering everything, the most important work of his life, for by it he has come into close touch with so many millions--literally millions!--of people.
I asked him once if he had any idea how many he had talked to in the course of his career, and he tried to estimate how many thousands of times he had lectured, and the average attendance for each, but desisted when he saw that it ran into millions of hearers. What a marvel is such a fact as that! Millions of hearers!
I asked the same question of his private secretary, and found that no one had ever kept any sort of record; but as careful an estimate as could be made gave a conservative result of fully eight million hearers for his lectures; and adding the number to whom he has preached, who have been over five million, there is a total of well over thirteen million who have listened to Russell Conwell"s voice! And this staggering total is, if anything, an underestimate. The figuring was done cautiously and was based upon such facts as that he now addresses an average of over forty-five hundred at his Sunday services (an average that would be higher were it not that his sermons in vacation time are usually delivered in little churches; when at home, at the Temple, he addresses three meetings every Sunday), and that he lectures throughout the entire course of each year, including six nights a week of lecturing during vacation-time. What a power is wielded by a man who has held over thirteen million people under the spell of his voice! Probably no other man who ever lived had such a total of hearers. And the total is steadily mounting, for he is a man who has never known the meaning of rest.
I think it almost certain that Dr. Conwell has never spoken to any one of what, to me, is the finest point of his lecture-work, and that is that he still goes gladly and for small fees to the small towns that are never visited by other men of great reputation. He knows that it is the little places, the out-of-the-way places, the submerged places, that most need a pleasure and a stimulus, and he still goes out, man of well over seventy that he is, to tiny towns in distant states, heedless of the discomforts of traveling, of the poor little hotels that seldom have visitors, of the oftentimes hopeless cooking and the uncleanliness, of the hardships and the discomforts, of the unventilated and overheated or underheated halls. He does not think of claiming the relaxation earned by a lifetime of labor, or, if he ever does, the thought of the sword of John Ring restores instantly his fervid earnestness.
How he does it, how he can possibly keep it up, is the greatest marvel of all. I have before me a list of his engagements for the summer weeks of this year, 1915, and I shall set it down because it will specifically show, far more clearly than general statements, the kind of work he does. The list is the itinerary of his vacation. Vacation! Lecturing every evening but Sunday, and on Sundays preaching in the town where he happens to be!
June 24 Ackley, Ia. July 11 *Brookings, S. D.
" 25 Waterloo, Ia. " 12 Pipestone, Minn.
" 26 Decorah, Ia. " 13 Hawarden, Ia.
" 27 *Waukon, Ia. " 14 Canton, S. D " 28 Red Wing, Minn. " 15 Cherokee, Ia " 29 River Falls, Wis. " 16 Pocahontas, Ia " 30 Northfield, Minn. " 17 Glidden, Ia.
July 1 Faribault, Minn. " 18 *Boone, Ia.
" 2 Spring Valley, Minn. " 19 Dexter, Ia.
" 3 Blue Earth, Minn. " 20 Indianola, Ia " 4 *Fairmount, Minn. " 21 Corydon, Ia " 5 Lake Crystal, Minn. " 22 Ess.e.x, Ia.
" 6 Redwood Falls, " 23 Sidney, Ia.
Minn. " 24 Falls City, Nebr.
" 7 Willmer, Minn. " 25 *Hiawatha, Kan.
" 8 Dawson, Minn. " 26 Frankfort, Kan.
" 9 Redfield, S. D. " 27 Greenleaf, Kan.
" 10 Huron, S. D. " 28 Osborne, Kan.
July 29 Stockton, Kan. Aug. 14 Honesdale, Pa.
" 30 Phillipsburg, Kan. " 15 *Honesdale, Pa.
" 31 Mankato, Kan. " 16 Carbondale, Pa.