IT is not because he is a minister that Russell Conwell is such a force
in the world. He went into the ministry because he was sincerely and
profoundly a Christian, and because he felt that as a minister he
could do more good in the world than in any other capacity. But being
a minister is but an incident, so to speak. The important thing is not
that he is a minister, but that he is himself!
Recently I heard a New-Yorker, the head of a great corporation, say: “I
believe that Russell Conwell is doing more good in the world than any
man who has lived since Jesus Christ.” And he said this in serious and
unexaggerated earnest.
Yet Conwell did not get readily into his life-work. He might have seemed
almost a failure until he was well on toward forty, for although he
kept making successes they were not permanent successes, and he did not
settle himself into a definite line. He restlessly went westward to make
his home, and then restlessly returned to the East. After the war was
over he was a lawyer, he was a lecturer, he was an editor, he went
around the world as a correspondent, he wrote books. He kept making
money, and kept losing it; he lost it through fire, through investments,
through aiding his friends. It is probable that the unsettledness of
the years following the war was due to the unsettling effect of the war
itself, which thus, in its influence, broke into his mature life
after breaking into his years at Yale. But however that may be, those
seething, changing, stirring years were years of vital importance to
him, for in the myriad experiences of that time he was building the
foundation of the Conwell that was to come. Abroad he met the notables
of the earth. At home he made hosts of friends and loyal admirers.
It is worth while noting that as a lawyer he would never take a case,
either civil or criminal, that he considered wrong. It was basic with
him that he could not and would not fight on what he thought was the
wrong side. Only when his client was right would he go ahead!
Yet he laughs, his quiet, infectious, characteristic laugh, as he
tells of how once he was deceived, for he defended a man, charged with
stealing a watch, who was so obviously innocent that he took the case in
a blaze of indignation and had the young fellow proudly exonerated. The
next day the wrongly accused one came to his office and shamefacedly
took out the watch that he had been charged with stealing. “I want you
to send it to the man I took it from,” he said. And he told with a sort
of shamefaced pride of how he had got a good old deacon to give, in all
sincerity, the evidence that exculpated him. “And, say, Mr. Conwell--I
want to thank you for getting me off--and I hope you’ll excuse my
deceiving you--and--I won’t be any worse for not going to jail.” And
Conwell likes to remember that thereafter the young man lived up to the
pride of exoneration; and, though Conwell does not say it or think
it, one knows that it was the Conwell influence that inspired to
honesty--for always he is an inspirer.
Conwell even kept certain hours for consultation with those too poor
to pay any fee; and at one time, while still an active lawyer, he was
guardian for over sixty children! The man has always been a marvel, and
always one is coming upon such romantic facts as these.
That is a curious thing about him--how much there is of romance in his
life! Worshiped to the end by John Ring; left for dead all night at
Kenesaw Mountain; calmly singing “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” to quiet the
passengers on a supposedly sinking ship; saving lives even when a boy;
never disappointing a single audience of the thousands of audiences he
has arranged to address during all his years of lecturing! He himself
takes a little pride in this last point, and it is characteristic of him
that he has actually forgotten that just once he did fail to appear:
he has quite forgotten that one evening, on his way to a lecture,
he stopped a runaway horse to save two women’s lives, and went in
consequence to a hospital instead of to the platform! And it is typical
of him to forget that sort of thing.
The emotional temperament of Conwell has always made him responsive
to the great, the striking, the patriotic. He was deeply influenced
by knowing John Brown, and his brief memories of Lincoln are intense,
though he saw him but three times in all.
The first time he saw Lincoln was on the night when the future President
delivered the address, which afterward became so famous, in Cooper
Union, New York. The name of Lincoln was then scarcely known, and it
was by mere chance that young Conwell happened to be in New York on that
day. But being there, and learning that Abraham Lincoln from the West
was going to make an address, he went to hear him.
He tells how uncouthly Lincoln was dressed, even with one trousers-leg
higher than the other, and of how awkward he was, and of how poorly, at
first, he spoke and with what apparent embarrassment. The chairman of
the meeting got Lincoln a glass of water, and Conwell thought that it
was from a personal desire to help him and keep him from breaking down.
But he loves to tell how Lincoln became a changed man as he spoke;
how he seemed to feel ashamed of his brief embarrassment and, pulling
himself together and putting aside the written speech which he had
prepared, spoke freely and powerfully, with splendid conviction, as only
a born orator speaks. To Conwell it was a tremendous experience.
The second time he saw Lincoln was when he went to Washington to plead
for the life of one of his men who had been condemned to death for
sleeping on post. He was still but a captain (his promotion to a
colonelcy was still to come), a youth, and was awed by going into the
presence of the man he worshiped. And his voice trembles a little, even
now, as he tells of how pleasantly Lincoln looked up from his desk, and
how cheerfully he asked his business with him, and of how absorbedly
Lincoln then listened to his tale, although, so it appeared, he already
knew of the main outline.
“It will be all right,” said Lincoln, when Conwell finished. But Conwell
was still frightened. He feared that in the multiplicity of public
matters this mere matter of the life of a mountain boy, a private
soldier, might be forgotten till too late. “It is almost the time set--”
he faltered. And Conwell’s voice almost breaks, man of emotion that
he is, as he tells of how Lincoln said, with stern gravity: “Go and
telegraph that soldier’s mother that Abraham Lincoln never signed a
warrant to shoot a boy under twenty, and never will.” That was the one
and only time that he spoke with Lincoln, and it remains an indelible
impression.
The third time he saw Lincoln was when, as officer of the day, he stood
for hours beside the dead body of the President as it lay in state
in Washington. In those hours, as he stood rigidly as the throng went
shuffling sorrowfully through, an immense impression came to Colonel
Conwell of the work and worth of the man who there lay dead, and that
impression has never departed.
John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, old Revolutionary Lexington--how Conwell’s
life is associated with famous men and places!--and it was actually
at Lexington that he made the crucial decision as to the course of his
life! And it seems to me that it was, although quite unconsciously,
because of the very fact that it was Lexington that Conwell was
influenced to decide and to act as he did. Had it been in some other
kind of place, some merely ordinary place, some quite usual place, he
might not have taken the important step. But it was Lexington, it was
brave old Lexington, inspiring Lexington; and he was inspired by it, for
the man who himself inspires nobly is always the one who is himself open
to noble inspiration. Lexington inspired him.
“When I was a lawyer in Boston and almost thirty-seven years old,” he
told me, thinking slowly back into the years, “I was consulted by a
woman who asked my advice in regard to disposing of a little church in
Lexington whose congregation had become unable to support it. I went out
and looked at the place, and I told her how the property could be sold.
But it seemed a pity to me that the little church should be given up.
However, I advised a meeting of the church members, and I attended
the meeting. I put the case to them--it was only a handful of men and
women--and there was silence for a little. Then an old man rose and, in
a quavering voice, said the matter was quite clear; that there evidently
was nothing to do but to sell, and that he would agree with the others
in the necessity; but as the church had been his church home from
boyhood, so he quavered and quivered on, he begged that they would
excuse him from actually taking part in disposing of it; and in a deep
silence he went haltingly from the room.
“The men and the women looked at one another, still silent, sadly
impressed, but not knowing what to do. And I said to them: ‘Why not
start over again, and go on with the church, after all!’”
Typical Conwellism, that! First, the impulse to help those who need
helping, then the inspiration and leadership.
“‘But the building is entirely too tumble-down to use,’ said one of the
men, sadly; and I knew he was right, for I had examined it; but I said:
“‘Let us meet there to-morrow morning and get to work on that building
ourselves and put it in shape for a service next Sunday.’
“It made them seem so pleased and encouraged, and so confident that a
new possibility was opening that I never doubted that each one of those
present, and many friends besides, would be at the building in the
morning. I was there early with a hammer and ax and crowbar that I had
secured, ready to go to work--but no one else showed up!”
He has a rueful appreciation of the humor of it, as he pictured the
scene; and one knows also that, in that little town of Lexington, where
Americans had so bravely faced the impossible, Russell Conwell also
braced himself to face the impossible. A pettier man would instantly
have given up the entire matter when those who were most interested
failed to respond, but one of the strongest features in Conwell’s
character is his ability to draw even doubters and weaklings into line,
his ability to stir even those who have given up.
“I looked over that building,” he goes on, whimsically, “and I saw that
repair really seemed out of the question. Nothing but a new church would
do! So I took the ax that I had brought with me and began chopping the
place down. In a little while a man, not one of the church members, came
along, and he watched me for a time and said, ‘What are you going to do
there?’
“And I instantly replied, ‘Tear down this old building and build a new
church here!’
“He looked at me. ‘But the people won’t do that,’ he said.
“‘Yes, they will,’ I said, cheerfully, keeping at my work. Whereupon he
watched me a few minutes longer and said:
“‘Well, you can put me down for one hundred dollars for the new
building. Come up to my livery-stable and get it this evening.’
“‘All right; I’ll surely be there,’ I replied.
“In a little while another man came along and stopped and looked, and
he rather gibed at the idea of a new church, and when I told him of the
livery-stable man contributing one hundred dollars, he said, ‘But you
haven’t got the money yet!’
“‘No,’ I said; ‘but I am going to get it to-night.’
“‘You’ll never get it,’ he said. ‘He’s not that sort of a man. He’s not
even a church man!’
“But I just went quietly on with the work, without answering, and after
quite a while he left; but he called back, as he went off, ‘Well, if he
does give you that hundred dollars, come to me and I’ll give you another
hundred.’”
Conwell smiles in genial reminiscence and without any apparent sense
that he is telling of a great personal triumph, and goes on:
“Those two men both paid the money, and of course the church people
themselves, who at first had not quite understood that I could be in
earnest, joined in and helped, with work and money, and as, while the
new church was building, it was peculiarly important to get and keep
the congregation together, and as they had ceased to have a minister of
their own, I used to run out from Boston and preach for them, in a room
we hired.
“And it was there in Lexington, in 1879, that I determined to become a
minister. I had a good law practice, but I determined to give it up. For
many years I had felt more or less of a call to the ministry, and here
at length was the definite time to begin.
“Week by week I preached there”--how strange, now, to think of William
Dean Howells and the colonel-preacher!--“and after a while the church
was completed, and in that very church, there in Lexington, I was
ordained a minister.”
A marvelous thing, all this, even without considering the marvelous
heights that Conwell has since attained--a marvelous thing, an
achievement of positive romance! That little church stood for American
bravery and initiative and self-sacrifice and romanticism in a way that
well befitted good old Lexington.
To leave a large and overflowing law practice and take up the ministry
at a salary of six hundred dollars a year seemed to the relatives of
Conwell’s wife the extreme of foolishness, and they did not hesitate
so to express themselves. Naturally enough, they did not have Conwell’s
vision. Yet he himself was fair enough to realize and to admit that
there was a good deal of fairness in their objections; and so he said to
the congregation that, although he was quite ready to come for the six
hundred dollars a year, he expected them to double his salary as soon as
he doubled the church membership. This seemed to them a good deal like a
joke, but they answered in perfect earnestness that they would be quite
willing to do the doubling as soon as he did the doubling, and in less
than a year the salary was doubled accordingly.
I asked him if he had found it hard to give up the lucrative law for
a poor ministry, and his reply gave a delightful impression of his
capacity for humorous insight into human nature, for he said, with a
genial twinkle:
“Oh yes, it was a wrench; but there is a sort of romance of
self-sacrifice, you know. I rather suppose the old-time martyrs rather
enjoyed themselves in being martyrs!”
Conwell did not stay very long in Lexington. A struggling little church
in Philadelphia heard of what he was doing, and so an old deacon went up
to see and hear him, and an invitation was given; and as the Lexington
church seemed to be prosperously on its feet, and the needs of the
Philadelphia body keenly appealed to Conwell’s imagination, a change was
made, and at a salary of eight hundred dollars a year he went, in
1882, to the little struggling Philadelphia congregation, and of that
congregation he is still pastor--only, it ceased to be a struggling
congregation a great many years ago! And long ago it began paying him
more thousands every year than at first it gave him hundreds.
Dreamer as Conwell always is in connection with his immense
practicality, and moved as he is by the spiritual influences of life,
it is more than likely that not only did Philadelphia’s need appeal,
but also the fact that Philadelphia, as a city, meant much to him, for,
coming North, wounded from a battle-field of the Civil War, it was in
Philadelphia that he was cared for until his health and strength were
recovered. Thus it came that Philadelphia had early become dear to him.
And here is an excellent example of how dreaming great dreams may go
hand-in-hand with winning superb results. For that little struggling
congregation now owns and occupies a great new church building that
seats more people than any other Protestant church in America--and Dr.
Conwell fills it!