[Illustration: RUSSELL H CONWELL]
RUSSELL H. CONWELL
Founder of the Institutional Church in America
THE WORK AND THE MAN
BY
AGNES RUSH BURR
With His Two Famous Lectures as Recently Delivered, entitled "Acres of
Diamonds," and "Personal Glimpses of Celebrated Men and Women"
With an Appreciative Introduction by FLOYD W. TOMKINS, D.D., LL.D.
1905
TO THE MEMBERS
OF
GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH
TO THOSE WHO IN THE OLD DAYS WORKED WITH SUCH SELF SACRIFICE AND
DEVOTION TO BUILD THE TEMPLE WALLS; TO THOSE WHO IN THE LATER DAYS
ANYWHERE WORK IN LIKE SPIRIT TO ENLARGE THEIR SPHERE OF USEFULNESS,
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
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 noble 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 godly
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
associated 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 friendship 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. God 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 worship is to enter into a
blessed fellowship with God 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 God 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
God.
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.
[Illustration: 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 God'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 worship, 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 masses 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 petition for the opening of a post-office near his home in
South Worthington, Mass.
In his school days at Wilbraham Academy, he organized an original
critics' club, started the first academy paper, organized the original
alumni association.
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, Mass.
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, Mass., and he opened in a schoolhouse the mission from
which grew the West Somerville (Mass.) 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
Institutional 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.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
In the preparation of this book, the three excellent biographies
already written, "Scaling the Eagle's Nest," by Wm. C. Higgins, "The
Modern Temple and Templars," by Robert J. Burdette, and "The Life of
Russell H. Conwell," by Albert Hatcher Smith, have been of the utmost
help. The writer wishes to acknowledge her great indebtedness to all
for much of the information in the present work. These writers have
with the utmost care gathered the facts concerning Dr. Conwell's early
life, and the writer most gratefully owns her deep obligation to them.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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 H. Conwell.
Chapter II.--Early Environment. The Family Circle. An Unusual Mother.
What She Read Her Children. A Preacher at Three Years of Age.
Chapter III.--Days of Study, Work and Play. The Schoolhouse in the
Woods. Maple Sugar-making. The Orator of the Dawn. A Boyish Prank.
Capturing the Eagle's Nest.
Chapter IV.--Two Men and Their Influence. John Brown. Fireside
Discussions. Runaway Slaves. Fred Douglas. Rev. Asa Niles. A Runaway
Trip to Boston.
Chapter V--Trying His Wings. Boyhood Days. Russell's First Case at Law.
A Cure for Stage Fever. Studying Music. A Runaway Trip to Europe.
Chapter VI--Out of the Home Nest. School Days at Wilbraham Academy. The
First School Oration and Its Humiliating End. The Hour of Prayer in the
Conwell Home at the Time of John Brown's Execution.
Chapter VII.--War's Alarms. College Days at Yale. The Outbreak of the
Civil War. Patriotic Speechmaking. New York and Henry Ward Beecher.
Chapter VIII.--While the Conflict Raged. Lincoln's Call for One Hundred
Thousand Men. Enlistment. Captain Conwell. In Camp at Springfield, Mass.
The Famous Gold-sheathed Sword.
Chapter IX.--In the Thick of the Fight. Company F at Newberne, N.C. The
Fight at Batchelor's Creek. The Goldsboro Expedition. The Battle of
Kingston. The Gum Swamp Expedition.
Chapter X.--The Sword and the School Book. Scouting at Bogue Sound.
Captain Conwell Wounded. The Second Enlistment. Jealousy and
Misunderstanding. Building of the First Free School for Colored
Children. Attack on Newport Barracks. Heroic Death of John Ring.
Chapter XI.--A Soldier of the Cross. Under Arrest for Absence Without
Leave. Order of Court Reversed by President. Certificate from State
Legislature of Massachusetts for Patriotic Services. Appointed by
President Lincoln, Lieutenant-Colonel on General McPherson's Staff.
Wounded at Kenesaw Mountain. Conversion. Public Profession of Faith.
Chapter XII.--Westward. Resignation from Army. Admission to Bar.
Marriage. Removal to Minnesota. Founding of the Minneapolis Y.M.C.A.
and of the Present "Minneapolis Tribune." Burning of Home. Breaking Out
of Wound. Appointed Emigration Agent to Germany by Governor of
Minnesota. Joins Surveying Party to Palestine. Near to Death in Paris
Hospital. Journey to New York for Operation in Bellevue Hospital. Return
to Boston.
Chapter XIII.--Writing His Way Around the World. Days of Poverty in
Boston. Sent to Southern Battlefields. Around the World for New York and
Boston Papers. In a Gambling Den in Hong Kong, China. Cholera and
Shipwreck.
Chapter XIV.--Busy Days in Boston. Editor of "Boston Traveller." Free
Legal Advice for the Poor. Temperance Work. Campaign Manager for General
Nathaniel P. Banks. Urged for Consulship at Naples. His Work for the
Widows and Orphans of Soldiers.
Chapter XV.--Troubled Days. Death of Wife. Loss of Money. Preaching on
Wharves. Growth of Sunday School Class at Tremont Temple from Four to
Six Hundred Members in a Brief Time. Second Marriage. Death of Father
and Mother. Preaching at Lexington. Building Lexington Baptist Church.
Chapter XVI.--His Entry Into the Ministry. Ordination. First Charge at
Lexington. Call to Grace Baptist Church, Philadelphia.
Chapter XVII.--Going to Philadelphia. The Early History of Grace Baptist
Church. The Beginning of the Sunday Breakfast Association. Impressions
of a Sunday Service.
Chapter XVIII.--First Days at Grace Baptist Church. Early Plans for
Church Efficiency. Practical Methods for.
Chapter XXXI.--The Manner of the Message. The Style of the Sermons.
Their Subject Matter. Preaching to Help Some Individual Church Member.
Chapter XXXII.--These Busy Later Days. A Typical Week Day. A Typical
Sunday. Mrs. Conwell. Back to the Berkshires in Summer for Rest.
Chapter XXXIII.--As a Lecturer. 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.
Chapter XXXIV.--As a Writer. Rapid Method of Working. A Popular
Biographical Writer. The Books He has Written.
Chapter XXXV.--A Home Coming. Reception Tendered by Citizens of
Philadelphia in Acknowledgment of Work as Public Benefactor.
Chapter XXXVI.--The Path That Has Been Blazed. Problems That Need
Solving. The Need of Men Able to Solve Them.
Acres of Diamonds.
Personal Glimpses of Celebrated Men and Women.
[Illustration: MARTIN CONWELL]
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, bloody partisanship. 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.
[Illustration: MIRANDA CONWELL]
Of this family came Martin Conwell, of Baltimore, hot-blooded, proud,
who in 1810, visiting a college chum in western Massachusetts, met
and fell in love with a New England girl, Miss Hannah Niles. She was
already engaged to a neighbor's son, but the Southerner cared naught
for a rival. He wooed earnestly, passionately. He soon swept away her
protests, won her heart and the two ran away and were married. But
tragic days were ahead. On her return her incensed father locked her
in her room and by threats and force compelled her to write a note to
her young husband renouncing him. He would accept no such message, but
sent a note imploring a meeting in a nearby schoolhouse at nightfall.
The letter fell into the father's hands. He compelled her to write a
curt reply bidding him leave her "forever." Then the father locked
the daughter safely in the attic, and with a mob led by the rejected
suitor, surrounded the schoolhouse and burnt it to the ground. The
husband, thinking he had been heartlessly forsaken, made a brave fight
against the odds, but seeing no hope of success, leaped from the
burning building, amid the shots fired at him, escaped down a rocky
embankment at the back of the schoolhouse, and under cover of the
woods, fled. They told his wife that he was dead.
A little son came to brighten her shadowed life, whom she named, after
him, Martin Conwell; and after seven years she married her early
lover. But Martin was the son of her first husband and always her
dearest child, and day after day when old and gray and again a widow,
she would come over the New England hills, a little lonely old woman,
to sit by his fireside and dream of those bygone days that were so
sweet.
Too proud to again seek an explanation, Martin Conwell, her husband,
returned to his Maryland home, living a lonely, bitter life, believing
to the day of his death, thirty years later, that his young wife had
repudiated and betrayed him.
Martin Conwell, the son, grew to manhood and in 1839 brought a bride
to a little farm he had purchased at South Worthington, up in the
Hampshire Highlands of the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts. Here and
there among these hills, along the swift mountain streams, the land
sweeps out into sunny little meadows filled in summer with rich,
tender grasses, starred with flowers. It is not a fertile land. The
rocks creep out with frequent and unpleasing persistency. But Martin
Conwell viewed life cheerfully, and being an ingenious man, added to
the business of farming, several other occupations, and so managed to
make a living, and after many years to pay the mortgage on his home
which came with the purchase. The little farmhouse, clinging to the
bleak hillside, seemed daring to the point of recklessness when the
winter's winds swept down the valley, and the icy fingers of the storm
reached out as if to pluck it bodily from its exposed position.
But when spring wove her mantle of green over the hills, when summer
flung its leafy banners from a million tree tops, then in the
wonderful panorama of beauty that spread before it, was the little
home justified for the dangers it had dared. Back of the house the
land climbed into a little ridge, with great, gray rocks here and
there, spots of cool, restful color amid the lavish green and gold and
purple of nature's carpeting. To the north swept hills clothed with
the deep, rich green of hemlock, the faint green flutter of birch, the
dense foliage of sugar maples. To the east, in the valley, a singing
silver brook flashed in and out among somber boulders, the land
ascending to sunny hilltop pastures beyond. But toward the south from
the homestead lay the gem of the scenery; one of the most beautiful
pictures the Berkshires know. Down the valley the hills divided,
sweeping upward east and west in magnificent curves; and through the
opening, range on range of distant mountains, including Mount Tom,
filled the view with an ever-changing fairyland of beauty--in the
spring a sea of tender, misty green; in the summer, a deep, heaving
ocean of billowy foliage; in the fall, a very carnival of color--gold,
rich reds, deep glowing browns and orange. And always, at morning,
noon and night, was seen subtle tenderness of violet shadows, of hazy
blue mists, of far-away purple distances.
Such was the site Martin Conwell chose for a home, a site that told
something of his own character; that had marked influence on the
family that grew up in the little farmhouse.
A mixture of the practical, hard common sense of New England and the
sympathetic, poetic temperament of the South was in this young New
England farmer--the genial, beauty-loving nature of his Southern
father, the rigid honesty, the strong convictions, the shrewd sense of
his Northern mother. Quiet and reserved in general, he was to those
who knew him well, kind-hearted, broad-minded, fun-loving. He not
only took an active interest in the affairs of the little mountain
community, but his mind and heart went out to the big problems of the
nation. He grappled with them, sifted them thoroughly, and having
decided what to him was the right course to pursue, expressed his
convictions in deed as well as word. His was no passive nature. The
square chin denoted the man of will and aggression, and though the
genial mouth and kindly blue eyes bespoke the sympathetic heart, they
showed no lack of courage to come out in the open and take sides.
The young wife, Miranda Conwell, shared these broader interests of her
husband. She came from central New York State and did not have that
New England reserve and restraint that amounts almost to coldness. Her
mind was keen and vigorous and reached out with her husband's to grasp
and ponder the higher things of life. But the beauty of her character
lay in the loving, affectionate nature that shone from her dark eyes,
in the patient, self-sacrificing, self-denying disposition which found
its chief joy in ministering to her husband and children. Deeply
religious, she could no more help whispering a fervent little prayer,
as she tucked her boys in bed, that the Father above would watch over
and protect them, than she could help breathing, her trust in God
was so much a part of her nature. Such a silent, beautiful influence
unconsciously permeates a child's whole character, moulding it,
setting it. Unconscious of it at the time, some day a great event
suddenly crystalizes it like a wonderful chemical change, and the
beauty of it shines evermore from his life. Miranda Conwell built
better than she knew when in the every-day little things of her life,
she let her faith shine.
Not a usual couple, by any means, for the early 40's in rugged New
England. Yet their unusualness was of a kind within every one's reach.
They believed the making of a life of more importance than the making
of a living, and they grasped every opportunity of those meagre days
to broaden and uplift their mental and spiritual vision. Martin
Conwell's thoughts went beyond his plow furrow, Miranda's further than
her bread-board; and so the little home had an atmosphere of earnest
thought and purpose that clothed the uncarpeted floors and bare walls
with dignity and beauty.