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."