Acres of Diamonds: Our Every-day Opportunities
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!
III. STORY OF THE FIFTY-SEVEN CENTS
AT every point in Conwell’s life one sees that he wins through his
wonderful personal influence on old and young. Every step forward, every
triumph achieved, comes not alone from his own enthusiasm, but because
of his putting that enthusiasm into others. And when I learned how it
came about that the present church buildings were begun, it was another
of those marvelous tales of fact that are stranger than any imagination
could make them. And yet the tale was so simple and sweet and sad and
unpretending.
When Dr. Conwell first assumed charge of the little congregation that
led him to Philadelphia it was really a little church both in its
numbers and in the size of the building that it occupied, but it quickly
became so popular under his leadership that the church services and
Sunday-school services were alike so crowded that there was no room for
all who came, and always there were people turned from the doors.
One afternoon a little girl, who had eagerly wished to go, turned back
from the Sunday-school door, crying bitterly because they had told her
that there was no more room. But a tall, black-haired man met her and
noticed her tears and, stopping, asked why it was that she was crying,
and she sobbingly replied that it was because they could not let her
into the Sunday-school.
“I lifted her to my shoulder,” says Dr. Conwell, in telling of this; for
after hearing the story elsewhere I asked him to tell it to me himself,
for it seemed almost too strange to be true. “I lifted her to my
shoulder”--and one realizes the pretty scene it must have made for the