Acres of Diamonds

R >> Russell H. Conwell >> Acres of Diamonds

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

There is a little lonely cemetery in the
Berkshires, a tiny burying-ground on a wind-swept
hill, a few miles from Conwell's old home. In
this isolated burying-ground bushes and vines and
grass grow in profusion, and a few trees cast a
gentle shade; and tree-clad hills go billowing off
for miles and miles in wild and lonely beauty.
And in that lonely little graveyard I found the
plain stone that marks the resting-place of John
Ring.

II

THE BEGINNING AT OLD LEXINGTON

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!

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 little
girl to go through the crowd of people, drying
her tears and riding proudly on the shoulders of
the kindly, tall, dark man! ``I said to her that
I would take her in, and I did so, and I said to
her that we should some day have a room big
enough for all who should come. And when she
went home she told her parents--I only learned
this afterward--that she was going to save money
to help build the larger church and Sunday-school
that Dr. Conwell wanted! Her parents pleasantly
humored her in the idea and let her run errands
and do little tasks to earn pennies, and she began
dropping the pennies into her bank.

``She was a lovable little thing--but in only a
few weeks after that she was taken suddenly ill
and died; and at the funeral her father told me,
quietly, of how his little girl had been saving money
for a building-fund. And there, at the funeral,
he handed me what she had saved--just fifty-
seven cents in pennies.''

Dr. Conwell does not say how deeply he was
moved; he is, after all, a man of very few words
as to his own emotions. But a deep tenderness
had crept into his voice.

``At a meeting of the church trustees I told of
this gift of fifty-seven cents--the first gift toward
the proposed building-fund of the new church that
was some time to exist. For until then the matter
had barely been spoken of, as a new church building
had been simply a possibility for the future.

``The trustees seemed much impressed, and it
turned out that they were far more impressed
than I could possibly have hoped, for in a few
days one of them came to me and said that he
thought it would be an excellent idea to buy a
lot on Broad Street--the very lot on which the
building now stands.'' It was characteristic of
Dr. Conwell that he did not point out, what every
one who knows him would understand, that it was
his own inspiration put into the trustees which
resulted in this quick and definite move on the
part of one of them. ``I talked the matter over
with the owner of the property, and told him of
the beginning of the fund, the story of the little
girl. The man was not one of our church, nor
in fact, was he a church-goer at all, but he listened
attentively to the tale of the fifty-seven cents
and simply said he was quite ready to go ahead
and sell us that piece of land for ten thousand
dollars, taking--and the unexpectedness of this
deeply touched me taking a first payment of just
fifty-seven cents and letting the entire balance
stand on a five-per-cent. mortgage!

``And it seemed to me that it would be the
right thing to accept this unexpectedly liberal
proposition, and I went over the entire matter
on that basis with the trustees and some of the
other members, and all the people were soon
talking of having a new church. But it was not
done in that way, after all, for, fine though that
way would have been, there was to be one still
finer.

``Not long after my talk with the man who
owned the land, and his surprisingly good-hearted
proposition, an exchange was arranged for me one
evening with a Mount Holly church, and my wife
went with me. We came back late, and it was
cold and wet and miserable, but as we approached
our home we saw that it was all lighted from
top to bottom, and it was clear that it was full
of people. I said to my wife that they seemed to
be having a better time than we had had, and we
went in, curious to know what it was all about.
And it turned out that our absence had been
intentionally arranged, and that the church people
had gathered at our home to meet us on our return.
And I was utterly amazed, for the spokesman
told me that the entire ten thousand dollars
had been raised and that the land for the church
that I wanted was free of debt. And all had come
so quickly and directly from that dear little girl's
fifty-seven cents.''

Doesn't it seem like a fairy tale! But then this
man has all his life been making fairy tales into
realities. He inspired the child. He inspired the
trustees. He inspired the owner of the land. He
inspired the people.

The building of the great church--the Temple
Baptist Church, as it is termed--was a great
undertaking for the congregation; even though
it had been swiftly growing from the day of Dr.
Conwell's taking charge of it, it was something
far ahead of what, except in the eyes of an enthusiast,
they could possibly complete and pay for
and support. Nor was it an easy task.

Ground was broken for the building in 1889,
in 1891 it was opened for worship, and then
came years of raising money to clear it. But it
was long ago placed completely out of debt, and
with only a single large subscription--one of ten
thousand dollars--for the church is not in a
wealthy neighborhood, nor is the congregation
made up of the great and rich.

The church is built of stone, and its interior
is a great amphitheater. Special attention has
been given to fresh air and light; there is nothing
of the dim, religious light that goes with medieval
churchliness. Behind the pulpit are tiers of seats
for the great chorus choir. There is a large organ.
The building is peculiarly adapted for hearing
and seeing, and if it is not, strictly speaking,
beautiful in itself, it is beautiful when it is filled
with encircling rows of men and women.

Man of feeling that he is, and one who
appreciates the importance of symbols, Dr. Conwell
had a heart of olive-wood built into the front of the
pulpit, for the wood was from an olive-tree in the
Garden of Gethsemane. And the amber-colored
tiles in the inner walls of the church bear, under
the glaze, the names of thousands of his people;
for every one, young or old, who helped in the
building, even to the giving of a single dollar, has
his name inscribed there. For Dr. Conwell wished
to show that it is not only the house of the Lord,
but also, in a keenly personal sense, the house of
those who built it.

The church has a possible seating capacity of
4,200, although only 3,135 chairs have been put
in it, for it has been the desire not to crowd the
space needlessly. There is also a great room for
the Sunday-school, and extensive rooms for the
young men's association, the young women's
association, and for a kitchen, for executive offices,
for meeting-places for church officers and boards
and committees. It is a spacious and practical
and complete church home, and the people feel
at home there.

``You see again,'' said Dr. Conwell, musingly,
``the advantage of aiming at big things. That
building represents $109,000 above ground. It
is free from debt. Had we built a small church, it
would now be heavily mortgaged.''

IV

HIS POWER AS ORATOR AND PREACHER

EVEN as a young man Conwell won local fame
as an orator. At the outbreak of the Civil
War he began making patriotic speeches that
gained enlistments. After going to the front he
was sent back home for a time, on furlough, to
make more speeches to draw more recruits, for his
speeches were so persuasive, so powerful, so full
of homely and patriotic feeling, that the men who
heard them thronged into the ranks. And as a
preacher he uses persuasion, power, simple and
homely eloquence, to draw men to the ranks of
Christianity.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10