Читать книгу Russell H. Conwell, Founder of the Institutional Church in America - Agnes Rush Burr - Страница 4

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.