Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-01-20

attended him from the very beginning of
his pastoral work. This was in Peoria, in
1887, where he built a fine new church a
year after going there. He was then
thirty years old.
Perhaps the explanation is partially
found in the circumstance that while still
at his books young Hills gained a lot OF
valuable experience organizing union
Sunday schools on his own hook.
While he was attending the academy
which his father helped to found at Grin
nell, Iowa, going out from Yale for that
purpose he determined to become a
preacher. This decision was reached
largely through the influence OF Henry
Ward Beecher's sermons, and in this con-
nection 1t is interesting to note that the
preacher who is today filling Beecher,s
old pulpit is none other than Newell
Dwight Hills. On leaving the academy
he was imbued with the idea of forming
Sunday schools in places where they did
not exist, and to that end he boarded a
c., B. and Q. train and did not leave it
until the jumping off place was reached
In a little-frequented part of the Ne
braska prairie.
With this hitherto unworked country
field this nineteen-year-old youth went
about for year preaching in the school
houses and the churches organizing Sun
day schools in every community that he
entered. Forty-five Sunday schools were
organized and. incidentally, eight churches.
The next year, during his freshman vaca-
ton from Lake Forest University, he spent
eleven weeks organizing Sunday schools in
e,
in the territory except Laramie and Chey-
enne. Twenty schools were organized this
trip.
Through his efforts Sunday school was
not infrequently provided with a good IL
brary as well as the necessary hymn books
After he had finished speaking in a Wyom-
ing mining camp saloon to go miners and
cowboys and their women and children,
the saloonkeeper made young Hills stand
up while the crowd filled his pockets with
Slyer-s25 in ALL
He was due to leave on the waiting stage,
but he shortly returned to the camp with a
hundred-volume library and 200 hymn
books. The saloonkeepers wife volunteer
ed to take charge of the hymn books, and
when he bade a final farewell to the camp
a Sunday school, circulating library and
singing school were in full swing.
The first part of this work was done
without outside assistance. After he had
organized ten or fifteen schools young
Hills learned, to his surprise, that similar
work had been carried on systematically
for years by the American Sunday School
Union of Philadelphia. His later work was
done under the unions direction.
How Hills Got His Beecher Library.
Another unusual thing that Hills, the
college student, did was to ransack Brook
1yn for material for Henry Ward Beecher
library. He gathered anything he could
lay hands on-books, manuscripts, PAM
phlets, interviews. As a result when Bar
rows came to write his biography of
Beecher he was compelled to consult the
Hills collection, with what frequency the
author gratefully acknowledges in his pre-
face. The collection was made through
sheer admiration for Beecher; today DIR.
Hills probably has the best Beecher library
in the world.
DR.. Hills ministerial career has been in
four noted churches. He went straight
from the Mccormick Theological Seminary
to Peoria. where he became the head or
in nnt,fr
nois. During one of the three years that
he spent there he preached in a theater
his next pastorate was in the leading Pres
byterian Church in Evanston, and while
building new church there he again
preached In theater. He also preached
in theater for four years while head of
the late Prof. Swings church.
DIR. Hills has been at Plymouth since
1899. succeeding DIR. Lyman Abbott on his
retirement from the ministry, to give his
attention to editorial work.
If you journey to Brooklyn some time
this year for the express purpose of hearing
DR.. Hills preach you will hear a man who
VIII impress you with a virle originality
of his own founded upon a groundwork of
Beecher and Swing. his boyhood ideals.
Likely as not. you will hear a sermon of
good, hard common sense directed especi-
ally to young men.
One of the Most Eloquent.
Though the form Of service in the Catholic
~
velopment of pulpit eloquence, many eccIe-
siastical authorities of various churches
hold that Archbishop Patrick John Ryan of
Philadelphia is our most eloquent present
day preacher Certain 1t Is that when he
breaches in the cathedral he seems
strangely to move his hearers, and
strangers in the Quaker city seek to be
directed to the cathedral about as often
as they ask the way to the Temple, and
to that church popularity known as John
Wanamakers church."
The archbishop is what has been termed
more than once before now, a born orator
While a school boy in Carlow College Ire
land. he recited before Daniel O'Connell,
and that famous Irishman was SO moved
that he prophesied great future for the
boy If only he would cultivate his natural
gift Of speech
His zeal fired by the emancipator's words,
the boy Ryan set to work to do this, and as
a result he has become noted not only In
his church here, but abroad as well, as
one of It's most gifted orators. His reputa-
ton abroad began in 1868, when, on the in
vitation of Pope Plus TX, he delivered
Lenten lectures in English at Rome
When you behold Archbishop Ryan as
Quent scholar using the simplest of words
and, perhaps once In the sermon telling a
laughable anecdote or a witty one, to ac-
centuate pet point.
A New Style Evangelist.
A of the name of ]. Wilbur Chap
man has lately become we'll known through
out the country. He is being hailed In Pro-
testant circles as the successor of Dwight
L. Moody. His converts are said to number
thousands; even In Paterson, n. J., hith-
erto the despair of the revivalist, he has
had wonderful results. Few persons will
deny him place among the country's most
famous preachers Least of all will those
pastors OF all denominations whose respect
i've churches have gained materially In
membership through his evangelistic work.
DR.. Chapman has been an evangelist from
the start of his ministerial career. Shortly
after going to his first church he began a
revival that gathered in some of the princi-
pal men of the town. In five years he
added 900 persons to the membership of the
First Reformed Church in Albany N Y,
his second pastorate. Then he went to
Bethany Church, Philadelphia, John Wan
amaker's church., where the membership
increased LOO in three years. The ensuing
three years he spent in evangelical work
throughout the country. Until December,
1902, he was pastor first, at Bethany again
and the Fourth Presbyterian Church, New
York. Then he became the executive secre-
tary of the general assembly's committee on
evangelistic work for the Presbyterian
church. and as such he has won tnterna-