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

secured call for his young friend to the
vacant pulpit of the Congregational Church
in Lenox, Mass. This was in 1874, when
DR.. Parkhurst was thirty-two years old.
DR.. Parkhurst was at Lenox for five
years, coming direct from there to the
Madison Square Presbyterian Church,
where he has been ever since.
Soldier, Lawyer, Writer and Preacher.
Surely when people only kept from
fighting to get into a church to hear a
preacher by the device of issuing tickets of
admission that preacher is deserving of be-
ing named among the most famous in the
country.
Although the Temple, in Philadelphia,
will hold five thousand persons it rarely
fails on any Sunday except in summer that
hundreds more than that number do not
| lirger about the doors in the hope OF hear
| ing the Rev. DR.. Russell H. Conwell
| Soldier, lawyer, state immigration agent,
! foreign and war correspondent, lawyer
again, and then preacher-such has been
Russell II. Conwells Microscopic career.
! He was thirty-seven years old when, as
| a lawyer, he went to Lexington, Mass, to
| wind up the affairs of the moribund Bap-
| fist Church there. 1t was going to be an
| easy task apparently-but the seven men,
| beers refused to sell and Lawyer Conwell
went to his hotel to think the matter over
! during the night.
| Bright and early the next morning he did
friendly fence post, he fiercely attacked
| the church steps with a pickaX, putting
into the task all the energy of which his
| siX-foot-and-over muscular frame was ca
| pable of producing.
The first person to be attracted by this
unusual procedure was a town character
of the name of Prosser. Naturally, he IN
| Quired of the lawyer what he was DONG.
The reply was that he was tearing down
the church Why was he doing that? To
build new one. Had he the money for 1t ?
No. Where was he going to get 1t? The
lawyer didn't know, and swung the pickax
over his head once more.
Then and there the first S1CO toward the
erection of the new church was subscribed.
That day s4,5OO was subscribed by passers-
by. One woman alone subscribed $1,000.
When he had assured to the Lexington
Baptists a new church. Lawyer Conwell,
having decided that the seven should not
be without a preacher while the new build
ing was under way, volunteered to preach
to them until they could secure regular
pastor. s... 49,.
Lexington was all agossip about the ex-
traordinary manner in which the lawyer
had raised $1,000 but when 1t learned that
he was to preach on Sunday only twenty
seven townspeople took enough interest IN
the announcement to turn up for services.
What the preacher said during the course
of his initial pulpit talk has not been hand
ed down. Still, 1t was effective enough to
fill the church the following Sunday, and on
the third Sunday there was not even stand
ing room.
In this unconventional way the thoughts
of the lawyer were turned toward the min
istry, and about the time that Dr. Park
hurst was receiving his call to New York
1t was Lawyer Conwell no longer, but the
Rev Russell H. Conwell, his ordination as
a Baptist minister speedily following the
reception of his remarkable bit Of church
work while merely layman.
One Secret of His Success.
| One of the secrets OF DIR. Conwells hold
| on people has undoubtedly been his uncon-
ventional way of appealing to the religious
| instinct through the aroused human SYM
pathies. His method of resuscltatng tho
church is a case in point; and SO is the way
In which he started the movement that led
to the building of that great institutional
church. the Temple-the largest Protestant
church in America.
Grace Baptist Church, Philadelphia, was
DR.. Converts second church. In the course
of few years he built it up from family
struggling organization into a powerfully
militant one. Then the church building
became too small for the people who tried
to get inside.
One Sunday while on his way to the
Sunday school room In the basement, DR..
ConWell noticed a little girl trying to force
her way through the crush to the school.
Her determined but Intellectual struggles
appealed to him. STOPPING down he picked
carried her into the Sunday school room.
As he seated her on window sill he re-
marked:
Never mind, Hattie; some day We'll
have a church big enough to hold every
body who wants TO get in
A few weeks later DR.. Conwell told the
| little incident in his pulpit And he added
| the sequel A short while after, little Hat
| tie Watt had died, but before she died she
| conided to her parents her dearest secret
| She had remembered what the preacher
| had said to her as he seated her that Sun
| day afternoon. She had so longed to help
| him get the church where Yerybody who
| wanted TO could get In, and here was her
| pocketbook and the money she had col
! lected among her playmates for the new
/ church. And wouldn't father and mother
/ give the money to the preacher, because
| she was going 10 heaven and couldn't, but
| she had meant to when she had got little
| more
| Hattie's last request was granted, and on
| that Sunday morning the man whom she
| had planned to help showed his hearers
| the little red book and the fifty-seven cents
| that the child had collected
! That was ali-and then-then how Hattie
| helped her preacher! One man jumped up
| and offered to give S57 toward the new
! church. Another person fastened to sub
| scribe $50 From all over the church came
| a flood of subscriptions, nearly every
| offer having In 1t the same combination,
! the two magical figures, five and seven. 1t
| was the money thus subscribed that bought
| the lot on which the temple stands
| A Prodigious Worker
/ Another secret of DR.. Conwells success
| is his keeping eyerlastingly at thing until
| 1t is accomplished. His tenacity is SUI
| perior. If anything. to that of the much
Wanted bulldog. and he has the physical
| as well as the mental stamina to stand by
| his guns until the victory is gained.
! He Is q prodigious worker. Every aux
| Hilary institution connected with his
| church has his personal direction-the
| college, the hospital. the charitable or
| ganiZation, the usual young peoples So
| cieties, besides many others. He lectures
| throughout the country and frequently
| takes an active part in political and other
| questions strongly before his city. Now
! only few days short of sixty-four years
| of age, he still works with all the tire
/ less energy of a physically perfect and
mentally alert man of thirty. But this is
( to be expected of man who for stretch
| of fourteen years was so busy that he
| could not find the time to spend a single
| evening in his own home with his fam
| lily.
Many persons who are acquainted with
| the meteor like ministerial career OF
| Newell Dwight Hills. who frst came
~