When The Temple was being built, Dr. Conwell proposed that the new pipe organ be put in to be ready for the opening service.  But the church felt it would be unwise to assume such an extra burden of debt and voted against it.  Dr. Conwell felt persuaded that the organ ought to go in, and spent one whole night in The Temple in prayer for guidance.  As the result, he decided that the organ should be built.  The contract was given, the first payment made, but when in a few months a note of $1,500 came due, there was not a cent in the treasury to meet it.  He knew it would be a most disastrous blow to the church interests, with such a vast building project started, to have that note go to protest.  Yet he couldn’t ask the membership to raise the money since it had voted against building the organ at that time.  Disheartened, full of gloomy foreboding, he came Sunday morning to the church to preach.  The money must be ready next morning, yet he knew not which way to turn.  He felt he had been acting in accordance with God’s will, for the decision had been made after a night of earnest prayer.  Yet here stood a wall of Jericho before him and no divine direction came as to how to make it fall.  As he entered his study, his private secretary handed him a letter.  He opened it, and out fell a check for $1,500 from an unknown man in Massillon, Ohio, who had once heard Dr. Conwell lecture and felt strangely impelled to send him $1,500 to use in The Temple work.  Dr. Conwell prayed and rejoiced in an ecstasy of gratitude.  Three times he broke down during the sermon.  His people wondered what was the matter, but said he had never preached more powerfully.

He is a man of prayer and a man of work.  Loving, great-hearted, unselfish, cheery, practical, hard-working, he yet draws his greatest inspiration from that silent inner communion with the Master he serves with such single-hearted, unfaltering devotion.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE MANNER OF THE MESSAGE

The Style of the Sermons.  Their Subject Matter.  Preaching to Help Some Individual Church Member.

In the pulpit, Dr. Conwell is as simple and natural as he is in his study or in the home.  Every part of the service is rendered with the heart, as well as the understanding.  His reading of a chapter from the Bible is a sermon in itself.  The vast congregation follow it with as close attention as they do the sermon.  He seems to make every verse alive, to send it with new meaning into each heart.  The people in it are real people, who have lived and suffered, who had all the hopes and fears of men and women of to-day.  Often little explanations are dropped or timely, practical applications, and when it is over, if that were all of the service one would be repaid for attending.

The hymns, too, are read with feeling and life.  If a verse expresses a sentiment contrary to the church feeling, it is not sung.  He will not have sung what is not worthy of belief.