When he knows that some one member is struggling with a special problem either in business, in the home circle, in his spiritual life, he endeavors to weave into his sermon something that will help him, knowing that no heart is alone in its sorrow, that the burden one bears, others carry, and what will reach one will carry a message or cheer to many.

“During the building of The Temple,” says Smith in his interesting life of Dr. Conwell, “a devoted member, who was in the bookbinding business, walked to his office every morning and put his car-fare into the building fund.  Dr. Conwell made note of the sacrifice, and asked himself the question, ‘How can I help that man to be more prosperous?’ He kept him in mind, and while on a lecturing trip he visited a town where improved machines for bookbinding were employed.  He called at the establishment and found out all he could about the new machines.  The next Sunday morning, he used the new bookbinder as an illustration of some Scriptural truth.  The result was, the church member secured the machines of which his pastor had spoken, and increased his income many-fold.  The largest sum of money given to the building of the new Temple was given by that same bookbinder.

“A certain lady made soap for a fair held in the Lower Temple.  Dr. Conwell advised her to go into the soap-making business.  She hesitated to take his advice.  He visited a well known soap factory, and in one of his sermons described the most improved methods of soap-making as an illustration of some improved method of Christian work.  Hearing the illustration used from the pulpit, the lady in question acted on the pastor’s previous advice, and started her nephew in the soap business, in which he has prospered.

“A certain blacksmith in Philadelphia who was a member of Grace Church, but who lived in another part of the city, was advised by Dr. Conwell to start a mission in his neighborhood.  The mechanic pleaded ignorance and his inability to acquire sufficient education to enable him to do any kind of Christian work.  On Sunday morning Dr. Conwell wove into his sermon an historical sketch of Elihu Burritt, that poor boy with meagre school advantages, who bound out to a blacksmith, at the age of sixteen, and compelled to associate with the ignorant, yet learned thirty-three languages, became a scholar and an orator of fame.  The hesitating blacksmith, encouraged by the example of Elihu Burritt, took courage and went to work.  He founded the mission which soon grew into the Tioga Baptist Church.”

In addition to helping his own church members, this method of preaching had other results.  Smith gives the following instance: