“A few years ago the pastor of a small country church in Massachusetts resolved to try Dr. Conwell’s method of imparting useful information through his illustrations, and teaching the people what they needed to know.  Acting on Dr. Conwell’s advice, he studied agricultural chemistry, dairy farming, and household economy.  He did not become a sensationalist and advertise to preach on these subjects, but he brought in many helpful illustrations which the people recognized as valuable, and soon the meeting-house was filled with eager listeners.  After careful study the minister became convinced that the farmers on those old worn-out farms in Western Massachusetts should go into the dairy business, and feed their cows on ensilage through the long New England winter.  One bright morning he preached a sermon on ‘Leaven,’ and incidentally used a silo as an illustration.  The preacher did not sacrifice his sermon to his illustration, but taught a great truth and set the farmers to thinking along a new line.  As a result of that sermon one poor farmer built a silo and filled it with green corn in the autumn; his cows relished the new food and repaid him splendidly with milk.  That farmer Is the richest man In the country to-day.  This is only one of a great many ways in which that practical preacher helped his poor, struggling parishioners by using the Conwell method.  What was the spiritual result of such preaching among the country people?  He had a great, wide, and deep revival of religion, the first the church had enjoyed for twenty-five years.”

Thus Dr. Conwell weaves practical sense and spiritual truths together in a way that helps people for the span of life they live in this world, for the eternal life beyond.  He never forgets the soul and its needs.  That is his foremost thought.  But he recognizes also that there is a body and that it lives in a practical world.  And whenever and wherever he can help practically, as well as spiritually, he does it, realizing that the world needs Christians who have the means as well as the spirit to carry forward Christ’s work.

Speaking of his methods of preaching, Rev. Albert G. Lawson, D.D., says: 

“He has been blessed in his ministry because of three things:  He has a democratic, philosophic, philanthropic bee in his bonnet, a big one, too, and he has attempted to bring us to see that churches mean something beside fine houses and good music.  There must be a recognition of the fact that when a man is lost, he is lost in body as well as in soul One needs, therefore, as our Lord would, to begin at the foundations, the building anew of the mind with the body; and I bless God for the democratic, and the philosophic, and the philanthropic idea which is manifest in this strong church.  I hope there will be enough power in it to make every Baptist minister sick until he tries to occupy the same field that Jesus Christ did in his life and ministry; until every one of the churches shall recognize the privilege of having Jesus Christ reshaped in the men and women near them.”