But the affair was not over.  The college boys felt that shaking hands in formal fashion did not express sufficiently their loyalty and devotion, their joy in the return of their beloved “Prex.”  They unharnessed the horses, and with college cheers and yells triumphantly drew their president all the way from the Academy of Fine Arts to his home, a distance of two miles.  As they passed Temple College, their enthusiasm broke all bounds and they drew up the carriage at the Doctor’s residence, two blocks beyond the College, with a yell and a flourish that fairly lifted the neighbors from their beds.

It was in every way a homecoming and a welcome that proved how wide-reaching has been the work Dr. Conwell has done, how deeply it has touched the lives of thousands of people in Philadelphia.  This spontaneous act of appreciation was but the tribute paid by grateful hearts.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE PATH THAT HAS BEEN BLAZED

Problems that Need Solving.  The Need of Men Able to Solve Them.

    “O do not pray for easy lives
  Pray to be stronger men.  Do not pray for
    Tasks equal to your powers.  Pray
  For powers equal to your tasks. 
    Then the doing of your work shall be
  No miracle.  But you shall be a miracle,
    Every day you shall wonder at yourself,
  At the richness of life that has come to you
    By the Grace of God.”

wrote that great preacher, Phillips Brooks.

The world does not want easy lives but strong men.  Every age has its problems.  Every age needs men with clear moral vision, strong hands, humane hearts to solve these problems.  Character, not the fortune of birth, qualifies for leadership in such a work.  And such work ever waits, the world over, to be done.  In every large city of the country are thousands crying for better education, the suffering poor are holding up weak hands for help, men and women morally blind, are asking for light to find Christ—­the Christ of the Bible, not the Christ of dogma and creed, religion pure and undefiled, the church in the simplicity of the days of the apostles, the church that reaches out a helping hand to all the needs of humanity.

Institutional churches are needed, not one, but many of them, in the cities, churches that help men to grapple with the stern actualities of everyday life, churches that preach by works as well as by word, churches in which the man in fustian is as welcome as the one in broadcloth, churches whose influence reaches into the highways and byways and compels people to come in by the very cordiality and kindness of the invitation, churches that help people to live better and more happily in this world, while at the same time preparing them for the world to come.