[Illustration:  Mrs. Sarah F. Conwell]

In 1874 his father died, and in 1877 he lost his mother, these sad bereavements still further inclining his heart to the work of the ministry.  They were buried at South Worthington, in a sunny hilltop cemetery, open to the sky, the voice of a little brook coming softly up from among the trees below.  This visit to his old home under such sad circumstances, the memory of his father’s and mother’s prayers that the world might not be the worse, but that it might be the better for his having lived in it, deepened the growing conviction that he should give his life to the work of Christ.

At last came the deciding event.  In 1879, a young woman visited Colonel Conwell, the lawyer, and asked his advice respecting the disposition of a Baptist Meeting House in Lexington.  He went to Lexington and called a meeting of the members of the old church, for the purpose of securing legal action on the part of that body preparatory to selling the property.  He got some three or four old Baptists together and, as they talked the business over, “they became reluctant to vote, either to sell, destroy, keep, or give away the old meeting-house,” says Burdette, in “Temple and Templars.”  “While discussing the situation with these sorrowful old saints—­and one good old deacon wept to think that ’Zion had gone into captivity,’—­the preacher came to the front and displaced the lawyer.  It was the crisis in his life; the parting of the ways.  In a flash of light the decision was made.  ’It flashed upon me, sitting there as a lawyer, that there was a mission for me there,’ Dr. Conwell has often said, in speaking of his decision to go into the ministry.  He advised promptly and strongly against selling the property.  ’Keep it; hold service in it; repair the altar of the Lord that is broken down; go to work; get God to work for you, and work with Him; ’God will turn again your captivity, your months shall be filled with laughter and your tongues with singing.”  They listened to this enthusiastic lawyer whom they had retained as a legal adviser, in dumb amazement ’Is Saul also among the prophets?’ But having given his advice, he was prompt to act upon it himself.  ‘Where will we get a preacher?’ ’Here is one who will serve you until you can get one whom you will like better, and who can do you more good.  Announce preaching in the old meeting house next Sunday!’

“It was nothing new for Colonel Conwell to preach, for he was engaged in mission work somewhere every Sunday; so when the day came, he was there.  Less than a score of hearers sat in the moldy old pews.  The windows were broken and but illy repaired by the curtaining cobwebs.  The hand of time and decay had torn off the ceiling plaster in irregular and angular patches.  The old stove had rusted out at the back, and the crumbling stove-pipe was a menace to those who sat within range of its fall.  The pulpit was what Mr. Conwell called a ‘crow’s