Raising money and erecting a building did not stop the spiritual work of the church.  Rather it increased it.  People heard of the church through the fairs and various other efforts to raise money, came to the service, perhaps out of curiosity at first, became interested, their hearts were touched and they joined.  Never did its spiritual light burn more brightly than in these days of hard work and self-denial.  The membership steadily rose, and when Grace Church moved into its new temple of worship, more than twelve hundred members answered the muster roll.

CHAPTER XXI

OCCUPYING THE TEMPLE

The First Sunday.  The Building Itself—­Its Seating Capacity, Furnishing and Lighting.  The Lower Temple and its Various Rooms and Halls.  Services Heard by Telephone at the Samaritan Hospital.

That was a great day—­the first Sunday in the new Temple.  Six years of labor and love had gone to its building and now they possessed the land.

“During the opening exercises over nine thousand people were present at each service,” said the “Philadelphia Press” writing of the event.  The throng overflowed into the Lower Temple; into the old church building.  The whole neighborhood was full of the joyful members of Grace Baptist Church.  The very air seemed to thrill with the spirit of thanksgiving abroad that day.  All that Sabbath from sunrise until close to midnight members thronged the building with prayers of thankfulness and praise welling up from glad hearts.

Writing from London several years later, Mr. Conwell voiced in words what had been in his mind when the church was planned: 

“I heard a sermon which helped me greatly.  It was delivered by an old preacher, and the subject was, ‘This God is our God,’ He described the attributes of God in glory, knowledge, wisdom and love, and compared Him to the gods the heathen do worship.  He then pressed upon us the message that this glorious God is the Christian’s God, and with Him we cannot want.  It did me so much good, and made me long so much for more of God in all my feelings, actions, and influence.  The seats were hard, and the tack of the pew hard and high, the church dusty and neglected; yet, in spite of all the discomforts, I was blessed.  I was sorry for the preacher who had to preach against all those discomforts, and did not wonder at the thin congregation.  Oh! it is all wrong to make it so unnecessarily hard to listen to the gospel.  They ought for Jesus’ sake tear out the old benches and put in comfortable chairs.  There was an air about the service of perfunctoriness and lack of object, which made the service indefinite and aimless.  This is a common fault.  We lack an object and do not aim at anything special in our services.  That, too, is all wrong.  Each hymn, each chapter read, each anthem, each prayer, and each sermon should have a special and appropriate purpose.  May the Lord help me, after my return, to profit by this day’s lesson.”