lphia voluntarily paid lofty tribute to his aims and ability, his
work and his personal worth. "He is an inspiration to his brothers in
the ministry of Jesus Christ," so this Episcopalian rector wrote. "He is
a friend to all that is good, a foe to all that is evil, a strength to
the weak, a comforter to the sorrowing, a man of God. These words come
from the heart of one who loves, honors, and reverences him for his
character and his deeds."

Dr. Conwell did some beautiful and unusual things in his church,
instituted some beautiful and unusual customs, and one can see
how narrow and hasty criticisms charged him, long ago, with
sensationalism--charges long since forgotten except through the hurt
still felt by Dr. Conwell himself. "They used to charge me with making a
circus of the church--as if it were possible for me to make a circus of
the church!" And his tone was one of grieved amazement after all these
years.

But he was original and he was popular, and therefore there were
misunderstanding and jealousy. His Easter services, for example, years
ago, became widely talked of and eagerly anticipated because each sermon
would be wrought around some fine symbol; and he would hold in his hand,
in the pulpit, the blue robin's egg, or the white dove, or the stem
of lilies, or whatever he had chosen as the particular symbol for the
particular sermon, and that symbol would give him the central thought
for his discourse, accented as it would be by the actual symbol itself
in view of the congregation. The cross lighted by electricity, to
shine down over the baptismal pool, the little stream of water cascading
gently down the steps of the pool during the baptismal rite, the roses
floating in the pool and his gift of one of them to each of the baptized
as he or she left the water--all such things did seem, long ago, so
unconventional. Yet his own people recognized the beauty and poetry of
them, and thousands of Bibles in Philadelphia have a baptismal rose from
Dr. Conwell pressed within the pages.

His constant individuality of mind, his constant freshness, alertness,
brilliancy, warmth, sympathy, endear him to his congregation, and when
he returns from an absence they bubble and effervesce over him as if he
were some brilliant new preacher just come to them. He is always new to
them. Were it not that he possesses some remarkable quality of charm he
would long ago have become, so to speak, an old story, but instead
of that he is