ey 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