d
spiritual help for the week.

When he knows that some one member is struggling with a special
problem either in business, in the home circle, in his spiritual life,
he endeavors to weave into his sermon something that will help him,
knowing that no heart is alone in its sorrow, that the burden one
bears, others carry, and what will reach one will carry a message or
cheer to many.

"During the building of The Temple," says Smith in his interesting
life of Dr. Conwell, "a devoted member, who was in the bookbinding
business, walked to his office every morning and put his car-fare into
the building fund. Dr. Conwell made note of the sacrifice, and asked
himself the question, 'How can I help that man to be more prosperous?'
He kept him in mind, and while on a lecturing trip he visited a town
where improved machines for bookbinding were employed. He called at
the establishment and found out all he could about the new machines.
The next Sunday morning, he used the new bookbinder as an illustration
of some Scriptural truth. The result was, the church member secured
the machines of which his pastor had spoken, and increased his income
many-fold. The largest sum of money given to the building of the new
Temple was given by that same bookbinder.

"A certain lady made soap for a fair held in the Lower Temple. Dr.
Conwell advised her to go into the soap-making business. She hesitated
to take his advice. He visited a well known soap factory, and in one
of his sermons described the most improved methods of soap-making as
an illustration of some improved method of Christian work. Hearing the
illustration used from the pulpit, the lady in question acted on the
pastor's previous advice, and started her nephew in the soap business,
in which he has prospered.

"A certain blacksmith in Philadelphia who was a member of Grace
Church, but who lived in another part of the city, was advised by Dr.
Conwell to start a mission in his neighborhood. The mechanic pleaded
ignorance and his inability to acquire sufficient education to enable
him to do any kind of Christian work. On Sunday morning Dr. Conwell
wove into his sermon an historical sketch of Elihu Burritt, that poor
boy with meagre school advantages, who bound out to a blacksmith, at
the age of sixteen, and compelled to associate with the ignorant, yet
learned thirty-three languages, became a scholar and an orator of
fame. The hesitating blacksmith, encouraged by the example of Elihu