best opportunities to learn know all too little about the details of proper conduct on their own part, or concerning policies and methods for correcting the ills which afflict society. If it is the church's business to do good at all, I see no escape from the church's responsibility to make deep and triumphant study of these grave problems now so earnestly and angrily discussed, and to teach the results from the pulpit and in every other possible way. A new sort of theological education, more practical than the old, is imperatively needed. Our Sunday-schools might be utilized in that interest, and how innumerable agencies of the church could be made useful to the same end I need not stop to describe.

Suppose some such ideal as has thus been hinted at were carried out, how long would the proverbial absence of poor and ordinary people from our churches continue? How long would agitators be able to point out the apathy of Christian people to the fortunes of laboring men? How long could it be said with any truth, as it can now be said with some, that the church is simply an affair of the classes, of the relatively rich and great? How long would our religious services be so meagrely attended as most of them are at present? Not long. Religion would soon become a mightier power than ever and the millennium not be long deferred.

men.

And what if nothing is done toward the changes indicated? Depend upon it, Christianity will take care of itself, but it may have to find a bearer different from any of the churches which now exist. I am forced sometimes to fear that the Almighty may have in store a sweeping change in the agent of his saving work among To every body now called a church he may be preparing to say: "Weighed and found wanting; the Lord hath done with you." The wonderful spread of the Salvation Army is some hint of this. The laboring masses or their best leaders are coming to see that genuine morality is needful to any valuable reform in their condition. They will one day discover that such morality can be solidly based nowhere else than upon Christ. Should the church remain cold as now toward the masses of men and their interests, and a great Christian labor-leader be raised up, a Luther and a Powderly both in one, Christianity would stride to victory through him, but its agent would be a new church, bearing to the establishments represented in this congress somewhat

the relation which original Protestantism bore to the Catholic Church of its time. This would certainly be better than not to have religion progress at all. But oh, how infinitely better still will it be if the church, as we know it and as the ages know it,

shall rise to the necessary newness of spirit and adopt the necessary methods for the reformation which must come !

THE STORY OF A CHURCH.

BY REV. RUSSELL H. Conwell, D.D., LL.D., of Philadelphia.

BRETHREN AND SISTERS: I have sixteen minutes in which to answer the questions which have been propounded to me; and the first one is, "What are the methods of our church work?"

It requires something that looks like egotism to tell of work on the part of a man who is so personally associated with it. But I can say truthfully, I have only been introduced to speak on the principle, urgently presented, that there are other churches who desire to do the same thing that we have done.

I have no doubt that there are Philadelphia pastors here tonight that never heard of our church. We never in any sense advertise it. Our church methods are simply, that there are old-fashioned forms of church-worship which we pursue, and we conduct them with exceeding simplicity. We began ten years ago, with about ninety workers. From that the church has increased steadily. Philadelphia is one of those steady cities. is unlike other cities in this, that it grows steadily, and if you have an audience one Sunday, you are sure of it the next Sunday, and you are sure of it the next year, and you can't get a great audience at once if you try. No bands will bring it. No sensation will arouse it. It is only the steady growth of the city, characteristic of the people. I say, ten years ago we began with about ninety. The membership of our church is now some twenty-two hundred. I have received from conversions in our church into the membership of the church-that is, received by baptism -a little over twenty-five hundred in ten years; and we know where those twenty-five hundred are. When we had a roll-call last May, of those who are yet living of the twenty-five hundred, all but fourteen answered, saying where they were.

Our methods of church work are exceedingly simple. The members of the church work. We have no rich people in our

church, for which we thank God, and shall continue to do so. If we had had any rich men to give us one hundred thousand dollars, or ten thousand, in times of distress, of course we would not have seen our way so clearly. But the congregation being composed of poor people, and in a neighborhood where there are not many rich people, we have been obliged to depend entirely upon the people for the support and for the work. And I speak of that because there are people, perhaps, who feel they are under great difficulties because they have no rich men in their congregation. Thank God for that. Rich men kill churches by giving too much. A poor man has a right to give, and when he gives, has a right to be appreciated just as much as the rich man. he does not give, he does not appreciate it.

I will begin with the church services. They are very simple, very plain. We have no sensationalism of any kind or shapeno brass band, no advertising, no gathering of people by any sort of methods. We send out no canvassers, we circulate no tracts, no advertisements-nothing. We simply ask people to get there early that they may be sure of a seat, because if they don't they can't get a seat in the upper or lower service. But that has not been by advertising. They find it out by experience.

Now, at the church services there is a plain, simple sermon, and all of those are unstudied, because the pastor is so busy through the week that he hasn't time to study. In the morning we begin with a young men's service at half-past nine o'clock. About two hundred young men attend the morning prayer-meeting. At 10.30 is the sermon I have spoken of-unstudied and simple. I was walking behind a couple the other night. They said: "I don't see what under the sun sends anybody to that church." That was after the sermon. But the service consists of volunteer singing. We have a chorus of two hundred and eighty voices, all of them Christians, who sing because they love to sing and wish to praise God in leading the congregation. The church has grown in these ten years, as I say, to this membership. We were obliged to move out of the church we had at first, and we constructed a building called the Temple, in which we have a congregation of about 4210 regularly, and on extra occasions about 4616. That is the upper auditorium. We also occupy the lower auditorium at the same time with another service. I have a twin pastor who preaches in the lower hall while I am

preaching in the upper hall; even then we are not able to accommodate the people who come, and last Sunday night we turned away a great many, and it is simply a regular thing that has been going on through the years. The building cost $257,000. We began it with fifty-seven cents. That is all we had in the beginning. We went on with it, and the Lord did not allow us to miss any single engagement, though we were all poor. We had ten thousand dollars to pay at twelve o'clock last Monday week, and the 20th of August didn't see a penny in hand. But it has come in through the mail, in small sums. I gave out four thousand pennies to my congregation one Sunday night, and asked them to invest it. They brought back six thousand dollars, the other day. We prayed to the Lord, and depended on his help. We believed we would have the money, and we thought we would have the exact money, because it has occurred many times before that we have had the exact money, to a penny. But the other day we had three hundred dollars over. It was something remarkable in our history, and just as we were wondering at it a bill came in from the architect for three hundred dollars that we had forgotten. The building itself is constructed in the amphitheatrical form, with a very deep gallery, and with rising seats around the pulpit, with the great chorus behind the pulpit and in front of the large organ. The building itself is 150 feet long by 107 broad, being 12 feet wider and 20 feet deeper than Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle in London; but his tabernacle has two galleries, and ours has one, although that gallery is much deeper than are those of Mr. Spurgeon's. You get some idea, those who have attended there. It is lit by electric light. We have our own plant adjoining the church.

We have in connection with the church seven Christian Endeavor societies, seven reading-rooms for seven different associations-young men, young women, the older women, the business men, the Boys' Brigade, the Girls' Society, and the Young Women's Association. We asked the congregation one night to bring us in twenty-two hundred books, and a man walked out of the church and said, "They won't bring the twenty-two hundred books." But the next Sunday we had the twenty-two hundred books. Each one brought in one. Thus we have furnished the library with what each person brought in. Consequently, we have the best library in the world, because no person can under