章节正文
``The trustees seemed much impressed, and it
turned out that they were far more impressed
than I could possibly have hoped, for in a few
days one of them came to me and said that he
thought it would be an excellent idea to buy a
lot on Broad Street--the very lot on which the
building now stands.'' It was characteristic of
Dr. Conwell that he did not point out, what every
one who knows him would understand, that it was
his own inspiration put into the trustees which
resulted in this quick and definite move on the
part of one of them. ``I talked the matter over
with the owner of the property, and told him of
the beginning of the fund, the story of the little
girl. The man was not one of our church, nor
in fact, was he a church-goer at all, but he listened
attentively to the tale of the fifty-seven cents
and simply said he was quite ready to go ahead
and sell us that piece of land for ten thousand
dollars, taking--and the unexpectedness of this
deeply touched me taking a first payment of just
fifty-seven cents and letting the entire balance
stand on a five-per-cent. mortgage!
``And it seemed to me that it would be the
right thing to accept this unexpectedly liberal
proposition, and I went over the entire matter
on that basis with the trustees and some of the
other members, and all the people were soon
talking of having a new church. But it was not
done in that way, after all, for, fine though that
way would have been, there was to be one still
finer.
``Not long after my talk with the man who
owned the land, and his surprisingly good-hearted
proposition, an exchange was arranged for me one
evening with a Mount Holly church, and my wife
went with me. We came back late, and it was
cold and wet and miserable, but as we approached
our home we saw that it was all lighted from
top to bottom, and it was clear that it was full
of people. I said to my wife that they seemed to
be having a better time than we had had, and we
went in, curious to know what it was all about.
And it turned out that our absence had been
intentionally arranged, and that the church people
had gathered at our home to meet us on our return.
And I was utterly amazed, for the spokesman
told me that the entire ten thousand dollars
had been raised and that the land for the church
that I wanted was free of debt. And all had come
so quickly and directly from that dear little girl's
fifty-seven cents.''
Doesn't it seem like a fairy tale! But then this
man has all his life been making fairy tales into
realities. He inspired the child. He inspired the
trustees. He inspired the owner of the land. He
inspired the people.
The building of the great church--the Temple
Baptist Church, as it is termed--was a great
undertaking for the congregation; even though
it had been swiftly growing from the day of Dr.
Conwell's takingcharge of it, it was something
far ahead of what, except in the eyes of an enthusiast,
they could possibly complete and pay for
and support. Nor was it an easy task.
Ground was broken for the building in 1889,
in 1891 it was opened for worship, and then
came years of raising money to clear it. But it
was long ago placed completely out of debt, and
with only a single large subscription--one of ten
thousand dollars--for the church is not in a
wealthy neighborhood, nor is the congregation
made up of the great and rich.
The church is built of stone, and its interior
is a great amphitheater. Special attention has
been given to fresh air and light; there is nothing
of the dim, religious light that goes with medieval
churchliness. Behind the pulpit are tiers of seats
for the great chorus choir. There is a large organ.
The building is peculiarly adapted for hearing
and seeing, and if it is not, strictly speaking,
beautiful in itself, it is beautiful when it is filled
with encircling rows of men and women.
Man of feeling that he is, and one who
appreciates the importance of symbols, Dr. Conwell
had a heart of olive-wood built into the front of the
pulpit, for the wood was from an olive-tree in the
Garden of Gethsemane. And the amber-colored
tiles in the inner walls of the church bear, under
the glaze, the names of thousands of his people;
for every one, young or old, who helped in the
building, even to the giving of a single dollar, has
his name inscribed there. For Dr. Conwell wished
to show that it is not only the house of the Lord,
but also, in a keenly personal sense, the house of
those who built it.
The church has a possible seating capacity of
4,200, although only 3,135 chairs have been put
in it, for it has been the desire not to crowd the
space needlessly. There is also a great room for
the Sunday-school, and extensive rooms for the
young men's association, the young women's
association, and for a kitchen, for executive offices,
for meeting-places for church officers and boards
and committees. It is a spacious and practical
and complete church home, and the people feel
at home there.
``You see again,'' said Dr. Conwell, musingly,
``the advantage of aiming at big things. That
building represents $109,000 above ground. It
is free from debt. Had we built a small church, it
would now be heavily mortgaged.''
IV
HIS POWER AS ORATOR AND PREACHER
EVEN as a young man Conwell won local fame
as an orator. At the outbreak of the Civil
War he began making patriotic speeches that
gained enlistments. After going to the front he
was sent back home for a time, on furlough, to
make more speeches to draw more recruits, for his
speeches were so persuasive, so powerful, so full
of homely and patriotic feeling, that the men who
heard them thronged into the ranks. And as a
preacher he uses persuasion, power, simple and
homelyeloquence, to draw men to the ranks of
Christianity.
He is an orator born, and has developed this
inborn power by the hardest of study and thought
and practice. He is one of those rare men who
always seize and hold the attention. When he
speaks, men listen. It is quality, temperament,
control--the word is immaterial, but the fact is
very material indeed.
Some quarter of a century ago Conwell published
a little book for students on the study and practice
of oratory. That ``clear-cut articulation is the
charm of eloquence'' is one of his insisted-upon
statements, and it well illustrates the lifelong
practice of the man himself, for every word as
he talks can be heard in every part of a large building,
yet always he speaks without apparent effort.
He avoids ``elocution.'' His voice is soft-pitched
and never breaks, even now when he is over
seventy, because, so he explains it, he always
speaks in his natural voice. There is never a
straining after effect.
``A speaker must possess a large-hearted regard
for the welfare of his audience,'' he writes, and
here again we see Conwell explaining Conwellism.
``Enthusiasm invites enthusiasm,'' is another of his
points of importance; and one understands that
it is by deliberate purpose, and not by chance,
that he tries with such tremendous effort to put
enthusiasm into his hearers with every sermon
and every lecture that he delivers.
``It is easy to raise a laugh, but dangerous, for
it is the greatest test of an orator's control of his
audience to be able to land them again on the
solid earth of sober thinking.'' I have known
him at the very end of a sermon have a ripple of
laughter sweep freely over the entire congregation,
and then in a moment he has every individual
under his control, listening soberly to his words.
He never fears to use humor, and it is always
very simple and obvious and effective. With him
even a very simple pun may be used, not only with-
out taking away from the strength of what he is
saying, but with a vivid increase of impressiveness.
And when he says something funny it is
in such a delightful and confidential way, with
such a genial, quiet, infectious humorousness, that
his audience is captivated. And they never think
that he is telling something funny of his own;
it seems, such is the skill of the man, that he is
just letting them know of something humorous
that they are to enjoy with him.
``Be absolutelytruthful and scrupulously clear,''
he writes; and with delightfully terse common
sense, he says, ``Use illustrations that illustrate''--
and never did an orator live up to this injunction
more than does Conwell himself. Nothing is more
surprising, nothing is more interesting, than the
way in which he makes use as illustrations of the
impressions and incidents of his long and varied
life, and, whatever it is, it has direct and instant
bearing on the progress of his discourse. He will
refer to something that he heard a child say in a
train yesterday; in a few minutes he will speak
of something that he saw or some one whom he
met last month, or last year, or ten years ago--
in Ohio, in California, in London, in Paris, in
New York, in Bombay; and each memory, each
illustration, is a hammer with which he drives
home a truth.
The vast number of places he has visited and
people he has met, the infinitevariety of things his
observant eyes have seen, give him his ceaseless
flow of illustrations, and his memory and his
skill make admirable use of them. It is seldom
that he uses an illustration from what he has
read; everything is, characteristically, his own.
turned out that they were far more impressed
than I could possibly have hoped, for in a few
days one of them came to me and said that he
thought it would be an excellent idea to buy a
lot on Broad Street--the very lot on which the
building now stands.'' It was characteristic of
Dr. Conwell that he did not point out, what every
one who knows him would understand, that it was
his own inspiration put into the trustees which
resulted in this quick and definite move on the
part of one of them. ``I talked the matter over
with the owner of the property, and told him of
the beginning of the fund, the story of the little
girl. The man was not one of our church, nor
in fact, was he a church-goer at all, but he listened
attentively to the tale of the fifty-seven cents
and simply said he was quite ready to go ahead
and sell us that piece of land for ten thousand
dollars, taking--and the unexpectedness of this
deeply touched me taking a first payment of just
fifty-seven cents and letting the entire balance
stand on a five-per-cent. mortgage!
``And it seemed to me that it would be the
right thing to accept this unexpectedly liberal
proposition, and I went over the entire matter
on that basis with the trustees and some of the
other members, and all the people were soon
talking of having a new church. But it was not
done in that way, after all, for, fine though that
way would have been, there was to be one still
finer.
``Not long after my talk with the man who
owned the land, and his surprisingly good-hearted
proposition, an exchange was arranged for me one
evening with a Mount Holly church, and my wife
went with me. We came back late, and it was
cold and wet and miserable, but as we approached
our home we saw that it was all lighted from
top to bottom, and it was clear that it was full
of people. I said to my wife that they seemed to
be having a better time than we had had, and we
went in, curious to know what it was all about.
And it turned out that our absence had been
intentionally arranged, and that the church people
had gathered at our home to meet us on our return.
And I was utterly amazed, for the spokesman
told me that the entire ten thousand dollars
had been raised and that the land for the church
that I wanted was free of debt. And all had come
so quickly and directly from that dear little girl's
fifty-seven cents.''
Doesn't it seem like a fairy tale! But then this
man has all his life been making fairy tales into
realities. He inspired the child. He inspired the
trustees. He inspired the owner of the land. He
inspired the people.
The building of the great church--the Temple
Baptist Church, as it is termed--was a great
undertaking for the congregation; even though
it had been swiftly growing from the day of Dr.
Conwell's takingcharge of it, it was something
far ahead of what, except in the eyes of an enthusiast,
they could possibly complete and pay for
and support. Nor was it an easy task.
Ground was broken for the building in 1889,
in 1891 it was opened for worship, and then
came years of raising money to clear it. But it
was long ago placed completely out of debt, and
with only a single large subscription--one of ten
thousand dollars--for the church is not in a
wealthy neighborhood, nor is the congregation
made up of the great and rich.
The church is built of stone, and its interior
is a great amphitheater. Special attention has
been given to fresh air and light; there is nothing
of the dim, religious light that goes with medieval
churchliness. Behind the pulpit are tiers of seats
for the great chorus choir. There is a large organ.
The building is peculiarly adapted for hearing
and seeing, and if it is not, strictly speaking,
beautiful in itself, it is beautiful when it is filled
with encircling rows of men and women.
Man of feeling that he is, and one who
appreciates the importance of symbols, Dr. Conwell
had a heart of olive-wood built into the front of the
pulpit, for the wood was from an olive-tree in the
Garden of Gethsemane. And the amber-colored
tiles in the inner walls of the church bear, under
the glaze, the names of thousands of his people;
for every one, young or old, who helped in the
building, even to the giving of a single dollar, has
his name inscribed there. For Dr. Conwell wished
to show that it is not only the house of the Lord,
but also, in a keenly personal sense, the house of
those who built it.
The church has a possible seating capacity of
4,200, although only 3,135 chairs have been put
in it, for it has been the desire not to crowd the
space needlessly. There is also a great room for
the Sunday-school, and extensive rooms for the
young men's association, the young women's
association, and for a kitchen, for executive offices,
for meeting-places for church officers and boards
and committees. It is a spacious and practical
and complete church home, and the people feel
at home there.
``You see again,'' said Dr. Conwell, musingly,
``the advantage of aiming at big things. That
building represents $109,000 above ground. It
is free from debt. Had we built a small church, it
would now be heavily mortgaged.''
IV
HIS POWER AS ORATOR AND PREACHER
EVEN as a young man Conwell won local fame
as an orator. At the outbreak of the Civil
War he began making patriotic speeches that
gained enlistments. After going to the front he
was sent back home for a time, on furlough, to
make more speeches to draw more recruits, for his
speeches were so persuasive, so powerful, so full
of homely and patriotic feeling, that the men who
heard them thronged into the ranks. And as a
preacher he uses persuasion, power, simple and
homelyeloquence, to draw men to the ranks of
Christianity.
He is an orator born, and has developed this
inborn power by the hardest of study and thought
and practice. He is one of those rare men who
always seize and hold the attention. When he
speaks, men listen. It is quality, temperament,
control--the word is immaterial, but the fact is
very material indeed.
Some quarter of a century ago Conwell published
a little book for students on the study and practice
of oratory. That ``clear-cut articulation is the
charm of eloquence'' is one of his insisted-upon
statements, and it well illustrates the lifelong
practice of the man himself, for every word as
he talks can be heard in every part of a large building,
yet always he speaks without apparent effort.
He avoids ``elocution.'' His voice is soft-pitched
and never breaks, even now when he is over
seventy, because, so he explains it, he always
speaks in his natural voice. There is never a
straining after effect.
``A speaker must possess a large-hearted regard
for the welfare of his audience,'' he writes, and
here again we see Conwell explaining Conwellism.
``Enthusiasm invites enthusiasm,'' is another of his
points of importance; and one understands that
it is by deliberate purpose, and not by chance,
that he tries with such tremendous effort to put
enthusiasm into his hearers with every sermon
and every lecture that he delivers.
``It is easy to raise a laugh, but dangerous, for
it is the greatest test of an orator's control of his
audience to be able to land them again on the
solid earth of sober thinking.'' I have known
him at the very end of a sermon have a ripple of
laughter sweep freely over the entire congregation,
and then in a moment he has every individual
under his control, listening soberly to his words.
He never fears to use humor, and it is always
very simple and obvious and effective. With him
even a very simple pun may be used, not only with-
out taking away from the strength of what he is
saying, but with a vivid increase of impressiveness.
And when he says something funny it is
in such a delightful and confidential way, with
such a genial, quiet, infectious humorousness, that
his audience is captivated. And they never think
that he is telling something funny of his own;
it seems, such is the skill of the man, that he is
just letting them know of something humorous
that they are to enjoy with him.
``Be absolutelytruthful and scrupulously clear,''
he writes; and with delightfully terse common
sense, he says, ``Use illustrations that illustrate''--
and never did an orator live up to this injunction
more than does Conwell himself. Nothing is more
surprising, nothing is more interesting, than the
way in which he makes use as illustrations of the
impressions and incidents of his long and varied
life, and, whatever it is, it has direct and instant
bearing on the progress of his discourse. He will
refer to something that he heard a child say in a
train yesterday; in a few minutes he will speak
of something that he saw or some one whom he
met last month, or last year, or ten years ago--
in Ohio, in California, in London, in Paris, in
New York, in Bombay; and each memory, each
illustration, is a hammer with which he drives
home a truth.
The vast number of places he has visited and
people he has met, the infinitevariety of things his
observant eyes have seen, give him his ceaseless
flow of illustrations, and his memory and his
skill make admirable use of them. It is seldom
that he uses an illustration from what he has
read; everything is, characteristically, his own.
- definite [´definit]
a.确定的，明确的 (初中英语单词) - beginning [bi´giniŋ] n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词)
- payment [´peimənt] n.支付；报酬；报偿 (初中英语单词)
- miserable [´mizərəbəl] a.悲惨的；可怜的 (初中英语单词)
- absence [´æbsəns] n.不在，缺席；缺乏 (初中英语单词)
- swiftly [´swiftli] ad.迅速地，敏捷地 (初中英语单词)
- charge [tʃɑ:dʒ] v.收费；冲锋 n.费用 (初中英语单词)
- worship [´wə:ʃip] n.&v.崇拜；敬仰 (初中英语单词)
- neighborhood [´neibəhud] n.邻居；邻近；附近 (初中英语单词)
- chorus [´kɔ:rəs] n.合唱；齐声 v.合唱 (初中英语单词)
- keenly [´ki:nli] ad.敏锐地；强烈地 (初中英语单词)
- capacity [kə´pæsiti] n.容量；智能；能力 (初中英语单词)
- extensive [ik´stensiv] a.广阔的；大量的 (初中英语单词)
- executive [ig´zekjutiv] a.行政的 n.行政官 (初中英语单词)
- advantage [əd´vɑ:ntidʒ] n.优势；利益 (初中英语单词)
- persuasion [pə´sweiʒən] n.说服(力)；劝说；见解 (初中英语单词)
- apparent [ə´pærənt] a.显然的；表面上的 (初中英语单词)
- speaker [´spi:kə] n.演讲人；代言人 (初中英语单词)
- welfare [´welfeə] n.福利(事业) (初中英语单词)
- tremendous [tri´mendəs] a.可怕的；巨大的 (初中英语单词)
- freely [´fri:li] ad.自由地；慷慨地 (初中英语单词)
- obvious [´ɔbviəs] a.明显的；显而易见的 (初中英语单词)
- effective [i´fektiv] a.有效的；有力的 (初中英语单词)
- delightful [di´laitful] a.讨人喜欢的 (初中英语单词)
- audience [´ɔ:diəns] n.听众；观众；接见 (初中英语单词)
- absolutely [´æbsəlu:tli] ad.绝对地；确实 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- yesterday [´jestədi] n.&ad.昨天；前不久 (初中英语单词)
- california [,kæli´fɔ:njə] n.加利福尼亚 (初中英语单词)
- hammer [´hæmə] n.锤子 v.重击 (初中英语单词)
- variety [və´raiəti] n.变化；多样(性)；种类 (初中英语单词)
- illustration [,ilə´streiʃən] n.插图，图解，例证 (初中英语单词)
- characteristic [,kæriktə´ristik] a.特有的 n.特性 (高中英语单词)
- inspiration [,inspi´reiʃən] n.鼓舞；灵感；启发 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- strictly [´striktli] ad.严格地 (高中英语单词)
- spacious [´speiʃəs] a.广阔的，宽敞的 (高中英语单词)
- outbreak [´autbreik] n.(战争等的)爆发 (高中英语单词)
- patriotic [,pætri´ɔtik] a.爱国的 (高中英语单词)
- homely [´həumli] a.朴素的；不漂亮的 (高中英语单词)
- deliberate [di´libəreit] a.慎重的；故意的 (高中英语单词)
- sermon [´sə:mən] n.说教；训诫；讲道 (高中英语单词)
- ripple [´ripəl] n.涟漪 v.(使)起涟漪 (高中英语单词)
- infectious [in´fekʃəs] a.传染，传染(性)的 (高中英语单词)
- discourse [´diskɔ:s] n.论文；演说；说教 (高中英语单词)
- infinite [´infinit] a.无限的，无穷的 (高中英语单词)
- admirable [´ædmərəbəl] a.极佳的，值得赞美的 (高中英语单词)
- unexpectedly [´ʌniks´pektidli] ad.意外地；突然地 (英语四级单词)
- congregation [,kɔŋgri´geiʃən] n.集合；团体 (英语四级单词)
- pulpit [´pulpit] n.讲坛 (英语四级单词)
- peculiarly [pi´kju:liəli] ad.特有地；古怪地 (英语四级单词)
- orator [´ɔrətə] n.演说者；雄辩家 (英语四级单词)
- eloquence [´eləkwəns] n.雄辩；口才 (英语四级单词)
- soberly [´səubəli] ad.严肃地；清醒地 (英语四级单词)
- confidential [,kɔnfi´denʃəl] a.极受信任的；心腹的 (英语四级单词)
- genial [´dʒi:niəl] a.愉快的；和蔼的 (英语四级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- surprisingly [sə´praiziŋli] ad.惊人地；意外地 (英语六级单词)
- persuasive [pə´sweisiv] a.有说服力的 n.动机 (英语六级单词)
- oratory [´ɔrətəri] n.演讲(术)；修辞 (英语六级单词)
- truthful [´tru:θfəl] a.诚实的；真实的 (英语六级单词)
- delightfully [di´laitfuli] ad.大喜，欣然 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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