Northwestern Bible School - Scroll Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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When the day of graduation came, my mother was radiant, for already two of her daughters had been teachers, my oldest brother was a young physician, the one between him and myself, was graduating with me, and my two younger brothers, with mother, were shortly to move to the college town that the boys might enter Hanover, In 1883 I had accepted the pastorate of the First Baptist Church at Carrolton, Ky,, and already for two years, or since ’81, I had been a once-a- month preacher at North Madison, Indiana, spokesman for a blessed pastor, Dr, Munro, whose voice had failed. But now I was to be made pastor of my own church. It was a strange little body, sadly divided by a contention of years between its leading mem¬ bers, and, just at that moment, destitute of a house, through a fire i My call was attended with a proffer of $200 per annum for two Sundays per month, the county court house to be the place of meeting. I accepted the call but not the salary, asking them to leave that an open question! and pay me what they could. My Scotch sagacity in the matter was justified; they paid me more than twice this amount. In two and a half years I had them in a new building and ready for all-time service, Warsaw, Kentucky, had also called me for the other two Sundays, and I remained pastor of these two Kentucky fields until I had finished my col¬ lege course and was a student in the theological seminary at Louisville, Ky. Next, the Tabernacle Church of New Albany, Indiana, called me, and, as it was just across the river from Louisville, my Seminary home, I accepted. Something more than a year went by when Lafayette, Indiana, called me to succeed Dr. Alexander Blackburn, six months before my graduation from the seminary, or January 1, 1888. I accepted, it being agreed that I was to give Sunday services only for that six months period. Two and one-half years I gave to that pastorate, notable to me at least, not alone because they were years of delight on the part of both pastor and people, but because just across the street from my church I found a girl, eas¬ ily the city ' s beauty, named Lillian Howard, who was a student in Purdue Univer¬ sity, and on December 31, 1890, six months following her graduation, she walked with me to the marriage altar in her own, the Trin¬ ity Methodist Church. The next anniversary of our wedding will be the forti¬ eth, and she abides with me still, her beauty enhanced by time, and her bravery in¬ creased by fellowship. To save Mrs. Riley the somewhat embarassing of¬ fice of a pastor ' s wife among the girls and boys with whom she had grown Cfilviirv Tits Mi tl Church. Chicavo. 1S93-1H97

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On June 3, 1885, I graduated from that college with the degree of A.B., holding the fourth place in my class in grade, and the first in debate. Education and Life Calling My education and my life calling were inextricably interwoven. It was in the early autumn of 78 that I made a public profession of my faith in Christ, and during the year at the normal school I was equipping myself to teach my way through college, expecting to adopt the law as my permanent profession. But there was a Divine voice, not audible to the ears of others, but louder than thunder in my secret soul, telling me that my choice was wrong, and that the ministry was the Divine will instead. I hated the suggestion. I had loved the dance! I delighted in horses and hounds! The spirit of the sport was in me, and the ministry looked tame and uninviting. My country pastor had had only a salary of $400 per annum, and slaved in a store all the week to eke out a family living ; and the largest salary paid in the country at that time was $1,000. I had brilliant law acquaintances, at nearby county seats, who were earning handsome sums. Beside, I delighted in debate! To contend for the things that appealed to me was positive pleasure. I told the Lord more than once that if He ever intended to make a minister out of me, He had started wrong. He should have made my nature different. But my arguments with Him availed me nothing. Days of ill-content about my choice followed in what seemed interminable succession, and in spite of the physical weariness with which I fell into bed night after night, sleep refused to come. The fight was on! After some months of turmoil, I at last reluctantly said, “I will; I will preach. A thousand times I have thanked God for calling and compelling, for that is what it meant to me; and since the day when my roughly clothed knees were driven into the black loam of the Kentucky hillside, as I knelt between two rows of tobacco to surrender, I have never had a regret; neither have I had one doubt of the Divine will concerning my work. Into this decision two factors entered with profound influence; first, the dogged determination and the inflexible purpose of my mother that her children should be educated. She herself had come out of a cultured family, but with the whim of a child, had refused to enter the Quaker school that had been opened by her very uncles, that in it their children, nephews and nieces, might be trained. In running away from school to Cincinnati, where her tubercular father had just moved in a vain search for health, she terminated all school possibilities by marrying my father when she was but fifteen, and he three years her senior. But the appreciation of education was in her blood, and she burned it into the very brain of boy and girl alike, that we should go to school and equip ourselves for the largest possible life. On the other side, my father, converted at thirty-three, immediately felt the call to preach. But being without scholastic training, and with five children already, he believed himself unequipped for the same and went his way as a farmer, bearing an ever-conscious grief that he was out of God ' s will, That these two factors were an influence there can be no question; and when, in the first year of my college life, I announced to my father my de¬ termination to preach, and straightway entered upon the same, he hailed it with delight. But very shortly he went to he with the Lord. l 20 ]

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up, I accepted—six months before our marriage—a call to the First Baptist Church, of Bloomington, Illinois, thereby becoming successor to Dr. John L. Jackson. This city was all the more attractive to us because it was Mrs. Riley’s birthplace, and a city that held the most of her blood relatives Here, for two and one-half years, we witnessed a remarkable work. The house was often packed, and many sought the Lord Among the baptized was the pastor ' s wife, while to the cradle roll was added the pastor ' s eldest son, now Dr. Arthur Howard Riley This pastorate was characterized by two outstanding experiences The mayor, a man who often attended my church, permitted a wide-open town, and gambling became the order of the day. Gambling institutions existed in a score or more of places. I selected one week for my subject, “Bloomington’s Burning Disgrace—Gambling! ' ’ and after having prepared my sermon, I went, in company with a newspaper reporter and the Y M. C. A. secretary, to per¬ sonally visit seven of these gambling holes They were attended by from fif¬ teen to three hundred each. Returning to my office I put on the finishing touches, the thunder of indignation and the lightning of exposure! The ser¬ mon was printed in three newspapers on Monday. Many gamblers quit the town; but some two hundred indictments of managers and pa¬ trons ensued. Gam¬ bling, I understand, has never flourished in Bloomington since. It was in this pas¬ torate also that I en¬ countered my first or¬ ganized official oppo¬ sition. It was led by men of means and of good social standing. It fruited in a few stormy board meet¬ ings, and then the op¬ position suddenly col¬ lapsed, owing to the fact that a state audi¬ tor uncovered the con¬ duct of my opponents, who were found to have been systemati¬ cally robbing the Building a n d Loan Association in which they were chief offi¬ cials This experience taught me a lesson es¬ sential to success in the pas torate, namely, that if one knows he is right, he need fear no First Baptist Church, Minneapolis 1897 organized opposition. God lives, and justice, though slow, seldom miscarries. Laboring under the false impression that the bigger the city, the greater the opportuni¬ ty for service, I went to Chicago in 1893 and became the pastor of a newly organized church, sixty mem¬ bers having asked for letters from the First Baptist Church to ef¬ fect the Calvary or¬ ganization, In four years and six months I saw this company grow to 500 in num¬ ber, and was perfectly disillusioned concern¬ ing the relation be¬ tween the size of a city and the extent of the opportunity. A big city is the poorest place in the world for any preacher except its most notable one. Its very e ftent suffices to reduce opportunity, to circumscribe influ-