Temple University - Templar Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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 10 ] RUSSELL H. CONWELL fOUNflER OF TEMPLE UNIVERSIT Y

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RUSSELL H. CONWELL An Addrtii Dtlitirtd Dtstmbtr 9, I92S By Forrest E. Dager ‘ID) EAUTIFUL for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is MS Mount Zion, the city of the great King. Bountiful tor peerless service, the joy of the whole land, is Russell H. Conwell, a child of the King. At an hour like this it is blessed to know that death is not a state, but an act; not a condition, but a transition. As I look back through forty years of association, his record challenges my admiration, his character compels my respect, his personality constrains my love. One of our earliest conversations was in a little basement room, where, as we sat upon rough boards in the presence of a few students (the beginning of Temple University), and talked about life’s changes, in answer to my question How came you to Philadelphia?, he replied I suppose that I got to Philadelphia as Abram got into Canaan, by the call of the Lord. When I hinted that Abram had the promise that God would make of him a great nation, he quickly replied My capital is the promise of God. A great nation bows before Mr. Conwell's silent form today. Mind would not serve, nor would heart permit me just now to give you an adequate appreciation of our departed brother. The foundation of his life of service was a supreme and unquestioned confidence in the Living Word and the written Word—in Jesus Christ and the Bible. His life was influenced less by the definition of Christ, more by the imitation of Christ. Throwing himself with resistless energy into those great institutions of learning, he yet held that the cultivation of the mind was but a preparatory step to the cultivation of the heart. The wrong accent upon a word was infinitely less than the wrong accent upon a deed. Back of those wonderful campaigns that opened in Africa a highway for Christianity and civilization was the loving, bleeding Christ-in-dwelt heart of David Livingstone; back of the emancipation of the colored race and the banishment of human slavery from our Republic was the big, broken heart of Abraham Lincoln; back of all these institutions that lift their noble heads around us today was thecourageous, loving, brotherly heart of Russell Conwell. I see them linking hands in the congregation yonder- Livingstone, Lincoln, Conwell, a trinity whose efforts for the uplift of humanity have no superior on the pages of modern history. Henry Drummond, with whom it was my privilege to talk right where I am now standing when he came to get a conception of Russell Conwell's great work, tells us that he constantly found his science overflowing in his theology, and his theology overflowing into his science. Mr. Conwell, a man of rare administrative talents, ever mingled his business with his religion and his religion with his business. With him the secular did not neutralize the sacred, but the sacred transfused and transformed the secular. He was the ideal religious man in business and the ,[11