And there is something more than happiness;there is a sense of ease, of comfort, of general joy, that is quite unmistakable. There is nothing of stiffness or constraint. And with it all there is full reverence. It is no wonder that he is accustomed to fill every seat of the great building.
His gestures are usually very simple. Now and then, when he works up to emphasis, he strikes one fist in the palm of the other hand. When he is through you do not remember that he has made any gestures at all, but the sound of his voice remains with you, and the look of his wonderful eyes. And though he is past the threescore years and ten, he looks out over his people with eyes that still have the veritable look of youth.
Like all great men, he not only does big things, but keeps in touch with myriad details. When his assistant, announcing the funeral of an old member, hesitates about the street and number and says that they can be found in the telephone directory, Dr. Conwell's deep voice breaks quietly in with, ``Such a number [giving it], Dauphin Street''--quietly, and in a low tone, yet every one in the church hears distinctly every syllable of that low voice.
His fund of personal anecdote, or personal reminiscence, is constant and illustrative in his preaching, just as it is when he lectures, and the reminiscences sweep through many years, and at times are really startling in the vivid and homelike pictures they present of the famous folk of the past that he knew.
One Sunday evening he made an almost casual reference to the time when he first met Garfield, then a candidate for the Presidency. ``I asked Major McKinley, whom I had met in Washington, and whose home was in northern Ohio, as was that of Mr. Garfield, to go with me to Mr.
Garfield's home and introduce me. When we got there, a neighbor had to find him. `Jim! Jim!'
he called. You see, Garfield was just plain Jim to his old neighbors. It's hard to recognize a hero over your back fence!'' He paused a mo-ment for the appreciative ripple to subside, and went on:
``We three talked there together''--what a rare talking that must have been-McKinley, Garfield, and Conwell--``we talked together, and after a while we got to the subject of hymns, and those two great men both told me how deeply they loved the old hymn, `The Old-Time Religion.'
Garfield especially loved it, so he told us, because the good old man who brought him up as a boy and to whom he owed such gratitude, used to sing it at the pasture bars outside of the boy's window every morning, and young Jim knew, whenever he heard that old tune, that it meant it was time for him to get up. He said that he had heard the best concerts and the finest operas in the world, but had never heard anything he loved as he still loved `The Old-Time Religion.'
I forget what reason there was for McKinley's especially liking it, but he, as did Garfield, liked it immensely.''
What followed was a striking example of Conwell's intentness on losing no chance to fix an impression on his hearers' minds, and at the same time it was a really astonishing proof of his power to move and sway. For a new expression came over his face, and he said, as if the idea had only at that moment occurred to him--as it most probably had--``I think it's in our hymnal!''
And in a moment he announced the number, and the great organ struck up, and every person in the great church every man, woman, and child --joined in the swinging rhythm of verse after verse, as if they could never tire, of ``The Old-Time Religion.'' It is a simple melody--barely more than a single line of almost monotone music:
_It was good enough for mother and it's good enough for me!
It was good on the fiery furnace and it's good enough for me!_Thus it went on, with never-wearying iteration, and each time with the refrain, more and more rhythmic and swaying:
_The old-time religion, The old-time religion, The old-time religion--It's good enough for me!_
That it was good for the Hebrew children, that it was good for Paul and Silas, that it will help you when you're dying, that it will show the way to heaven--all these and still other lines were sung, with a sort of wailing softness, a curious monotone, a depth of earnestness. And the man who had worked this miracle of control by evoking out of the past his memory of a meeting with two of the vanished great ones of the earth, stood before his people, leading them, singing with them, his eyes aglow with an inward light. His magic had suddenly set them into the spirit of the old camp-meeting days, the days of pioneering and hardship, when religion meant so much to everybody, and even those who knew nothing of such things felt them, even if but vaguely. Every heart was moved and touched, and that old tune will sing in the memory of all who thus heard it and sung it as long as they live.
