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 homely
eloquence, to draw men to the ranks of Christianity.

He is an orator born, and has developed this inborn power by the hardest
of