Russell H. Conwell, founder of the Institutional church in America

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Founder of the Institutional Church in America
With His Two Famous Lectures as Recently Delivered, entitled Acres of Diamonds, and Personal Glimpses of Celebrated Men and Women
With an Appreciative Introduction by FLOYD W. TOMKINS, D.D., LL.D.
1905
The measure of greatness is helpfulness. We have gone back to the method of the Master and learned to test men not by wealth, nor by birth, nor by intellectual power, but by service. Wealth is not to be despised if it is untainted and consecrated. Ancestry is noble if the good survives and the bad perishes in him who boasts of his forebears. Intellectual force is worthy if only it can escape from that cursed attendant, conceit. But they sink, one and all into insignificance when character is considered; for character is the child of godly parents whose names are self-denial and love. The man who lives not for himself but for others, and who has a heart big enough to take all men into its living sympathies—he is the man we delight to honor.
Biographies have a large place in present day literature. A woman long associated with some foreign potentates tells her story and it is read with unhealthy avidity. Some man fights many battles, and his career told by an amiable critic excites temporary interest. Yet as we read we are unsatisfied. The heart and mind, consciously or unconsciously, ask for some deeds other than those of arms and sycophancies. Did he make the world better by his living? Were rough places smoothed and crooked things straightened by his energies? And withal, had he that tender grace which drew little children to him and made him the knight-attendant of the feeble and overborne amongst his fellows? The life from which men draw daily can alone make a book richly worth the reading.
It is good that something should be known of a man whilst he yet lives. We are overcrowded with monuments commemorating those into whose faces we cannot look for inspiration. It is always easy to strew flowers upon the tomb. But to hear somewhat of living realities; to grasp the hand which has wrought, and feel the thrill while we hear of the struggles which made it a beautiful hand; to see the face marked by lines cut with the chisel of inner experience and the sword of lonely misunderstanding and perchance of biting criticism, and learn how the brave contest spelt out a life-history on feature and brow;—this is at once to know the man and his career.