He has proven that the great masses of people are hungry and thirsty for knowledge. The halls of Temple College have resounded to the tread of an army of working men and women more than fifty thousand strong. The man with an hour a day and a few dollars a year is as eager and as welcome a student there, and has the same educational opportunities to the same grade of learning as though he had the birthright of leisure and money which opens the doors to Harvard and Yale.
He has shown that a hospital can be built not merely as a charity, not merely as a necessity, but as a visible expression of Christ's love and command, "Heal the sick."
In all these three lines he has blazed new paths, opened new worlds for man's endeavors—new worlds of religious work, new worlds of educational work. He has not only proven their need, demonstrated their worth, but he has shown how it is possible to accomplish such results from small beginnings with no large gifts of money, with only the hands and hearts of willing workers.
Not only has he done a magnificent pioneer work in these great fields, but from boyhood he has blazed trails of one kind or another, for the pioneer fever was in his blood—that burning desire to do, to discover, to strike out into new fields.
As a mere child, he organized a strange club called "Silence," also the first debating society in the district schoolhouse, and circulated the first petition for the opening of a post-office near his home in South Worthington, Mass.
In his school days at Wilbraham Academy, he organized an original critics' club, started the first academy paper, organized the original alumni association.
In war time, he built the first schoolhouse for the first free colored school, still standing at Newport, N.C.; and started the first "Comfort Bag" movement at a war meeting in Springfield, Mass.
As a lawyer, he opened the first noon prayer meeting in the Northwest, called the first meeting to organize the Y.M.C.A. at Minneapolis, Minn., organized four literary and social clubs in Minneapolis, started the first library in that city, began the publication of the first daily paper there called "The Daily Chronicle," afterward "The Minneapolis Tribune."
In Boston, he started the "Somerville Journal," now edited by his son,
Leon M. Conwell, one of the most quoted publications in the country.
He called the first meeting which organized the Boston Young Men's
Congress, and was one of the first editors of the "Boston Globe."
He was the personal adviser of James Redpath, who opened the first
Lecture and Lyceum Bureau in the United States.
He began a new church work in the old Baptist church building at Lexington, Mass., and he opened in a schoolhouse the mission from which grew the West Somerville (Mass.) Baptist church.