The pastor was the most untiring worker of all. With ceaseless energy and unfailing tact, he was the head and heart of every undertaking. Day and night he ministered to the needs of his membership and the community. To the bedside of the sick he carried cheer that was better than medicine. In the homes where death had entered, he brought the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Where disgrace had fallen like a pall, he went with words of hope and practical advice. Parents sought him to help lead erring children back from a life of wretchedness and evil. Wherever sorrow and trouble was in the heart or home he went, his heart full of sympathy, his hands eager to help.
Much of his time, too, in those early days of his ministry was devoted to pastoral calls, not the formal ministerial call where the children tiptoe in, awed and silent, because the "minister is there." Children hailed his coming with delight, the family greeted him as an old, old friend before whom all ceremony and convention were swept away. He was genuinely interested in their family affairs. He entered into their plans and ambitions, and he never forgot any of their personal history they might tell him, so that each felt, and truly, that in his pastor he had a warm and interested friend.
His own simple, informal manner made every one feel instantly at home with him. He soon became a familiar figure upon the streets in the neighborhood of his church, for morning, noon and night he was about his work, cherry, earnest, always the light of his high calling shining from his face. The people for squares about knew that here was a man, skilled and practical in the affairs of the world, to whom they could go for advice, for help, for consolation, sure that they would have his ready sympathy and the best his big heart and generous hands could give.
Such faithful work of the pastor, such earnest, active work of the people could not but tell. The family feeling which is the ideal of church fellowship was so strong and warm that it attracted and drew people as with magnetic power. The church became more and more crowded. In less than a year it was impossible to seat those who thronged to the Sunday services, though the auditorium then had a seating capacity of twelve hundred.
"I am glad," the pastor once remarked to a friend, "when I get up Sunday morning and can look out of the window and see it snowing, sleeting, and raining, and hear the wind shriek and howl. 'There,' I say, 'I won't have to preach this morning, looking all the while at people patiently standing through the service, wherever there is a foot of standing room.'"
[Illustration: THE SAMARITAN HOSPITAL OF THE FUTURE]
The membership rose from two hundred to more than five hundred within two years. A question began to shape itself in the minds of pastor and people. "What shall we do?" As a partial solution of it, the proposition was made to divide into three churches. But, as in the old days of enlistment when two companies clamored for him for captain, all three sections wanted him as pastor, and so the idea was abandoned.
Still the membership grew, and the need for larger quarters faced them imperatively and not to be evaded. The house next door was purchased which gave increased space for the work of the Sunday School and the various associations. But it was a mere drop in the bucket. Every room in it was filled to overflowing with eager workers before the ink was fairly dry on the deed of transfer.
Then into this busy crowd wondering what should be done came a little child, and with one simple act cleared the mist from their eyes and pointed the way for them to go.