In the pulpit, Dr. Conwell is as simple and natural as he is in his study or in the home. Every part of the service is rendered with the heart, as well as the understanding. His reading of a chapter from the Bible is a sermon in itself. The vast congregation follow it with as close attention as they do the sermon. He seems to make every verse alive, to send it with new meaning into each heart. The people in it are real people, who have lived and suffered, who had all the hopes and fears of men and women of to-day. Often little explanations are dropped or timely, practical applications, and when it is over, if that were all of the service one would be repaid for attending. The hymns, too, are read with feeling and life. If a verse expresses a sentiment contrary to the church feeling, it is not sung. He will not have sung what is not worthy of belief. The sermons are full of homely, practical illustrations, drawn from the experiences of everyday life. Dr. Conwell announces his text and begins quite simply, sometimes with a little story to illustrate his thought. If Bible characters take any part in it, he makes them real men and women. He pictures them so graphically, the audience sees them, hears them talk, knows what they thought, how they lived. In a word, each hearer feels as if he had met them personally. Never again are they mere names. They are living, breathing men and women. Dr. Conwell makes his sermons human because he touches life, the life of the past, the life of the present, the lives of those in his audience. He makes them interesting by his word pictures. He holds attention by the dramatic interest he infuses into the theme. He has been called the "Story-telling Preacher" because his sermons are so full of anecdote and illustrations. But every story not only points a moral, but is full of the interest that fastens it on the hearer's mind. Children in their teens enjoy his sermons, so vivid are they, so full of human, every day interest. Yet all this is but the framework on which is reared some helpful, inspiring Biblical truth which is the crown, the climax, and which because of its careful upbuilding by story and homely illustration is fixed on the hearer's mind and heart in a way never to be forgotten. It is held there by the simple things of life he sees about him every day, and which, every time he sees them, recall the truth he has heard preached. Dr. Thomas May Pierce, speaking of Dr. Conwell's method of preaching, says: "Spurgeon sought the masses and found them by preaching the gospel with homely illustrations; Russell H. Conwell comes to Philadelphia, he seeks out the masses, he finds them with his plain presentation of the old, old story."