Russell H. Conwell, founder of the Institutional church in America : $b the work and the manBurr, Agnes Rush
Religion
Russell H. Conwell, founder of the Institutional church in America : $b the work and the man
Burr, Agnes Rush
Conwell, Russell H., 1843-1925; Minneapolis (Minn.) -- Biography
John B. Gough, the great temperance orator, the greatest the world has
ever seen, said to me one evening at his home that he would lecture
for forty years, and then would stop. But his wife said, "Now, John,
you know you won't give it up." He assented, "Yes, I will." But his
wife said, "No you won't. You men when you drink of public life find
it like a drink of whiskey, and you are just like the rest of the
men." "No," said he. Then Mr. Gough told again his familiar story of
the minister who was preaching in his pulpit in Boston when he saw the
Governor of the State coming up the aisle. Immediately he began to
stammer, and finally said: "I see the Governor coming in, and as I
know you will want to hear an exhortation from him, I think that I had
better stop." Then one of the old officials leaped up from one of the
front seats and said, "I insist upon your going on with your sermon,
sir; you ought not be embarrassed by the Governor's coming in. We are
all worms! All worms! nothing but worms!" Then the minister was
angry and shouted: "Sir, I would have you understand that there is
a difference in worms." Mr. Gough said he was different from other
people yet the years came and went, and he stayed on the public
platform. One night a committee from Frankford, Philadelphia, asked me
to write him and ask him to lecture for them. I wrote and whether my
influence had anything to do with it or not, I do not know, but he
came from New York and when he was in about the middle of his lecture,
he came to that sentence, "Young man, keep your record clear, for a
single glass of intoxicating liquor may somewhere, in after years,
change into a horrid monster that shall carry you down to woe." And
when he had uttered that wonderful sentence of advice, he slopped to
get breath, reached for a drink of water, swung forward and fell over.
The doctor said he was too late for any earthly aid, and John B.
Gough, with his armor on, went on into Glory. He never found that
earthly rest he had promised himself. His garden never showed its
flowers, and his fields were never strewn with grain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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