The Captain's Sword
Russell Conwell
"Son, will you lead us in prayer this morning and give thanks for your safe trip home?"
Slowly young Russell Conwell shook his head.
"Have your studies at Yale caused you to forget?" The old man's question was edged with disappointment.
The youth hung his head and stared into his plate. He coughed uneasily.
"Speak out, boy, What is wrong with you?"
"I no longer believe your way, Father. I cannot pray to a God in whom I do not believe."
Russell Conwell's parents gripped their chairs in disbelief. Life on the Massachusetts farm had been hard. But their boy had been cradled in the Bible and family prayers. He had been a devout church attendant.
"I've joined the Infidel Club at Yale," the youth continued, breaking the tense silence. Then seeing the tears of his parents, he added, "It's not that I don't love and respect you. You're the most wonderful parents a boy could have. But when I got to college, I saw all those rich boys with money to burn. And I had to eat the leftovers given to me for helping the dormitory cook. Well, it didn't seem right."
"What didn't seem right, son?"
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"That God should let us be so poor. Some of those rich students couldn't care less about religion. And yet, Dad, you and Mother have always tried to serve God — the God in whom I just can't believe anymore."
Tears welled up in the eyes of the farmer and his wife. There was a long, uncomfortable silence during which no one spoke. Russell Conwell noticed that the work-worn hands of his father were trembling although they rested on the table. "Son," the father finally began, "I would rather see you in your coffin, or live in ignorance, than for you to forsake God."
Russell Conwell went back to Yale and continued working to pay his way. By the time he received his degree, the country had plunged into the Civil War.
Young Conwell immediately became an ardent spokesman for the cause of Union victory. He gave public lectures on the life and death of John Brown. He recruited a company of volunteers, was appointed their captain, though only nineteen, and marched off to war.
Captain Conwell soon became a hero for his bravery and daring. In tribute, his admirers presented to him a glittering gold-sheathed sword, which bore the Latin inscription, Vera amicitia est sempiterna — "True friendship is eternal." He did not know then that the sword would play a prominent part in changing his life.
Shortly before the presentation of the sword, a Boston customs house employee sought out Captain Conwell. "My boy Johnny is determined to go to war," he told him. "I should like to trust him into your hands."
The captain eyed the scrawny, awkward-looking
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teenage boy. "Boy, are you willing to lie on the ground all night and have your hair frozen to the ground? Are you willing to have an arm or leg shot off for your country?"
The boy nodded.
"Then if you still want to go, I'm willing to make you my personal servant."
Johnny Ring shared his captain's tent, sleeping across from his cot. On his first night with the captain, he took his Testament from his pocket and prepared to read by the light of their army lantern.
Captain Conwell saw what Johnny Ring was doing. "Put that away!" he shouted in sudden rage. "We don't believe the Bible around here. I gave up such foolishness long ago."
"But, sir," the boy protested. "I promised my mother when she was dying that I would read my Testament every night."
The captain calmed a bit. "I respect your love for your mother. But if the other officers see you reading here they will rag me to death about it. Go outside the tent."
Johnny Ring put his Testament away. He could not see to read it outside by the flickering campfire. After that, he waited until the captain was out of the tent. But one evening the captain walked in early.
"Johnny, I asked you not to read the Bible in here," he fumed. "Now, as you superior officer, I command you to stop."
The boy burst into tears. As he lifted the door flap, he turned to face his unbelieving captain. "Captain, sir, I love you. But you are a wicked man."
A few weeks later their regiment was ordered to an occupied area near New Berne, North Carolina. Their job was to guard a railroad line that ran from New Berne to the coast.
One dark night, Captain Conwell was checking the sentries he had posted at the edge of the woods. A bullet zinged out of the darkness and knocked him to the ground. Miraculously, the bullet smashed only the watch in his pocket.
Shortly afterward, he rode into New Berne on business. While he was there, he received word that General Pickett's Confederates had captured his encampment, setting fire to the camp and the nearby railroad bridge.
"What happened to my servant, Johnny Ring?" he asked the courier.
The messenger's smoke-blackened face lit up in admiration. "Well, sir, as we retreated across the burning bridge, Johnny Ring shouted, 'The captain's sword is in his tent.'
"We yelled for him to come back, but, sir, that boy streaked across the bridge and snatched your sword from the blazing tent. As he came back across the bridge the battle was fully under way."
"The Confederates killed him, then?"
"No, sir. The Confederate commander nearest the bridge ordered his men to cease firing. We all watched Johnny as he ran with your sword. Finally he reached our side and fell to the ground. His uniform was blazing, but he had your sword. We rolled him in the river to put out the fire. He has been taken to the Army hospital at Beaufort, North Carolina."
The captain learned later that when Johnny Ring regained consciousness in the hospital he asked, "Has
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the captain got his sword?" A nurse assured him it was there beside the bed. Johnny asked to touch it, and said, "I'm glad I saved it." Then he asked, "Is Captain Conwell coming to see me?" They told him that word had been sent to the Captain.
During the night the surgeon called the chaplain to the bedside. Johnny Ring was dying. "You are going to see your mother, son," the chaplain whispered. "Don't be afraid to go."
The dying boy whispered back, "I'm not afraid. But I wish I could see the captain once more."
The hospital told Captain Conwell what Johnny Ring had said. The sword was returned with its motto, "True friendship is eternal."
Captain Conwell looked at the polished weapon and read the words. "Will I ever see Johnny again? he asked himself. And my parents? They believed in eternal things. If I could only see Johnny to beg his forgiveness for my ill-treatment.
The war moved on. Captain Conwell rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. But still the memory of loyal Johnny Ring haunted him.
The battle of Kenesaw Mountain near Atlanta came. Lieutenant Colonel Russell Conwell was in the forefront when he was hit by an exploding shell. He was wounded so severely that his men left him for dead.
The following morning, the cleanup detail found him alive. In the hospital at Marietta, Georgia, the staff debated about amputating his arm. Only a nurse's objection saved it.
A Baptist chaplain paused by his bed. They talked long enough for the chaplain to discover the colonel's doubts.
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"Colonel, you know by instinct that there is life after death," he said. Then gently, step by step, the chaplain led the wounded officer to surrender his life to Christ.
Afterward he gripped the chaplain's hand and whispered, "I must serve God, not only for myself, but for Johnny Ring." From that day until his death, Russell Conwell led the life of a devout Christian.
After the war, Russell Conwell's star of influence rose rapidly in the world. He moved to Minneapolis and established the Minneapolis Chronicle, which is today the Tribune. He was admitted to the bar as a lawyer. And he lectured and worked in Sunday schools.
Then a dark cloud of failing health settled upon his horizon. He consented to surgery in New York. The surgeon removed from his lungs a grisly souvenir of his war days. Looking at the brass bullet, Russell Conwell was impressed again that Johnny Ring's God had something greater for him to do.
His health recovered, he moved to Boston, where he wrote and lectured. The Boston Traveler and New York Tribune sent him to Europe where he interviewed Gladstone, Tennyson, Bismarck, and other greats.
But just as his influence was beginning to be felt worldwide, his wife died in 1872. The sorrow drove him to his knees and then back into a busy life where he vowed to work for eternal things.
He heard of a struggling Baptist church in Lexington, Massachusetts. "Yes, we would be proud to have you for our minister," the congregation said. So Russell Conwell began preaching from a regular pulpit. Soon the church was flourishing. Capacity crowds began attending.
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Then Conwell heard of another struggling church in Philadelphia.
He became pastor of the church when it was meeting in a tent. Within a few years, he led the Temple Baptist Church to build an auditorium seating four thousand.
He continued his outside lecturing with far-reaching results. In a lecture entitled "Perils of Democracy," he charged that colleges were developing an intellectual aristocracy and that high standards and expensive tuition were dooming poor youth to a life of ignorance. From this lecture came the great Temple University — now nineteenth largest in the nation — from which an estimated one hundred thousand people of all social classes passed during his lifetime.
Another lecture, "Acres of Diamonds" — his most famous — was delivered more than six thousand times in every corner of the globe. For the proceeds he helped educate ten thousand young men.
During his ministry he received into church membership more than six thousand previously non-Christians. Three giant hospitals were founded in relation to his church.
He wrote dozens of books, including the biographies of six Presidents. After his death, Russell Conwell was eulogized as the "penniless millionaire" for through his lectures and writings he had earned millions of dollars, but an accounting showed he had given most of it away.
When he was buried, the sword which Johnny Ring had given his life to rescue was placed in his hand. No one who knew Russell Conwell doubted that he had done the work of two men — and more.
