[Illustration: REVEREND WILLIAM ASHLEY SUNDAY, D.D.]
"BILLY" SUNDAY
THE MAN AND HIS MESSAGE
WITH HIS OWN WORDS
WHICH HAVE WON
THOUSANDS FOR CHRIST
BY
WILLIAM T. ELLIS, LL.D.
AUTHOR OF "MEN AND MISSIONS"
Authorized Edition
PHILADELPHIA
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
L. T. MYERS
CAUTION
The entire contents of this book are protected by the stringent new
copyright law, and all persons are warned not to attempt to reproduce
the text, in whole or in part, or any of the illustrations.
Authorized by Mr. Sunday
This work contains the heart of Mr. Sunday's gospel message arranged
by subjects, and is published by special agreement with him for the
use of copyright material and photographs, which could be used only by
his permission.
A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR
Because he is the most conspicuous Christian leader in America today;
because he has done an entirely unique and far-reaching work of
evangelism; and because his words have a message for all men, I have
written, at the request of the publishers, this narrative concerning
Rev. William A. Sunday, D.D.
The final appraisal of the man and his ministry cannot, of course, be
made while he is alive. "Never judge unfinished work." This book has
endeavored to deal candidly, though sympathetically, with its subject.
Mr. Sunday has not seen either the manuscript or proofs. He has,
however, authorized the use of the messages which he is accustomed to
deliver in his meetings, and which comprise more than half the contents
of the volume.
The author's hope is that those of us who are just plain "folks"
will find the book interesting and helpful. He has no doubt that
professional Christian workers will get many suggestions from the story
of Mr. Sunday's methods.
I would acknowledge the assistance of Miss Helen Cramp and the Rev.
Ernest Bawden in collating and preparing for publication Mr. Sunday's
utterances.
WILLIAM T. ELLIS.
SWARTHMORE, PA.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface 5
Contents 7
CHAPTER I
One of God's Tools
God's Man Sent in God's Time--Sunday's Converts--Religion
and the Common People--A Great City Shaken by the
Gospel--Popular Interest in Vital Religion--Sunday
a Distinctively American Type 15
CHAPTER II
Up from the Soil
Sunday's Sympathy with Every-day Folk--Early Life--The
Soldiers' Orphanage--The Old Farm--Earning a Living--The
School of Experience--First Baseball Ventures 22
CHAPTER III
A Base-Ball "Star"
Fame as a Baseball Player--Eagerness to "Take a
Chance"--Record Run on the Day Following his
Conversion--The Parting of the Ways 33
CHAPTER IV
A Curbstone Recruit
Mrs. Clark and the Pacific Garden Mission--Sunday's Own
Story of his Conversion--Winning the Game of Life 39
CHAPTER V
Playing the New Game
The Individuality of the Man--His Marriage--Mrs. Sunday's
Influence--Work in the Y. M. C. A.--A Father
Disowned--Redeeming a Son--The Gambler--A Living
Testimony--Professional Evangelistic Work 45
CHAPTER VI
A Shut Door--and an Open One
Sunday Thrown Upon His Own Resources by Dr. Chapman's
Return to Philadelphia--Call to Garner, Iowa--"This
is the Lord's Doings" 57
CHAPTER VII
Campaigning for Christ
Splendid Organization of a Sunday Campaign--Church
Co-operation--The Power of Christian Publicity--District
Prayer Meetings--Sunday's Army of Workers--The Sunday
Tabernacle--The Evangelist's Own Compensation--Personnel
of the Sunday Party 61
CHAPTER VIII
"Speech--Seasoned with Salt"
Vivid Language of the Common People--"Rubbing the Fur
the Wrong Way"--"Delivering the Goods"--Shakings
from the Sunday Salt-cellar 69
CHAPTER IX
Battling with Booze
An Effective Foe of the Liquor Business--"Dry" Victories
Following Sunday Campaigns--"De Brewer's Big
Hosses"--The Famous "Booze" Sermon--Interest in
Manhood--Does the Saloon Help Business?--The Parent of
Crimes--The Economic Side--Tragedies Born of
Drink--More Economics--The American Mongoose--The Saloon
a Coward--God's Worst Enemy--What Will a Dollar Buy?--The
Gin Mill--A Chance for Manhood--Personal Liberty--The
Moderate Drinker--What Booze Does to the System 80
CHAPTER X
"Give Attendance to Reading"
Sunday's Reverence for "Book Learning"--No Claim to
Originality--Some Sources of His Sermons--God's
Token of Love--The Sinking Ship--"What If It Had
Been My Boy?"--A Dream of Heaven--The Battle
with Death--"Christ or Nothing"--Calvary--The
World for God--A Word Picture--The Faithful Pilot 121
CHAPTER XI
Acrobatic Preaching
Platform Gymnastics--The Athlete in the Preacher--Sunday's
Sense of Humor Stronger than His Sense of
Pathos--His Voice and Manner--Personal Side of
Sunday 138
CHAPTER XII
"The Old-Time Religion"
Sunday's Power of Positive Conviction--His Ideas of
Theology--The Need of Old-time Revival--The Gospel
According to Sunday--Salvation a Personal Matter--"And
He Arose and Followed Him"--At the Cross-roads--"He
Died for Me" 146
CHAPTER XIII
"Hitting the Sawdust Trail"
Origin of the Phrase, "The Sawdust Trail"--Impressive
Scenes as Converts by the Hundred Stream Forward--Vital
Religion--Mr. Sunday's Hand--All Sorts and Conditions
of People 158
CHAPTER XIV
The Service of Society
Social and Ethical Results of Sunday's Preaching--The
Potent Force of the Gospel--Religion in Every-day
Life--Testimony of Rev. Joseph H. Odell, D.D.--Testimony
of Rev. Maitland Alexander, D.D.--The "Garage Bible
Class"--Making Religion a Subject of Ordinary
Conversation--Lasting Results--A Life Story 167
CHAPTER XV
Giving the Devil His Due
Sunday's Sense of the Reality of the Devil--Excoriation
of the Devil--"Devil" Passages from Sermons 182
CHAPTER XVI
Critics and Criticism
Storm of Criticism a Tribute--Preaching "Christ
Crucified"--Recognition from Secretary Bryan--Pilgrimage
of Philadelphia Clergymen--Heaven's Messenger--Plain
Speech from Sunday Himself 188
CHAPTER XVII
A Clean Man on Social Sins
Clean-mindedness of the Man--A Plain Talk to Men--Christian
Character--Common Sense--No Excuse for Swearing--Family
Skeletons--Nursing Bad Habits--The Leprosy of Sin--"But
the Lord Looketh on the Heart"--The Joy of Religion--A
Plain Talk to Women--Hospitality--Maternity Out of
Fashion--The Girl Who Flirts--The Task of Womanhood 202
CHAPTER XVIII
"Help Those Women"
Sunday's Honor of Womanhood--The Sermon on "Mother"--A
Mother's Watchfulness--A Mother's Bravery--Good Mothers
Needed--God's Hall of Fame--A Mother's Song--A Mother's
Love--A Mother's Responsibility--Mothers of Great Men 231
CHAPTER XIX
Standing on the Rock
The Old-Fashioned Loyalty of the Evangelist to the
Bible--Some of His Utterances on the Bible 249
CHAPTER XX
Making a Joyful Noise
No Gloom in a Sunday Revival--The Value of a Laugh--The
Value of Music--The Tabernacle Music--The Campaign
Choirs--A Revival of Song 261
CHAPTER XXI
The Prophet and His Own Time
The Evangelist's Arraignment of the Sins of Today--His
Treatment of the Church and Society 267
CHAPTER XXII
Those Billy Sunday Prayers
Unconventionality of the Prayers--Specimen Prayers--"Teach
Us to Pray"--Learning of Christ--Pride Hinders
Prayer--Praying in Secret--Praying in Humility--Men
of Prayer 271
CHAPTER XXIII
The Revival on Trial
The Sea of Faces--Laboratory Tests--"The Need of
Revivals"--What a Revival Does--Revival Demands
Sacrifice--Persecution a Godsend 288
CHAPTER XXIV
An Army With Banners
Unique Plans for Reaching the Masses of the
People--Visiting Delegations--Parade at Close of
Campaign--"Spiritual Power"--Derelicts in the
Church--The Meaning of Power--Church Needs Great
Awakening--Lost Power 299
CHAPTER XXV
A Life Enlistment
Some Notable Instances of the Lasting Results of Sunday
Revivals--"Gospel Teams"--Sermon on "Sharp-Shooters"--The
Value of Personal Work--"My Father's
Business"--Feeding the Spiritual Life--The Dignity of
Personal Work--Five Classes of People 311
CHAPTER XXVI
"A Good Soldier of Jesus Christ"
Astounding Number of Conversions--Statistics of Campaigns
in Various Cities--Sunday's "Consecration"
Sermon--God's Mercies--The Living Sacrifice--A Glass
of Champagne--Denying One's Self--Thinking for
God--What God Asks 326
CHAPTER XXVII
A Wonderful Day at a Great University
Visit to University of Pennsylvania--"What Shall I Do
With Jesus?"--"Real Manhood"--"Hot-cakes Off the
Griddle"--Comment of _Old Penn_--Opinions of
Students--Comment of Religious Press 343
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Christian's Daily Helper
"The Holy Spirit"--No Universal Salvation--Happiest
Nation on Earth--Ambassadors of God--Holy Spirit
a Person--The Last Dispensation--"Little Things"--The
Fame of a Christian 359
CHAPTER XXIX
A Victorious Sermon
Conquests by the Sermon on "The Unpardonable Sin"--What
It Is--Resisting the Truth--"Too Late"--Representative
of the Trinity--Death-bed Confessions--A Forgiving
God--Power of Revivals 370
CHAPTER XXX
Eternity! Eternity!
"What Shall the End Be?"--Men Believe in God--At the
Cross--The Judgment of God--Glad Tidings to All--The
Atonement of Christ--God's Word--Eternity and
Space--God's Infinite Love--Preparing for Eternity--A
Leap in the Dark--"The End Thereof" 383
CHAPTER XXXI
Our Long Home
"Heaven"--"I, Too, Must Die"--No Substitute for
Religion--Morality Not Enough--The Way of
Salvation--Rewards of Merit--A Place of Noble
People--"A Place for You"--The Missing 404
CHAPTER XXXII
Glorying in the Cross
"Atonement"--Suffering for the Guilty--Jesus' Atoning
Blood--No Argument Against Sin--"There is Sin"--"How
Long, O God?" 424
CHAPTER I
One of God's Tools
I want to be a giant for God.--BILLY SUNDAY.
Heaven often plays jokes on earth's worldly-wise. After the consensus
of experience and sagacity has settled upon a certain course and
type, lo, all the profundity of the sages is blown away as a speck of
dust and we have, say, a shockingly unconventional John the Baptist,
who does not follow the prescribed rules in dress, training, methods
or message. John the Baptist was God's laugh at the rabbis and the
Pharisees.
In an over-ecclesiastical age, when churchly authority had reached the
limit, a poor monk, child of a miner's hut, without influence or favor,
was called to break the power of the popes, and to make empires and
reshape history, flinging his shadow far down the centuries. Martin
Luther was God's laugh at ecclesiasticism.
While the brains and aristocracy and professional statesmanship of
America struggled in vain with the nation's greatest crisis, God
reached down close to the soil of the raw and ignored Middle West, and
picked up a gaunt and untutored specimen of the common people--a man
who reeked of the earth until the earth closed over him--and so saved
the Union and freed a race, through ungainly Abraham Lincoln. Thus
again Heaven laughed at exalted procedure and conventionality.
In our own day, with its blatant worldly wisdom, with its flaunting
prosperity, with its fashionable churchliness, with its flood of
"advanced" theology overwhelming the pulpit, God needed a prophet,
to call his people back to simple faith and righteousness. A nation
imperiled by luxury, greed, love of pleasure and unbelief cried aloud
for a deliverer. Surely this crisis required a great man, learned
in all the ways of the world, equipped with the best preparation of
American and foreign universities and theological seminaries, a man
trained in ecclesiastical leadership, and approved and honored by the
courts of the Church? So worldly wisdom decreed. But God laughed--and
produced, to the scandal of the correct and conventional, Billy Sunday,
a common man from the common people, who, like Lincoln, so wears the
signs and savor of the soil that fastidious folk, to whom sweat is
vulgar and to whom calloused hands are "bad form," quite lose their
suavity and poise in calling him "unrefined."
That he is God's tool is the first and last word about Billy Sunday.
He is a "phenomenon" only as God is forever doing phenomenal things,
and upsetting men's best-laid plans. He is simply a tool of God. For a
special work he is the special instrument. God called, and he answered.
All the many owlish attempts to "explain" Billy Sunday on psychological
and sociological grounds fall flat when they ignore the fact that he is
merely a handy man for the Lord's present use.
God is still, as ever, confounding all human wisdom by snatching the
condemned baby of a Hebrew slave out of Egypt's river to become a
nation's deliverer; by calling a shepherd boy from his sheep to be
Israel's greatest warrior and king; and by sending his only-begotten
Son to earth by way of a manger, and training him in a workingman's
home and a village carpenter shop. "My ways are not your ways," is a
remark of God, which he seems fond of repeating and illustrating.
There is no other explanation of Billy Sunday needed, or possible, than
that he is God's man sent in God's time. And if God chooses the weak
and foolish things of earth to confound the mighty, is not that but
another one of his inscrutable ways of showing that he is God?
Why are we so confident that Billy Sunday is the Lord's own man, when
so many learned critics have declared the contrary? Simply because he
has led more persons to make a public confession of discipleship to
Jesus Christ than any other man for a century past. Making Christians
is, from all angles, the greatest work in the world. Approximately two
hundred and fifty thousand persons, in the past twenty-five years, have
taken Sunday's hand, in token that henceforth their lives belong to the
Saviour.
That amazing statement is too big to be grasped at once. It requires
thinking over. The huge total of dry figures needs to be broken up
into its component parts of living human beings. Tens of thousands of
those men were husbands--hundreds of whom had been separated from their
wives and children by sin. Now, in reunited homes, whole families bless
the memory of the man of God who gave them back husbands and fathers.
Other tens of thousands were sons, over many of whom parents had long
prayed and agonized. It would be hard to convince these mothers, whose
sons have been given back to clean living and to Christian service,
that there is anything seriously wrong with Mr. Sunday's language,
methods or theology. Business men who find that a Sunday revival means
the paying up of the bad bills of old customers are ready to approve
on this evidence a man whose work restores integrity in commercial
relations.
Every conceivable type of humanity is included in that total of a
quarter of a million of Sunday converts. The college professor, the
prosperous business man, the eminent politician, the farmer, the
lawyer, the editor, the doctor, the author, the athlete, the "man about
town," the criminal, the drunkard, the society woman, the college
student, the workingman, the school boy and girl: the whole gamut of
life is covered by the stream of humanity that has "hit the sawdust
trail"--a phrase which has chilled the marrow of every theological
seminary in the land. But the trail leads home to the Father's House.
One must reach into the dictionary for big, strong words in
characterizing the uniqueness of Billy Sunday's work. So I say that
another aspect of his success is fairly astounding. He, above all
others in our time, has broken through the thick wall of indifference
which separates the Church from the world. Church folk commonly avoid
the subject of this great fixed gulf. We do not like to face the fact
that the mass of mankind does not bother its head about conventional
religious matters. Even the majority of church-goers are blankly
uninterested in the general affairs of religion. Sad to tell, our
bishops and board secretaries and distinguished preachers are really
only local celebrities. Their names mean nothing in newspaper offices
or to newspaper readers: there are not six clergymen in the United
States with a really national reputation. Each in his own circle, of
locality or denomination, may be Somebody with a big S. But the world
goes on unheeding. Great ecclesiastical movements and meetings are
entirely unrecorded by the secular press. The Church's problem of
problems is how to smash, or even to crack, the partition which shuts
off the world from the Church.
Billy Sunday has done that. He has set all sorts and conditions of
men to talking about religion. Go to the lowest dive in New York's
"Tenderloin" or in San Francisco's "Barbary Coast," and mention the
name "Billy Sunday," and everybody will recognize it, and be ready
to discuss the man and his message. Stand before a session of the
American Philosophical Society and pronounce the words "Billy Sunday"
and every one of the learned savants present will be able to talk about
the man, even though few of them know who won last season's baseball
championship or who is the world's champion prize-fighter.
This is a feat of first magnitude. All levels of society have been made
aware of Billy Sunday and his gospel. When the evangelist went to New
York for an evening address, early in the year 1914, the throngs were
so great that the police were overwhelmed by the surging thousands.
Even Mr. Sunday himself could not obtain admittance to the meeting for
more than half an hour. Andrew Carnegie could not get into the hall
that bears his name. Probably a greater number of persons tried to
hear this evangelist that night than were gathered in all the churches
of greater New York combined on the preceding Sunday night. To turn
thousands of persons away from his meetings is a common experience of
Mr. Sunday. More than ten thousand, mostly men, tried in vain to get
into the overcrowded Scranton tabernacle at a single session. Every
thoughtful man or woman must be interested in the man who thus can make
religion interesting to the common people.
The despair of the present-day Church is the modern urban center. Our
generation had not seen a great city shaken by the gospel until Billy
Sunday went to Pittsburgh. That he did it is the unanimous report of
press and preachers and business men. Literally that whole city was
stirred to its most sluggish depths by the Sunday campaign. No baseball
series or political campaign ever moved the community so deeply.
Everywhere one went the talk was of Billy Sunday and his meetings. From
the bell boys in the hotels to the millionaires in the Duquesne Club,
from the workmen in the mills and the girls in the stores, to the women
in exclusive gatherings, Sunday was the staple of conversation.
Day by day, all the newspapers in the city gave whole pages to the
Sunday meetings. The sermons were reported entire. No other topic
ever had received such full attention for so long a time at the hands
of the press as the Sunday campaign. These issues of the papers were
subscribed for by persons in all parts of the land. Men and women
were converted who never heard the sound of the evangelist's voice.
This series of Pittsburgh meetings, more than anything else in his
experience, impressed the power of Sunday upon the metropolitan centers
of the nation at large; the country folk had long before learned of him.
Any tabulation of Mr. Sunday's influence must give a high place to
the fact that he has made good press "copy": he has put religion on
the front pages of the dailies; and has made it a present issue with
the millions. Under modern conditions, no man can hope to evangelize
America who has not also access to the columns of the newspapers.
Within the memory of living men, no other man or agency has brought
religion so powerfully and consecutively into the press as William A.
Sunday, whom some of his scholarly critics have called "illiterate."
All of which proves the popular interest in vital, contemporaneous
religion. Men's ears are dulled by the "shop talk" of the pulpit. They
are weary of the worn platitudes of professional piety. Nobody cares
for the language of Canaan, in which many ministers, with reverence for
the dead past, have tried to enswathe the living truths of the Gospel,
as if they were mummies. In the colloquial tongue of the common people,
Jesus first proclaimed his gospel, and "the common people heard him
gladly," although many of the learned and aristocratic ecclesiastics of
his day were scandalized by his free and popular way of putting things,
by his "common" stories, and by his disregard for the precedents of the
schools. Whatever else may be said about Billy Sunday's much-discussed
forms of speech, this point is clear, and denied by nobody: he makes
himself and his message clearly understood by all classes of people.
However much one may disagree with him, nobody fails to catch his
meaning. He harnesses the common words of the street up to the chariot
of divine truth. Every-day folk, the uncritical, unscholarly crowd of
us, find no fault with the fact that Sunday uses the same sort of terms
that we do. In fresh, vigorous, gripping style, he makes his message
unmistakable.
College students like him as much as do the farmers and mechanics. In
a single day's work at the University of Pennsylvania, when thousands
of students crowded his meetings, and gave reverent, absorbed attention
to his message, several hundred of them openly dedicated their lives
to Christ, and in token thereof publicly grasped his hand. Dr. John
R. Mott, the world's greatest student leader, once said to me, in
commenting upon Sunday: "You cannot fool a great body of students.
They get a man's measure. If he is genuine, they know it, and if he is
not, they quickly find it out. Their devotion to Mr. Sunday is very
significant."
[Illustration: "GOD LIKES A LITTLE HUMOR, AS EVIDENCED BY THE FACT THAT
HE MADE THE MONKEY, THE PARROT--AND SOME OF YOU PEOPLE."]
This man, who meets life on all levels, and proves that the gospel
message is for no one particular class, is a distinctively American
type. Somebody has said that the circus is the most democratic of
American institutions: it brings all sorts and conditions of people
together on a common plane and for a common purpose. The Sunday
evangelistic meetings are more democratic than a circus. They are
a singular exhibit of American life--perhaps the most distinctive
gathering to be found in our land today. His appeal is to the great
mass of the people. The housekeepers who seldom venture away from their
homes, the mechanics who do not go to church, the "men about town"
who profess a cynical disdain for religion, the "down and outs," the
millionaires, the society women, the business and professional men, the
young fellows who feel "too big" to go to Sunday school--all these, and
scores of other types, may be found night after night in the barn-like
wooden tabernacles which are always erected for the Sunday meetings.
Our common American life seems to meet and merge in this baseball
evangelist, who once erected tents for another evangelist, and now has
to have special auditoriums built to hold his own crowds; and who has
risen from a log cabin to a place of national power and honor. Nowhere
else but in America could one find such an unconventional figure as
Billy Sunday.
Succeeding chapters will tell in some detail the story of the man and
his work; and in most of them the man will speak his own messages. But
for explanation of his power and his work it can only be said, as of
old, "There was a man sent from God, whose name was"--Billy Sunday.