Playing the New Game
It is not necessary to be in a big place to do big things.--BILLY
SUNDAY.
If Billy Sunday had not been an athlete he would not today be the
physical marvel in the pulpit that he is; if he had not been reared
in the ranks of the plain people he would not have possessed the
vocabulary and insight into life which are essential parts of his
equipment; if he had not served a long apprenticeship to toil he
would not display his present pitiless industry; if he had not been
a cog in the machinery of organized baseball, with wide travel and
much experience of men, he would not be able to perfect the amazing
organization of Sunday evangelistic campaigns; if he had not been a
member and elder of a Presbyterian church he could not have resisted
the religious vagaries which lead so many evangelists and immature
Christian workers astray; if he had not been trained in three years of
Y. M. C. A. service he would not today be the flaming and insistent
protagonist of personal work that he now is; if he had not been
converted definitely and consciously and quickly in a rescue mission he
could not now preach his gospel of immediate conversion.
All of which is but another way of saying that Sunday was trained in
God's school. God prepared the man for the work he was preparing for
him. Only by such uncommon training could this unique messenger of the
gospel be produced. A college course doubtless would have submerged
Sunday into the level of the commonplace. A theological seminary would
have denatured him. Evidently Sunday has learned the lesson of the
value of individuality; he prizes it, preaches about it, and practices
it. He probably does not know what "_sui generis_" means, but he is it.
Over and over again he urges that instead of railing at what we have
not enjoyed, we should magnify what we already possess. The shepherd's
rod of Moses, rightly wielded, may be mightier than a king's scepter.
As we approach the development of the unique work of Billy Sunday,
which is without a parallel in the history of evangelism, we must
reckon with those forces which developed his personality and trace the
steps which led him into his present imperial activity. For he has gone
forward a step at a time.
He followed the wise rule of the rescue mission, that the saved should
say so. At the very beginning he began to bear testimony to his new
faith. Wherever opportunity offered he spoke a good word for Jesus
Christ. In many towns and cities his testimony was heard in those early
days; and there was not a follower of the baseball game who did not
know that Billy Sunday was a Christian.
The convert who does not join a church is likely soon to be in a bad
way; so Sunday early united with the Jefferson Park Presbyterian
Church, Chicago. He went into religious activity with all the ardor
that he displayed on the baseball field. He attended the Christian
Endeavor society, prayer-meeting and the mid-week church service.
This is significant; for it is usually the church members who are
faithful at the mid-week prayer-meetings who are the vital force in a
congregation.
Other rewards than spiritual awaited Sunday at the prayer-meeting;
for there he met Helen A. Thompson, the young woman who subsequently
became his wife. Between the meeting and the marriage altar there were
various obstacles to be overcome. Another suitor was in the way, and
besides, Miss Thompson's father did not take kindly to the idea of
a professional baseball player as a possible son-in-law, for he had
old-fashioned Scotch notions of things. "Love conquers all," and in
September, 1888, the young couple were married, taking their wedding
trip by going on circuit with the baseball team.
Mrs. Sunday's influence upon her husband has been extraordinary. It
is a factor to be largely considered in any estimate of the man. He is
a devoted husband, of the American type, and with his ardent loyalty
to his wife has complete confidence in her judgment. She is his man
of affairs. Her Scotch heritage has endowed her with the prudent
qualities of that race, and she is the business manager of Mr. Sunday's
campaigns. She it is who holds her generous, careless husband down to a
realization of the practicalities of life.
He makes no important decisions without consulting her, and she travels
with him nearly all of the time, attending his meetings and watching
over his work and his personal well-being like a mother. In addition
Mrs. Sunday does yeoman service in the evangelistic campaigns.
The helplessness of the evangelist without his wife is almost
ludicrous: he dislikes to settle any question, whether it be an
acceptance of an invitation from a city or the employment of an
additional worker, without Mrs. Sunday's counsel. Frequently he turns
vexed problems over to her, and abides implicitly by her decision,
without looking into the matter himself at all.
Four children--Helen, George, William and Paul--have been born to the
Sundays, two of whom are themselves married. The modest Sunday home is
in Winona Lake, Indiana. When Mrs. Sunday is absent with her husband,
the two younger children are left in the care of a trusted helper. The
evangelist himself is home for only a short period each summer.
Mrs. Sunday was the deciding factor in determining her husband to
abandon baseball for distinctively religious work. A woman of real
Scotch piety, in the time of decision she chose the better part. Her
husband had been addressing Y. M. C. A. meetings, Sunday-schools and
Christian Endeavor societies. He was undeniably a poor speaker. No
prophet could have foreseen the present master of platform art in the
stammering, stumbling young man whose only excuse for addressing public
meetings was the eagerness of men to hear the celebrated baseball
player's story. His speech was merely his testimony, such as is
required of all mission converts.
If Sunday could not talk well on his feet he could handle individual
men. His aptness in dealing with men led the Chicago Young Men's
Christian Association to offer him an assistant secretaryship in the
department of religious work. It is significant that the baseball
player went into the Y. M. C. A. not as a physical director but in the
distinctively spiritual sphere. He refused an invitation to become
physical director; for his religious zeal from the first outshone his
physical prowess.
Those three years of work in the Chicago Association bulk large in the
development of the evangelist. They were not all spent in dealing with
the unconverted, by any means. Sunday's tasks included the securing
of speakers for noon-day prayer-meetings, the conducting of office
routine, the raising of money, the distribution of literature, the
visiting of saloons and other places to which invitations should be
carried, and the following up of persons who had displayed an interest
in the meetings. Much of it was sanctified drudgery: but it was all
drill for destiny. The young man saw at close range and with particular
detail what sin could do to men; and he also learned the power of the
Gospel to make sinners over.
The evangelist often alludes to those days of personal work in Chicago.
Such stories as the following have been heard by thousands.
A Father Disowned
"While I was in the Y. M. C. A. in Chicago I was standing on the corner
one night and a man came along with his toes sticking out and a ragged
suit on and a slouch hat and asked me for a dime to get something to
eat. I told him I wouldn't give him a dime because he would go and get
a drink. He said, 'You wouldn't let me starve, would you?' I told him
no, but that I wouldn't give him the money. I asked him to come to
the Y. M. C. A. with me and stay until after the meeting and I would
take him out and get him a good supper and a bed. He wanted me to do it
right away before going to the Y. M. C. A., but I told him that I was
working for someone until ten o'clock. So he came up to the meeting and
stayed through the meeting and was very much interested. I saw that he
used excellent language and questioned him and found that he was a man
who had been Adjutant General of one of the Central States and had at
one time been the editor of two of the biggest newspapers.
"I went with him after the meeting and got him a supper and a bed and
went to some friends and we got his clothes. I asked him if he had any
relatives and he said he had one son who was a bank cashier but that he
had disowned him and his picture was taken from the family album and
his name was never spoken in the house, all because he was now down and
out, on account of booze.
"I wrote to the boy and said, 'I've found your father. Send me some
money to help him.'
"He wrote back and said for me never to mention his father's name to
him again, that it wasn't ever spoken around the house and that his
father was forgotten.
"I replied: 'You miserable, low-down wretch. You can't disown your
father and refuse to help him because he is down and out. Send me some
money or I will publish the story in all of the papers.' He sent me
five dollars and that's all I ever got from him. I took care of the old
man all winter and in the spring I went to a relief society in Chicago
and got him a ticket to his home and put him on the train and that was
the last I ever saw of him."
Redeeming a Son
"I stood on the street one Sunday night giving out tickets inviting
men to the men's meeting in Farwell Hall. Along came a young fellow, I
should judge he was thirty, who looked prematurely old, and he said,
'Pard, will you give me a dime?'
"I said, 'No, sir.'
"'I want to get somethin' to eat.'
"I said, 'You look to me as though you were a booze-fighter.'
"'I am.'
"'I'll not give you money, but I'll get your supper.'
"He said, 'Come on. I haven't eaten for two days.'
"'My time is not my own until ten o'clock. You go upstairs until then
and I'll buy you a good supper and get you a good, warm, clean bed in
which to sleep, but I'll not give you the money.'
"He said, 'Thank you, I'll go.' He stayed for the meeting. I saw he was
moved, and after the meeting I stood by his side. He wept and I talked
to him about Jesus Christ, and he told me this story:
"There were three boys in the family. They lived in Boston. The father
died, the will was probated, he was given his portion, took it, started
out drinking and gambling. At last he reached Denver, his money was
gone, and he got a position as fireman in the Denver and Rio Grande
switchyards. His mother kept writing to him, but he told me that he
never read the letters. He said that when he saw the postmark and the
writing he threw the letter into the firebox, but one day, he couldn't
tell why, he opened the letter and it read:
"'Dear----: I haven't heard from you directly, but I am sure that you
must need a mother's care in the far-off West, and unless you answer
this in a reasonable time I'm going to Denver to see you.' And she
went on pleading, as only a mother could, and closed it: 'Your loving
mother.'
"He said, 'I threw the letter in the fire and paid no more heed to it.
One day about two weeks later I saw a woman coming down the track and I
said to the engineer: "That looks like my mother." She drew near, and I
said: "Yes, that's mother." What do you think I did?'
"I said, 'Why you climbed out of your engine, kissed her and asked God
to forgive you.'
"He said, 'I did nothing of the kind. I was so low-down, I wouldn't
even speak to my mother. She followed me up and down the switchyard
and even followed me to my boarding house. I went upstairs, changed
my clothes, came down, and she said, "Frank, stay and talk with me."
I pushed by her and went out and spent the night in sin. I came back
in the morning, changed my clothes and went to work. For four days she
followed me up and down the switchyards and then she said, "Frank, you
have broken my heart, and I am going away tomorrow."
[Illustration: "FRANK, KISS ME GOOD-BYE!"]
"'I happened to be near the depot with the engine when she got on the
train and she raised the window and said, "Frank, kiss me good-bye."
I stood talking with some of my drinking and gambling friends and one
man said, "Frank Adsitt, you are a fool to treat your mother like that.
Kiss her good-bye." I jerked from him and turned back. I heard the
conductor call "All aboard." I heard the bell on the engine ring and
the train started out, and I heard my mother cry, "Oh, Frank, if you
won't kiss me good-bye, for God's sake turn and look at me!"
"'Mr. Sunday, when the train on the Burlington Railroad pulled out of
Denver, I stood with my back to my mother. That's been nine years ago
and I have never seen nor heard from her.'
"I led him to Jesus. I got him a position in the old Exposition
building on the lake front. He gave me the money he didn't need for
board and washing. I kept his money for months. He came to me one day
and asked for it.
"He used to come to the noon meetings every day. Finally I missed him,
and I didn't see him again until in June, 1893, during the World's Fair
he walked into the Y. M. C. A. I said, 'Why, Frank, how do you do?'
"He said, 'How do you know me?'
"I said, 'I have never forgotten you; how is your mother?'
"He smiled, then his face quickly changed to sadness, and he said,
'She is across the street in the Brevoort House. I am taking her to
California to fill her last days with sunshine.'
"Three months later, out in Pasadena, she called him to her bedside,
drew him down, kissed him, and said, 'Good-bye; I can die happy because
I know my boy is a Christian.'"
The Gambler
"I have reached down into the slime, and have been privileged to help
tens of thousands out of the mire of sin--and I believe that most of
them will be saved, too. I've helped men in all walks of life. When I
was in Chicago I helped a man and got him a position, and so was able
to restore him to his wife and children. One night a fellow came to me
and told me that the man was playing faro bank down on Clark Street. I
said: 'Why that can hardly be--I took dinner with him only a few hours
ago.'
"But my informant had told me the truth, so I put on my coat and went
down LaSalle Street and past the New York Life Building and along up
the stairway to the gambling room. I went past the big doorkeeper, and
I found a lot of men in there, playing keno and faro bank and roulette
and stud and draw poker. I saw my man there, just playing a hand. In a
moment he walked over to the bar and ordered a Rhine wine and seltzer.
[Illustration: THE PACIFIC GARDEN MISSION IN CHICAGO, WHERE BILLY
SUNDAY WAS CONVERTED.]
"I walked over and touched him on the shoulder, and he looked and
turned pale. I said, 'Come out of this. Come with me.' He said, 'Here's
my money,' and pulled $144 from his pocket and handed it to me. 'I
don't want your money.' He refused at first, and it was one o'clock
in the morning before I got him away from there. I took him home and
talked to him, then I sent down into Ohio for an old uncle of his, for
he had forged notes amounting to $2,000 or so, and we had to get him
out of trouble. We got him all fixed up and we got him a job selling
relief maps, and he made $5,000 a year.
"I didn't hear from him for a long time; then one day Jailor Whitman
called me up and told me that Tom Barrett, an old ball player I knew
well, wanted me to come up and see a man who had been sentenced to the
penitentiary. I went down to the jail and the prisoner was my friend.
I asked him what was the matter, and he said that he and some other
fellows had framed up a plan to stick up a jewelry store. He was caught
and the others got away. He wouldn't snitch, and so he was going down
to Joliet on an indeterminate sentence of from one to fourteen years.
He said: 'You are the only man that will help me. Will you do it?'
"I said: 'I won't help you, I won't spend so much as a postage stamp on
you if you are going to play me dirt again!' He promised to do better
as soon as he got out, and I wrote a letter to my friend, Andy Russell,
chairman of the board of pardons. He took up the case and we got my
friend's sentence cut down to a maximum of five years.
"Time passed again, and one day he came in dressed fit to kill. He had
on an $80 overcoat, a $50 suit, a $4 necktie, a pair of patent leather
shoes that cost $15, shirt buttons as big as hickory nuts and diamond
cuff buttons. He walked up to my desk in the Y. M. C. A. and pulled out
a roll of bills. There were a lot of them--yellow fellows. I noticed
that there was one for $500. There was over $4,500 in the roll. He
said: 'I won it last night at faro bank.' He asked me to go out to
dinner with him and I went. We had everything on the bill of fare,
from soup to nuts, and the check was $7.60 apiece for two suppers. I've
never had such a dinner since.
"We talked things over. He said he was making money hand over
fist--that he could make more in a week than I could in a year. I was
working at the Y. M. C. A. for $83 a month, and then not getting it,
and baseball managers were making me tempting offers of good money to
go back into the game at $500 to $1,000 a month to finish the season.
But I wouldn't do it. Nobody called me a grafter then. 'Well,' I said
to my friend, 'old man, you may have more at the end of the year than
I've got--maybe I won't have carfare--but I'll be ahead of you.'
"Where is he now? Down at Joliet, where there is a big walled
institution and where the stripes on your clothes run crossways."
A Living Testimony
"I had a friend who was a brilliant young fellow. He covered the
Chino-Japanese war for a New York paper. He was on his way home when
he was shipwrecked, and the captain and he were on an island living on
roots for a week and then they signaled a steamer and got started home.
He got word from the New York _Tribune_ and they told him to go to
Frisco, so he went, and they told him to come across the arid country
and write up the prospects of irrigation. And as he walked across
those plains, he thought of how they would blossom if they were only
irrigated. Then he thought of how his life was like that desert, with
nothing in it but waste.
"He got to Chicago and got a job on the _Times_ and lost it on
account of drunkenness, and couldn't get another on account of having
no recommendation. So he walked out one winter night and took his
reporter's book, addressed it to his father, and wrote something like
this: 'I've made a miserable failure of this life. I've disgraced you
and sent mother to a premature grave. If you care to look for me
you'll find my body in the Chicago River.' He tossed aside the book and
it fell on the snow.
"He leaped to the rail of the bridge, but a policeman who had been
watching him sprang and caught him. He begged him to let him leap,
but the policeman wouldn't do it and got his story from him. Then the
policeman said, 'Well, I don't know whether you're stringing me or not,
but if half of what you say is true you can make a big thing out of
life. I'm not much on religion, but I'll show you a place where they
will keep you,' and he took him to the Pacific Garden Mission at 100
East Van Buren Street, which for 13,000 nights has had its doors open
every night.
"He went in and sat down by a bum. He read some of the mottos, like
'When did you write to mother last?' and they began to work on him and
he asked the bum what graft they got out of this. The bum flared right
up and said there was no graft, that Mrs. Clark had just mortgaged her
home for $3,000 to pay back rent. Then he told him he could sleep right
there and go down in the morning and get something to eat free, and if
he could not land a bed by next night he could come back to one of the
benches. Then my friend got up and told him the story of Jesus Christ,
and the young man went down and accepted Christ. He was so full of gold
bromide cures that he tingled when he talked and he jingled when he
walked.
"He started out to give his testimony and he was a marvelous power. I
met him some time later in an elevator in Chicago, and he was dressed
to kill with a silk lid and a big diamond and the latest cut Prince
Albert, and he said, 'Bill, that was a great day for me. I started out
with not enough clothes to make a tail for a kite or a pad for a crutch
and now look at me.' He was secretary in the firm of Morgan & Wright,
and was drawing $175 a month. He is an expert stenographer. A newspaper
in New York had written him to take an associate editorship, but I told
him not to do it, to stay where he was and tell his story."
The next class in the University of Experience which Sunday entered
was that of professional evangelistic work, in association with Rev.
J. Wilbur Chapman, D.D., the well-known Presbyterian evangelist. This
invitation came after three years of service in the Chicago Y. M. C.
A. Not yet to platform speaking as his chief task was Sunday called.
Far from it. He was a sort of general roustabout for the evangelist.
His duties were multifarious. He was advance agent, going ahead to
arrange meetings, to organize choirs, to help the local committee
of arrangements with its advertising or other preparations, and, in
general, tying up all loose ends. When tents were used he would help
erect them with his own hands; the fists that so sturdily beat pulpits
today, have often driven home tent pegs. Sunday sold the evangelist's
song books and sermons at the meetings; helped take up the collection,
and, when need arose, spoke from the platform. The persons who wonder
at the amazing efficiency for organization displayed by Sunday
overlook this unique apprenticeship to a distinguished evangelist. He
is a "practical man" in every aspect of evangelistic campaigns, from
organizing a local committee and building the auditorium, to handling
and training the converts who come forward.
The providence of all this is clear in retrospect: but as for Sunday
himself, he was being led by a way that he knew not.