A Clean Man on Social Sins
There are a good many things worse than living and dying an old maid,
and one of them is marrying the wrong man.--BILLY SUNDAY.
Sunday's trumpet gives no uncertain sound on plain, every-day
righteousness. He is like an Old Testament prophet in his passion for
clean conduct. No phase of his work is more notable than the zeal for
right living which he leaves behind him. His converts become partisans
of purity.
Sunday's own mind is clean. He does not, as is sometimes the case, make
his pleas for purity a real ministry of evil. In the guise of promoting
purity he does not pander to pruriency. As outspoken as the Bible upon
social sin, he yet leaves an impression so chaste that no father would
hesitate to take his boy to the big men's meeting which Sunday holds in
every campaign; and every woman who has once heard him talk to women
would be glad to have her daughter hear him also.
The verdict of all Christians who have studied conditions in a
community after one of the Sunday campaigns is that Sunday has been
like a thunder storm that has cleared the moral atmosphere. Life is
sweeter and safer and more beautiful for boys and girls after this man
has dealt plainly with social sins and temptations. Of course, it is
more important to clean up a neighborhood's mind than its streets.
Even in cold print one may feel somewhat of the power of the man's
message on "The Moral Leper."
A PLAIN TALK TO MEN
"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in
the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the
sight of thine eyes: but know thou that for all these things God will
bring thee into judgment."
"Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that
shall he also reap."
In other words, do just as you please; lie if you want to, steal if you
want to. God won't stop you, but he will hold you responsible in the
end. Do just as you please until the end comes and the undertaker comes
along and pumps the embalming fluid into you and then you are all in.
No one is living in ignorance of what will become of him if he does not
go right and trot square. He knows there is a heaven for the saved and
a hell for the damned, and that's all there is to it.
Many men start out on a life of pleasure. Please remember two things.
First, pleasure soon has an end, and, second, there is a day of
judgment coming and you'll get what's coming to you. God gives every
man a square deal.
If a man stood up and told me he was going to preach on the things I am
this afternoon, I'd want him to answer me several questions, and if he
could do that I'd tell him to go ahead.
First--Are you kindly disposed toward me?
Second--Are you doing this to help me?
Third--Do you know what you're talking about?
Fourth--Do you practice what you preach?
That's fair. Well, for the first. God knows I am kindly disposed toward
you. Second, God knows I would do anything in my power to help you be a
better man. I want to make it easier for you to be square, and harder
for you to go to hell. Third, I know what I'm talking about, for I
have the Bible to back me up in parts and the statements of eminent
physicians in other parts. And fourth, "Do I practice what I preach?" I
will defy and challenge any man or woman on earth, and I'll look any
man in the eye and challenge him, in the twenty-seven years I have
been a professing Christian, to show anything against me. If I don't
live what I preach, gentlemen, I'll leave the pulpit and never walk
back here again. I live as I preach and I defy the dirty dogs who have
insulted me and my wife and spread black-hearted lies and vilifications.
I was born and bred on a farm and at the age of eleven I held my place
with men in the harvest field. When I was only nine years old I milked
ten cows every morning. I know what hard knocks are. I have seen the
seamy side of life. I have crawled out of the sewers and squalor and
want. I have struggled ever since I was six years old, an orphan son of
a dead soldier, up to this pulpit this afternoon. I know what it is to
go to bed with an honest dollar in my overalls pocket, when the Goddess
of Liberty became a Jenny Lind and the eagle on the other side became a
nightingale and they'd sing a poor, homeless orphan boy to sleep. I'm
not here to explode hot air and theories to you.
Some men here in town, if their wives asked them if they were coming
down here, would say: "Oh no, I don't want to go anywhere I can't take
you, dear." The dirty old dogs, they've been many a place they wouldn't
take their wife and they wouldn't even let her know they were there.
If sin weren't so deceitful it wouldn't be so attractive. The effects
get stronger and stronger while you get weaker and weaker all the time,
and there is less chance of breaking away.
Many think a Christian has to be a sort of dish-rag proposition, a
wishy-washy, sissified sort of a galoot that lets everybody make a
doormat out of him. Let me tell you the manliest man is the man who
will acknowledge Jesus Christ.
Christian Character
Christianity is the capital on which you build your character. Don't
you let the devil fool you. You never become a man until you become a
Christian. Christianity is the capital on which you do business. It's
your character that gets you anything. Your reputation is what people
say about you, but your character is what God and your wife and the
angels know about you. Many have reputations of being good, but their
characters would make a black mark on a piece of coal or tarred paper.
I was over in Terre Haute, Indiana, not long ago, and I was in a bank
there admiring the beauty of it when the vice-president, Mr. McCormick,
a friend of mine, said: "Bill, you haven't seen the vault yet," and
he opened up the vaults there, carefully contrived against burglars,
and let me in. There were three, and I wandered from one to another.
No one watched me. I could have filled my pockets with gold or silver,
but no one watched me. Why did they trust me? Because they knew I was
preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, and living up to it. That's why
they trusted me. There was a time in my life when a man wouldn't trust
me with a yellow dog on a corner fifteen minutes.
Before I was converted I could go five rounds so fast you couldn't see
me for the dust, and I'm still pretty handy with my dukes and I can
still deliver the goods with all express charges prepaid. Before I was
converted I could run one hundred yards in ten seconds and circle the
bases in fourteen seconds, and I could run just as fast after I was
converted. So you don't have to be a dish-rag proposition at all.
When a person's acts affect only himself they can be left to the
conscience of the individual, but when they affect others the law steps
in. When a child has diphtheria, you are not allowed personal liberty;
you are quarantined, because your personal liberty could endanger
others if exercised. So you haven't any right to live in sin. You say
you'll do it anyhow. All right, you'll go to hell, too. Adam and Eve
said they would eat the apple anyhow, and the world became a graveyard,
and here's the result today.
I look out into the world and see a man living in sin. I argue with
him, I plead with him. I cry out warning words. I brand that man with a
black brand, whose iniquities are responsible for the fall of others.
No man lives to himself alone. I hurt or help others by my life. When
you go to hell you're going to drag some one else down with you and if
you go to heaven you're going to take some one else with you. You say
you hate sin. Of course you do if you have self-respect. But you never
saw anyone who hates sin worse than I do, or loves a sinner more than
I. I'm fighting for the sinners. I'm fighting to save your soul, just
as a doctor fights to save your life from a disease. I'm your friend,
and you'll find that I'll not compromise one bit with sin. I'll do
anything to help you. No man will argue that sin is a good thing. Not
a one who does not believe that the community would be better off if
there was no sin. I preach against vice to show you that it will make
your girl an outcast and your boy a drunkard. I'm fighting everything
that will lead to this and if I have to be your enemy to fight it, God
pity you, for I'm going to fight. People do not fight sin until it
becomes a vice.
You say you're not afraid of sin. You ought to be, for your children.
It doesn't take boys long to get on the wrong track, and while you
are scratching gravel to make one lap, your boy makes ten. We've got
kids who have not yet sprouted long breeches who know more about sin
and vice than Methuselah. There are little frizzled-top sissies not
yet sprouting long dresses who know more about vice than did their
great-grandmothers when they were seventy-five years old. The girl who
drinks will abandon her virtue. What did Methuselah know about smoking
cigarettes? I know there are some sissy fellows out there who object to
my talking plain and know you shirk from talking plain.
If any one ever tells you that you can't be virtuous and enjoy good
health, I brand him as a low, infamous, black-hearted liar.
Ask any afflicted man you see on the street. If you could only reveal
the heart of every one of them! In most you would find despair and
disease.
How little he thinks when he is nursing that lust that he is nursing a
demon which, like a vampire, will suck his blood and wreck his life and
blacken and blight his existence. And if any little children are born
to him, they will be weak anemics without the proper blood in their
veins to support them. Our young men ought to be taught that no sum
they can leave to a charitable institution can blot out the deeds of an
ignominious life. You don't have to look far for the reason why so many
young men fail; why they go through life weak, ambitionless, useless.
Common Sense
Let's be common folks together today. Let's be men, and talk sense.
As a rule a man wants something better for his children than he has
had for himself. My father died before I was born and I lived with my
grandfather. He smoked, but he didn't want me to. He chewed, but he
didn't want me to. He drank, but he didn't want me to. He cussed, but
he didn't want me to. He made wine that would make a man fight his own
mother after he had drunk it. I remember how I used to find the bottles
and suck the wine through a straw or an onion top.
One day a neighbor was in and my grandfather asked him for a chew. He
went to hand it back, and I wanted some. He said I couldn't have it. I
said I wanted it anyhow, and he picked me up and turned me across his
knee and gave me a crack that made me see stars as big as moons.
If there is a father that hits the booze, he doesn't want his son to.
If he is keeping some one on the side, he doesn't want his son to. In
other words, you would not want your son to live like you if you are
not living right.
An old general was at the bedside of his dying daughter. He didn't
believe in the Bible and his daughter said, "What shall I do? You
don't believe in the Bible. Mamma does. If I obey one I'm going against
the other." The old general put his arms around his daughter and said:
"Follow your mother's way; it is the safest." Man wants his children to
have that which is sure.
I have sometimes imagined that young fellow in Luke xv. He came to
his father and said, "Dig up. I'm tired of this and want to see the
world." His father didn't know what he meant. "Come across with the
mazuma, come clean, divvy. I want the coin, see?" Finally the father
tumbled, and he said, "I got you," and he divided up his share and gave
it to the young man. Then he goes down to Babylon and starts out on a
sporting life. He meets the young blood and the gay dame. I can imagine
that young fellow the first time he swore. If his mother had been near
he would have looked at her and blushed rose red. But he thought he had
to cuss to be a man.
No man can be a good husband, no man can be a good father, no man can
be a respectable citizen, no man can be a gentleman, and swear. You can
hang out a sign of gentleman, but when you cuss you might as well take
it in.
There are three things which will ruin any town and give it a bad
name--open licensed saloons; a dirty, cussing, swearing gang of
blacklegs on the street; and vile story tellers. Let a town be known
for these three things, and these alone, and you could never start a
boom half big enough to get one man there.
Old men, young men, boys, swear. What do you cuss for? It doesn't do
you any good, gains you nothing in business or society; it loses you
the esteem of men. God said more about cussing than anything. God said,
"Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not bear
false witness," but God said more about cussing than them all; and men
are still cussing. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in
vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who taketh his name in
vain."
No Excuse for Swearing
I can see how you can get out of anything but cussing. I can see how
a man could be placed in such a position that he would kill and be
exonerated by the law of God and man, if he killed to protect his life,
or the life of another.
I can see how a man could be forced to steal if he stole to keep his
wife from starving.
Up in Chicago several years ago there was a long-continued strike and
the last division of the union treasury had given each man twenty-five
cents. A man went into the railroad yards and got a bag of coal from
one of the cars. They pinched him and he came up before a judge. He
told the judge that he had only the twenty-five cents of the last
division and he spent that for food. His wife and two children were at
home starving and he had no fire. He stole the coal to cook their food.
The judge thundered, "Get out of this room and get home and build that
fire as quickly as you can."
Say, boys, if I was on a jury and you could prove to me that a father
had stolen a loaf of bread to keep his wife from starving you could
keep me in the room until the ants took me out through the keyhole
before I'd stick him. That may not be law, I don't know; but you'll
find there is a big streak of human nature in Bill.
There isn't a fellow in this crowd but what would be disgusted if his
wife or sister would cuss and hit the booze like he does. If she would
put fifteen or twenty beers under her belt, he'd go whining around a
divorce court for a divorce right away and say he couldn't live with
her. Why, you dirty dog, she has to live with you.
I heard of a fellow whose wife thought she would show him how he
sounded around the house and give him a dose of his own medicine. So
one morning he came down and asked for his breakfast. "Why you old
blankety, blank, blank, bald-headed, blankety, blankety, blank, you can
get your own breakfast." He was horrified, but every time he tried to
say anything she would bring out a bunch of lurid oaths until finally
he said, "Wife, if you'll cut out that cussing I'll never swear again."
I have sometimes tried to imagine myself in Damascus on review day, and
have seen a man riding on a horse richly caparisoned with trappings
of gold and silver, and he himself clothed in garments of the finest
fabrics, and the most costly, though with a face so sad and melancholy
that it would cause the beholder to turn and look a second and third
time. But he was a leper. And a man unaccustomed to such scenes might
be heard to make a remark like this: "How unequally God seems to divide
his favors! There is a man who rides and others walk; he is clothed in
costly garments; they are almost naked while he is well fed," and they
contrast the difference between the man on the horse and the others. If
we only knew the breaking hearts of the people we envy we would pity
them from the bottom of our souls.
I was being driven through a suburb of Chicago by a real estate man who
wanted to sell me a lot. He was telling me who lived here and who lived
there, and what an honor it would be for me and my children to possess
a home there. We were driving past a house that must have cost $100,000
and he said: "That house is owned by Mr. So-and-So. He is one of our
multi-millionaires, and he and his wife have been known to live in that
house for months and never speak to each other. They each have separate
apartments, each has a separate retinue of servants, each a dining-room
and sleeping apartments, and months come and go by and they never speak
to each other." My thoughts hurried back to the little flat we called
our home, where we had lived for seventeen years. I have paid rent
enough to pay for it. There wasn't much in it; I could load it in two
furniture vans, maybe three, counting the piano, but I would not trade
the happiness and the joy and the love of that little flat if I had to
take that palatial home and the sorrow and the things that went with
it.
Family Skeletons
Suppose you were driving along the street and a man who was intimately
acquainted with the skeletons that are in every family, should tell you
the secrets of them all, of that boy who has broken his father's heart
by being a drunkard, a blackleg gambler, and that girl who has gone
astray, and that wife who is a common drunkard, made so by society, and
the father himself who is also a sinner.
Leprosy is exceedingly loathsome, and as I study its pathology I am
not surprised that God used it as a type of sin. A man who is able
to understand this disease, its beginning and its progress, might
be approached by a man who was thus afflicted and might say to him,
"Hurry! hurry! Show yourself to the priest for the cleansing of the
Mosaic law."
"Why?" says the man addressed. "What is the trouble?" The other man
would say, "Do hurry and show yourself to the priest." But the man
says, "That is only a fester, only a water blister, only a pimple,
nothing more. I say there is no occasion to be alarmed. You are unduly
agitated and excited for my welfare."
Those sores are only few now, but it spreads, and it is first upon the
hand, then upon the arm, and from the arm it goes on until it lays hold
of every nerve, artery, vein with its slimy coil, and continues until
the disintegration of the parts takes place and they drop off, and
then it is too late. But the man who was concerned saw the beginning
of that, not only the end, but the beginning. He looked yonder and saw
the end too. If you saw a blaze you would cry, "Fire!" Why? Because you
know that if let alone it will consume the building.
That is the reason why you hurry when you get evidence of the
disease. So I say to you, young man, don't you go with that godless,
good-for-nothing gang that blaspheme and sneer at religion, that bunch
of character assassins; they will make of your body a doormat to
wipe their feet upon. Don't go with that bunch. I heard you swear, I
heard you sneer at religion. Stop, or you will become a staggering,
muttering, bleary-eyed, foul-mouthed down-and-outer, on your way to
hell. I say to you stop, or you will go reeling down to hell, breaking
your wife's heart and wrecking your children's lives. And what have you
got to show for it? What have you got to show for it? God pity you for
all you got to show for selling your soul to the devil. You are a fool.
You are a fool. Take it from "Bill," you are a fool.
Don't you go, my boy; don't you laugh at that smutty story with a
double meaning. Don't go with that gang. But you say to me, "Mr.
Sunday, you are unduly excited for my welfare. I know you smell liquor
on my breath, but I never expect to become a drunkard. I never expect
to become an outcast." Well, you are a fool. You are a fool. No man
ever intended to become a drunkard. Every drunkard started out to be
simply a moderate drinker. The fellow that tells me that he can leave
it alone when he wants to lies. It is a lie. If you can, why don't you
leave it alone? You will never let it alone. If you could, you would.
My boy, hear me, I have walked along the shores of time and have seen
them strewn with the wrecks of those who have drifted in from the seas
of lust and passion and are fit only for danger signals to warn the
coming race. You can't leave it alone or if you can, the time will come
when it will get you. Take it from me.
My mother told me never to buy calico by lamplight, because you can't
tell whether the colors will stand or run in the wash. Never ask a girl
to be your wife when she's got her best bib and tucker on. Call on her
and leave at ten o'clock and leave your glove on the piano, and go
back the next morning about nine o'clock after your glove and ring the
doorbell, and if she comes to the door with her hair done up in curl
papers and a slipper on one foot and a shoe on the other foot, and that
untied, and a Mother Hubbard on, take to the woods as fast as you can
go. Never mind the glove, let the old man have that if he can wear it.
But if she comes to the door nice and neat in a neat working house
dress, with her sleeves rolled up and her hair neatly done up, and a
ribbon or a flower stuck in it, grab her quick.
Henry Clay Trumbull told me years ago that he was in Europe and in
London he went to a theater to see a man who was going to give an
exhibition of wild animals and serpents. He had a royal Bengal tiger
and a Numidian lion, and he introduced a beast that seems to be least
able of being tamed either by kindness or brutality, a black panther.
He made him go through the various motions, and after a while a wire
screen was put down in front of the stage between the audience and
the performer, and to the weird strains of an oriental band the man
approached from the left of the stage and a serpent from the right.
The eyes of the serpent and the man met and the serpent quailed before
the man. Man was master there. At his command the serpent went through
various contortions, and the man stepped to the front of the stage and
the serpent wound himself round and round and round the man, until
the man and serpent seemed as one. His tongue shot out, his eyes
dilated. The man gave a call, but the audience thought that part of the
performance, and that horrified audience sat there and heard bone after
bone in that man's body crack and break as the reptile tightened its
grasp upon his body, and saw his body crushed before he could be saved.
He had bought that snake when it was only four feet long and he had
watered and nursed it until it was thirty-five feet. At first he could
have killed it; at last it killed him.
Nursing Bad Habits
Are you nursing a habit today? Is it drink? Are you nursing and feeding
that which will wreck your life and wreck you upon the shores of
passion, notwithstanding all the wrecks you have seen of those who have
gone down the line?
I never got such a good idea of leprosy as I did by reading that
wonderful book of the nineteenth century by General Lew Wallace, "Ben
Hur." You remember the banishment of Ben Hur and the disintegration of
that family life and estate, and the return of Ben Hur from his exile.
He goes past his old home. The blinds are closed and drawn and all is
deserted. He lies down upon the doorstep and falls asleep. His mother
and sister have been in the leper colony and are dying of leprosy and
only waiting the time when they will be covered with the remains of
others who have come there. So they have come to the city to get bread
and secure water, and they see their son and brother lying on the
doorstep of their old home. They dare not awaken him for fear anguish
at learning of their fate would be more than he could bear. They dare
not touch him because it is against the law, so they creep close to him
and put their leprous lips against his sandal-covered feet. They then
go back again with the bread and water for which they had come.
Presently Ben Hur awakens and rubs his eyes and sees great excitement.
(This part of the story is mine.) Along comes a blear-eyed, old,
whisky-soaked degenerate and Ben Hur asks him what is the trouble, what
is the excitement about, and he says: "A couple of lepers have been
cleansed, but there is nothing to that, just some occult power, it's
all a fake." Ben Hur goes farther on and hears about this wonder, and
they say it is nothing; nothing, some long-haired evangelist who says
his name is Jesus Christ; it's all a fake. Then Ben Hur goes farther
and discovers that it is Jesus of Nazareth and that he has cleansed Ben
Hur's own mother and sister. He hears the story and acknowledges the
Nazarene.
The Leprosy of Sin
The lepers had to cry, "Unclean! Unclean!" in those days to warn the
people. They were compelled by law to do that: also they were compelled
by law to go on the side of the street toward which the wind was
blowing lest the breeze bring the germs of their body to the clean
and infect them with the disease. And the victim of this disease was
compelled to live in a lonely part of the city, waiting until his
teeth began to drop out, his eyes to drop from their sockets, and his
fingers to drop from his hands, then he was compelled to go out in the
tombs, the dying among the dead, there to live until at last he was
gathered to the remains of the dead. That was the law that governed the
leper in those days. All others shrank from him; he went forth alone.
Alone! No man of all he loved or knew, was with him; he went forth on
his way, alone, sick at heart, to die alone.
Leprosy is infectious. And so is sin. Sin begins in so-called innocent
flirtation. The old, god-forsaken scoundrel of a libertine, who looks
upon every woman as legitimate prey for his lust, will contaminate a
community; one drunkard, staggering and maundering and muttering his
way down to perdition, will debauch a town.
Some men ought to be hurled out of society; they ought to be kicked
out of lodges; they ought to be kicked out of churches, and out of
politics, and every other place where decent men live or associate. And
I want to lift the burden tonight from the heads of the unoffending
womanhood and hurl it on the heads of offending manhood.
Rid the world of those despicable beasts who live off the earnings of
the unfortunate girl who is merchandising herself for gain. In some
sections they make a business of it. I say commercialized vice is hell.
I do not believe any more in a segregated district for immoral women
than I would in having a section for thieves to live in where you could
hire one any day or night in the week to steal for you. There are two
things which have got to be driven out or they'll drive us out, and
they are open licensed saloons and protected vice.
Society needs a new division of anathemas. You hurl the burden on the
head of the girl; and the double-dyed scoundrel that caused her ruin
is received in society with open arms, while the girl is left to hang
her head and spend her life in shame. Some men are so rotten and vile
that they ought to be disinfected and take a bath in carbolic acid and
formaldehyde. Shut the lodge door in the face of every man that you
know to be a moral leper; don't let him hide behind his uniform and his
badge when you know him to be so rotten that the devil would duck up an
alley rather than meet him face to face. Kick him out of church. Kick
him out of society.
You don't live your life alone. Your life affects others. Some girls
will walk the streets and pick up every Tom, Dick and Harry that will
come across with the price of an ice-cream soda or a joy ride.
So with the boy. He will sit at your table and drink beer, and I want
to tell you if you are low-down enough to serve beer and wine in your
home, when you serve it you are as low down as the saloon-keeper, and
I don't care whether you do it for society or for anything else. If
you serve liquor or drink you are as low down as the saloon-keeper in
my opinion. So the boy who had not grit enough to turn down his glass
at the banquet and refuse to drink is now a blear-eyed, staggering
drunkard, reeling to hell. He couldn't stand the sneers of the crowd.
Many a fellow started out to play cards for beans, and tonight he
would stake his soul for a show-down. The hole in the gambling table
is not very big; it is about big enough to shove a dollar through; but
it is big enough to shove your wife through; big enough to shove your
happiness through; your home through; your salary, your character;
just big enough to shove everything that is dear to you in this world
through.
Listen to me. Bad as it is to be afflicted with physical leprosy,
moral leprosy is ten thousand times worse. I don't care if you are
the richest man in the town, the biggest taxpayer in the county, the
biggest politician in the district, or in the state. I don't care a rap
if you carry the political vote of Pennsylvania in your vest pocket,
and if you can change the vote from Democratic to Republican in the
convention--if after your worldly career is closed my text would make
you a fitting epitaph for your tombstone and obituary notice in the
papers, then what difference would it make what you had done--"he
was a leper." He was a great politician--but "He was a leper." What
difference would it make?
I'll tell you, I was never more interested in my life than in reading
the story of an old Confederate colonel who was a stickler for martial
discipline. One day he had a trifling case of insubordination. He
ordered his men to halt, and he had the offender shot. They dug the
grave and he gave the command to march, and they had stopped just three
minutes by the clock. At the close of the war they made him chief of
police of a Southern city, and he was so vile and corrupt that the
people arose and ordered his dismissal. Then a great earthquake swept
over the city, and the people rushed from their homes and thousands of
people crowded the streets and there was great excitement. Some asked,
"Where is the colonel?" and they said, "You will find him in one of two
or three places." So they searched and found him in a den of infamy. He
was so drunk that he didn't realize the danger he was in. They led him
out, then put him upon a snow white-horse, put his spurs on his boots
and his regimentals on; they pinned a star on his breast and put a
cockade on his hat, and said to him: "Colonel, we command you as mayor
of the city to quell this riot. You have supreme authority."
He rode out among the people to quell the riot, dug his spurs into the
white side of the horse and the crimson flowed out, and he rode in and
out among the surging mass of humanity.
He rode out among the people with commands here, torrents of obscenity
there, and in twenty-five minutes the stillness of death reigned in
city squares, so marvelously did they fear him, so wonderful was his
power over men. He then rode out, dismounted, took off his cockade,
tore the star from his breast and threw it down, threw off his
regimentals, took off his sword; then he staggered back to the house of
infamy, where three months later he died, away from his wife, away from
virtue, away from morality, his name synonymous with all that is vile.
What difference did it make that he had power over men when you might
sum up his life in the words, "But he was a leper." What difference did
it make?
I pity the boy or girl from the depths of my soul, who if you ask are
you willing to be a Christian, will answer: "Mr. Sunday, I would like
to be, but if I tell that at home my brothers will abuse me, my mother
will sneer at me, my father will curse me. If I were, I would have no
encouragement to stand and fight the battle." I pity from the depths of
my soul that boy or girl, the boy who has a father like that; the girl
that has a mother like that, who have a joint like that for a home.
Unclean! Suppose every young man who is a moral leper were impelled by
some uncontrollable impulse over which he had no power to make public
revelations of his sins! Down the street he comes in his auto and you
speak to him from the curbstone and he will say: "Unclean! Unclean!"
Yonder he comes walking down the street. Suppose that to every man and
woman he meets he is impelled and compelled to make revelation of the
fact that he is a leper.
Leprosy is an infectious disease; it is the germ of sin. If there is an
evil in you the evil will dwell in others. When we do wrong we inspire
others--and your lives scatter disease when you come in contact with
others. If there is sin in the father there will be sin in the boy;
if there is sin in the mother, there will be sin in the daughter; if
there is sin in the sister, there will be sin in the brother; by your
influence you will spread it. If you live the wrong way you will drag
somebody else to perdition with you as you go, and kindred ties will
facilitate it.
Supposing all your hearts were open. Supposing we had glass doors to
our hearts, and we could walk down the street and look in and see where
you have been, and with whom you have been and what you have been
doing. A good many of you would want stained-glass windows and heavy
tapestry to cover them.
"But the Lord Looketh on the Heart"
Suppose I could put a screen behind me, pull a string or push a button,
and produce on that screen a view of the hearts of the people. I would
say: "Here is Mr. and Mrs. A's life, as it is, and here, as the people
think it is. Here is what he really is. Here is where he has been. Here
is how much booze he drinks. Here is how much he lost last year at
horse races." But these are the things that society does not take note
of. Society takes no note of the flirtation on the street. It waits
until the girl has lost her virtue and then it slams the door in her
face. It takes no note of that young man drinking at a banquet table;
it waits until he becomes a bleary-eyed drunkard and then it will slam
the door in his face. It will take no note of the young fellow that
plays cards for a prize; it waits until he becomes a blackleg gambler
and then it slams the door in his face.
God says, "Look out in the beginning for that thing." Society takes
no note of the beginning. It waits until it becomes vice, and then it
organizes Civic Righteousness clubs. Get back to the beginning and
do your work there. God has planned to save this world through the
preaching of men and women, and God reaches down to save men; he pulls
them out of the grog shops and puts them on the water wagon.
I never could imagine an angel coming down from heaven and preaching to
men and women to save them. God never planned to save this world with
the preaching of angels. When Jesus Christ died on the cross he died
to redeem those whose nature he took. An angel wouldn't know what he
was up against. Some one would say: "Good Angel, were you ever drunk?"
"No!" "Good Angel, did you ever swear?" "Oh, no!" "Good Angel, did you
ever try to put up a stove-pipe in the fall?" "Oh, no!" "Did you ever
stub your toe while walking the floor with the baby at three A. M?"
"Oh, no!"
"Well, then, Mr. Angel, you don't know. You say there is great mercy
with God, but you are not tempted."
No. God planned to save the world by saving men and women and letting
them tell the story.
The servant of Naaman entered the hut of the prophet Elisha and found
him sitting on a high stool writing with a quill pen on papyrus. The
servant bowed low and said, "The great and mighty Naaman, captain
of the hosts of the king of Syria, awaits thee. Unfortunately he is
a leper and cannot enter your august presence. He has heard of the
miraculous cures that you have wrought and he hopes to become the
recipient of your power." The old prophet of God replied:
"Tell him to dip seven times in the Jordan--beat it, beat it, beat it."
The servant came out to Naaman, who was sitting on his horse.
"Well, is he at home?"
"He's at home, but he is a queer duck."
Naaman thought that Elisha would come out and pat the sores and say
incantations, like an Indian medicine man. Naaman was wroth, like many
a fool today. God reveals to the sinner the plan of salvation and,
instead of thanking God for salvation and doing what God wants him to
do, he condemns God and everybody else for bothering him.
Now here is a man who wants to be a Christian. What will he do? Will
he go ask some old saloon-keeper? Will he go ask some of these old
brewers? Will he ask some of the fellows of the town? Will he ask the
County Liquor Dealers' Association? Where will he go? To the preacher,
of course. He is the man to go to when you want to be a Christian. Go
to a doctor when you are sick, to a blacksmith when your horse is to be
shod, but go to the preacher when you want your heart set right.
So Naaman goes into the muddy water and the water begins to lubricate
those old sores, and it begins to itch, and he says, "Gee whizz," like
many a young fellow today who goes to a church and just gets religion
enough to make him feel miserable. An old fellow in Iowa came to me and
said, "Bill, I have been to hear you every night and you have done me
a lot of good. I used to cuss my old woman every day and I ain't cussed
her for a week. I'm getting a little better."
The Joy of Religion
The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion
to make them miserable. If there is no joy in religion, you have got a
leak in your religion. Some haven't religion enough to pay their debts.
Would that I might have a hook and for every debt that you left unpaid
I might jerk off a piece of clothing. If I did some of you fellows
would have not anything on but a celluloid collar and a pair of socks.
Some of you have not got religion enough to have family prayer. Some
of you people haven't got religion enough to take the beer bottles out
of your cellar and throw them in the alley. You haven't got religion
enough to tell that proprietor of the red light, "No, you can't rent my
house after the first of June;" to tell the saloon-keeper, "You can't
rent my house when your lease runs out"; and I want to tell you that
the man that rents his property to a saloon-keeper is as low-down as
the saloon-keeper. The trouble with you is that you are so taken up
with business, with politics, with making money, with your lodges, and
each and every one is so dependent on the other, that you are scared
to death to come out and live clean cut for God Almighty. You have not
fully surrendered yourself to God.
The matter with a lot of you people is that your religion is not
complete. You have not yielded yourself to God and gone out for God
and God's truth. Why, I am almost afraid to make some folks laugh for
fear that I will be arrested for breaking a costly piece of antique
bric-à-brac. You would think that if some people laughed it would break
their faces. To see some people you would think that the essential of
orthodox Christianity is to have a face so long you could eat oatmeal
out of the end of a gas pipe. Sister, that is not religion; I want to
tell you that the happy, smiling, sunny-faced religion will win more
people to Jesus Christ than the miserable old grim-faced kind will in
ten years. I pity anyone who can't laugh. There must be something wrong
with their religion or their liver. The devil can't laugh.
So I can see Naaman as he goes into the water and dips seven times, and
lo! his flesh becomes again as a little child's. When? When he did what
God told him to do.
I have seen men come down the aisle by the thousands, men who have
drank whisky enough to sink a ship. I have seen fallen women come to
the front by scores and hundreds, and I have seen them go away cleansed
by the power of God. When? When they did just what God told them to do.
I wish to God the Church were as afraid of imperfection as it is of
perfection.
I saw a woman that for twenty-seven years had been proprietor of
a disorderly house, and I saw her come down the aisle, close her
doors, turn the girls out of her house and live for God. I saw enough
converted in one town where there were four disorderly houses to close
their doors; they were empty; the girls had all fled home to their
mothers.
Out in Iowa a fellow came to me and spread a napkin on the platform--a
napkin as big as a tablecloth. He said: "I want a lot of shavings and
sawdust."
"What for?"
"I'll tell you; I want enough to make a sofa pillow. Right here is
where I knelt down and was converted and my wife and four children, and
my neighbors. I would like to have enough to make a sofa pillow to have
something in my home to help me think of God. I don't want to forget
God, or that I was saved. Can you give me enough?"
I said, "Yes, indeed, and if you want enough to make a mattress, all
right, take it; and if you want enough of the tent to make a pair of
breeches for each of the boys, why take your scissors and cut it right
out, if it will help you to keep your mind on God."
That is why I like to have people come down to the front and publicly
acknowledge God. I like to have a man have a definite experience in
religion--something to remember.
A PLAIN TALK TO WOMEN
And I say to you, young girl, don't go with that godless, God-forsaken,
sneering young man that walks the streets smoking cigarettes. He would
not walk the streets with you if you smoked cigarettes. But you say you
will marry him and reform him; he would not marry you to reform you.
Don't go to that dance. Don't you know that it is the most damnable,
low-down institution on the face of God's earth, that it causes more
ruin than anything this side of hell? Don't you go with that young man;
don't you go to that dance. That is why we have so many whip-poor-will
widows around the country: they married some of these mutts to reform
them, and instead of doing that the undertaker got them. I say, young
girl, don't go to that dance; it has proven to be the moral graveyard
that has caused more ruination than anything that was ever spewed out
of the mouth of hell. Don't go with that young fellow for a joy ride at
midnight.
Girls, when some young fellow comes up and asks you the greatest
question that you will ever be asked or called upon to answer, next
to the salvation of your own soul, what will you say? "Oh, this is so
sudden!" That is all a bluff; you have been waiting for it all the time.
But, girls, never mind now, get down to facts. When he asks you the
greatest question, the most important one that any girl is ever asked,
next to the salvation of her soul, just say, "Sit down and let me ask
you three questions. I want to ask you these three questions and if
I am satisfied with your answer, it will determine my answer to your
question. 'Did you believe me to be virtuous when you came here to ask
me to be your wife?'" "Oh, yes, I believed you to be virtuous. That's
the reason I came here. You are like violets dipped in dew." The
second question: "Have you as a young man lived as you demand of me as
a girl that I should have lived?" The third question: "If I, as a girl,
had lived and done as you, as a young man, and you knew it, would you
ask me to marry you?"
They will line up and nine times out of ten they will take the count.
You can line them up, and I know what I am talking about, and I defy
any man on God's earth successfully to contradict me. I have the
goods. The average young man is more particular about the company he
keeps than the average girl. I'll tell you. If he meets somebody on
the street whom he doesn't want to meet he will duck into the first
open doorway and avoid the publicity of meeting her, for fear she
might smile or give an indication that she had seen him somewhere
and sometime before that. Yet our so-called best girls keep company
with young men whose character would make a black mark on a piece of
anthracite. Their characters are foul and rotten and damnable.
I like to see a girl who has a good head, and can choose right because
it is right, never minding the criticism. Choose the good and be
careful of good company and good conduct, and keep company with a
good young fellow. Don't go with the fellow whose reputation is bad.
Everybody knows it is bad, and if you are seen with him you will lose
your reputation as well, although your virtue is intact; and they might
as well take you to the graveyard and bury you, when your reputation is
gone. When a man like that asks you to go with him, say to him that if
he will live the way you want him to you will go with him. If he would
take a stand like that there wouldn't be so many wrecks. If our women
and girls would take higher stands and say, "No, no, we will not keep
company with you unless you live the way I want you to," there would
be better men. A lot of you women hold yourselves too cheaply. You are
scared to death for fear you will be what the world irreverently calls
"an old maid."
Hospitality
You remember the prophet Elisha and his journey to the school of
prophets up to Mount Carmel. There was a woman who noticed the actions
and conduct of the man of God and she said to her husband, "Let us
build a little room and place therein a bed, and bowl and pitcher, that
he may make it his home."
The suggestion evidently met with the approval of the husband, because
ever afterward the man of God enjoyed this hospitality. I sometimes
thought she might have been a new woman of the olden times, because no
mention is made of the husband. You never hear of some old lobsters
unless they are fortunate enough to marry a woman who does things and
their name is always mentioned in connection with what the wife does.
You know there are homes in which the advent of one, two and possibly
three children is considered a curse instead of a blessing. God, in
his providence, has often denied the honor of maternity to some women.
But there are married women who shrink from maternity, not because of
ill health, but simply because they love ease, because they love fine
garments and ability to flirt like a butterfly at some social function.
Crimes have been and are being committed; hands are stained with blood;
and that very crime has made France the charnel house of the world.
And America, we of our boasted intelligence and wealth, we are fast
approaching the same doom, until or unless it behooves somebody with
grit and courage to preach against the prevailing sins and run the risk
of incurring the displeasure of people who divert public attention from
their own vileness rather than condemn themselves for the way they are
living. They say the man who is preaching against it is vulgar, rather
than the man who did it.
I am sure there is not an angel in heaven that would not be glad to
come to earth and be honored with motherhood if God would grant her
that privilege. What a grand thing it must be, at the end of your
earthly career, to look back upon a noble and godly life, knowing you
did all you could to help leave this old world to God and made your
contributions in tears and in prayers and taught your offspring to be
God-fearing, so that when you went you would continue to produce your
noble character in your children.
Maternity Out of Fashion
Society has just about put maternity out of fashion. When you stop to
consider the average society woman I do not think maternity has lost
anything. The humbler children are raised by their mothers instead of
being turned over to a governess.
[Illustration: "SOCIETY HAS JUST ABOUT PUT MATERNITY OUT OF FASHION"]
There are too many girls who marry for other causes than love. I think
ambition, indulgence and laziness lead more girls to the altar than
love--girls not actuated by love, but simply willing to pay the price
of wifehood to wear fine clothes. They are not moved by the noble
desires of manhood or womanhood.
Some girls marry for novelty and some girls marry for a home. Some fool
mothers encourage girls to marry for ease so they can go to the matinee
and buzz around. Some fool girls marry for money and some girls marry
for society, because by connecting their name with a certain family's
they go up a rung in the social ladder, and some girls marry young
bucks to reform them--and they are the biggest fools in the bunch,
because the bucks would not marry the girls to reform them.
You mothers are worse fools to encourage your daughter to marry some
old lobster because his father has money and when he dies, maybe your
daughter can have good clothes and ride in an auto instead of hoofing
it. Look at the girls on the auction block today. Look at the awful
battle the average stenographer and average clerk has to fight. You
cannot work for six dollars a week and wear fine duds and be on the
square as much as you are without having the people suspicious.
In a letter to Miss Borson, President Roosevelt said: "The man or woman
who avoids marriage and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a
brain so shallow as to dislike having children is, in fact, a criminal."
Is it well with thee? Is it well with your husband? "The best man in
the world," you answer. Very well; is it well with the child? I think
its responsibilities are equal, if they don't outweigh its privileges,
and when God is in the heart of the child, I don't wonder that that
home is a haven of peace and rest.
I have no motive in preaching except the interest I have in the moral
welfare of the people. There is not money enough to hire me to preach.
I tell you, ladies, we have to do something more than wipe our eyes,
and blow our nose, and say "Come to Jesus." Go out and shell the woods
and make them let you know why they don't "come to Jesus."
I believe the time will come when sex hygiene will form part of the
high-school curriculum. I would rather have my children taught sex
hygiene than Greek and Latin. A lot of the high-school curriculum is
mere fad. I think the time will come when our girls will be taught in
classes with some graduated woman physician for an instructor.
Women live on a higher plane, morally, than men. No woman was ever
ruined that some brute of a man did not take the initiative. Women have
kept themselves purer than men. I believe a good woman is the best
thing this side of heaven and a bad woman the worst thing this side of
hell. I think woman rises higher and sinks lower than man. I think she
is the most degraded on earth or the purest on earth.
Our homes are on the level with women. Towns are on the level with
homes. What women are our homes will be; and what the town is, the men
will be, so you hold the destiny of the nation.
I believe there is something unfinished in the make-up of a girl who
does not have religion. The average girl today no longer looks forward
to motherhood as the crowning glory of womanhood. She is turning her
home into a gambling shop and a social beer-and-champagne-drinking
joint, and her society is made up of poker players, champagne,
wine and beer drinkers, grass-widowers and jilted jades and
slander-mongers--that comprises the society of many a girl today. She
is becoming a matinee-gadder and fudge-eater.
The Girl Who Flirts
I wish I could make a girl that flirts see herself as others see her.
If you make eyes at a man on the street he will pay you back. It
doesn't mean that you are pretty. It means that if you don't care any
more for yourself than that why should he? The average man will take a
girl at her personal estimate of herself.
It takes a whole lot of nerve for a fellow to look a girl in the face
and say, "Will you be my wife and partner, and help me fight the battle
during life?" but I think it means a whole lot more to the girl who
has to answer and fight that question. But the fool girl loafs around
and waits to be chosen and takes the first chance she gets and seems
to think that if they get made one, the laws of man can make them two
again.
The divorce laws are damnable. America is first in many things that I
love, but there are many things that are a disgrace. We lead the world
in crime; and lead the world in divorce--we who boast of our culture.
Many a girl has found out after she is married that it would have
been a good deal easier to die an old maid than to have said "yes,"
and become the wife of some cigarette-smoking, cursing, damnable
libertine. They will launch the matrimonial boat and put the oars in
and try it once for luck, anyway, and so we have many women praying for
unconverted husbands.
[Illustration: "WHO WILL LEAD THE WAY?"]
[Illustration: "HA! HA! OLD DEVIL, I'VE GOT YOU BEAT!"]
I preached like this in a town once and the next day I heard of about
five engagements that were broken. I can give you advice now, but if
the knot is tied, the thing is done.
I am a Roman Catholic on divorce. There are a whole lot of things worse
than living and dying an old maid and one of them is marrying the wrong
man. So don't be one to do that.
Now, girls, don't simper and look silly when you speak about love.
There is nothing silly about it, although some folks are silly because
they are in love. Love is the noblest and purest gift of God to man and
womankind. Don't let your actions advertise "Man Wanted, Quick." That
is about the surest way not to get a man. You might get a thing with
breeches on, but he is no man.
Many a woman is an old maid because she wanted to do her share of the
courting. Don't get excited and want to hurry things along. If a man
begins to act as though he is after you, the surest way to get him is
just to make him feel you don't want him, unless you drive him off by
appearing too indifferent.
And, girls, don't worry if you think you are not going to get a chance
to marry. Some of the noblest men in the world have been bachelors and
some of the noblest women old maids. And, woman, for God's sake, when
you do get married, don't transfer the love God gave you to bestow on a
little child to a Spitz dog or a brindle pup.
The Task of Womanhood
All great women are satisfied with their common sphere in life and
think it is enough to fill the lot God gave them in this world as wife
and mother. I tell you the devil and women can damn this world, and
Jesus and women can save this old world. It remains with womanhood
today to lift our social life to a higher plane.
Mothers, be more careful of your boys and girls. Explain these evils
that contaminate our social life today. I have had women say to me,
"Mr. Sunday, don't you think there is danger of talking too much to
them when they are so young?" Not much; just as soon as a girl is able
to know the pure from the impure she should be taught. Oh, mothers,
mothers, you don't know what your girl is being led to by this false
and mock modesty.
Don't teach your girls that the only thing in the world is to marry.
Why, some girls marry infidels because they were not taught to say "I
would not do it." A girl is a big fool to marry an infidel. God says,
"Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers."
I believe there is a race yet to appear which will be as far superior
in morals to us as we are superior to the morals in the days of Julius
Cæsar; but that race will never appear until God-fearing young men
marry God-fearing girls and the offspring are God-fearing.
Culture will never save the world. If these miserable human vampires
who feed and fatten upon the virtue of womanhood can get off with
impunity; nay, more, be feasted and petted and coddled by society, we
might as well back-pedal out and sink in shame, for we can never see to
the heights nor command the respect of the great and good.
What paved the way for the downfall of the mightiest dynasties--proud
and haughty Greece and imperial Rome? The downfall of their womanhood.
The virtue of womanhood is the rampart wall of American civilization.
Break that down and with the stones thereof you can pave your way to
the hottest hell, and reeking vice and corruption.