The Prophet and His Own Time
There wouldn't be so many non-church goers if there were not so many
non-going churches.--BILLY SUNDAY.
A prophet to his own generation is Billy Sunday. In the speech of
today he arraigns the sins of today and seeks to satisfy the needs of
today. A man singularly free and fearless, he applies the Gospel to
the conditions of the present moment. Knowing life on various levels,
he preaches with a definiteness and an appropriateness that echo the
prophet Nathan's "Thou art the man." By the very structure of Billy
Sunday's mentality it is made difficult for him to be abstract. He has
to deal definitely with concrete sins.
Now a pastor would find it difficult to approach, in the ruthless and
reckless fashion of Billy Sunday, the shortcomings of his members and
neighbors. He has to live with his congregation, year in and year out;
but the evangelist is as irresponsible as John the Baptist on the banks
of the Jordan. He has no affiliations to consider and no consequences
to fear, except the Kingdom's welfare. His only concern is for the
truth and applicability of his message. He is perfectly heedless about
offending hearers. Those well-meaning persons who would compare Billy
Sunday with the average pastor should bear this in mind.
A rare gift of satire and scorn and invective and ridicule has been
given to Sunday. He has been equipped with powerful weapons which are
too often missing from the armory of the average Gospel soldier. His
aptitude for puncturing sham is almost without a peer in contemporary
life. Few orators in any field have his art of heaping up adjectives to
a towering height that overwhelms their objective.
Nor does the Church escape Sunday's plain dealing. He treats vigorously
her shortcomings and her imperfections. Usually, the persons who hear
the first half dozen or dozen sermons in one of his campaigns are
shocked by the reckless way in which the evangelist handles the Church
and church members.
Others, forewarned, perceive the psychology of it. It is clear that
in Sunday's thinking the purity of the Church is all-important.
Complacency with any degree of corruption or inefficiency on her part
he would regard as sin. So he unsparingly belabors the Church and her
ministry for all the good that they have left undone and all amiss that
they have done.
The net result of this is that the evangelist leaves on the minds of
the multitudes, to whom the Church has been a negligible quantity, a
tremendous impression of her pre-eminent importance. It is true that
sometimes, after a Sunday campaign, a few ministers have to leave their
churches, because of the new spirit of efficiency and spirituality
which he has imparted. They have simply been unable to measure up to
the new opportunity. On the whole, however, it is clear that he imparts
a new sense of dignity and a new field of leadership to the ministers
of the Gospel in the communities he has served. Testimony on this point
seems to be conclusive.
Given prophets of today, with the conviction that both Church and
social life should square with the teaching of Jesus Christ, and you
have revolutionary possibilities for any community. Fair samples of
Sunday's treatment of the Church and of society are these:
"There is but one voice from the faithful preacher about the
Church--that is she is sick. But we say it in such painless, delicate
terms; we work with such tender massage, that she seems to enjoy her
invalidism. I'm coming with my scalpel to cut into the old sores
and ulcers and drive them out. I feel the pulse and say it's pus
temperature. The temperature's high. I'm trying to remove from the
Church the putrefying abscess which is boring into its vitals. About
four out of every five who have their names on our church records are
doing absolutely nothing to bring anybody to Christ and the Church is
not a whit better for their having lived in it. Christians are making a
great deal of Lent. I believe in Lent. I'll tell you what kind, though.
I believe in a Lent that is kept 365 days in the year for Jesus Christ.
That is the kind I like to see. Some people will go to hell sure if
they die out of the Lenten season. I hate to see a man get enough
religion in forty days to last him and then live like the devil the
rest of the year. If you can reform for forty days you can reform for
the year.
"The Jewish Church ran up against this snag and was wrecked. The Roman
Catholic Church ran up against it and split. All of the churches today
are fast approaching the same doom.
"The dangers to the Church, as I see them, are assimilation with the
world, the neglect of the poor, substitution of forms for godliness;
and all summed up mean a fashionable church with religion left out.
Formerly Methodists used to attend class meetings. Now these are
abandoned in many churches. Formerly shouts of praise were heard. Now
such holy demonstration is considered undignified. Once in a while
some good, godly sister forgets herself and pipes out in a falsetto,
apologetic sort of a key: 'Amen, Brother Sunday.' I don't expect any
of those ossified, petrified, dyed-in-the-wool, stamped-on-the-cork
Presbyterians or Episcopalians to shout, 'Amen,' but it would do you
good and loosen you up. It won't hurt you a bit. You are hidebound.
I think about half the professing Christians amount to nothing as a
spiritual force. They have a kind regard for religion, but as for
evangelical service, as for a cheerful spirit of self-denial, as for
prevailing prayer, willingness to strike hard blows against the devil,
they are almost a failure. I read the other day of a shell which had
been invented which is hurled on a ship and when it explodes it puts
all on board asleep. I sometimes think one of these shells has hit the
Church.
"What are some people going to do about the Judgment? Some are just
in life for the money they get out of it. They will tell you north
is south if they think they can get a dollar by it. They float
get-rich-quick schemes and anything for money. I haven't a word to say
about a man who has earned his money honestly, uses it to provide for
his family and spends the surplus for good. You know there is a bunch
of mutts that sit around on stools and whittle and spit and cuss and
damn and say that every man who has an honest dollar ought to divide
it with them, while others get out and get busy and work and sweat and
toil and prepare to leave something for their wives and families when
they die, and spend the rest for good.
"Old Commodore Vanderbilt had a fortune of over $200,000,000, and one
day when he was ill he sent for Dr. Deems. He asked him to sing for him
that old song:
'Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
Come, ye wounded, sick and sore.'
The old commodore tossed from side to side, looked around at the
evidence of his wealth, and he said: 'That's what I am, poor and
needy.' Who? Commodore Vanderbilt poor and needy with his $200,000,000?
The foundation of that fabulous fortune was laid by him when he poled
a yawl from New York to Staten Island and picked up pennies for doing
it. The foundation of the immense Astor fortune was laid by John Jacob
Astor when he went out and bought fur and hides from trappers and put
the money in New York real estate. The next day in the street one man
said to another: 'Have you heard the news? Commodore Vanderbilt is
dead.' 'How much did he leave?' 'He left it all.'
"Naked you came into this world, and naked you will crawl out of it.
You brought nothing into the world and you will take nothing out, and
if you have put the pack screws on the poor and piled up a pile of gold
as big as a house you can't take it with you. It wouldn't do you any
good if you could, because it would melt."