Cibrarjp of €he trheolo^ical ^^mimvy PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY •a^D* PRESENTED BY The Estate of Philip H, Waddell Smith BV 3785 .S86 B76 1914 Brown, Elijah P., 1842-1933 The real Billy Sunday THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY ^ [ ■1 ^1 ■ ^m__ 1 ^ ^^^^H 1 1 B^HB^ 1 ■ '''•*'*'*^''t^pI ■ jM ^^^^^H ..>^"'' B ^M j^^^^^H ^^^^fll 1 K- ^ ^^^L I ■ ^6p<'«« '■»>■' jj 1^1 r t ^^/Mj.^zA^ The Real Billy Sunday The Life and Work of REV. WILLIAM ASHLEY SUNDAY, D.D. The Baseball Evangelist BY ELIJAH P. BROWN, D.D. (Ram's Horn Brown) Illustrated New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, IQU, by WILLIAM A. SUNDAY kyJivfJi UJ-Ag A^ -^lyfijU^ TAT 7l£.A^^ a. fLutiZ^^ ytc^ ^^i/j, O^cAj /M^^r-A^ CONTENTS Introductory ii I Sunday's Birth and Boyhood . . . 15 II Sunday Leaves the Davenport Home . 26 III The Baseball Player's Conversion . 35 IV An Active Member of a Live Church . 44 V Playing Ball and Giving Religious Talks 56 VI Meets His Future Wife at a Prayer Meeting 64 VII Leaves Baseball to Engage in Reli- gious Work 70 VIII Beginning of Sunday's Evangelistic Career 79 IX From Tent to Tabernacle Meetings . 94 X Style and Character of Sunday's Preaching ...... 106 XI Last Day of the Burlington Meeting 116 XII Extracts from Sermons .... 122 XIII A Present-Day Sunday Tabernacle Meeting 137 XIV Special Features Connected with the Sunday Meetings 149 7 8 CONTENTS XV Some of Sunday's Sayings . . . 165 XVI Sunday's Home and Other Family Af- fairs 174 XVII Results of Meetings in Various Places 185 XVIII Sunday's Ordination and Various Other Matters 200 XIX A Hard Hitter of the Liquor Traffic 208 XX Sunday's Versatility — Royal Recep- tion AT Columbus 215 XXI Some Personal Matters .... 225 Sermons : The Three Groups 237 ■ Under the Sun 257 Wonderful 272 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGB William A. Sunday Frontispiece Sunday's First Home 15 William Sunday, Father of the Evan!2:eHst . . 20 Mother of the Evangelist 29 Certified Copy of Record in Adjutant-General's Office, State of Iowa, Showing Enlistment and Death of Mr. Sunday's Father .... 32 Squire Martin Corey, Mr. Sunday's Grandfather . 49 At the Ages of Twenty-three, Twenty-four, Twenty-five and Thirty 54 Sunday in His Old National League Uniform . 59 Old Sofa from the Thompson Home, " Just Big Enough for Two " 68 Mrs. W. A. Sunday yy Mr. and Mrs. William Thompson, Mrs. Sunday's Father and Mother 83 " Billy," Roy and Ed 94 The Day Before — What Happened to Sunday's Last Tent on the Closing Day at Salida, Col. . 103 One of the Earlier Tabernacles 106 My First Bible — A Worn-out Bible . . . .112 " Billy "Jr. 129 As He Looks To-day * • I35 Mr. and Mrs. Sunday, Helen, " Billy " Jr., George, Paul 138 ** Be It Ever So Humble, There's No Place Like Home " 149 Living Room and Dining Room in Home at Winona Lake, Ind 156 9 10 ILLUSTRATIONS FACIN<; PAGE Mr. and Mrs. Sunday on the Golf Links ^ . . 163 As He Appears at Home, Between Meetings . . 174 " Billy " and " Ma " Sunday Returning from an Afternoon Meeting 180 Pittsburg Tabernacle — Estimated Seating Capacity 15,000 189 A Single Sheet from Mr. Sunday's Sermon Notes . 240 Meeting for " Men Only/' Columbus, O. Thou- sands Unable to Gain Admittance .... 257 " Women Only " Meeting, Thousands Being Turned Away . 260 Mr. and Mrs. Sunday Leading 22,000 People in Sunday School Parade at Wilkes-Barre, Pa. . 269 Bidding the Sundays Good-by at Close of a Cam- paign 278 INTRODUCTORY THE making of this book has not been undertaken as a defense of Mr. Sunday, for he needs none ; the Master whom he so energetically serves having put His seal upon his labors in a way that the whole continent has been compelled to take note of. But the book is put into the hand of the reader with the hope and the prayer that through it he may come to know the real Billy Sunday, and learn how won- drously the Lord of Hosts is using him. I undertook this work believing that I ought to do it. Some years ago I was with Mr. Sunday as his confidential assistant, and so came to know him intimately. This ' made me conversant with the way in which his great campaigns are conducted, and gave me a knowledge of the details and machinery of his meetings. Having been a student of character all my life, I do not believe any other man has a clearer comprehension of the real Sun- day than myself. Others who have been associated with him may possibly know him as well, but I am confident no one can know him better. I made his acquaintance soon after his conversion, and have kept in touch with him ever since. I have summered and wintered with him. Have eaten and slept with him. I have seen him in the limelight and in private life. I know his great passion for souls, and „ how it drives him to pour out his life and strength in trying to win them. I know how he preaches and what he preaches for. I know how he lives, and I know how 11 12 INTRODUCTORY he gives, and I know that he hasn't a drop of mercenary- blood in his veins. I know how he tithes every dollar of his income. I know how religiously and quietly he is continually doing good with his money. I know of many struggling ones whose hearts he gladdens with timely help; of missions and struggling causes he aids, and I know of poor families supported by his bounty. I know that however unconventional his language may be, his preaching has in it the spirit of Christ and the power of Christ, and that it accomplishes what Christ commissioned His disciples to do. I know that he believes the Bible to be the word of God, and believes himself to be a messenger from God. I know that he fears neither man nor devil when he stands in the pulpit, and if it came to a test would go to the stake for his faith. A more honest or zealous man I have never known. He puts his very life and soul into every message he gives, and has kept on the go nearly all the year round for years without rest. This is the man in whose wake new buildings spring up for churches and Christian Associations for both young men and young women. The man who quickens the religious life of every church within fifty miles of where he preaches ; even of those that antagonize his meetings. This is the man whose preaching makes reli- gion something more than a name to conjure with. This is the man whom not only the common people, but all kinds of people hear gladly, because they can understand him. This is the man whose preaching makes people pay debts that have been outlawed, and brings long separated husbands and wives together in loving reconciliation. The preaching that fills every church in the community with new life and new blood ; makes a market for Bibles INTRODUCTORY 19 by the ten thousand, and makes religion the chief topic of conversation everywhere. His preaching creates re- spect for the Sabbath and the house of God; makes it easier to enforce the law^s; reduces crime, and slaps the devil squarely in the face wherever he shows his cloven hoof. It closes saloons and opens prayer meetings, and rekindles the fire on burnt out family altars. Mr. Sunday is not an uncertainty or an experiment. From his first meeting to his last he has had unbroken success. He has never held a meeting that did not result i in a revival that reached the whole community, and he has never preached in a building large enough to admit all who thronged to hear him. There were places where Moody failed, and there have been places where all great evangelists have failed, but Sunday has never failed anywhere. He has been holding great evangelistic meetings for almost twenty years, nearly every one in a tabernacle built especially for it, and almost every meet- ing has been greater than the last. His converts are numbered by multitudes, and will compare with those who have accepted Christ in any meeting. Nicodemus was not blind in both eyes when he said to Jesus : *' No man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him." And this is the message the Master gave to the disciples of John the Baptist: ** Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached." Try Billy Sunday by this test, and every unprejudiced Christian man will be compelled to admit that he is a man sent of God. Elijah P. Brown. Indianapolis, Ind. SUNDAYS FIRST HOME. SUNDAY'S BIRTH AND BOYHOOD IN a little log cabin of two rooms, floored with rough boards, a fireplace of flagstones, a chimney of un- barked logs plastered with clay, small windows and a low-hung roof — the typical home of the midwestern pioneer — in these lowly surroundings was born William Ashley Sunday, to whom it has been given as to no other American to turn many to righteousness. This humble dwelling is still standing in Story County, Iowa, a mile and a half south of the city of Ames. Four months before his birth, on November 19, 1862, his father, William Sunday, marched away from his home, to the sound of fife and drum, a soldier of the Union. The father never came back. Death ended his service, and his grave is unknown. Edward Sunday, a brother now living in North Dakota, was two years old when William was born. Albert, two years older than Edward, died in 1893. Previous to the birth of his son William Sunday wrote home from the front that if his child were a boy, he wanted him to be called William Ashley. This was done, though no member of the family has been able to tell why the middle name of Ashley was chosen. William Sunday was a contractor and brickmason. He built one of the first brick buildings in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; a house that is still standing. He was also a violinist of considerable repute. When the call came for volunteers he enlisted at once. In fording a stream 15 16 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY he was wet to the skin, contracted a severe cold, from the effects of which he died in camp, probably of pneu- monia. He was buried at Camp Patterson, Mo. His body was afterward, it is beheved, removed to a new resting-place near Washington Barracks, at St. Louis. Persistent efforts have been made in recent years to identify this grave, but without success. William Sunday had a sister, Mary Simmons, who went as a pioneer with him. The babyhood days of William Ashley were spent in the log cabin. The burden of the family rested heavily upon the soldier's widow. Yet with a true mother's heroism she faced the trying situation bravely, and struggled as only a mother can to keep her babies to- gether. For a time she succeeded, but no one will ever know all the heartaches, cares and distresses endured by her in those trying days. Yet that she lived true to the duties of motherhood, rearing her boys in the way they should go, and inculcating principles of truth and righteousness, is happily evident to-day. This mother is now a loved and revered member of the evangelist's family circle. During the first three years of his life Billy was any- thing but a healthy child, and his mother and her rela- tives often despaired of his life. He was small at birth, lacking in strength, and for some reason did not gain rapidly, as his brothers had done. Then an old French doctor, living in the neighborhood, prescribed some herb remedies that seemed to be just the thing, for they soon had the boy going toward robust health. This is prob- ably the reason why he often gives expression to a theory that in weeds, herbs and shrubs will some day be found the cure for all the ills that flesh is heir to. BIRTH AND BOYHOOD IT A farmer in the neighborhood gave the little boy one of the first jobs he ever had. He rode one of the lead horses of a four-horse team hitched to a reaper for eight days, for twenty-five cents a day. When the child reached home at the end of the work he was sore in every part of his little body, and his eyes had been almost blinded by the sun, but he was happy in the possession of a two-dollar bill. His cup of joy was made to run clear over when he found that while he had been away his mother had made for him his first hickory shirt. Sunday had a half-sister whose death came, some time before this, from burns received in a bonfire accident. His mother had a small picture of this sister, and in his boyish impulsiveness, he at once decided to spend his hardly earned two dollars in having it enlarged and framed. This crayon enlargement is still in possession of the family. A feature of Sunday's boyhood, which he remembers well, had to do with a sugarcane mill built and operated by his grandfather. This mill was a rude device used to crush and squeeze the sap from the cane. A raw- boned swaybacked plug of a horse, going round and round in a ring, furnished the motive power, and Albert, Edward and Will took turns as engineers. Then the boys, when mere youngsters, learned to tend the fires, which boiled the sap to the consistency of thick sorghum molasses. After the juice once began to boil it had to be kept going without cooling until finished. Otherwise it was about sure to sour. While the boiling was going on a great deal of skim- ming had to be done, to take out the impurities thus brought to the surface. This often kept the fires going late into the night, and sometimes till after midnight. These sugaring-off nights in the heart of a western wood 18 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY were just what a boy liked, and that is why they are so well remembered. The boys learned to cut wood, build fences, care for horses on the farm of their grandfather, and milk ten or a dozen cows a day. When Sunday was a small boy, he was one day hailed on the street by a man who had the reputation of being as tight as the bark on a tree. " Do you know burdock, sonny ? '* asked the man. " Sure I do," said Billy. " My wife is sick. Get me a good bunch of it quick, and I'll give you a nickel." Away went the boy on the run to his home on the farm two miles away, and was soon busy in a big patch of burdock. In a remarkably short time he had a hatful of fine roots, which he carefully washed, and then hurried with them to his man, but only to hear him say: " I don't need 'em now, bub. Another fellow come along with plenty of burdock, and I got all I wanted from him." The poor boy instantly felt the milk of human kindness sour in him, and going slowly to the creek, he threw the roots into the deepest place he could find, and then stoned them until the last bitter root sank out of sight. He remembers no greater disappointment of his boyhood days. Thirty years later Sunday was preaching to a great audience in a town in Iowa, and '' old Burdock " was in the meeting. He told every one near him that he knew the preacher when he was a little boy, and at the close he went up and made as much fuss over Billy as he would have done had he been his own son. Sunday of course remembered the man and his meanness, in swindling a child out of his hard-earned nickel. Billy was one day out in the garden with his grand- BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 19^ father, and for a time both were busy pulling weeds — and then the most casual observer would have seen with one eye that only the grandsire was diligent. It was one of the hardest days anybody ever saw for a little boy to be thrifty. It was such a fine balmy day that fish would almost jump out of the water to bite, and soon Billy's thoughts and desires were more than a mile and a half away from that truck patch. His grandfather was weeding away so busily that he failed to notice that the boy wasn't keeping up with his row, and was rather startled when he looked up and saw the little dreamer sitting in the shade under a currant bush. '' Hello, son ; what are you doing there ? " queried the old gentleman. " I was just a- thinking, grandfather." *' Thinking ? Thinking about what ? " *' Thinking about what I'm going to do when I get to be a man." " And what do you think you are going to do then ? " " I think I'm not going to pull weeds when I get to be a man. I'm going to hunt around and find a good job I can work at with my head.'* And he certainly kept his word, though he probably exercises about every muscle in his body every time he preaches. At all events his exertion keeps him in such splendid physical trim that he can go out and play a game of baseball without being sore. One newspaper had a careful estimate made, and de- clared that Sunday traveled a mile in every sermon, and covered something over a hundred miles on the platform in every campaign. Many of the incidents of Sunday's boyhood whicb would delight readers to-day have slipped from his go THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY mother's memory, but one in particular she remembers clearly. When he was only three or four years old his grand- mother died, and her death and burial in midwinter made a deep impression upon the child. The graveyard was only a few hundred yards from the home, and one morning, several days after the funeral, the mother missed the boy, but found it easy to trace him by his little footprints in the snow. She found him at the grave of his grandmother, kneeling beside it and saying a little prayer she had taught him. Billy went to the neighborhood school, the typical country district school, where the pupils sat on rough benches and learned the " Three R's " after a much ruder fashion than is known to-day. Later he went to one of the grade schools in Ames. Finding it impossible to longer give the boys the proper care at home, and believing that it would give them a much better chance in life, the mother of Edward and William decided, though with much reluctance, to send them to the Soldiers' Orphans Home, at Glenwood, Iowa. In one of his sermons Sunday most touchingly tells the tender story of the parting : " Four months before I was born my father went to the war, in Company E of the Tv/enty-third Iowa. I have fought and struggled since I was six years old. I know all about the dark and seamy side of life. If a man ever fought for everything he gained, I have. The wolf scratched at the cabin door, and scratched so hard that finally my poor mother had to say to my brother Ed and me — " ' Boys, I'm going to send you to the Soldiers' Or- phans Home ! ' " She took us to Ames, where we had to wait a long WILLIAM SUNDAY, FATHER OF THE EVANGELIST. BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 9A time for the train. We went to a little hotel near the depot to wait. About one o'clock in the morning some- body came and said — " ' Get ready for the train ; it's coming.' " I looked into my mother's face. Her eyes were red with long weeping, for the poor woman didn't have money enough to pay our fare all the way to Glenwood, where the Home was. " We went to the train, where mother put one arm around me, and the other about Ed, and sobbed as if her poor heart would break. People walked by, looked at us, but they didn't say a word. Why? They didn't know, and if they had they wouldn't have cared. But mother knew; yes, and she knew that for four years she wouldn't see her boys. "We got into a car, and said, * Good-by, mother,' as the train started, and it was the first good-by to her I had ever said. The last we saw of her she was smiling upon us through her tears. Yes; mother knew, and mother cared. " We reached Council Bluffs early in the morning. It was cold, and we turned our little thin coat collars up around our necks and shivered. We saw a little hotel, and going to it we asked a woman we saw there for something to eat. She asked our names, and I said : " * My name is Willie Sunday, and this is my brother Ed.' '' * And where are you going ? ' she then asked. " * To the Soldiers' Orphans Home at Glenwood,' I told her. " She wiped her eyes, and said, * My husband was a soldier, and he never came back. He wouldn't turn any one away, and I surely won't turn you boys away.' " She put her arms about us, and said, * Come on in/ ^2 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY '' She gave us our breakfast, and our dinner too. There was no train out on the Burlington till afternoon. We played around in the freight yards until near the time, when we saw a freight train standing on the track, and climbed into the caboose. After the train started the conductor came along, and said : " * Where are your tickets? ' " ' Ain't got any,' said I. *' 'Where's your money? ' " ' Ain't got any.' " * Then I'll have to put you off,' he said. " We commenced to cry. My brother Ed handed him a letter of introduction to the superintendent of the Home. As he read it his eyes filled with tears, and as he handed it back, he said: " ' Just sit still, boys ; it won't cost you a cent to ride on my train.' " It is twenty miles from Council Bluffs to Glenwood, and as we rounded the curve the conductor said : " ' There is the Home on the hill, boys ! ' The conduc- tor often visited us at the Home, and never failed to give us candy, peanuts and pennies. He was afterwards killed not far from the Home. " We were there about a year and a half when the Home was discontinued, and the children, about sixty in all — were transferred to the Orphans' Home at Daven- port, Iowa.'' In the Davenport Home young Billy had the advantage of good schooling and proper religious instruction, and in the systematic atmosphere he found there, he was inspired with an ambition to make something out of him- self. There he was taught to be earnest and energetic, painstaking and thorough in whatever he undertook. A strong religious influence filled the place, and what BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 23 he was taught there of religion and the Bible was suf- ficent to make him a believer in the divine authority of the Scriptures. So well and skillfully was he filled with Bible knowledge that he has ever since been free from all intellectual doubt, although he did not become a Chris- tian until after he reached man's estate. He will never cease to be thankful for the years he spent in the Daven- port Home, and the molding influence it exerted upon all his after life. Sunday's mother was a Christian woman, and although she did not long have him under her care, like the mother of Samuel she turned his little feet into the right pathway. One incident connected with Billy's stay at the Glen- wood Home reveals the bent of the boy's mind at the time, and shov/s why he has waged lifelong antagonisrn against oppression of the weak by the strong. In the school were boys of various dispositions, one of whom- was the typical beefy bully ; a boy who lorded it over the others just because he thought he could. Billy had never had any trouble with this boy himself, but it stirred him to the quick to see how arrogantly and overbearing he behaved toward the others. Finally it was decided in a little group of boys that this state of affairs must stop, and it fell on Billy to champion the cause of the weak. He felt sure that he could lick the bully, and was more than willing to try. Fighting in school was of course against the rules, but some nights later the bully was " dared to come out." So about three o'clock in the morning, out crept a dozen or more of the youngsters, clad only in their night shirts and trousers, and stealthily- made their way, through windows and down waterpipes, to the protecting shadow of a clump of trees well re* moved from the school building. 24 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY In the dim light before the dawn they formed a ring, and the bully went into it with a chip on his shoulder. But zip ! that moment Billy sent it flying, and before ' the bully could get over his astonishment, rapid and telling blows from Billy's fist were being planted in his beefy face. With the agility of a cat the smaller boy danced this way and that, on the alert for openings, into which he shot with all the energy his body held. The fast and furious conflict, in all of which Billy was giving the bully a lot of punishment, tickled the other boys mightily, until the snob was given all he deserved. The victory w^as to Billy, and the bully was quite a different boy afterward. That early morning drubbing was probably the making of him. At the Glenwood school a strict rule required prompt appearance at meals, and boys who were not on hand to the dot had to miss both that meal and the next. Some- how or other Billy found it hard to obey that rule. In later years he has generally been " Johnny on the spot," but in that time he had to miss a good many meals. To miss two meals a day is not a good thing for a growing boy, and it began to show on Billy so much that it greatly worried his brother Ed. The older boy was as anxious to have his little brother look well as the king's steward was that Daniel should, and so Ed began to scratch his head and do some thinking himself. In his scratching he must have touched the right spot, for he soon managed to have himself assigned to the task of cleaning the kitchen. When his work there was fin- ished it fell upon him to lock the door. This he faith- fully did, but it often happened that little Billy was locked in the kitchen. The plate he had missed at the table Ed would tuck away in some convenient corner, BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 25 and in spite of his tardiness Billy waxed fat and strong, and soon began to have a countenance as ruddy as that of David v^^hen he stood before Samuel. Revival meetings always had a fascination for Sun- day, and he cannot remember a time when he did not like to attend them, though in his young life he never had a thought of himself becoming an evangelist. On his mother's side Sunday is descended from Lord William Corey, who married the only daughter of Sir Francis Drake. Both of his great-grandfathers on the maternal side fought in the Revolutionary War. One lost a leg under Anthony Wayne at Brandy wine, and the other fought under Hull at Detroit. His grandfather and General Grant were boys together. His grand- parents on his father's side were born in Germany. They settled in Pennsylvania, and his father was born in that state, not far from Chambersburg. II SUNDAY LEAVES THE DAVENPORT HOME SUNDAY left the Home at Davenport when he was fourteen years old. Boys were discharged by age limitation at sixteen, and his brother Ed, being two years older, had remained his full time. The two brothers were so much to each other that Billy couldn't think of being left alone, and so chose to depart with Ed. The boys went to live with their grandfather on a farm near Ames. Squire Corey was one of the pioneer settlers in the state. He was a man of hard common- sense, and of a rough and ready stamp. He was some- what brusque and blunt in his ways, and seldom had much to say, a trait in which his famous grandson is much like him. As a boy Sunday had the same highstrung nervous nature that characterizes him to-day, and there were times when the seeming harshness of his grandfather cut him to the quick. But in his heart the old gentleman had a lot of real goodness, and had a great love for Billy. He showed much concern for the boy's best interests, and gave him good counsel, which, being remembered, exerted a wholesome influence on all his after life. Sunday's mother remembers how he was always his grandfather's favorite, and she tells how proudly he would set him on his shoulder, when he was not much more than big enough to run alone, and go marching down the road with the boy holding on to him by the 26 LEAVES DAVENPORT HOME 2T hair, just as he would take a horse by the mane whenever he was set on its back. Sunday still remembers the days he spent on his grandfather's farm as, in the main, the happiest in his boyhood life. His grandfather was a most genial and big-hearted ' man. He never turned any one from the door hungry. ; He was of the pioneer type, and was one of the earliest V settlers in the state of Iowa, having located there in | 1848. He was the only father Sunday ever knew, and \ he speaks of him with tender affection to this day. He never goes near the city of Ames but that he visits the old home, and goes out to the old cemetery on the farm. Here is one instance of the way in which his grand- father's counsel has remained with him : The neighbor- hood was stirred by interest in a spelling match, in which the young people from several counties were to take part. Some days before the time a friend of the Sunday boys boasted that he was going to wear a white store collar to the spelling match. To Billy the white store collar seemed to be about the finest thing that could be thought of, and so he went to his grandfather about it. '' Listen to me, son," said the old man ; " it is not what you wear on you, but what you have in you that makes a man. Be honest, and do your work with all your might, and then some day you won't have to wear a white collar to make folks look up to you." The boy caught the idea, and was so cheered by it that he went to the spelling bee in a happy and contented frame of mind. Often in talking to the young he quotes the words of his grandfather, to help and encourage ^ them : " It is not what you have on you, but what you have in you that makes a man." But in many ways life on a farm did not appeal very strongly to Billy. He was ill at ease there, and often £8 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY felt that his career would have to be found in some other calling. This decision was brought to a climax one day by a trivial thing that happend most unexpectedly. The grandfather sent Billy and his half-brother to the barn to carry a neck yoke to the field. As they were doing this, the big ring at one end of the yoke suddenly came loose, and without any fault of theirs. The boys got the blame, however, and a severe tongue lashing to boot. This fired the highstrung Billy, and right there and then he decided to leave the farm, and for good. His brother, with tears in his eyes, begged him not to go, but his dander was up and he stood firm. If the angels know anything about the future, there must have been some joy in heaven over the breaking of that neck yoke, for had it held together only a little longer the man who sways multitudes now might not have been a preacher. With what little money he had in his jeans, Billy next morning hired a horse from a neighbor, and rode seven miles to Nevada on the hunt for a job. He found a place as utility boy in a little fourth-rate hotel. He had to meet all the trains, and often carry grips that strong men were glad to put down. He swept and did every other little odd job about the place that no one else was willing to do. In the daytime he was on duty in the dingy, stufify office, reeking with tobacco smoke and bad stories, and at night he slept behind the counter. He stuck to this job eight months, and re- ceived as pay his board and lodging. He was then allowed to take a day off to go and visit his grandfather. He stayed on the farm two days instead c\f one, and for doing so lost the place. On his return the landlord even denied him entrance to the office, but his wife be- MOTHER OF THE EVANGELIST. LEAVES DAVENPORT HOME 29 friended the boy. She let him in through the back door, and gave him a meal and his lodging for the night. The next day Sunday learned that Col. John Scott, once lieutenant-governor of Iowa, wanted to hire a boy. He went to the Scott home and asked for the job. Col. Scott called his wife in, and together they looked the boy over. Billy caught the Colonel's fancy at once, but Mrs. Scott was not so sure, so she said : " You may go and scrub the cellar stairs for me, son." Billy went at the job with a smile that covered his whole face, for if there was anything he was strong at, it was the scrubbing of cellar stairs. Had he been asked to pick out his own job for a try-out, it would have been the very thing he was told to do. He had learned that trade, and learned it well, at the Orphans' Home, for he had to do a lot of it there. He has never done anything in his life, from licking a bully to skinning the devil, but what he did it thor- oughly and to a finish, and in that same way he cleaned those cellar stairs. The moment Mrs. Scott looked at them she gave the casting vote for Billy. Among his other duties in the Scott home, he took care of twenty Shetland ponies. In this place he got eight dollars a month and his board and lodging. During a meeting he held at Steubenville, Ohio, in 1913, Sunday heard that Mrs. Rex, a sister of Col. Scott, lived there. He and Mrs. Sunday went to visit her, and had a very pleasant day. Sunday preached in Richmond, Ohio, where Col. Scott was born, and the little church was packed to the doors, and twenty-four were converted. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War under Lincoln, was born at Steubenville, and so also were the McCooks, who were renowned generals during the Civil War. In his early life Col. Scott had lived in that part of so THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY Ohio and from the large part he had had in Sunday's early career, the people of Richmond felt that the evan- gelist was one of their very own, and did their best to make him feel at home. There was a good school in the Home at Davenport, and while there Sunday had passed the grades, and so was able to enter the high school at Nevada, which he did while working for Col. Scott. He completed the course, maintaining all the way through a high average of scholarship. His memory's marvelous retentive powers were displayed early. During the last two years of his high school course he had the job of janitor of the school building. This compelled him to leave his bed at three o'clock in the morning during the winter, start fourteen fires and keep them going during the day. For those fires he also had to carry the coal, do the sweeping and dusting, and whatever else was needed in the care of the building. From his early boyhood Sunday was a great runner, and always racing with other boys. At a Fourth of July celebration at Ames, when he was thirteen, he w^on the first prize in a footrace that was open to all. The prize he won was three dollars, and no three dollars ever looked any bigger to a boy. His strongest competitor in the race that day was a young man from the Agricultural College. The student ran in racing togs, and Billy with bare feet. During his high school days at Nevada, his speed as a runner began to attract much attention, and no won- der, for later he was to be one of the first men in the country to do a hundred yards in ten seconds. When his high school course w^as finished he was persuaded to go to Marshalltown, so that he might be a member of the Marshalltown Fire Brigade. Firemen's LEAVES DAVENPORT HOME 31 tournaments were then very popular all over the state, and largely attended wherever held. Sunday had had a part in some of these, and was beginning to be known as a young man of remarkable speed, and as fleetness of foot was the thing that was at a premium in the win- ning teams, the Marshalltown Fire Brigade was deter- mined to have him. His first job in Marshalltown was in an undertaking and furniture shop. He liked it no better than he had done farming, and especially detested varnishing chairs, and it was what he had to do the most. One day his employer, who stood watching him, said : '' That's not the way to do it ; let me show you." Then after a few strokes of the brush, he said : " Can't you do it that way? '' '' Not on your life," said Billy, " or I wouldn't be working for you for three dollars a week." V^^'hile in Marshalltown, Sunday became interested in baseball, and played with the city team. This marks one of the significant points in his career. He played a spectacular game from the start, and his base running was astonishing. It was in the early eighties that Anson discovered Sunday at Marshalltown, and it came about in this way: Some time before Billy's playing in Marshalltown the Club had won for it the State Cham- pionship of Local Clubs. The game was with Des Moines, and was played in the Fair Grounds at Des Moines. They told Anson so much about this game, and Sun- day's fine playing in it, that the Captain sat up and took notice that Billy must be something out of the ordinary as a player, and right there the young man's long lane of hard luck took a short turn for the better. Anson had been born and reared in Marshalltown, 32 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY and at that time was spending some time there, visiting his father. He had an aimt, known to many familiarly as " Aunt Em/' and it was she who drew the Captain's attention to Sunday. And but for the interest this good woman took in him, Billy might have remained in that furniture shop varnishing chairs for years, with a loath- ing like that Israel came to have for quail. Or if Anson had not made that most timely visit to the home of his boyhood, the man who is now preaching to such vast multitudes might have evoluted into a solemn-faced un- dertaker, who could be happy only when putting crape on the door. Anson had a meeting with Sunday, and was not long in convincing him that his forte lay, not in driving a hearse or selling crape at two dollars a yard, but in giving his legs a chance to do their best on the diamond, and so once more Billy packed his grip and boarded the cars to go to Chicago, where he landed with only a dollar in his pocket, but with hope beating high in his breast. Arrived there, he was soon wearing the uniform of the famous old White Stockings, of the National League, the club that won the championship for the windy city every year but two in the period of 1883-7. On the Chicago team at that time were Flint and Kelly, catchers ; Clarkson and McCormick, pitchers ; Anson, Pfeffer, Burns and Williamson, the '' stonewall " infield, with Dalrymple, Gore and Sunday in the out- field. This was brisk company, but Billy was soon admittedly the fastest runner, not only in the Chicago team, but in the profession. He was the first man who ever ran the bases in fourteen seconds. Anson has always contended that he was the fastest baserunner who ever played the game. It is remarkable that he went straight from the STATE OF IOWA ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE 3t 3(b (Eprtififd, That the Records of this office show that— -^/kd^t^C.J^^'e.::?:^^^ . Age g^<^. Nativity ./^ ^^-^^-^^^-^- -ta^:-- , residence G"?...- , {Oi^XxAXi./W ^<^'(^A^^ t^^^ Regiment Iowa on the ^"^^ Hay of C^-^-^ Vol and was mustered into the United States service as a , Iowa, was enlisted in Company It Iowa for the period of . C^- .—years, on.. .^ ^- day of....^ ^-'^-r^.^.< XIV SPECIAL FEATURES CONNECTED WITH THE SUNDAY MEETINGS SUNDAY'S corps of helpers consists of nearly a dozen people, made up of both men and women. His wife is with him most of the time in nearly every meeting, and she is of course his best helper. In general, arrangements are made so that the men of the party can live together under one roof, and so keep up something of home life. The ladies generally have rooms in homes near by, so that all can have meals at the same table. It is also an advantage in many ways, for them to be close together. Whenever it can be done, the Executive Committee rents a large furnished house,, and employs a housekeeper and other needed help. When this is not done, Sunday finds it difficult to get the time he needs for rest and work. His correspondence alone is heavy and burdensome, for although he has a most efficient secretary, so much of it requires his own personal attention. In connection with the great meetings are many spe- cial features that require skilled supervision and con- stant oversight, and no little downright hard work on the part of every member of the party. The first and most important of these are the cottage prayer meetings, about a hundred or more of which are held, in the larger places, every morning at ten o'clock. These are the spiritual life of the great meetings. To 149 150 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY have them go on successfully and profitably is no small task, and in this the local pastors can give much help. The city is divided into districts of a few blocks each, in every one of which a prayer meeting is held daily. The aim is to have these meetings held in different homes each morning, and not in the same ones contin- uously. There is also a daily change in the leaders. In the choosing of leaders care must be taken, not only to have those who will be spiritual and competent, but who will also be prompt and punctual, and see that the meetings begin and close on time. It has been found an advantage to hold as many of these meetings as pos- sible in the homes of non-Christians. Another feature that has much to do with the success of the great meetings is the holding of meetings in shops and factories during the noon hour. The men in the shops take much interest in these meetings, and are glad to have them as often as they can be held. At each one there is good singing and a short address, made by Sunday or one of his assistants. Sometimes meetings are also held for the clerks in the larger stores. Nu- merous meetings are held in the schools, and Sunday's educational talks are among the best and most practical he gives. By them many young lives have been turned into better channels. One very important special feature is the work that is done among women of several classes : Business women, factory girls, maids, society women, wives, mothers, schoolgirls, etc. One of Sunday's women as- sistants holds meetings for the business women — stenog- raphers, clerks, bookkeepers, etc., in which they are or- ganized into classes and given special help and instruc- tion in Bible study and other matters pertaining to young women. These meetings are held during the noon hour, SPECIAL FEATURES 151 and luncheon is provided for them three days in the week. The attendance upon these runs from four hundred to a thousand daily, according to size of city. Another young woman assistant holds meetings at noon- time in factories, and with the maids at a different hour on another day, and so with girls of other classes who sup- port themselves. Another woman assistant has had large experience as a Bible teacher, and does a very much needed work in her line, by organizing wives, mothers, housekeepers and all others she can enlist, into classes for a systematic study of the Scriptures, and under her skillful training a most enthusiastic interest is soon awakened in the study of the Bible, which continues for years after the meetings have been held. This assistant often returns for a few days, to give the classes any renewed help that may be needed. In one city where a meeting was in progress a travel- ing man went into his hotel, and with a look of amaze- ment on his face, said to the clerk : " I just saw the strangest sight I ever saw in my life." ''And what was it?" said the clerk, as he jabbed a pen into the glass of shot. " Why, it was more than a hundred women passing along the sidewalk, and every last one of them was carrying a Bible ! " And this shows what a marked Impression such Bible work as Sunday is having done must have on a com- munity. The lady above referred to also forms personal workers classes and trains them to do intelligent and effective personal work in the meetings and elsewhere. Many so trained become real soul winners. 152 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY She also meets the high school girls three times a week, and gives them practical instruction in Bible study. She plans and arranges for meetings of women in homes, arranges group meetings, etc., and herself addresses many women's meetings. The gospel is not only preached to the poor in the tabernacle, and carried to the unfortunate in many ways that appeal to them through the various channels of the Sunday meetings, but special efforts are also made to reach the v/ealthy. Meetings especially for this class are also held in the homes of society people, where for the time the ballroom is turned into a chapel, and some of the best preaching Sunday has ever done he does here. In no other meeting does he have a more attentive hear- ing, or preach more impressively. The place is always crowded with women who move in the upper circles, many of whom never heard a straight-out gospel sermon from a man who had the courage to speak the truth as it is given in the Bible. These people have found by experience that wealth and high station can never satisfy an immortal spirit, and in their souls many of them have long yearned for some- thing better. Many who thus hear the truth in the homes of friends want more of it, and so become attend- ants at the tabernacle. Sunday was the first evangelist to undertake this most important and sadly neglected work. In wide contrast to this, meetings are also held in jails and prisons. When holding meetings in Columbus, Ohio, where the State Penitentiary is located, Mr. Sun- day held services in the great prison every Wednesday and Sabbath morning, at nine o'clock, and hundreds of the prisoners were converted, and since their release have lived upright lives. His Bible teachers had a class SPECIAL FEATURES 153 of over eight hundred in the prison, and the men were taught the word of God. Another marked feature is the mammoth men's meet- ings that are held almost every Sunday afternoon in the tabernacle, and which is always filled to its fullest capac- ity. The attendance at these meetings is so unprece- dented that no matter how great the capacity of the build- ing may be, it is always crowded to the utmost, and thousands are turned away. No one can have the remotest idea of how men can be stirred, until he has attended one of these great meet- ings. In them multitudes have taken their stand for Christ, and other thousands of men whose names had long been on church rolls have been changed from luke- warmness and indifference into live wires of Christian energy. Whenever a large number have to be turned away from any of the tabernacle meetings, an overflow meeting is held in the largest accessible church, con- ducted by Sunday's assistants. While meetings for men only are being held at the tabernacle, from one to three meetings for women only are held, addressed by Mrs. Sunday and other ladies of the party, and these meetings are always larger in at- tendance than the capacity of the churches in which they are held can accommodate. A great many conversions have taken place in them. Another great meeting is one for women alone, where Sunday makes an address especially for women, and which no man has ever yet been allowed to attend. Not even the musical director, Sunday's first assistant or the janitor can remain. Unprincipled men have some- times tried to smuggle themselves in, but have soon been discovered and ousted. Not a great while ago two young fellows in women's apparel attempted it, but Mrs. Sun- 154f THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY day was acting as chief usher just then, and her quick eye detected them. She walked over to them, and put out her hand to shake hands. When they stretched out their big paws her suspicions were confirmed, and very much crestfallen they were shown to the door, getting a good deal tangled up in their hobble skirts as they stampeded toward the exit. In some of these meetings hundreds of well-dressed women have sat down on the shavings in the aisles and open spaces, while other thou- sands were unable to get into the building. The meeting for women only, during the campaign in Columbus, Ohio, was perhaps the most wonderful ever held in America. The hour for the service to com- mence had been announced for two o'clock, but at five o'clock in the morning women began to gather about the building, waiting for the doors to open. By ten o'clock twelve thousand women were packed in the building, every available foot of space being taken. Hundreds were clamoring to get in, and every street car was packed, bringing thousands more. Automobiles rushed up with their precious loads of elegantly gowned women from the homes of the rich, all wild to gain an entrance. Word being sent to Mr. Sunday, he hurried to the tabernacle, and announced that he would preach to those already in the building. They would then pass out through the rear doors, and those waiting outside would be admitted, and the sermon repeated to them. This announcement was greeted with wild cheers. When the doors were opened twelve thousand women swept in, brushing the police to one side as though they were children. Sunday finished the sermon the second time at three- thirty; rushed to his hotels changed his clothes, which SPECIAL FEATURES 155 were dripping wet from perspiration; jumped into an automobile and hurried to the Ohio State University, where he addressed two thousand students, assembled in the great gymnasium. Then back home for a few min- utes rest. Then again hurrying to the tabernacle to preach the same sermon to twelve thousand business women — from office, factory, shop and store — who had been given special tickets of admission. In all, nearly forty thousand different women attended the services in one day, and thus closed the most remarkable demon- stration of the kind ever seen in the United States. This is what a lady of South Bend had to say in one of the local papers, concerning the Woman's Meeting there : " Billy Sunday's talk to women was a plain talk on a plain subject, and as Billy said, he was ' bitterly ma- ligned ' by those whom he calls ' foul-mouthed degen- erates,' when they say his sermon is shocking. In my opinion every word of that sermon should be put in print, and then cut out and put in a woman's scrapbook of choice clippings. He talked plain, but if plain talk was ever needed it is needed to-day. Nothing else will ever make some women stop and think. The power of his personality is shown when something unusual causes a stir in the audience. Last night a restless movement was noticed once, and the whole audience and I held our breath, for I knew one scream, one false move, and thousands of women would be turned into so many wild- cats fighting for their lives. But Billy spoke a word of assurance, and quiet was restored. The meeting was a wonderful gathering of women, and its like will never be seen in South Bend again. As a woman observer it did me a world of good, and ' it was good to have been there.' " 156 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY Another great special feature of the campaign is the day that is set apart for mothers. On this day everybody in the city is urged to wear a white carnation, white flower of some kind, or if the flower is not obtainable, a white ribbon in memory of mother. Acts of kindness that would please mother, are urged upon every one for that day. If she is living, write her a good letter, or send her some flowers. '' If your mother is dead, it is requested that you re- member what she was to you. Recall how great has been her influence upon you for good ; thank God that you had a good mother, and say again the prayer she taught you. If your mother is dead, do an act of kind- ness to somebody else's mother. If you have an auto or a carriage, use it, or give its use to carry old mothers to the tabernacle." The day meeting that day is called " Alother's Meet- ing." The songs " mother used to sing " are sung, and the sermon by Mr. Sunday is very tender and very touch- ing, and is especially addressed to mothers. The influ- ence of the day can never be forgotten by those who attend the meetings. In many cities the stores and fac- tories close during the hours of the meeting. Among the most important features is the Sunday school parade, which usually takes place about the third week of the meeting, and in which about all the schools in the county participate. People always looi: for some- thing much out of the ordinary in this parade, and yet when it is seen they are much more than astonished — they are amazed. At Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where perhaps the largest thus far held took place, it was estimated that fully twenty thousand were in line, and that at least thirty thousand more turned out to witness the wonderful event. The LIVING ROOM AND DINING ROOM IN HOME AT WINONA LAKE, IND. SPECIAL FEATURES 157 procession was four miles long, marching four, and sometimes eight abreast. It took an hour and twenty-two minutes to pass a given point, including stops. The illustrations on other pages give but a faint idea of it. It was in April, and the weather ideal. The following account of it is from the Wilkes-Barre Record: '' Circus days in the palmiest period of their pros- perity never proved more magnetic in drawing people to the city. Every car the traction company could press into service was employed in handling the enormous sub- urban traffic. The summer cars were brought out, and every one packed to the limit. The people making up the various delegations began to assemble on the river common as early as ten o'clock. At noon it was almost impossible to move on River street, and at the Market street bridge the scene presented would have rivaled that in a metropolitan city on election night. No attempt was made at formation until the parade started to move. This occurred promptly to the minute scheduled. " Mr. Sunday appeared about three minutes ahead of time, walking from the Sterling with Mrs. Sunday, his self-confessed commander-in-chief. Promptly at twelve- thirty he gave the signal to the chief marshal, and the column started. The bands commenced to play, and the ranks fell into step. A platoon of mounted police kept the way clear. A car containing a number of women, members of the evangelistic party, formed the vanguard. Mr. and Mrs. Sunday, and most of the members of the party, marched in the procession. *' Everywhere the marchers advanced they were greeted with the same intense enthusiasm that marked the whole demonstration. At one point the mayor was picked up, loaded into a car and taken along. Traffic along the route of march was blocked for about two 158 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY hours. The makeup of the parade was something dif- ferent from anything ever seen in our city. " The main body of the column was composed of chil- dren, although there were thousands of adults in line. Numerous auto trucks and heavy wagons punctuated the line at various points. They were loaded with tiny children too small to march. Nearly every one who par- ticipated carried a banner or flag of some kind. Two sprinklers mounted by crowds of little youngsters made literal water wagons, and the fact was emblazoned on cards that admonished every one to ' Cut out Booze ! ' Hay wagons, carts, autos of all kinds carried hundreds of the little tots. " The scene at the tabernacle after the parade was one that cannot soon be forgotten. The vast building was packed to the doors with an audience made up mostly of children, and Sunday preached a sermon espe- cially to them. Four buildings were packed. The taber- nacle with seven to eight thousand; a church seating over two thousand, and in Majestic Theater were packed fifteen hundred more. Beside this, another meeting was held in one of the churches. All the meetings were ad- dressed by members of the Sunday party. By this time it was scarcely four o'clock, and the parade disbanded, with thousands who were unable to get into a meeting, some of whom had been marching since twelve-thirty. " When it was suggested in the tabernacle that the Sunday school parade be made an annual event, the entire audience leaped to their feet in acclamation of the proposal." The wildest kinds of rumors, reports, charges and slanders are in circulation as to the ironclad require- ments that must be met before Sunday will engage to hold a 'meeting in any city, and one of the basest of these SPECIAL FEATURES 159 is that he requires a money guarantee of twenty thou- sand dollars for his services. This is absolutely false, and has not a single word of truth in it. He never has made any requirement on this line whatever, except that he shall receive what the people will voluntarily give him on the last Sunday of the meeting. He makes no stipulation whatever as to the amount he shall receive. Sunday takes a deep interest in the spiritual well- being of those who take a stand for Christ in his meet-, ings, and aims to have them clearly and intelligently understand the meaning of the step they take. Indi- vidual cases, that for some particular reason are brought to his attention, he sometimes keeps in touch with for_^ years. A carefully prepared leaflet, the result of 'I years of experience, study and prayer, is presented to each one at the time the stand is taken. It reads as follows : Dear Friend : You have by this act of coming forward publicly acknowledged your faith in Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour. No one could possibly be more re- joiced that you have done this, or be more anxious for you to succeed and get the most joy and service out of the Christian life than I. I therefore ask you to read carefully this little tract. Paste it in your Bible and read it frequently. What It Means to he a Christian. — A Christian is any man, woman or child who comes to God as a lost sinner, accepts the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour, surrenders to Him as his Lord and Master; confesses Him as such before the world, and strives to please Him in everything, day by day. Have yoit come to God realizing that you are a lost 160 THE REAL BiLLY SUNDAY sinner? Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour? That is, do you believe with all your heart that God laid all your iniquity on Him? (Isa. 53:5-6). And that He bore the penalty of your sins (i Pet. 2:24) and that your sins are forgiven be- cause Jesus died in your stead? Have you surrendered to Him as your Lord and Master? That is, are you willing to do His will, even when it conflicts with your desire? Have you confessed Him as your Saviour and Master before the world? Is it your purpose to strive to please Him In every- thing day by day? If you can sincerely answer '' Yes " to the foregoing questions, then you may know, on the authority of God's word, that yon are now a child of God (John i : 12) ; that you have now eternal life (John 3: 36) ; that is to say, if you have done your part (i.e., believe that Christ died in your place, and receive Him as your Saviour and Master), God has done His part, and imparted to you His own nature (2 Peter 1:4). How to Make a Success of the Christian Life. — Now that you are a child of God, your growth depends upon yourself. It is impossible for you to become a useful Christian unless you are willing to do the things which are abso- lutely essential to your spiritual growth. To this end the following suggestions will be found to be of vital importance : Study the Bible. — Set aside at least fifteen minutes a day for Bible study. Let God talk to you fifteen minutes a day through His Word. Talk to God fifteen min- utes a day in prayer. Talk for God fifteen minutes a day. SPECIAL FEATURES 161 As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby. — i Peter 2 : 2. The w^ord of God is food for the soul. Commit to memory one verse of Scripture each day. Join a Bible class (Ps. 119: 11). Pray Much. — Praying is talking to God. Talk to Him about everything — your perplexities, joys, sorrows, sins, mistakes, friends, enemies, etc. Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. — Phil. 4 : 6. Win Some One for Christ. — For spiritual growth you need not only food (Bible study), but exercise. Work for Christ. The only work Christ ever set for Christians is to win others. Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. — Mark 16: 15. When I say unto the wicked. Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity ; but his blood will I require at thine hand. — Ezek. 3:18. Shun Evil Companions. — Avoid bad people, bad books, bad thoughts. Read the first psalm. Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbe- lievers : for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light 162 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY with darkness? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord. — 2 Cor. 6:14-17- Try to win the wicked for God, but do not choose them for your companions. Join Some Church. — Be faithful in your attendance at the Sabbath and mid-week services. Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves to- gether, as the manner of some is. — Heb. 10 : 25. Co-operate with Your Pastor. — God has appointed the pastor to be a shepherd over the church, and you should give him due reverence, and seek to assist him in his plans for the welfare of the church. Give to the Support of the Lord's Work. — Give as the Lord hath prospered you (i Cor. 16:2). Give not grudgingly or of necessity, for God lov- eth a cheerful giver. — 2 Cor. 9 : 7. Do Not Become Discouraged. — Expect temptations, discouragement and persecution. The Christian life is a warfare. Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. — 2 Tim. 3 : 12. " The eternal God is thy refuge." We have the prom- ise that all things, even strange, hard and unaccountable obstacles, work together for our good. Alany of God's brightest saints who were once as weak as you are, passed through dark tunnels and the hottest fires, and MR. AND MRS. SUNDAY ON THE GOLF LINKS. SPECIAL FEATURES 163 yet their lives were enriched by their experiences, and the world was made better because of their having lived in it. Read often the following passages of Scripture: Romans 8 : i8; James i : 12 ; i Cor. 10 : 13. Near the close of each campaign a Personal Workers' League is organized, to aid the churches in maintaining the revival spirit after the meetings end. In some places hundreds of names are enrolled, and in the list will be representatives from all classes converted at the taber- nacle, and others who have for years been church mem- bers. These Leaguers stand pledged to hold up the hands of their pastor, and stand shoulder to shoulder with him in all his endeavors to make religion something more than a name. They give life to the prayer and other devotional meetings of their own church, and also to the Sunday school and adult Bible classes. Teams are also organized among them for aggressive evangelistic work, and by them meetings are held in their own and neighboring communities. They hold noon meetings, in shops, factories, etc., and make all possible effort to get men to take an interest in religion. By such efforts a revival spirit is maintained, and hundreds of people are converted. At Youngstown, Ohio, for in- stance, where Sunday held a meeting in 1908, the revival fires have been kept burning in the churches ever since. The gains in church membership have been not only steady, but surprising. Through the personal workers at Wichita, Kan., where Sunday held a meeting in 191 1, nineteen hundred and thirteen men and boys were reported converted within a year from the close of the campaign. Also 164 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY through the example and influence of the Wichita work- ers, converts in other towns organized similar teams, and extended the work into other districts. A moment's thought will show what a power for good a live Per- sonal Workers' League may become in any community. B XV SOME OF SUNDAY'S SAYINGS ETTER limp all the way to heaven than not get there at all. To make seeking God the first business of life, is to begin right. In the sight of God there is no difference between being wrong and doing wrong. If you would be taken over the river dry-shod, you must get into the boat. I would rather have standing room in heaven than own the world and go to hell. If good preaching could save the world, it would have been done long ago. The man who can drive a hog and keep his religion, will stand without hitching. The inconsistency is not in the Bible, but in your life. There are men in hell because they wasted too much time in trying to find out where Cain got his wife. 165 166 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY You can find everything in the average church, from a humming bird to a turkey buzzard. The man who sneers at true rehgion turns up his nose at one of the best things on earth. You don't have to look like a hedgehog to be pious. Riches have never yet given anybody either peace or rest. If there is no hell, a good many preachers are obtain- ing money under false pretenses. The man virho is right with God will not be wrong with anything that is good. Some of the biggest lies ever told are to be found on gravestones. In every community are some folks the devil can catch with a bare hook. If you depend on your emotions for motive power, you will come to a good many places where the wires won't work. The Bible will always be full of things you cannot understand, as long as you will not live according to those you can understand. God never says no to the man who is really in earnest. Don't stop with telling your boy to do right. Show him how. SUNDAY'S SAYINGS IGT Better die an old maid, sister, than marry the wrong man. Our homes are on a level with our women. The devil has a mortgage on many a child from the day it is born. You never hear of a man marrying a woman to re- form her. Is there any bread in rum? Yes, for the brewer and the saloon keeper, but not for the drunkard's family. There are too many men in the pulpit to-day who preach as if they didn't expect any help from God. Going to church don't make anybody a Christian, any more than taking a wheelbarrow into a garage makes it an automobile. There never was a doubt in the world that didn't come straight from the devil. No hypocrite in the church, or out of it, is going to get into heaven. If you live as God wants you to your life will have some lines in it like those in the face of Christ. Too many churches are little more than four walls and a roof. I would rather be pastor of a graveyard than of some churches. 168 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY The right preaching of the gospel will never hurt anything good. The big bugs in the church are mistaken about as often as the little ones. The man who votes for the saloon is pulling on the same rope with the devil, whether he knows it or not. God pity the country when the devil gets the home. To have to live with some people is to slide toward the pit. A decent man ought to be ashamed to live in a town that is run by the devil's gang. Call the devil by his right name, and you will make many a man with broad phylacteries as mad as fire. You can have as many theories as you please, but you will never get into heaven unless you plant your feet on the Rock of As^es. "•&' If you would have your children turn out well, don't turn your home into a lunch counter and lodging house. Trying to run a church without revivals can be done — when you can run a gasoline engine on buttermilk. If the womanhood of America had been no better than its manhood, the devil would have had the country fenced in long ago. SUNDAY'S SAYINGS 169 Some homes need a hickory switch a good deal more than they do a piano. The devil hates the church, but he likes the work some highbrows do in it. Some of the biggest rooms in hell will be crowded full of church members. Many a man who is rolling down hill faster than a fox can run, will tell you that he is on his w^ay to heaven. Enthusiasm is as good a thing in religion as fire is in a cook stove. When I hit the devil square in the face some people go away as mad as if I had slapped them in the mouth. The man who has no passion for souls is liable to get mad at the drop of a hat. Man was a fool in the Garden of Eden, and he has taken a good many new degrees since. There are some homes that never hurt the devil's business. The backslider likes the preaching that wouldn't hit the side of a house, while the real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees. The man who don't believe in a hell is about sure to be scorching to it with both pedals loose. 170 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY Some preachers preach as if all their members were saints. The devil will say amen to the preaching that says the world is becoming better and better. Don't throw any mud at the plan of salvation until you try it and find out that it won't work. Whenever the devil gets a chance to put a thorn in a good man's side, he jabs it in deep. No photographer could make a living taking pictures, if he made them look just like you. Look into the preaching Jesus did, and you will find it was aimed straight at the big sinners on the front seats. The repentance that counts with God must be brought down to a spot cash basis. There would be more power in the prayers of some folks if they would put more white money in the collec- tion basket. There wouldn't be so many non-church goers if there were not so many non-going churches. Be careful, father, or while you are making one lap around the devil's track your boy will make six. God keeps no half-way house. It's either heaven or hell for you and me. SUNDAY'S SAYINGS 171 If there is a heaven for fools, the man who thinks he can get to glory on his wife's religion will be there on a front seat. Not to walk in the straight and narrow way yourself, is to give the devil the biggest kind of a chance to get your children. If you follow some of the star preachers you will be lost in the woods, but if you follow Christ you will be sure to land in heaven. If you are strangers to prayer you are strangers to power. When picking out a man's coffin, the worst thing to say about him is that he had no enemies. The devil never put a wickeder lie into the heart of any man, than that the way to be a Christian is to be solemn and cold and sour. I am not the author of the plan of salvation, but I am responsible for the way I preach it. The world needs the best you can give it. The father who keeps his boy away from school is doing his best to make a fool out of him. Not how well you have done, but how v/hat you have done compares with what you might have done is what counts. 17S THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY What you have given the world it never possessed before you came. The difference between God's side and the devil's is the difference between heaven and hell. Temptation is not sin — yielding is. A man can slip into hell with his hand on the door- knob of heaven. Ball bearings on the church doors will never fill the pews with sinners seeking salvation. Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in. If you live wrong you can't die right. To discover a flaw in our makeup is a chance to get rid of it, and add a new line of beauty to our life. God will not send the winds to drive our ship of salva- tion, unless we have faith to lift the sails. The real man shuns a path carpeted with velvet. If you are going to be carried over the rough places, you might as well have no legs at all. All the service that weighs an ounce in the sight of God is that which is prompted by love. SUNDAY'S SAYINGS 173 I am an old-fashioned preacher of the old-time reli- gion, that has warmed this cold world's heart for two thousand years. To know some men is an invitation to do right. To know others is an invitation to lie, drink, swear and sink into hell. What God needs, and the world needs, is men who are solid mahogany all the way through. XVI SUNDAY'S HOME AND OTHER FAMILY AFFAIRS MR. SUNDAY'S mother is still living, and only a mother can know and appreciate the great joy and satisfaction she has had in hearing her son preach to vast multitudes virith such marvelous power, and seeing him so wondrously used of God in the saving of many. It has been her privilege to have a seat on the platform in many of his great meetings, and there witness scenes that melted her heart in gratitude. Sunday has always been glad to have his mother with him at the tabernacle whenever she could be present, and has had his heart made very tender by the heartiness of the applause that always greeted her whenever he introduced her. God has a thousand ways of pouring the oil of joy into the heart of a mother, and to this Sunday's mother can abundantly testify. Billy's love for his mother, and his intense loyalty to her, has been a grand example to thousands of young people all over the country and this has always reached the climax of influence in every campaign when the spe- cial " Mothers* Day " services were held. Everything in the way of good that comes to Sunday he is proud and happy to share w^ith his wife. Next to the favor of God, it is doubtful if there is anything more precious to him than " Nell's " smile of enjoyment, and she is just as glad when the dew of heaven comes 174 AS HE APPEARS AT HOME, BETWEEN MEETINGS. HOME AND FAMILY AFFAIRS 175 to him. Along with the great honors and tributes that are bestowed upon Sunday in the cities where he goes, Mrs. Sunday must be at his side to share them if she is anywhere near. If she is on the platform behind him when any special ovation or present is offered him, a glance in her direc- tion, and a characteristic jerk of his head is a wireless signal that is by the whole multitude instantly understood, and it promptly brings her to his side. This noble ex- ample from a leader so prominent cannot but have a most wholesome influence in many a home. A short time ago, Mr. Sunday's youngest boy — little Paul, a six-year-old — had the experience that is always so momentous to the small boy — his first day in school. He had for some time been looking forward to it as being a fine thing to have to do, but when the day at last really dawned, it was quite a solemn thing for little Paul. There was no smile on his bright little face that morning, and for once in his life he was actually still. There is good ground for believing that he might have backed out altogether but for Willie, who braced him up as one boy knows so well how to help another. Willie is Paul's hero, for Willie is twelve, and that makes him quite a giant to his baby brother. He is all, and mayhap more to Paul than Simon Peter was to Andrew. He always feels safe when Willie is close by, and is never timid about following Willie anywhere. He would follow him into the lions' den. Had Jonah had a younger brother with him on the ship, who believed in him as little Paul does in Willie, the whale would have had to carry two passengers in- stead of one, and think of the extra trouble that would have made for some of the Bible critics. But little Paul's first day at school came and went, as 176 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY all other days are certain to do, and that evening his mother had a little talk with him about his new ex- perience. ** Tell me all about it, Paul/* said his mother. " How did you get along? " '' I didn't get along at all/' was the reply. " Why, Paul, what do you mean by that ? What did you do ? " "Didn't do nothing!" " Didn't do anything ? Child, what do you mean ? I want to know all about it." ''They didn't give me nothing to do; only to just sit there. And I can't waste my time that way/' said little Paul, who from his father's incessant activity seems to think that not to be doing something with all your might is a most sinful waste of the golden moments. By the way, the very day on which Paul was born his father had to leave home to begin a meeting at Gibson City, 111. Paul was born at seven-thirty in the morning, and an hour later Mr. Sunday had to grab up his suitcase and make a dash for the railroad depot, without stopping to even form a speaking acquaintance with the boy. When Willie was born the situation was even less de- sirable, for Sunday was up to his eyes in a meeting at Harlan, Iowa, and didn't get to see the new baby until it was ten days old, and had taken command of the entire household. This shows how little an evangelist is able to control his own movements or consult his own feelings. The importance of the work in which he is engaged is so great and far reaching, and the interests at stake so widespread and multitudinous, and his own personal and family affairs of such slight consequence in comparison, that he must anoint his altar with the blood of sacrifice, HOME AND FAMILY AFFAIRS 177 and go straight on in the Hne of duty, no matter how trying or difficult he may find the task. WiUie has always been a natural born explorer. Al- most from the cradle he has shown a tendency to investi- gate that could not be suppressed. From the time he was a very little boy anything that was new and strange was like the call of the wild to him. He could no more be kept from trying to investigate than Lieut. Peary could be kept from trying to reach the North Pole. Every town to which Willie went with his parents was a new world that he was as eager to explore as Columbus was to discover America. In making the rounds of the stores with his father's party, he was always slipping away to make side explorations on his own account. The singular thing about it is that he could find his way and keep his bearings like a greyhound, and was never lost. He would turn up again when least expected. He would glide from counter to counter, and from floor to floor until he had covered the plant, and then he was ready to go to another place. When Willie was about six years old Mr. Sunday went to visit his assistant, in another part of the city, taking the boy along. While the men were talking the little fellow went all over the house, from cellar to attic, and came into the room through a door that the occupant himself had not previously noticed. After a day or two in a new town the little chap could go anywhere alone. Had not the North and South Poles been already discovered, it is almost certain that Willie would sooner or later have found them both. Both Willie and Paul were born on the same day of the week, and the same day of the month. Willie was born on Saturday, June 15, 1901, and Paul on Saturday,. June 15, 1907. 178 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY Helen was born on January 29, 1890, while her father was still playing ball. She is married, and lives at Elm- hurst, near Chicago. She is now Mrs. Mark P. Haines. George was born November 12, 1892, while his father was Secretary of the Religious Department of the Chicago Y. M. C. A. His full name is George Marquis, the latter name being in honor of an old pastor of the family. George is also married. The Sundays first began housekeeping in Chicago at 700 Monroe street, in a four-room flat. Here they lived two years, and until after Helen was born. They then removed to a larger flat, at 64 Throop street, and here their other three children were born. This continued to be their home until 1910, when they built their present home at Winona Lake, Ind. They had, however, had a summer cottage there for something like ten years be- fore this. The South Bend Tribune published an article giving the following information: " A slender man, roughly dressed in old clothes, was at work on the hillside lawn in front of the cozy home of Billy Sunday, at Winona Lake, one day when a couple of visitors called to see the famous baseball evangelist. They were newspaper men from South Bend, sent to learn something of the home life of the Sundays. " Is this the home of Mr. Sunday ? " asked the two in chorus of the man, whom they took to be the gardener. " Yes, he lives here," was the laconic answer, as he motioned toward the house, and scarcely raised his head. " Who wants to see him ? " " A couple of newspaper men." " Well, what do you want ? " " To see Mr. Sunday." " All right ; look at him. Here he is." HOME AND FAMILY AFFAIRS 179 And as he spoke, the evangelist, who looked much more like a laboring man than a preacher, in the clothes he wore, turned half around and regarded his visitors narrowly from under the brim of a tattered hat. " We wanted to find out something in advance con- cerning your meetings," one of the men suggested. " I know of nothing," said the man in the old clothes, as he turned on his heel and walked away. Apparently the interview was over, but it was plain after he had taken several turns up and down the lawn, that this was just one of his old habits of moving about nervously as he talks. "How about your arrangement of sermons?" one of them queried, as he turned and approached again. *' There is none. I don't have any," and he was off again. Again it looked as if the interview were over. Sunday displayed no further interest in his callers, and they strolled nervously about on the lawn, as he dodged here and there among the bushes and flower beds, removing dead branches and twigs that had collected during the winter. There was a long, painful silence. Then suddenly the wiry man straightened up, and it was here he displayed the first sign of interest. " How are things in South Bend^, anyway? " he asked, looking from one of his visitors to the other. " Do the people appear interested in the coming revival ? " " They do." The reply undoubtedly pleased him, for when he spoke again he showed his pleasure with a broad smile. Then there was something said about the " booze crowd " in South Bend, and the ice was broken. Sunday spoke at length, and with his well-known vigor. 180 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY concerning the " booze crowd," his arch enemy the world over, and when he had finished his manner was entirely changed. With much animation he shouted to his wife that a couple of newspaper men had come to see them, whereupon the woman who is his guiding star, his most private secretary and all-around adviser, appeared. Two minutes of conversation with Mr. Sunday, and as much more with his better half, would reveal to the dullest mind that she has been one of the most important factors in changing a ball player into one of the greatest evangelists of modern times. Mr. Sunday forgets names, dates and faces, and any number of other things, and his wife remembers them for him. He forgets where he puts important telegrams and other papers, and she finds them for him. He calls her to do this, and asks her about that, and with a smile that never loses its luster, she always responds. Mrs. Sunday shook hands with the visitors with a cordial manner that spelled welcome. Then there sud- denly appeared two energetic small boys, neither of which could stand still a minute. The oldest wanted his tennis racket, and the other something to eat. Their wants were supplied, and later they appeared again, with a grin that told they had not been disappointed. " What would you say to posing for some pictures ? " was asked the evangelist and Mrs. Sunday. " It's the easiest thing I do," said he, as he threw him- self into position for a snapshot on the steps of his residence. " Daddy, you wouldn't have your picture taken in that outfit?" cried his wife, womanlike, and horrified. "Sure. Why not?" And in "that outfit" he was taken. The next few minutes were occupied in photographing t— I H W W O o w H < o PS p^ o I— I H < Q !5 C/2 J J I— I pq HOME AND FAMILY AFFAIRS 181 the Sunday family in various places and poses. In one Billy sat in the swing fondling his valuable dog, and in another he appeared beside the cage of the family parrot. When the picture taking was completed he had become a most gracious host. " Come in, and look through my forty-thousand dollar house," said he, laughing ; " the house that cost me ex- actly thirty-eight hundred dollars to build." Inside he explained the forty-thousand dollar connec- tion with his residence. " Mrs. Sunday and I always call it our forty-thousand dollar home," said he, " because the * booze crowd ' have advertised it from one end of the country to the other, as having cost me that. The truth of the matter is that it cost me exactly thirty-eight hundred dollars, and I spent about a thousand dollars in addition on interior decorations. So it is an investment of just about five thousand dollars, just an eighth of the amount charged against me by the ' booze gang,' and that is about as close as they ever come to the truth in anything. " We think we have it right cozy here," said Sunday, as he dropped into an easy chair near the door, and a better word could not be found in the dictionary to describe the Sunday home. It is cozy all over. It is ideally planned, and so filled with pretty things that you want to ask Billy if he is ever tempted to remain at home for the balance of his life. The question un- asked was answered indirectly soon afterward, when Mrs. Sunday volunteered the information that " Daddy always dreaded to leave it again after a rest there." The entire front of the house is taken up with one large living-room, finished and furnished elegantly. It is a combination of parlor, sitting-room, den and music room. A wide hallway runs from this room to the rear 182 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY of the house, and this has been turned into quite a picture gallery. On the walls hang many fine enlargements of various members of the family; oils painted by Mrs. Sunday several years ago, and other pictures of merit and interest. The house has two stories, and astonishes you at the number of good-sized rooms it contains. There are sev- eral bedchambers and two sleeping porches. The other rooms are furnished on practically the same scale as the front room, all having beautiful rugs on the floors. Mr. and Mrs. Sunday are proud of their Winona home, and they make no effort to conceal their pride. The Sundays there are as different from the Sundays of the tabernacle as day and night. Sunday in the pulpit is a fiery orator ; a magnetic figure who commands men; a son of thunder who utters words of fire, that are sometimes far from being conventional. In his home he is a quiet, orderly sort of person, who romps with his children, pets his dog, and makes a com- panion and chum of his wife. Catching sight of Sunday moving restlessly about in front of his home, collarless, and with his coat collar turned up and pinned about his throat, one has the im- pression he is looking at an invalid, who is just receiving his first breath of fresh air after a long confinement indoors. He moves rapidly about among the shrubbery, paying no attention to those about him, unless he is ad- dressed, or finds interest in the conversation. This is the picture he presented on the lawn in front of his home that day, but the photograph taken at that time shows quite a different sort of man. Before he had his old white hat drawn down over his eyes, but in the picture the hat is gone and the face is shown. That face is the strongest thing about his appearance. HOME AND FAMILY AFFAIRS ISS The life of Billy Sunday, and his success as an evan- gelist, is written on his countenance. He has piercing eyes, which reveal his various emotions. He has an un- usually plentiful stock of hair for a man fifty years old, and his chin is normal. He and his wife walked down to the Winona traction station with their visitors, he going for the exercise and she to meet a friend coming in on the car. Both were in a talkative mood, and had much to say of Winona; the pretty place it is in the summertime, and the difficulties encountered in cleaning it up every year for the warm weather season. When Sunday does talk, it is with much animation. He had many of the Winona college students at work on the grounds, putting them in order. He pays them out of his own pocket, and in return for this has the pleasure of directing their work, and having things done to suit him. The most of the students he knew by their first names, and nearly all of them greeted him as " Pro- fessor." Mrs. Sunday has been a greater traveler than her husband, in so far as mileage goes, for in almost every meeting she has had to fly like a shuttle, back and forth between the tabernacle and home. Many women claim that they have sometimes had to live for weeks in a trunk, but Mrs. Sunday has often had to do the same in a suitcase. Indeed, she almost has to keep one packed and ready to fly at a moment's notice to the place from which the hurry call comes. When she is at hom.e, along comes a telegram or a long distance call, saying she is badly needed at the front, and she has to put on her hat, and without waiting to see whether it is on straight or not, do some lively sprint- ing to make the train. And then, sometimes almost before 184 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY she has had time to become rested from the long trip, the wires begin from the other end, and bring the Hvely news that one of the boys has broken a leg, got the short end of a wishbone fast in his throat or been almost drowned while boating on the lake, and again she must grab up her hat and put it on in the hack, as the horses gallop for the depot. You will know what a wonderful woman she is when we tell you that these emergency calls never flurry her. She keeps her head and her wits, and goes right on in the line of duty, without ever once breaking step, with a calmness and deliberation that do honor to her Scotch heritage. Cupid certainly did a good day's work when he caused Billy to lose his heart to a lassie whose parents were born in the Highlands. While in a meeting six years ago it was found that one of the boys would have to be operated on for appen- dicitis, and while the campaign was on at Wichita, Kan., Mrs. Sunday had to scorch back to the home at Winona Lake, because Willie had broken a leg. While she was helping Mr. Sunday in the campaign at Erie, Pa., she had to take a fast train, and do it quick, for Ames, Iowa, where George was in college, and take the young man to Rochester, Minn., for a surgical operation. The children are strong and healthy, and every one of them has the energy of a dynamo, but accidents will happen, you know, and with Billy's boys no prophet can ever tell just when or how. XVII RESULTS OF MEETINGS IN VARIOUS PLACES 4 LL things considered, the greatest meeting held by A\ Mr. Sunday so far, was at Columbus, Ohio, in ■*- -^ January and February of 1913. Eighteen thou- sand conversions were recorded, and twelve thousand of these had united with churches within two weeks of the close of the campaign. The following summing up of this meeting was given by a correspondent of the Western Christian Advocate, a most conservative paper : *' The Sunday meetings have closed in Columbus, Ohio, with the unanimous judgment that all previous evangelis- tic records, in point of number of converts, and in funds raised, have been eclipsed. The meeting continued through seven weeks, and every day the interest increased until the entire city was held in its grasp. It is said that every department of the city's activities was influenced. " The straightening up of men's lives meant the arous- ing of the sense of obligation and feeling of honesty. Old debts were paid to grocerymen and other parties to such an extent that it became a matter of public notice and commendation of the spirit of the revival. If this is one of the results of Mr. Sunday's meetings, it fur- nishes a recommendation that will appeal to business men. There are many communities where such a meeting would be welcomed by the hard-headed business men, who are carrying on their books hundreds of dollars against fam- 185 186 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY ilies belonging to the church. One of the greatest rec- ommendations for modern revivaHsm is its power to awaken men to their obhgation to pay their debts. *' Every walk of life was influenced. It could not be resisted. It went into every office, every shop, every home, every street. It claimed converts in every profession. The police of the city were captured. Every policeman placed on duty at the tabernacle '* hit the sawdust trail." The chief himself, seated on the platform, made a hearty and open confession of Christ. Lawyers, physicians, mer- chants, artisans of every description, all gave their quota to the harvest of the evangelist. One pastor writes : ' The work cannot be conservatively and sanely described. It would be like trying to describe a cyclone when you are in the midst of its fury.* " Men and women were carried off their feet. Men who had never listened to a religious appeal, surrendered to the call of Christ. Many who had hated evangelism and feared the gospel were caught in the throes of de- cision. The total number of converts during the cam- paign was eighteen thousand one hundred and forty-nine. *' There were ninety-five tabernacle meetings held, and the aggregate attendance was nearly a million people. On the last Saturday night four thousand Free and Ac- cepted Masons attended the meeting, led by two bands of music. This demonstration revealed one of the great powers of the evangelist. All manner of secular influ- ences may be carried into his meetings, but they do not affect the situation. He picks up the burden, and like a Samson walks off with it. Nothing seems to be great enough to eclipse the spiritual influence. The larger the crowd the greater the results. A choir of two thousand voices and the prayers of sixty churches is a tremendous support for any preacher of the gospel. RESULTS IN VARIOUS PLACES 187 " On the last Sabbath people were standing at the tabernacle doors before eight o'clock, with their dinner baskets on their arms, there to spend the day. At nine o'clock Mr. Sunday preached to the prisoners in the State Prison, with splendid results; fifteen hundred men responding to his appeal. The crowd at the morning service was a jam, but marvelous for spiritual uplift. In the afternoon the attendance upon the men's meeting was thirteen thousand five hundred, the greatest number of men ever present at a religious meeting at one time. " Simultaneously with the men's meeting Mrs. Sunday addressed a mass meeting of women which numbered thousands in attendance. The evening service was one great rally of the forces and converts, which resulted for the day's work in twenty-three hundred and thirty-one conversions, aggregating eighteen thousand one hundred and forty-nine, and the raising of $20,795.62 for the expenses of the campaign. " This is registered as the universal judgment: ' Every one was tired; every one was happy'; every one was sat- isfied.' This further result must also be registered : The reinstatement of evangelistic methods into favor in the minds of men, and the popularizing of personal approach in matters of religion; and this final word, that faith in the response of men to the religious appeal has been greatly heightened." The Ohio State Journal, a daily paper which freely and sympathetically featured the meeting, gave this judg- ment at the close : " In the opinion of men who have studied the cam- paigns of great revivalists, this record surpasses all figures thus far compiled in the United States and abroad, and may be taken as the greatest evangelistic demonstration of modern times. For more than seven weeks hundreds 188 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY of business men had neglected their private affairs ; for an equal period social engagements were disregarded or side-tracked; for that length of time sixty churches had closed their doors, the pastors had devoted the most of their time to advancing the work of the campaign, and during all those days the Rev. Billy Sunday, the baseball evangelist, had talked and prayed, sweated and pranced about the platform, besought and entreated with sinners, flayed with scalding invective every sort of wickedness, and endeared himself personally to multitudes who either had been openly or covertly antagonistic. Under the spell of his oratory and the persuasive influence of his co- workers, all manner of men were made to take a new view of life. City and county officials, saloon-keepers and professors, society women and shop-girls, school children and avowed agnostics stood up and said, ' I pub- licly accept Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour.' " And this from another issue of the same paper: " Now that the Sunday meetings are over, it may be well to take an account of stock. Mr. Sunday has been given a hearing that has not been rivaled in the history of the church. It is very important that a hearing should be obtained, and it is very probable that Rev. William Sunday's peculiarities of style may have made this feature successful. At any rate twice as many people went to hear him as could gain admission to his great tabernacle. *' The advantage that Mr. Sunday took of these great throngs was to preach a religion of life and not of doc- trine. He had his doctrine, but its underlying lesson was that of a pure and honest life. No man ever brought to the masses the alternative of right and wrong, of decency and disgrace, of purity and vice, as did Rev. Sunday in proclaiming his doctrine. " As a result of his mission here, we should say there Ph RESULTS IN VARIOUS PLACES 189 is a stronger moral sense in this community than there ever was before ; and now, the pressing question is, how to preserve it; how to make it vital in civic, religious and business life. He has made of religion a thoroughly practical matter, and has made the people feel it to be that way. And now it becomes the duty of every one who loves his neighbors and his city to put into practice in his own life the high lessons of duty and honor and faith which he has been preaching to us for the last seven weeks." In 1910 Mr. Sunday held a meeting at Newcastle, Pa. Two years later the following was published by the News of that city, written by Rev. A. B. McCormick, a Pres- byterian pastor, who frankly confesses that he had been much prejudiced against Sunday before the holding of the meeting: " In a city of nearly forty thousand there have been only eighty-three arrests in the past two months ! There is no open saloon in either city or county. And this must largely be credited to Mr. Sunday's preaching in general, and to his famous ' booze sermon ' in particular. At its close about six thousand men pledged themselves to stand against alcohol at their first opportunity. ** Our churches are in a prosperous condition. Two large buildings are in process of erection. Four churches have been enlarged. Several others have been repaired and re-decorated. Four have purchased new organs. Others have paid debts of long standing. A new hundred- thousand-dollar Y. I\L C. A. building has been erected. A whirlwind campaign for fifteen hundred members for it resulted in securing sixteen hundred and twenty-five. A Rescue Mission has been established, and the people have rallied to its support. It is open every night in the week, and many remarkable conversions are reported. 190 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY A band of personal workers, most of whom were Sunday converts, have carried the message of personal evangelism to many communities, and have been blessed of God in conducting some genuine revivals. One of them has be- come an evangelist, and has just closed a successful cam- paign. The movement for Christian unity has received great impetus. The people of the various churches wor- ship and work together in a harmony delightful to witness. " The revival was worth while. The Lord sets his seal to Mr. Sunday's preaching. He knows but one gos- pel — ' Jesus Christ and Him crucified.' It is still the power of God unto salvation. May God bless him, and save him for many years of evangelism." In the winter of 1908 a Sunday meeting was held at Decatur, 111., which beat all the records up to that time. A year later a correspondent of a Chicago paper visited Decatur, and had this to say about the results of the meeting : " The church life of the city is unusually well estab- lished. Few places of thirty thousand can boast so many fine church buildings, and new pastors coming to the community recognize at once that the church work is remarkably well supported, and engages the energies of a very large percentage of the prominent business and professional men. On the subject the pastors were a unit. Though some voted for Mr. Sunday with great reluctance, fearing the sensationalism of his work, they all accepted the final decision heartily, and entered into the meetings with the determination to reap the largest possible return. Finally, the work of preparation was thoroughly done. The evangelist came into a field which had been thoroughly brought to the most perfect degree of ripeness, and was met by laborers with their sleeves rolled up. RESULTS IN VARIOUS PLACES 191 " After discounting the reports of the newspapers to the limit, on the score of local pride, it must still be con- ceded that the Decatur meetings were notable in the history of modern evangelism. The huge tabernacle was packed afternoon and evening throughout the whole six weeks, and on Sunday afternoons, when Sunday spoke to men alone, as many as six thousand men were crowded inside. " People flocked into the city from Bloomington, and even farther, and the local papers within a radius of twenty miles reported additions to their churches when the meetings closed. It is easily possible in a city of this size to have even so large a meeting in progress in one corner and not affect greatly the life and activity of the town, but it was not so in Decatur. The newspapers turned their pages over bodily to the report of the meet- ing, printing from twelve to fifteen columns a day, and making special subscription offers which added thousands of short term subscribers to their lists. There were no social engagements. Lodges did not meet, and study, both in the schools and the University, was maintained only with the greatest difficulty. " Near the close interest in the meeting took on added zest, as it was seen that the record of Bloomington, the rival of Decatur, was to be equaled and passed. It be- came a matter of earnest community effort that the meet- ings should attain a huge success. Men closed their places of business at the evangelist's request, and came to swell the attendance figures. Even baseball gave way before the tidal wave. Sunday and sin and salvation were literally the sole topics of conversation. " Out of this there came six thousand two hundred and nine converts, and an offering to Mr. Sunday amounting 192 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY to $11,379.56, the largest amount he had ever received. The results of such a meeting are to be measured by their effect on the churches first, and then on the life and the thought of the town. In all cases the second of these measurements is hardest to make. But in Deca- tur it is its effect on the city life which is most prominent ; the thing which one is compelled to recognize. It rises up to confront you, whether you talk with the mayor or the bootblack. It is written all over the police records and the polling booths, and he that runs may read. I had to talk to a good many men before I was willing to admit this. But when, after a dozen interviews, in which a dozen business men had told me the same thing, I sat in the office of one of the most prominent lawyers and politicians in the city, and heard him say, * I do not think that any man can measure the permanent good which Mr. Sunday did this town,' I ceased objecting, and was convinced. ** I suggested to the proprietor of a gents' furnishing store that Billy Sunday is a grafter, just to see what he would do, and I had to take it all back before he would sell me a shirt. The bootblacks said, * He is the only man who ever came to Decatur who prayed for every- body ! ' The telephone girls wanted to chip in something for Billy because ' he prayed for us.' " The business man who is leading the largest faction of the now disorganized Republican party, said : * If there should be a proposition to invite Sunday here again, we could form as strong a committee as we had before, and form it entirely outside of the churches.' '' So much for the sentiment of the town toward Sunday and the effect of his work on its life. Twelve churches united in inviting him to Decatur, and stood solidly be- hind him through it all. But the interesting thing is that RESULTS IN VARIOUS PLACES 19S even the churches which did not co-operate could not escape some measure of the result." The following is from the South Bend Tribune: " The greatest religious revival in Indiana is now history. For seven weeks South Bend, Mishawaka and surrounding territory have been stirred as never before. Six thousand three hundred and ninety-eight persons have taken Billy Sunday by the hand, thereby signifying their intention of living new lives. How many others of the five hundred and sixty-six thousand who attended the meetings have inwardly made the same resolve, no one can say. Nor can any say how many professing Christians have been uplifted by the meetings. " If there is one thing that keeps alive religious life and religious institutions, it is the evangelistic spirit. The permanent organization of a * personal workers' league ' among men is a prophecy of greater and more effective church work in South Bend and Mishawaka than ever before. These men have joined themselves and pledged their services in assisting the pastors in keeping alive the evangelistic fires. If they persist in their pur- pose the churches will not become ' religious ice boxes/ as Mr. Sunday calls them. " The revival has meant much to South Bend and Mishawaka in an economic sense. Saloon men themselves estimate their business in the two cities has fallen off forty per cent. It is stated on good authority, that last week, notwithstanding the hot weather, ten thousand more pounds of meat were brought to South Bend than usual. If figures could be obtained the same showing would undoubtedly be made for Mishawaka. Merchants have been surprised to see old, outlawed accounts paid up, and ' conscience money ' has been paid for stolen articles. One merchant as far away as Elwood, Ind., felt the 194 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY results of the meetings when he received two dollars for a knife stolen years ago. Family quarrels have been adjusted; family friendships have been cemented: family altars erected. These are evidences of quickened indi- vidual consciences, and quickened individual consciences will surely mean quickened social consciences, which mean more attention paid to matters of government, and better enforcement of law. " The religious revival has done much for South Bend, Mishawaka and the surrounding territory in a religious and economic way, but its beneficence does not stop there. The spirit of giving has been spread abroad. Hundreds of persons who never before contributed to any cause, have had a part in bearing the expense of the meeting. That very fact has encouraged the development of a spirit of municipal solidarity. Local pride has been captured in the fields where it was running wild, utterly useless, and has been harnessed and put to work. South Bend and Mishawaka have pulled together as they never have before, with the result that there has come about a better understanding and a better feeling. It has shown that team work pays. Because these cities have seen fit to ' desire earnestly the better things,' many others have been added unto them also." The Record of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., sums up results there in this way : " A review of the seven weeks of evangelistic cam- paign is a mighty tribute to the extraordinary genius and talent of Mr. Sunday. The number of those who have professed Christianity runs away up into the thousands, and the results in the abstract are simply beyond com- prehension. More thousands than those who have ' hit the trail ' will lead better lives. Their hearts have been touched. Many of them will be led to join the throng RESULTS IN VARIOUS PLACES 195 of active Christians after the Sunday party has left the city. " At the beginning of the campaign the people went out of curiosity. They wanted to see and hear the man about whom so much had been said. Skepticism pre- vailed. Sneers were heard on every hand. It was deemed impossible that a baseball player who had drifted into the ministry could move the self-complacent, intelli- gent element in the Wyoming Valley into such a spirit of religious enthusiasm as was reported from other places. It seemed entirely out of the question. The story of to-day is the story of a wonderful revelation. The base- ball evangelist has accomplished the seemingly impossible. The community has been stirred from center to circum- ference. Skepticism has given way to conviction, and conviction has been followed by enthusiasm. " The work of Mr. Sunday is on the lips of tens of thousands of the people. Already thousands of applica- tions for church membership have been made, and other thousands will follow. Hundreds of men who squan- dered their earnings and their health in drunkenness have been torn loose from the old habits. Hundreds of men whose brutality in the midst of their families was a con- stant heartbreak to distressed wives and terror-stricken children, have for the first time shed the sunshine of cheer into their homes. Tens of thousands will gird on the armor of civic righteousness, and move forward to do battle with the forces of evil. The Wyoming Valley will be a better place to live in. '* A man who can accomplish such results is not an ordinary man. His methods may be unique, and he may have been advertised as no other evangelist has been advertised; yet over and above it all is the fact that if he had not spoken the plain truth in a way to carry 196 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY conviction into the hearts of the skeptics and the luke- warm, the actual results of his campaign in spiritual and moral cleansing would not have been so tremen- dous, so astounding. Say what you will — here are the results. " At the conclusion of these seven weeks of Billy Sun- day, there is no uncertain answer to the question pro- pounded at the outset : ' Will he make good ? ' The affirmative answer comes in a mighty chorus from every part of the Valley; from homes made happier; from men and women reclaimed and re-consecrated, and from tens of thousands who have felt the touch of a new inspiration : Mr. Sunday has made good." The following was written by C. W. Laycock, a busi- ness man of Wilkes-Barre, some months after the close of the campaign there : " The religious impressions made here by the Billy Sunday campaign are so deep and the work of grace so far-reaching that one is bewildered by the magnitude of the wonders God has wrought. Sunday himself is a won- der, but after recognizing all his natural endowments, and allowing for the quickening of his faculties through de- votion and consecration to a great cause, there is some- thing more to be accounted for, an influence which per- vades the whole community for miles around. '* To illustrate : Twelve miles out in the country a farm- hand who had not been to hear Mr. Sunday preach, nor had he read any of his sermons, heard that there was a great revival here and many people were being converted. He was impressed with the thought that something more was needed in his own life, so he went to a friend and told him that he wanted to know how he could find Jesus Christ and be saved. The friend advised him to read the RESULTS IN VARIOUS PLACES 197 book of Acts. This he knew nothing about, and was in- formed that it was in the Bible. He walked a mile and borrowed a Bible from a neighbor, which he took home and read and studied until his interest was greatly inten- sified; yet he was not satisfied. So he went to the man for whom he worked and said he must go to Wilkes- Barre. " When asked how long he would be gone he said, ' I don't know. I have a big job on hand, and don't know how long it is going to take.' He put in his grip enough food to last a week and went to the railroad station, but reached it too late for the train. Rather than wait an- other day he walked twelve miles, but did not reach here until after the close of the afternoon meeting at the tabernacle. He finally found his way to a parsonage^ and when asked by the minister what he wanted, said : " I want somebody to tell me how to find Christ.'* " The minister told him he had gotten to about the right place, and after some conversation and prayer the man arose, his face aglow, and said : ' Well, if I had known this I wouldn't have brought so many victuals with me.' He then went home entirely satisfied. That man is now an active member of the church of his choice, and is teaching a Bible class. I mention this incident merely to show that God so honors Mr. Sunday with the presence of His Spirit that when the people fully co-operate with him, there is manifested an influence which is wonderful in its workings. " Prior to the Sunday campaign one of the Young Men's Christian Associations in our valley had an average attendance of twelve to fifteen at its Sunday afternoon meetings. Interest there has grown until last Sunday there were seven hundred and fifty at the afternoon meet- ing, and what is also interesting is that many of these 198 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY meetings are being led by men who were converted in the Sunday meetings. " As far as I can learn there is no abatement of reli- gious interest and zeal among those who were converted, and many who did not take their stand on the side of Christianity are still talking about the wonderful things that have come to pass. " Business men tell me they have received ' conscience money ' in amounts ranging from forty cents to twenty- five dollars. In some instances the people brought it themselves, and made open confession of their misdoings. One woman returned forty cents for goods she had stolen fifteen years ago. A man who is a clerk in a large store went to a former employer, and confessed to having stolen five dollars and thirty-five cents ten years ago. He said Billy Sunday told him he could not be a thief and a Christian at the same time, and after praying and crying the whole night through he had come to make good. " Another instance is that of a man consulting a lawyer, stating that he expected to be sued for a bill, and to the lawyer's mind made a pretty good defense, but as suit had not been entered, and no papers served, the lawyer told him to wait until such service was made, and then come to him and he would prepare the case. About a week later the man appeared, and when the lawyer asked him to restate his defense the man simply said : " * There is no defense ; the debt is an honest one and should be paid.' " The lawyer reminded him of the defense he seemed to have made a week earlier, when he was informed by the man that he ' had hit the trail ' and was going to pay the debt. " Enough concrete examples of changed lives and RESULTS IN VARIOUS PLACES 199 habits can be found in this community to fill a large volume, and would make most interesting reading. " One line of business adversely affected is the liquor business. Reliable people have told me that the business of the saloon-keepers has fallen off from thirty to seventy- five per cent. " Cab-drivers say that the gambling and red-light dis- trict has had much less patronage. Two gambling dens and four houses have closed, and some of the ' popula- tion ' have left town. " The religious and moral atmosphere of the com- munity is greatly improved and intensified. People mar- vel at the wonderful changes that have taken place, and are still occurring. ^' Another result of the campaign is the more friendly feeling which now exists among the various religious denominations, a willingness to meet on common ground for a common cause." XVIII SUNDAY'S ORDINATION AND VARIOUS OTHER MATTERS IN 1905 Mr. Sunday was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church, by the Chicago Presbytery, the ordination taking place at the Jefferson Park Presbyterian Church, in which he had for several years been an elder. His old friend and associate in evangel- istic work. Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman, preached the sermon, and Dr. Alexander Patterson gave the charge. In his examination before the Presbytery, the former ball player was plied with questions for an hour or more by the professors of theology and the learned members of the body. He answered their questions to their entire satisfaction, and his orthodoxy was pronounced sound in every particular. Occasionally some erudite professor would ask him a question that was a poser, to which he would immediately reply : " That's too deep for me," or " I will have to pass that up." He created an excellent impression by his frank, honest manner, and the rapidity with which he gave his answers. On June 13, 1912, the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon Mr. Sunday by Westminster College, at New Wilmington, Pa. In regard to this. Dr. R. M. Russell, the President of Westminster, has well said: " We count it to the honor of Westminster that she did this thing. Mr. Sunday knows his Bible, which is 200 SUNDAY'S ORDINATION 201 the true body of Divinity in theological lore. He has devoted his life to the supreme task of world evangeliza- tion, for which the Bible is the great charter. He is, therefore, both in scholarship and practical effort, entitled to the degree. ** Just as a doctor of medicine is supposed to know the science of medicine, and practice the art of healing, so a Doctor of Divinity who knows the truth about God, and practices the art of saving, is entitled to the degree. In many institutions it is customary to bestow the hon- orary degree of Doctor of Divinity upon those who are men more noted for their knowledge of ' the traditions of the scribes and Pharisees ' than for their knowledge and practical use of the Bible itself." After being twenty- four years in the cornerstone of the old Central Y. M. C. A. building, at Cleveland, Ohio, a copper box containing interesting enclosures was recently removed. Among the contents of the box was a copy of " Cleveland's Young Men," a Y. M. C. A. publication printed in 1889, which contained an account of the preach- ing, in the Star Theater, of " a deserving young ball player named William A. Sunday." How little the writer of those long-buried lines dreamed that the " deserving young ball player " would one day have the whole country at his feet. In Sunday's meeting at Steubenville, Ohio, some time ago, a former saloon-keeper arose and gave this remark- able testimony: *' It would take a lifetime for me to tell of the goodness of God, and the benefit Billy Sunday did me. I kept a saloon two miles away from the tabernacle in Colum- bus, but read the papers, and through them I was con- verted." When this man sat down another arose and said: 202 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY " I didn't own a saloon, but was trying to buy them all — drinking, gambling and carousing around. Sunday brought me the message that brought me to Christ." A little later on Dr. Day, pastor of the First Presby- terian Church, of Columbus, and President of the Ohio State Society of Christian Endeavor, said: *' I don't believe there was a man more hated in Columbus on the 27th day of last December than Billy Sunday, and a few weeks later when he left, I don't think there was a person more generally beloved, hon- ored and respected than this man of God. I staked one of the men who gave testimony here this evening to two hundred dollars to start a restaurant. He has paid me back that money a long time ago, and has an account in the bank besides. It would take me a long time to tell you of the good that has been done. On the last day of the meeting in Columbus two thousand confessed their faith in Christ, and there were scarcely any children among them. If there has ever been anything like that since Pentecost it has not been recorded. Nine thousand united with churches within two weeks after the close of Sunday's meeting, and from the close until June I the accessions to our churches totaled twelve thousand.'* Walter HoUiday, of Columbus, Ohio, is an agent for the Standard Oil Company in China. While the Sunday meetings were in progress in his home city, the papers containing accounts of them and reports of the sermons, were sent to him by his sister, and these led to his awak- ening and conversion, thirteen thousand miles away from the tabernacle. He wrote at once to the pastor of his sister's church, asking to be enrolled as a member of the same. Here is something for the people who do not think that God is using Billy Sunday to think about. While Sunday was holding a meeting at Erie, Pa., SUNDAY'S ORDINATION SOS eighteen hundred dollars were given in the basket collec- tions in a single day. If this has ever been equaled in any religious meeting, history has failed to mention it. On the third Sunday of the Steubenville, Ohio, cam- paign, the basket collections for the day were $1,548.90. The first convert in the meeting at Pontiac, 111., was a young woman, who inaugurated a movement that re- sulted in the building of a fine Y. M. C. A. building. At the Men's Meeting on the last day of the Columbus campaign, six hundred and nine men " hit the trail " and broke the record which had been held by McKeesport, and which was later outdone by Wilkes-Barre, on the last day in the great campaign in that city, when six hundred and eleven men were enrolled at the afternoon meeting for men. It is impossible to appreciate the immensity or intensity of these great men's meetings, in which hun- dreds of men are won for Christ in a single meeting, and many of them influential men in the city and state. It is marvelous. When the invitation was given one night in the Steuben- ville meeting, the mayor of the city was the first to go forward. Sunday has a golden text that has become a great tower and bulwark in his daily life and work, and it is this : " &tubp to £!f)otD tiji'sEelf approbeb unto #ob, a tDorfeman tijat neebetf) not to be agl^amcb, rigfjtlp bifaibing ttje teorb of trutfj."— 2 tE^im. 2:15. It is doubtful if there are many hours in the day when this great text does not come into his mind. It has become almost a part of his signature, for seldom 204> THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY or never does he sign a check without following his name with the reference, as below : ^(2^^.>:/^ Those who are closely associated with him and know him well, are confident that he earnestly strives to fashion his life and his preaching according to the manner in- dicated by his golden text. It is this that makes him so utterly fearless in the pulpit. It is this that makes him dare to preach in his own way, no matter who may criticise. It is this that makes him as conscientious in what he preaches and how he preaches as he is in paying his debts. Sunday has no fear of man, because whenever he preaches he believes that he is standing in the one spot in all the universe where the Lord of hosts wants him to be at that very moment. What matter, then, who may howl and growl and throw mud at him ? And he is just as confident that the sermon he is about to preach will be a message direct from the Almighty, and he has no more fear of its falling dead like a flash in the pan, than he has of missing his dinner. He goes to the pulpit ^' studying to show himself approved unto God (in the work he will do there), as a workman that needeth not to be ashamed," and he intends to rightly divide the word of truth, according to the light that has been given him, no matter who may be wounded, healed or oflfended by it. It may be that one reason why the ministry of some preachers appears to be as fruitless as the barren fig tree, is that they never expect the Lord to be within ten miles SUNDAY'S ORDINATION 205 of the pulpit in which they do their preaching, but noth- ing like that is ever true of Sunday. He always counts upon the Lord being in the meeting, no matter who else may stay away. He believes the Lord will stand by him, no matter what the conditions or the weather may be. If he didn't feel absolutely sure of this he would never hold another meeting. When he undertakes a new meeting there is no un- certainty in his mind about what the result will be. He is as sure that thousands will be converted as he is that the sun will shine to-morrow. Failure is never even taken into consideration. In Sunday's dictionary there is no such word as fail. He pulled that word out by the roots long ago, and has grown a faith that keeps it out. His preaching has been criticised with more venom than that of any other preacher of the present day, but not a whisper of insinuation has ever been turned against his faith. He has a faith that gives more than one big mountain marching orders wherever he goes, and no one knows it better than the man who has never been able to speak to a molehill in a way to even shake it. Sunday is the man he is to-day, and preaches as he does, and preaches what he does, mainly because he be- lieves the Bible from cover to cover. It is doubtful if such a thing as a doubt ever troubles him, for he seems to have utterly destroyed Amalek, root and branch. He has no more doubt that the Bible is the word of God, than he doubts that the letters he receives from his wife have been written by her hand. When he reads the Bible — and he spends much time over its golden pages — it is that he may learn the will of " Him whom having not seen " he loves, and when he learns what that will is, it becomes his prayer that it may be done in, by and through him. To make his preaching as effective as it should be, 206 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY he knows that he must live just as high as he preaches, and every sermon he preaches to the mukitudes that flock to hear him, he first preaches just as prayerfully to himself. Could Sunday once be robbed of the comfort, peace and rest he derives from his golden text, and the almost hourly consolation and inspiration he finds flowing out of it, like water from the smitten rock, he would no doubt soon be shorn of his strength. In his constant use of his golden text there seems to be repeated in him the experience of the wrestler in the fable, who was at once made fresh and strong again every time he touched the earth. Here is a list of the many towns and cities in which Sunday has held meetings: Iowa Audubon Afton Atlantic Alta Avoca Boone Bedford Burlington Corydon Centerville Cumberland Colesburg Cedar Rapids Clarksville Dubuque Dtinlap Emerson Exira Eddyville Elliott Fairfield Fonda Fredericksburg Garner Grundy Center Glenwood Glidden Gravity Harlan Hawkeye Iowa Falls Jefferson Keokuk Knoxville Leon Malvern Muscatine Mason City Marsh alltown Nev/ Sharon Nevada New Hampton Osceola Ottumwa Oelwein Oakville Olin Perry Panora Strawberry Point Sigourney Silver City Seymour Sibley Stuart Tabor Villisca Williamsburg Waterloo Wapella Illinois Aledo Belvidere Bloomington Canton Charleston Carthage Decatur Danville Dixon Dundee Elgin Farmington Freeport Galva Galesburg Genoa Harvard Jacksonville Kankakee SUNDAY'S ORDINATION 20T Kewanee Nebraska Macomb Beatrice Marengo Humboldt MurphysborO' Lincoln Oneida Oxford Prophetstown Pawnee Princeton Tecumseh Pontiac Rantoul Pennsylvania Richmond Beaver Falls Rockford Erie Sterling Johnstown Savanna McKeesport Springfield Newcastle Woodstock Pittsburg Wheaton Scranton Sharon Ohio Wilkes-Barre Columbus Canton Missouri East Liverpool Joplin Lima Marysville Portsmouth Springfield Indiana Steubenville Fairmount Toledo Salem Youngstown South Bend Minnesota Austin Ely Marshall Moorehead Redwood Rochester Tower Worthington Colorado Boulder Caiion City Salida Washington Bellingham Everett Spokane Belleville, Wis. Fargo, N. D. Wichita, Kan. Wheeling, W. Va. There are one hundred and forty-two names in the list given above. To say that Sunday has spoken to an average of fifteen thousand different persons for each meeting, would be a very low estimate, and yet it would make the total number to which he has preached, two million one hundred and thirty thousand, and prob- ably half as many more have read printed reports of his sermons. It is not likely that any other man ever preached to so many people. To say that there have been an average of four thou- sand converts enrolled for each meeting held, would also be putting it low, but at that figure the grand total would be five hundred and sixty-eight thousand! And yet there are people — and some of them are preachers — who do not believe that God is using Billy Sunday. XIX A HARD HITTER OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC IT is doubtful if any man in modern times has done more than Billy Sunday to help the cause of tem- perance. At all events, this is the inference from the vigorous way in which the whisky interests oppose him. The liquor men seem to know his engagements almost as soon as he makes them, and weeks ahead of his meetings they begin to circulate all manner of lying slanders against him. It is well authenticated that they spend thousands of dollars every year in doing this. His great " booze sermon " is one of the most effective and hard-hitting specimens of eloquence against the saloon that ever fell from the lips of m^an. If every man in the country could hear him hurl it forth, as Jove hurled thunderbolts, it would hasten the coming of the glad day when the whisky dragon shall be forever de- stroyed. Sunday has done effective work for the cause of tem- perance, not only in his own revival campaigns, but on special occasions between meetings. In his campaigns he always observes Monday as a rest day, but it is seldom a day of rest for him. He is so besieged with calls from other towns and cities to pay them a visit that almost every Monday he is speaking at some other point, fifty or a hundred, or even two hundred miles away from the place of his own meeting, and in such addresses he 208 A SWORN FOE TO SALOON 209 generally gives the whisky business some telling sledge- hammer blows. Many times temperance interests have chartered a special Pullman car, into which they have loaded Sunday and several of his party, and sent them out to cover as much territory as could be reached in this way in the few days intervening between meetings. This was done in the state of Illinois with such success that hun- dreds of saloons were closed, and many counties went dry. .Beginning with the first of January, 1908, Sunday \ conducted a five weeks* campaign in Bloomington, 111., a city of twenty-seven thousand in the central part of the state. This meeting resulted in forty-seven hundred people taking their stand for God and righteousness. J After a few days' intermission he entered upon another ^ campaign at Decatur, a city of thirty-four thousand, forty miles south of Bloomington, and this meeting re- sulted in six thousand two hundred and nine conver:i.J sions. The next meeting was at Charleston, about sev- enty-five miles southeast of Decatur. The Illinois spring election came on a Tuesday in the] midst of this last campaign. For many days previous Sunday had been going out to different towns and cities over the state, giving his '' booze sermon " and then J rushing back to Charleston for the evening meeting. When the spring elections were over it was found thaT/ fifteen hundred saloons had been knocked out in one day, and much of this was directly the result of Sunday's efforts. In Decatur sixty-three saloons were closed, and in Charleston twenty-one were put out of business. j A goodly number of other towns and cities that had been considered hopelessly wet, were listed in the dry column. And so it is safe to say that many of the hard- 210 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY est blows the saloon giant has ever received have been dealt it by Billy Sunday. On the eve of the great campaign for state wide pro- hibition in West Virginia, Sunday covered the state in a special train, speaking at several places every day, and there is no doubt whatever but that his strenuous labors in that campaign turned the tide that brought in the great wave of an overwhelming majority for the cause of God and public decency. It is quite fitting, in this connection, to quote a few statements from the '' booze sermon," to show how un- flinchingly and courageously Sunday deals sledge- hammer blows full in the face of the liquor traffic : " The saloon is the sum of all villainies. It is worse than war or pestilence. It is the crime of crimes. It is the parent of crimes, and the mother of sins. It is the appalling source of misery, poverty and sorrow. It causes three-fourths of the crime, and of course is the source of three-fourths of the taxes to support that crime. And to license such an incarnate fiend of hell is the dirtiest, most low down, damnable business on top of this old earth. I " The saloons fill the jails and the penitentiaries, the poorhouses and insane asylums. Who has to pay the bills? The landlord who doesn't get the rent, because the money goes for whisky, the butcher and the grocer and the charitable person who takes pity on the children of drunkards, and the taxpayer who supports the insane asylums and other institutions, that the whisky business fills with human wrecks. " Do away with the accursed business and you will not have to put up to support them. Who gets the money? The saloon keepers and the brewers and the distillers, while the whisky fills the land with misery, A SWORN FOE TO SALOON Sll poverty, wretchedness, disease, death and damnation, and it is being authorized by the will of the sovereign people. " You say, ' People will drink it anyway/ Not by my vote. You say, ' Men will murder their wives any- way." Not by my vote. * They will steal anyway.' Not by my vote. You are the sovereign people, and what are yott going to do about it? . " Let me assemble before your minds the bodies of the drunken dead, who crawl away * into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell,' and then out of the valley of the shadow of the drink let me call the contingent widowhood, and wifehood and childhood, and let their tears rain down upon their purple faces ! Do you think that would stop the curse of the liquor traffic? No! No! " In these days when the question of saloon or no saloon is at the fore in almost every community, one hears a good deal about what is called ' personal lib- erty.' These are fine large mouth-filling words, and they certainly do sound first-rate; but when you get right down and analyze them ia the light of good old horse sense, you will discover that in their application to the present controversy they mean just about this : " Personal liberty is for the man who, if he has the inclination and the price, can stand up to a bar and fill his hide so full of red liquor that he is transformed for the time into an irresponsible, dangerous, evil-smelling brute. But personal liberty is not for the patient, long- suffering wife, who has to endure with what fortitude she may his blows and curses. Nor is it for his chil- dren, who if they escape his insane rage, are yet robbed of every known joy and privilege of childhood, and too often grow up neglected, uncared for and vicious as the 212 THE REAL BILLY SUNDxVY result of their surroundings and the example before them. " * Personal liberty ' is not for the sober industrious citizen who, from the proceeds of honest toil and orderly- living, has to pay, willingly or not, the tax bills which pile up as the direct result of drunkenness, disorder and poverty, the items of which are written in the records of every police court and poorhouse in the land. Nor is ' personal liberty ' for the good woman who goes abroad in the town only at the risk of being shot down by some drink-crazed demon. This rant about * personal liberty,* as an argument, has no leg to stand upon. " I tell you, men, the American home is the dearest heritage of the people, for the people, and by the people, and when a man can go from home in the morning with the kisses of wife and children on his lips, and come back at night with an empty dinner bucket to a happy home, that man is a better man, whether white or black. Whatever takes away the comforts of home — whatever degrades the man or woman — whatever invades the sanctity of the home, is the deadliest foe to the home, to church, to state and school, and because of what it is and does the saloon is the deadliest foe to the home, to church and school and state on top of God Almighty's dirt ! '' And if all the combined forces of hell should assem- ble in conclave, and with them all the men on earth that hate and despise God, purity and virtue ; if all the scum of the earth could mingle with the denizens of hell to try to think of the deadliest institution to home, church and state, I tell you, sir, the combined hellish intelligence could not conceive of or bring forth an institution that could touch the hem of the garment of the open licensed saloon to damn the home and manhood and womanhood A SWORN FOE TO SALOON 213 and business, and every other good thing on God's earth. " In the island of Jamaica the rats increased so they destroyed the crops, and they introduced the mongoose, which is a species of the coon. They have three breed- ing seasons a year, and there are twelve to fifteen in each brood, and they are deadly enemies of the rats. The result was that the rats disappeared, and there was nothing more for the mongoose to feed upon, so it at- tacked the snakes and the frogs and the lizards that fed upon the insects, with the result that the insects in- creased, and they stripped the gardens, eating up the onions and the lettuce and everything that grew in them. And then the mongoose attacked the sheep and the cats and the puppies and the calves and the geese. Now Jamaica is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, trying to get rid of the mongoose. " The American mongoose is the open licensed saloon. It eats the carpet off the floor, and the clothes from off your back; your money out of the bank, and it eats up character. And it goes on until it leaves a stranded wreck in the home, a skeleton of what was once bright- ness and happiness, and yet some of you keep right on voting, year after year, for the devilish thing to stay and go on with its deadly work of havoc and ruin. " It is the saloon that cocks the highwayman's pistol. The saloon that puts the rope in the hands of the mob. It is the anarchist of the world, and its dirty red flag is dyed with the blood of women and children. It sent the bullet through the body of Lincoln. It nerved the arm of the assassins who struck down Garfield and McKinley. " Yes, it is a murderer. Every plot that was ever hatched against our flag, and every anarchist plot against the government and law, was born and bred, and crawled 214 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY out of the grogshop to damn this country. The curse of God Almighty is on the saloon. Legislatures are legis- lating against it. Decent society is barring it out. The fraternal brotherhoods are knocking it out. The secret societies are closing their doors against the whisky seller. They don't want him wriggling his carcass in their lodges. Yes, sir! I tell you the curse of God is on it. It is on the down grade. It is headed for hell, and by the grace of God I am going to give it a push, with a whoop, for all I know how. How many of you will help me? " You men now have a chance to show your man- hood. Then in the name of your pure mother, in the name of your manhood, in the name of your wife, and the pure innocent children that climb up in your lap and put their arms around your neck, in the name of all that is good and noble, fight the curse. Shall you men who hold in your hands the ballot, and in that ballot hold the destiny of womanhood and childhood and man- hood, shall you, the sovereign power, refuse to rally in the name of defenseless men and women and native land ? No!" XX SUNDAY^S VERSATILITY— ROYAL RECEPTION AT COLUMBUS NO one who has heard Sunday through a meeting can doubt but that he would have made a fine actor, had his talents been exercised to their fullest in that direction. He impersonates almost every character he introduces, and does it well. Tom Keene, the actor, was his warm personal friend, and once urged him to become his " understudy." He had no doubt, he said, that Sunday might become one of the world's great actors. William Jennings Bryan, another good friend of the evangelist, has said that Sunday would make one of the greatest political speakers the country has known, were he to give his attention to politics as earnestly as he has done to preaching. In one address he will astonish and delight by his dramatic portrayal and brilliant word pictures, and in the next he may excel in humor. No one can hear him for just a time or two and have any- thing like a clear idea of his remarkable versatility. One newspaper writer said that ** when he gave his vivid impersonation of the call of the Almighty to the great Welsh evangelist, Evan Roberts, the hearts of many stood still, and they fancied for a moment that they heard in truth the call of God to the grimy Welsh miner who came out of the coal mines in the bowels of the earth to stir his native country with a power that had 215 £16 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY never been excelled, even in that spiritual and ardently religious country of bards and druids." The Toledo Blade had this to say of Sunday during the great meeting he held in that city : ** He is as dramatic as the greatest actor. His story of the pearl at the end of the evening sermon was one of the most dramatic any one in Toledo has ever seen or heard. The people listened to a very simple story with eyes and mouths agape. A half-drunken and ragged man in one of the front seats who had fallen asleep, suddenly awoke at the beginning of the story, and leaned farther and farther forward during the recital, following with his body the movements of the body of the speaker, until it seemed at times that he would certainly fall from his seat. When the story ended he leaned back in his seat with a deep sigh, at the discomfiture of the man of whom the story was told. ** Sunday's good humor was also infectious, and com- municated itself to the audience. Whenever he laughed the multitude laughed with him. Every point he made went home, and even those he lashed applauded the wit- ticism with which it was clinched. Those who had come merely to have the opportunity to get at first hand some of his so-called vulgarity left disappointed, for he ' made good ' with his usual language. He so deftly put the lance of criticism into the festering spots of wrong living that his words of ridicule were double-edged. They carried with them the anaesthetic of a spontaneous bubbling humor that took the pain from the wound he made. " His mannerisms are Sundayisms. He is a master of invective and excoriating adjective, and resembles no other public speaker alive. His speech is as lightning- like and keen as are his movements. He darts about the RECEPTION AT COLUMBUS 217 platform with the rapidity of a hawk, and he bends and handles his lithe body with the ease that made him one of the fastest men on bases when he played base- ball. " There is not a forced or studied movement about him. Every action is telling in its force. When he sits upon his chair on the edge of the platform, every ear is bent forward a little closer to hear the story that is coming, and when he mounts his chair to thunder forth some defiance of evil, with his hands to his lips in trum- pet shape, every one grows tense in anticipation of the stirring words which are to come. His climaxes are all unique and startling. No finer denunciation or challenge was ever uttered than that which ended his morning sermon, when, mounted upon his chair, he shrilled out upon the clear morning air the words : * Come on, ye cohorts of the devil, come on, ye forces of evil, I defy you ! ' " Sunday also has an imagination which at times seems almost magical, and with it he has the ability to draw striking and telling illustrations from the commonplace and everyday aftairs of life that would make him a rare writer of fiction, had he only been trained to use the pen as well as he does his voice. The little incidents that he often tells of his own family life have a power that tugs at the heartstrings, and he never fails to draw il- lustrations from the crowds which surround him. New thoughts seem to fill his mind every time he faces an audience, and he utters them with such pungency and apt turn of expression that they force their way into the quick comprehension and recognition of even the slowest witted who hear them. As he often says, with the taking smile for which he is noted from ocean to ocean, *' I like to put the cookies on the lower shelf." 218 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY The description he gives of his first sermon is an amusing example of the manner in which he draws upon his own experience to interest and hold attention : " When I first began to preach I diagnosed the dif- ficulties and sins of the people as existing in the gray matter. I figured that they were all from Missouri, and that I had to show them. You ought to have heard the sermon that I got up. My, but it w^as a hummer! I had stacks of encyclopedias scattered around me, and all the reference books I could lay my hands on. There were words in that sermon that would have made the jaws of a Greek professor squeak for a week. When I sprung it on the poor people it went off like a firecracker that had busted in the middle. " I figured that the Lord had got it doped out all wrong, and that I was going to hand the goods to the sinful old world that would bring it right down on its knees. I went after the devils of this thing and the devils of that thing, and yet nothing happened. Then I loaded my old muzzle-loading gospel gun with ipecac, buttermilk, rough on rats, rock salt and whatever else came handy, and the gang has been ducking and the feathers flying ever since. But I was wrong; it was the heart, and not the gray matter that was wrong. I didn't hit the ball at all until I found that out. '' I've been a preacher a good many years now, and I like it. I love it as I love nothing else. I wouldn't leave it for any money, and while I am about it, I believe in preaching so that people can understand me, Paul said he would rather speak five words that were under- stood than ten thousand in an unknown tongue, and that hits me. I want people to know what I mean, and that is why I try to get down to where they live. What do I care if some juff-eyed dainty little dibbly-dibbly goes RECEPTION AT COLUMBUS 219 tibbly-tibbly around because I use plain Anglo-Saxon words? '* And I believe the Bible is the word of God, from cover to cover, and I believe that the man who mag- nifies the word of God in his preaching is a man that God will honor. Why do such names stand out on the pages of history as Wesley, Whitefield, Finney and Mar- tin Luther? Because of their fearless denunciation of all sin, and because they preached Jesus Christ without fear or favor. " But somebody says a revival is abnormal. You lie ! Do you mean to tell me that the godless card-playing conditions of the church are normal? I say they are not, but it is the abnormal state. It is the sin-sated apathetic condition in the church that is abnormal. It is the Dutch lunch and beer parties, and the card par- ties and the like that are abnormal. I say that they lie when they say that the revival is an abnormal condition in the church. I like these good old plain, undeniable, unmistakable words like ' lie.* It was meant for some people. It's plain; you catch the meaning when it is thrown out at some person or class of persons. " Somebody else says, ' A revival is followed by a reaction.' I say it isn't true, but even if it were, it would be worth all it costs, because a revival brings hundreds nearer to God than they've ever been before. If your baby were sick, and you called a physician, and it grew convalescent, and you were able to keep it near you for six months more, wouldn't you think it worth while? If I can get a poor miserable sinner to turn to the Lord for six months; if I can get some maudering drunkard to go home and stop being untrue to his wife, and stop her tears for six months, by the Eternal God I'll do it every time. 220 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY *•' But you say, ' A revival creates undue excitement ! ' I take issue with you right there. It rains. The rain does the ground good. For that reason, do you want it to rain all the time ? In business, is a revival unwise ? You have commercial and booster clubs. Somebody says it brings disrespect upon the cause of Christianity to have a revival, because it confesses that we have back- sliders. Well, you haven't given the world any informa- tion that I don't possess, when you've said it. ** * But a revival is temporary,' some one shouts. So is a rain storm; so was Pentecost, but we are feeling the effects of it yet. We want men full of good red blood, instead of pink tea and ice water. " You say, ' It exalts the evangelist.' Nothing of the kind. Some of you, just to find fault, say that a revival and a visiting evangelist make a bellboy of the local preacher. Well, it does not. This is not your pastor's work. He still does his. He has more opportunities under these conditions to do good. If I do not make you think more of your pastor and of his efforts, and if I don't cause you to take more interest in his eft'orts, I will have failed in my purpose. '' This is a day of specialists. It is a rare thing now- adays to find a general medical practitioner outside of the smaller communities. There are eye specialists, ear specialists, nose specialists and throat specialists. Some men are successes as preachers, others as pastors, and others as evangelists. I couldn't be a pastor, and many a pastor cannot be an evangelist. " What we need is the good old-time kind of revival that will cause you to love your neighbors, and quit talking about them. A revival that will make you pay your debts and have family prayers. Get that kind, and then you will see that a revival means a very dif- RECEPTION AT COLUMBUS 221 ferent condition from what yoit have imagined. Chris- tianity means a lot more than church membership. Many an old skinflint is not fit for the balm of Gilead until you give him a fly blister and get after him v^^ith a currycomb. There are too many Sunday school teachers w^ho are godless, card-playing, beer, v^^ine and champagne drinkers. No wonder the kids are going to the devil. No wonder your children grow up like cattle, when you have no form of prayer in your home. *' If I knew that the chief of devils sat out there on one of those benches, and that all the cohorts of hell were in front of me, sneering and leering, I would preach anyway, and I would preach the truth as God has given it to me. It was said that when men left a meet- ing led by Phillips Brooks, they were filled with a desire to be preachers. I do hope that some preachers and workers for the Lord will be the fruit of these meetings." Some idea of the great hold Sunday has on every com- munity in which he has held a meeting may be gained from the following account of the whole-hearted wel- come they gave him at Columbus, Ohio, in May, 191 3, when he returned to that city for a single day, to speak at the annual Chamber of Commerce May Day Picnic. He was at the time engaged in a meeting at South Bend, Ind., but the Chamber of Commerce finally prevailed on him for once to depart from the practice he had main- tained for seventeen years, of not leaving his own meet- ing. In order to do this a special fast train was char- tered to take him from South Bend to Columbus, and return him. The Ohio State Journal gave the following account of his reception and stay in Columbus : " Turning a May day outing, in which upward of sixty-five thousand persons were interested, into a tern- g£2 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY porary tour of progress, Rev. Billy Sunday came to Columbus yesterday with a triumph that indicated he was returning to his own. He held twenty-five thousand persons in the hollow of his hand while he defied prece- dent and the physician's orders, and broke records for himself and for Columbus, addressing the largest single audience that ever sat under the spell of his voice. " Olentangy Park was gay in its holiday dress. Merry- go-rounds and brass bands in the distance vied unsuc- cessfully for attention while the evangelist told the peo- ple assembled what he thought of ' Butterfly Chasers.' " With his characteristic vigor he crowded the day full to overflowing. He had not taken a seat in the waiting auto, while the reception committee crowded around, before he announced that he wanted to speak at the penitentiary at nine-thirty. No one in Columbus had the slightest intimation of that intention, but there was nothing to do but to fall in with his plans. The address at the prison over, Mr. Sunday and his party were taken to the Railway Y. M. C. A., where a suite of rooms had been reserved for him, and where he made a pretext of resting in the intervals of receiving a stream of callers prior to the luncheon, at which a hundred men from the city and various parts of the state sat down. " In conclusion Mr. Sunday was called upon for a few words, and in one of those rapid-fire addresses which consume exactly two minutes, by a stop watch, and are the despair of all stenographers, he told for him- self and his party how Columbus had held a dear and tender spot in their hearts ; how he was breaking a rule of seventeen years to come here, and how his heart had gone out to the city when he heard of the damage done by the flood. " A few minutes later he was being whirled away to RECEPTION AT COLUMBUS 22S Olentangy Park, while people along the way stood and waved at him, shouting welcomes and bidding him God- speed. Everywhere he went the experience was the same. " While Mr. Sunday was being entertained by the men, Mrs. Sunday was the guest of the wives of the officers of the Northside Chamber of Commerce, at a luncheon in the Chittenden Hotel. " The program of speeches at the park was turned topsy-tur\y at the last minute. Governor Cox and At- torney-General Hogan were called out of the city, and Senator W. A. Greenlund, one of the speakers, had to leave the ground before Mr. Sunday concluded his address. " About sixty thousand people crowded into the park. It was the largest gathering of this kind ever held in Columbus. Mr. Sunday's address was peculiarly replete with incident, epigram and anecdote, held together by a serious thread of thought, which first pointed and then shot home the truth that life is worth living if it is worthily lived, and that what people get and see depends largely upon their viewpoint and their contribution to life. During all of his campaign here the evangelist never appeared to better advantage than yesterday. As far as the uttermost vibration of his voice would reach people stood and listened, frequently laughing and ap- plauding. " It was Billy Sunday day. Try as they would to keep the May day outing to the fore, it was Billy Sunday that made the outing, and not the outing that got a hearing for Billy Sunday. *' The great meeting was brought to a close by a characteristic prayer on the part of the evangelist, who prayed for blessing on all present. On the city, state 224 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY and county officials, and referring to the local campaign as probably the greatest awakening since the days of Pentecost. " Mrs. Sunday also was lifted to the table, and said that she realized that her great mission in life was to take care of her husband, and that she was trying to do that to the best of her ability. She said she never would be able to express the sense of appreciation she had of the reception tendered her and her husband in Columbus. " The extreme democracy of Sunday was shown upon his arrival, when he shook hands with all the men about the station and the Railway Y. M. C. A., where he went back into the kitchen and greeted the cook and all the waiters. Many sought to save the evangelist an imag- ined embarrassment by introducing people who had met him during the campaign, but in almost every instance this was a wasted effort, as he recalled practically every man and face without seeming effort." It will also be quite proper to refer in this chapter to a notable demonstration that resulted from the great meeting held at Wilkes-Barre. As a result of awakened conscience following the campaign in that city, a public demonstration in the form of a law-and-order parade was held in Wilkes-Barre on Monday night, June 2, 1913, in which more than ten thousand people marched. Prac- tically all these were men, with a small percentage of boys. There could be no doubt that this body of men was strictly in favor of enforcement of the Sunday closing law, etc. The demonstration was out of the ordinary in many ways. There have seldom been as many men gathered in any city for such a purpose. Again, these were all men from the one county. The parade was also held at the close of a very busy day, when many men who would RECEPTION AT COLUMBUS 225 have taken part if possible were unable to get around from their evening meal. There were thousands upon thousands of sympathetic people lining the streets for two miles of the line of march. The banners and songs prepared for the occasion left not the least doubt as to the sentiment of every one who participated in this great parade for decency and the honesty of public officials. XXI SOME PERSONAL MATTERS IT may surprise many to learn that in private life Sunday is a very quiet man. He is so intensely active in his preaching, and so full of fire when holding a meeting, that many think he must be noisy at all times, but nothing could be more wide of the mark. With his great store of general information, his matured opinions upon nearly all subjects, and his ability to give clear expression to what he thinks, he could easily be- come a brilliant conversationalist, if he cared to, but he seems to prefer hearing others talk. Those who have known him long say he has always been of a sensitive nature, and of quiet and retiring dis- position. When with others he has little to say, but is one of the best of listeners. He never misses a word that is addressed to him, and shows his keen interest by his expression and attitude. He also has a remarkable memory, and seems not to forget anything he hears or reads, especially if it has anything in it that will make " good sermon stuff.'* Even when among his most intimate friends, he lets them do most of the talking. He tells many stories in illustrating his sermons, and good ones, too, and he tells them with master strokes, but seldom or never does he tell a story in private conversation. Sunday has a keen sense of humor, and enjoys hear- ing a good story as well as any one, but it must be clean 226 PERSONAL MATTERS S^Ti in thought and language. He will not listen to any- thing that is at all questionable. Billy is quite fastidious about his clothes. They must fit him " like the paper on the wall." He is never seen on the platform wearing anything that has the remotest suspicion of a wrinkle in it. He believes that some men are as divinely called to be tailors as he has been to preach, and so he allows the tape measure to be passed over his person only by the knight of the goose he is sure fills the bill on that line. It is because his tailor is an artist that everywhere, except at Winona Lake, Sunday always looks as though he had just stepped out of a fashion plate. How he looks at Winona is shown in one of the illustrations. He generally carries a half-dozen suits with him, in a wardrobe trunk, that takes them through without a crease, and he sees to it that they are all kept pressed and ready to put on. He never wears a Prince Albert, or anything that gives him a preacher look. To have the preacher marks about him, he fears, might make some men take the other side of the street, and as a servant of God he wants to get as close to men as he can. A few years ago he always wore a white vest, but now he is usually seen clad in a two-piece suit, with a belt. His linen is always immaculate, and his ties very neat and tasty, and harmonizing with his suit. He sweats so profusely when speaking that he has to buy expensive ties to prevent their being faded. His overcoat is about the only article of dress he ever puts on that has much weight, for he seems to abhor heavy clothing as he does a hypocrite, and sticks to light summer underwear all the year round, and yet he seems never to take cold. One of Billy's strongest peculiarities is that he will not often use adhesive postage stamps in his correspondence. 228 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY To receive a letter with a stamp stuck to it, and purport- ing to come from him, would be certain to awaken dis- trust from any of his intimate friends. No psychologist has ever undertaken to give a scientific explanation of just why Sunday will not have anything to do with the gummed postage stamp, but the milk in the cocoanut is probably this : In the days when a letter from the girl who is now Mrs. Sunday was due to reach him every day, and two on Monday, there were times, no doubt, when in spite of the best intention on the part of the sender, the stamp would come off, and if the creamy missive reached William at all, its beauty was marred by having " two CENTS DUE " smeared upon it with a rubber stamp, by a postal clerk who had no poetry in his soul, and which, considering the way Billy was " gone on Nell," must have greatly marred his enjoyment of the closely written eighteen scented pages, and postscript on a piece of curl paper he found inside. But whether this is the correct surmise or not, the fact remains that Billy always keeps well stocked up with government envelopes, which have the stamp both em- bossed and printed in the grain, so that if the letter ever reaches its destination the stamp cannot be somewhere else. Sunday shaves himself, and does it good and proper, too, with the same kind of a razor Noah had in the ark. He abominates a safety as a Turk does soap, and will have nothing to do with it. Those who live in the same house with him sometimes hear wails in the morn- ing hour, that in their drowsy state make them dream that one of the domestics is doing penance for mortal sin, but they are soon sufficiently aroused to know that ** it is only the boss in the bathroom shaving." PERSONAL MATTERS 2!29 Sunday is good at drawing the blade, but he is not an artist at sharpening a razor, and as he will not wait a minute for anybody else to help him there, he makes up by main strength for what the razor lacks in edge, and so both he and those who want to sleep have to suffer the consequences. A more deliberate man than Billy would have a smoother time, in some ways, and so would his friends. Sunday has had many experiences that do not come to all of us. When a little fellow out in Iowa, he was one day having a small boy's time in " the old swimmin' hole," when he got beyond his depth, and was so nearly drowned that it took all the neighbors and the hardest kind of work to bring him to. He still remembers the experience with a shudder, and says the common im- pression that drowning is a most delightful death to die is all bunk. He wouldn't go through it again, he says, for anything you could name. He would rather shave. In the summer of 1909 he made a trip with Glenn Curtiss, in an aeroplane, and that he remembers as beat- ing drowning forty laps for delight. *' That was some- thing worth while! Interesting? You're talking. Something doing every minute; and as for thrills — a half-dozen at once sometimes — and then some. The ascension was made at Winona Lake, and the sail around over the lake, high enough to get a magnificent viev/ reaching a long distance, and not too high up to see things below distinctly — it was great ! It was a wonder- ful — wonderful experience ; to climb up into the air, and see the beautiful world God has given to us, as the birds see it ! Think of it ! " He says the sentence, *' They shall mount up with wings as eagles," was always a favorite promise of his. ^SO THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY but he never expected to see it so literally fulfilled as it was in his case. One of Sunday's experiences that proved to be a most unpleasant one, occurred at Springfield, 111. One even- ing, soon aftar the beginning of the meeting, a man who was afterward found to be insane, made a vicious attack upon him with a wagon whip, just after he had an- nounced his text and begun to preach. With the subtle cunning which is so characteristic of the insane, the man had managed to elude the ushers, and smuggle him- self and his great whip into a seat well to the front. Watching his chance, he sprang forward, almost with the speed of light, and gave Sunday one most vicious cut over the legs below the knees. But before he could raise his arm to strike another blow, Sunday jumped from his high platform upon the man, and knocked him down as he descended. Sunday was not much hurt by the whip, but in the jump his ankle was sprained so badly that he had to go on crutches for several weeks, but he never missed a night service. Billy has all sorts of experiences with people who are off in their minds, and gets anonymous letters almost by the hatful, from some of the crankiest cranks any- body ever had to deal with. All such letters go into the waste basket without a second glance. Sunday is a man of many moods, and those who would get on well with him need to learn to read them as a sailor does the weather signs. He is as finely organized as a thoroughbred racer, and is of such a strongly nervous temperament that he is as sensitive to surrounding conditions as a thermometer. He has fine health, and is always ready for every duty that presents itself. If he ever had a regular spell of sickness, or missed a speaking date through illness, the knowledge PERSONAL MATTERS ^SV of it has never reached this writer. He seems not to require much sleep, and yet there are times in certain stages of a meeting when he does not sleep as well as he should. There are times in every campaign when the burden upon him from the meeting is terrific. There is so much at stake, and so multitudinous are the cares and details, and so disastrous would be the result should essential things not be properly looked after, that sleep is sometimes hardest to obtain when needed the most. It is doubtful if any other evangelist was ever so good a sleeper as Moody. He made it a lifelong habit never to sap his energy by the slightest friction of worry. He believed that if he did the best he knew, and did his work the best he was able, the Lord could be trusted to carry all the burden, and that is why he could go on his way in light marching order. But we must remember that, in their mental and physical makeup. Moody and Sunday were the opposite of each other. Moody did his work at a deliberate walk, while Sun- day does his on the run, for the spirit of the age has taken hold of him. Moody never ran a footrace, even to make a train, while Sunday was a sprinter from his babyhood. Both were ever intensely in earnest, and each with a consuming passion for souls, but being so opposite in character their zeal found vent in quite dif- ferent ways. While in a meeting at Steubenville, Ohio, and several weeks before the beginning of the campaign at Pittsburg, Sunday and his party went over to Pittsburg, to have a meeting with the ministers who had given him a call. When Sunday was introduced he called up the different members of his party, one after another, and asked each one to tell the ministers all about his or her part of the work. The information thus given created much interest S32 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY and surprise on the part of the preachers, not many of whom knew much about the magnitude and extent of the work. In this way every preacher present was quickly enabled to see what a tremendous sweep the movement is certain to have in a city. After all the others had spoken, and answered all the questions pro- pounded to them, '' Ma " Sunday was called to the plat- form, and also introduced by her husband. She brought down the house in the very first breath, by saying — " And my work is to sit on the safety valve." Then in a pertinent little speech that was full of good hits and plenty of information, the preachers of Pitts- burg were speedily made to see that " Ma " Sunday's part in the great movement is far from being a sinecure. No one could long be associated with Sunday without making the discovery that being famous has its draw- backs. Living in the limelight has its advantages, to be sure, and very great ones they are too, sometimes, but it also has its drawbacks, and nobody knows it better than Billy Sunday. It is not always the flower-strewn path, arched with rainbows and carpeted with velvet, that those of us who dwell in the valley of humility may suppose it to be. One of the trying things about it is, that if you do anything that lifts you above the common level, you can't turn around without having people everywhere put on their nose glasses to stare at you. Lion hunters everywhere will get after you, and chase you up hill and down without mercy. The famous man is regarded as public property every- where. On the street, in the store, on the train, in the hotel or private home, people will hold their breath and stand still to look at him. If he smiles they will look tickled, and if he frowns they will look serious and shake their heads in great solemnity. PERSONAL MATTERS S33 It is said that in Japan whenever an American goes to his room all the neighbors will surround the house and punch holes through the paper walls with their fin- gers, through which to stare at him. A fate something like that follows the famous man in this country wherever he goes. People with eyes like X-rays are always springing out upon him. There is no retirement, no seclusion for him. Wherever he goes somebody is sure to recognize him and let the cat out of the bag, and then there is no rest for the weary. If Sunday were to meet all the people who press upon him for interviews when he is in the midst of a campaign, he would have no time or opportunity for anything else. And most of those who thus want to see him have no business with him whatever. They may have heard him preach somewhere, years ago, perhaps, and believe it will make him shouting happy for them to call and tell him so. Sunday shrinks from being lionized, and never feels so ill at ease as when people gushingly praise him to his face, and yet he would not under any consideration say or do anything that would in the slightest way lessen his influence for good with any one. It is because of this that he often gives up the opportunity for much needed rest to meet urgent calls for interviews. Tens of thousands of people have been converted through Sunday's instrumentality, and hosts of these feel that they have a strong personal interest in him, and in whatever belongs to him. That is why great throngs go to see his home at Winona Lake, and it is also the reason that none who call are ever turned away without being courteously shown over the house, even in the ab- sence of the family. SERMONS By William A. Sunday THE THREE GROUPS Lord, is it I? — Matt. 26:22. GOD created man and placed him in the Garden of Eden, and gave him an explicit command, and man disobeyed, with the full knowledge of the penalty ringing in his ears, for God said : " In the day thou eatest of the fruit thou shalt surely die.'* The Lord did not mean a period of twenty-four hours, but did mean that man would pass a crisis in his career. Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, and this world became a graveyard. If man had not sinned we never would have died. All the misery, all the disease, all the heart- aches have come tlirough sin. The hearse backs up in front of our homes and drives away with our loved ones because of sin. But when man sinned God gave the promise, " The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." In the fullness of time Jesus came into the world in fulfill- ment of that promise. He opened the eyes of the blind, stilled the tempest, fed the multitude with five loaves and two fishes, cast out devils and raised the dead. He demonstrated by word and deed that He was the Son of God. The Jews spumed and repudiated His claim, and their enmity finally culminated in His crucifixion. But before that heartrending tragedy was enacted sev- eral incidents occurred, from one of which I take my text. Jesus said to His disciples, " Go your way into the 237 2S8 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY village over against you, and you will find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him and bring him to Me. And if any man ask you, Why do ye this? say, The Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will send him hither." And the disciples went their way and found the colt tied in front of a house where two ways met, and there was a crowd of men loafing about the place; and if they were in any way like the bunch in our day, they were whittling, cursing, chewing tobacco, discussing financial, political and all other public ques- tions. The disciples began untying the colt, when one fellow, who spits tobacco juice enough to drown a rabbit, calls out, " Hey there ! What are you doing ? What are you going to do with that colt ? " The disciples call back : " The Lord hath need of him." So away they go with the colt to where Jesus was and He on its back enters the city of Jerusalem on His famous triumphal entry. A great multitude followed, shouting, " Hosanna to the son of David ! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord ! " They spread their garments on the ground in front of Jesus. They cut down branches from the trees ; they paved His way with flowers. You would have thought by their acclaim that then and there they would crown Him, but let us wait and see. Jesus said to Peter and John, " You go on, and you will meet a man bearing a pitcher of water. You follow him into the house he enters, and say to the goodman of the house, ' Where is the guest chamber ? ' He will show you an upper room furnished ; there make ready." Jesus desired to eat the Passover feast with His dis- ciples, commemorating the passing over of the destroying angel, who went throughout the land of Egypt and slew the first-bom in every home where the blood was not on THE THREE GROUPS 239 the doorposts. That night at the table Peter noticed that Jesus looked sad and troubled. Turning to John, who was one of the favored disciples, he said, " Ask Him what's the matter ? " John said, '' Master, you look worried. Why is it?" Jesus replied: ** One of you shall betray me." Peter asked, in the words of my text : " Lord, is it I ? " John also asked : " Lord, is it I ? " And Judas, the arch traitor, had the cheek and the audacity to look Jesus in the face and ask : " Lord, is it I ? " When for days he had been bartering and bickering to betray Jesus to the Pharisees for thirty pieces of silver; or about fifteen dollars and ninety-five cents in our money. Jesus replied : " It is he to whom I give the sop." So saying, He dipped it in the dish and handed the sop to Judas, saying : " That thou doest, do quickly." Pricked to the heart by the words of Jesus, Judas leaped to his feet, and because he was treasurer of the little apostolic band, seizing the money bag, he left the room. And when they had sung an hymn Jesus, with the remaining eleven disciples, went out and crossed the brook Kedron and entered into the Garden of Geth- semane. This brings me to the subject of my sermon: The Three Groups in the Garden. I. Difference in Position: They were not grouped by their rating in Bradstreet or Dun. Every man classified himself; and you do the same. You are where you are because Jesus knows He cannot trust you in a more responsible place. Judas classified himself with the enemies of God. The first group was near the edge of the garden ; the second group farther in the garden, while Jesus, we are told, was a stone's throw farther on. The first group g40 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY of disciples was so near the edge of the garden that they would have had only a short distance to go to have been outside where Judas was, with the scribes, Pharisees and the mob. I am sorry to say it, but it's the truth. The truth is not always pleasant to hear, but it's profitable for all who will profit by the truth. The first group is analogous to the position of a large percentage of members in the average church to-day. They live such a selfish, indif- ferent, apathetic, " good Lord, good devil," milk and chalk, cider and vinegar sort of a life that it's hard to tell whether they are in the church or in the world. I detest any man who will trim his sails to catch a passing breeze of popularity, and fight under a doubtful flag. I love to see a person come clear out for God without compromise. The nearer the relationship the stronger are the ties of obligation. I owe to Mrs. Sunday and our children that which I do not owe to any other woman or children in the world, because of my relationship. You owe to your wife and children that which you do not owe to any other beings. I owe to Jesus that which I do not owe to the world. I testify of the world that its deeds are evil. I do not care whether they hiss me or applaud me; whether they dine me or damn me. Jesus said: " The world will hate you as it hateth Me." " Woe unto thee when all men speak well of thee." One of the most uncomplimentary things that can be said at your funeral, is that you had no enemies. If you live an uncompromising life for Christ you will have enemies. The nearer the relationship the greater the provoca- tion. I could in one act break my wife's heart, and bring disgrace upon my children, but that act would not put a tear in your eye. Why? Because all the interest (TKRBK ORQirPS. Page 2) Churches want MORS GOD LKSS DRK£S=ST?.IPB=MONfiY-SOCRL LIFK ILLUS. WOMN LniCOLN II.DIFFEHb'NCB £IZK( I Most glorious ex ploits not always furnish oleerest index" rice — rlrtue — ©to/( Sometimes look- -word — presence ^ \^ £8ST£^ /Talk with Jesus -*, i/Talk v.ith the LIGHT" H0V7 many disciples? { IwHERE JasUS? DOU'T KIIOW IIAB 12--0NS GONiJ ASTRAY 1 / " P. J. JHo. " " , JUIL'.S BOUGHT TICKST KBLL ( " JUDAS? 30 pieces silvw J ( WKIJT PAST SAlIFJiDRIN IJCT RCUND-ThI? EITKTO )jssus GoirFltT. trans, f. j. jo hit? PATH3R 30Y PO gSESSSL WITH DSYIL GAMU TO 8 Is fat he rliei^ never had trouble boy? Is father here never had trouble boy? l n^^nfoFii This father weighted trouble-~child — devill mv^^^>\ YST SOfclfi Pb'OPLE THIilK THROWING STONUS TIISM to SPBAK AGAINST THS DKVII.^ SAY "oU) L5VIL ?A¥S WAY L3T STAY " ^^£0 JA^^^ LIC£NSa G3? SALOON— -rAVfiS STRBET. et oW't^^- ' *^ PccrH. /a5A/V^ EVSRY SALOON GI^/ES DKVIL CHANCE GST BOY /«''*^" I? VANT WORLD BHTTrH^ AFTSR WHIL3 KS 5 P TEH DBYIL OUT BOY rsrought to disciples Gould cast out ^ S CARD-PLAY I!IG-»DANCING GRO'^ CAt:T NO DBVILj ''V e A SINGLE SHEET FROM MR. SUNDAY'S SERMON NOTES. THE THREE GROUPS 241 you have toward me is that I may entertain or instruct you, and perhaps your concern ends there. I have imagined that the conduct of multitudes who are in the church must almost break the heart of Christ. God has the right to say, '' I did not send My Son into the world to bathe it in blood and tears, and open His veins with the cruel instrument of the cross, to redeem you to serve the flesh and the devil, but to serve Me. I want your influence, your time, your money, your prayers, your tears." Alexander the Great was once asked to engage in the Olympic games. He replied : *' I will, if kings are to be mine antagonists on the race track." If we were found doing nothing in this world that is not in harmony with our birth from above we would move this old sin-soaked world Godward. You cannot do as you please. The higher you climb the plainer you are seen. When you are away from home, don't forget that God is every- where. When the son of Fulvius was discovered with the con- spirators of Catiline, his old father rebuked him by say- ing : " I did not beget thee to serve Catiline, but to serve your country — Rome ! " You are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, not to serve the world, but to serve God. I love to see people as loyal to Jesus as was Speaker Lenthall to the Constitution in the days of King Charles I. When commanded to dissolve Parliament, he said : " I have neither eyes to see, ears to hear, nor tongue to speak, but as the Constitution, whose servant I am, is pleased to direct me." Or as Prince William of Orange was to the Netherlands in the thirty-seven years of war. King Philip of Spain offered him fabulous sums to surrender. Prince WilHam sent back that mes- ^42 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY sage which has become mosaiced in the hearts of the Dutch people : '' Not for life nor wife, nor children, nor lands would I mix in my cup one drop of the poison of treason ! " No wonder, that when he was slain by the hand of an assassin, little children stopped playing and cried. Many of our churches are not much more than mere social organizations. They spend more time in develop- ing along social lines than along spiritual lines. Business men and influential church members do not do their duty; they are completely wrapped up in their own affairs. They are busy with the pursuits and frivolities of the world, and they lose the track. The old-time fire and the old-time spirit are lacking. What can we -expect from a social club other than a leading away from God? Our churches need more of God; less of ■dress, strife after wealth, and social life. A woman in a western city went to her pastor and asked: "What can I do to win my husband to Christ?" He answered : " You cannot win anyone to Christ the way you live." She hung her head in shame and went home. When her husband and her son, a young man of eighteen, came home, she said to them : " I wish you would remain a little while after dinner. I want to speak with you." They stepped into the parlor, and she put an arm about each and said : " I have not l)een a consistent Christian, therefore I feel I have not been as good a wife to you, husband, or as good a mother to you, son, as I should have been. Will you join me in prayer that God will forgive me?" They all three kneeled, and she tried to pray, but all she could say was, "O God! O God!" But the Spirit broke up the fountains of the deep, and all three wept. A few days later her husband publicly accepted Christ and joined the church. THE THREE GROUPS 24S " Husband, tell me why I couldn't win you to Christ before?'' she asked, and he said: '* I would ask you to go with me to the theater, and you would go; to the dance, and you would go; to play cards, and you would. You drank wine with me. Then you would ask me to go to church with you, and to prayer meeting, and I would go. You went where I went, and I went where you went. You did what I did, and I did what you did. Wherein was your life any better than mine ? " To be able to convict others of sin, we must ourselves first get right with God. n. Difference in Size: Eight in the first group. Three in the second group. Jesus alone forms the third. The largest number in the first group. Farthest from Jesus. Nearest to the world. That has always been true of every church that I knew anything about. Ask the minister for a list of his mem- bers; then sit down and check off the prayer meeting members. You will find the largest number nearer the card party and wine supper; closer to the world than to the cross of Christ. Somebody said to Daniel Web- ster when he was a boy : '' What are you going to be when you are a man ? " "A lawyer," he repUed. " But the profession is overrun." Webster answered : ** There is plenty of room at the top." The nearer you get to Jesus the more elbow room you will have and the less the crowd. The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest index of the vices or virtues of men and women. Sometimes a word, an act, a ges- ture; your absence or your presence will give a clearer insight into your manhood or womanhood, or lack of both, than some deed of bravery or act of prowess. 2U THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY Let us talk with Jesus a minute. " Jesus, how many disciples have you? " '' I had twelve. I have but eleven now." " Where is the missing one? " " He has gone to betray Me." " And yet with eleven left you are praying all alone ? " Just like many a minister with hundreds of members, and bearing the burden all alone. Judas bought a ticket for hell for thirty pieces of silver, and it wasn't a round-trip ticket either. Let us go talk with the eight: "Where is Jesus?" "We don't know." "Where are Peter, James and John ? " " Don't know ; haven't seen them." "Where is Judas?" "Why, he just went past not long ago, with the scribes and Pharisees and a great company." "Where was he going?" "Why, he was looking for Jesus, to betray Him." " Why do you think that ? " " Because to-night at the feast Jesus said, ' One of you shall betray Me, and it is he to whom I give the sop,' and after dipping it in the dish He handed it to Judas." " Didn't you try to stop him in his dastardly work of betrayal? " " No." " Well, don't you suppose Judas thought he would find Jesus here with you men ? " No, he never suspected that Jesus was near that bunch. Judas knew that crowd. He knew that first group out near the edge of the garden through and through. Why do I think so? I will tell you. Jesus had gone up on the mount of transfiguration, taking with him Peter, James and John, members of the second group, and while He was away a father whose boy was possessed with a devil came to the disciples who com- posed the first group, out near the edge of the garden, and besought them to cast the devil out of his boy. Jesus had given His disciples power against unclean spirits, to drive them out, but instead of doing the work THE THREE GROUPS 245 He gave them to do, they spent the time chewing the rag about who would be greatest in the kingdom. I wonder if there is a father in this world who never had trouble with his boy. This father was weighted down with trouble all caused by the devil. The devil is the cause of every saloon, every drunkard, every murder, every theft, every lie, every heartache, every house of shame. All of the deception, envy, malice, filthy communications that come out of your mouth are prompted by the devil, and yet some people think I am throwing stones at them when I preach against the devil. Some say, '' Well, the devil pays, so let him stay. We need the license from the saloons to pave our streets and light our city.'* Yes, and you need your saloons in order to keep your jails, penitentiaries, poorhouses and insane asylums filled. Every saloon gives the devil that much better chance to get your boy. If you want the world to be better after a while, keep the devil out of the boys and girls. If you want to drive the devil out of the world, hit him with a cradle, not a crutch. When Jesus returned from the mount the sorrowing father ran to Him with his boy, crying, " If Thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us. I brought my son to Thy disciples, and they could not cast the devil out ! " That " if " implies a doubt. Failure on the part of those disciples to keep in touch with Jesus, so they could have power to cast out devils, led the poor old father to doubt the power of Jesus. The divine philosophy, as demonstrated by thousands of church members, breeds more infidels than all the Paines, Parkers and Ingersolls combined. As a principle increases in its meaning, it decreases in ^46 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY the number that should adhere to that principle. Suppose by education I mean every one who can read and write ; then there are about eighty-five millions of educated people in the United States. But, suppose that by edu- cation I mean every one who has graduated from high school ; about one-fifth of the population would be classi- fied as educated. On the other hand, if by education I mean every one who has graduated from a university or a college ; one-half of one per cent, would come under that heading. Suppose by your friends you mean all who shake your hand, smile and say, '' How are you ? I am glad to see you." You have scores of friends of that sort ; but sup- pose by friends you mean all who will stand by you through thick and thin, and defend you when they hear your name defamed, I fear they are lamentably few. Suppose by a Christian I mean every one who has his name on a church record; there are about twenty-six millions in the United States, about equally divided be- tween the Catholics and Protestants. On the other hand, suppose I mean every man and woman who is willing to do God's will; I question whether there are ten mil- lions that would die for Jesus. I said to a minister one time, " How many members have you ? " He said, *' Eight hundred and seventy-two ; but there are two hundred and seventy-eight I do not count." I asked : " Out of the number you do count, how many are helping in the meetings : singing in the choir, ushering or doing personal work ? " Tears flowed down his cheeks as he said, the largest number I have been able to muster any one night was twenty-eight, and if my life depended on my making the number fifty, I would die ! " There we were wearing out our lives, trying to bring THE THREE GROUPS 247 that God-forsaken, whisky-soaked, gambling-cursed, har- lot-blighted town to her knees, and the church calmly- looking on. I sometimes doubt whether the church needs new members one-half as much as she needs the old bunch made over. Judging by the way multitudes in the church live, you would think they imagined they had a through ticket to heaven in a Pullman palace car, and had left orders for the porter to wake them up when they head into the yards of the New Jerusalem. If that's the case you will be doomed to disappointment, for you will be side-tracked with a hot box. If I had a hundred tongues, and every tongue speak- ing a different language, in a different key at the same time, I could not do justice to the splendid chaos that the world-loving, dancing, card-playing, whisky-guzzling, gin-fizzling, wine-sizzling, novel-reading crowd in the church brings to the cause of Christ. There is but one voice from faithful preacher and worker about the church, and that is, " She is sick," but we say it in such painless, delicate terms that she seems to enjoy her in- validity. About four out of five who have their names on our church records are doing nothing to bring the world to Christ, and the church is not one whit better for their presence. As a satisfaction for all this, Chris- tians are making a great deal out of Lent. I believe in a Lent that is kept three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. I think it a travesty on the teachings of Christ that any one can get such an overstock of piety on hands in forty days they can live like the devil the rest of the year. That's an old trick of the devil. The Jewish church struck that rock and was wrecked. The Roman Catholic church struck and was split. The Protestant church is fast approaching the same doom. One of the great dangers, as I see it, is assimilation to g48 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY the world ; the neglect of the poor ; substitution of forms for the facts of godliness ; a hireling ministry, all summed up, means a fashionable church, with religion left out. Formerly Methodists attended class meeting and gave testimony ; now the class meeting has become a thing of the past. Shouts of praise used to be heard. Now such holy demonstrations are considered undignified. Occa- sionally some godly old sister, who is a sort of a con- necting link between the old and the new, pipes up in a weak, negative falsetto, apologetic kind of a voice, and says : " Amen, Brother Sunday ! " I don't expect one of these ossified, petrified, mil- dewed, dyed-in-the-wool, stamped-on-the-cork, blown-in- the-bottle, horizontal, perpendicular Presbyterians or Episcopalians to shout " Amen ! " but it would do you good to loosen up. Many of you are hide-bound. I believe half of the professing Christians amount to nothing as a spiritual force. They go to church, have a kindly regard for religion, but as for having a firm grip on God, a cheerful spirit of self-denial, enthusiastic service and prevailing prayer, and willingness to strike hard, staggering blows against the devil, they are almost failures. A shell has been invented which, when it strikes a ship, puts everybody on board to sleep. Some such thing seems to have hit our churches. III. Difference in Revelation: Jesus said to the members of the first group, near the edge of the garden, largest in numbers, " Sit ye here." To those composing the second. He said, " My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Tarry ye here, and watch with Me. Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is THE THREE GROUPS 249 weak." But when He was alone He cried, " Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless, not My will, but Thine, be done." Notice the progressive stages of revelation. Not a word to Judas. To the eight nearest the world, He said, " Sit ye here." To Peter, James and John, He said, " Watch and pray." When alone with the Father, " Thy will be done." He told the Father what He did not tell Peter, James and John. He told them what He did not tell the group of eight; what He did not tell Judas. Do you wish God to reveal the deep things of the Spirit to you? Then turn your back on the sinful things and creep close to His side. Jesus will never unfold His revelations to you when you are lined up in front of a bar drinking, or when you are at a baseball game on the Sabbath, or living in sin. Jesus did not ask the members of the first group, near the edge of the garden, to pray. Perhaps they would have refused. Every minister knows there are certain members of his church that he never thinks of asking to lead in prayer. In fact they never darken a prayer meeting door; if a card party takes place on prayer meeting night they are at the party. Yet we wonder why this old sin-blighted world is not on her knees. I am amazed that God is doing as well as He is, with the crowd He has to work with. Please pardon a personal reference: I was born and bred, not in Old Kentucky, although my grandfather was born in Lexington, but in Old Iowa. I was a rube of the rubes, a hayseed of the hayseeds. I have greased my hair with goose grease. I have blacked my boots with stove blacking. I have wiped my face on a gunny- sack towel. I have eaten with my knife. I have drank coffee out of my saucer. I have said " done it," when 250 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY I should have said, *' did it ; " " came," when I should have said, " come " ; " seen," when I should have said, " saw." I am a graduate from the university of poverty and hard knocks, and I have taken post-graduate courses. My autobiography could be summed up in one line from Gray's " Elegy " : " The short and simple annals of the poor." My father enlisted four months before I was born. He went to the front with Company E, Twenty-third Iowa Infantry, but he never came back. He died and was buried at Camp Patterson, Mo. I have battled my way since I was six years old. I know all about the dark and seamy side of life. If ever a man fought hard every inch of his way, I have. One day mother said, " Boys, I am going to send you to the Soldiers' Orphans' Home at Glenwood, Iowa." We had to go to Ames to take the train. We went to a little hotel to wait, and about one o'clock some one came and said, " Get ready for the train ; it's coming." I looked into mother's face. Her eyes were red; her hair was disheveled. I said, " What's the matter, mother?" All the time Ed and I slept mother had been praying. We went to the train. Mother put one arm about me and the other about Ed, and sobbed as if her heart would break. People walked by and looked at us, but they didn't say a word. Why? They didn't know, and if they had they wouldn't have cared. Mother knew ; she knew that for years she wouldn't see her boys. We got into the train and cried, " Good-by, mother ! " as the train pulled out. We reached Council BluflFs. It was cold, and we turned up our little thin coat collars over our necks and shivered. We saw a hotel, and went up and asked a woman for something to eat. She said, " What's your name? " " My name is Willie Sun- THE THREE GROUPS 251 day, and this is my brother Ed," I said. '' Where are you going ? " " Going to the Soldiers' Orphans' Home at Glenwood." She wiped her tears and said, " My husband was a soldier, and he never came back. He wouldn't turn any one away, and I certainly won't turn you boys away." She threw her arms about us and said, " Come on in." She gave us our breakfast, and our dinner too. There wasn't any train going out on the Burlington until afternoon. We played around the yards. We saw a freight train standing there, so we climbed into the caboose. The conductor came along and said, " Where is your money?" "Ain't got any." "Where's your tickets?" "Ain't got any." "You can't ride without money or tickets. I'll have to put you off." We commenced to cry. My brother handed him a letter of introduction to the superintendent of the Orphans' Home. The conductor read it, handed it back as the tears rolled down his cheeks ; then said : " Just sit still, boys. It won't cost you a cent to ride on my train." It's only twenty miles from Council Bluffs to Glen- wood, and as we rounded the curve the conductor said, ** There is the Home on the hill." Mother knew. Ed didn't know. I didn't know. I went to sleep. So did Ed ; but mother knew. She prayed. Jesus knew. He prayed. Peter, James and John went to sleep. You can't make me believe that if you knew you would act as you do. If you will tell me how much you read the Bible, how much you pray, how much you do to help people to Jesus Christ, I will tell you to what figures you point on the spiritual thermometer. The trouble is, you will be in the church on Sunday morning, and will keep a little spot about eighteen inches square warm for half an hour; listen to the sermon; pick up a book and sing, " Jesus paid it all," when you 252 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY have debts that are outlawed. He doesn^t pay them. He doesn't pay for that hat, or that set of false teeth you are wearing. You get up and say, " I am standing on the solid rock.'' You are probably standing in a pair of shoes you haven't paid for yet. Let's get cleaned up for God, and see if the Lord won't do great things. He will not send the wind to drive our ships unless we have faith to lift our sails. IV. Difference in Duty : To the members of the first group Jesus said, " Sit ye here." To those of the second group He said, " Watch and pray." While His duty was to bear the sins of the world, there are multitudes in the church that do noth- ing. They are mere ciphers. At a funeral the preacher failed to appear. The undertaker thought it would be a downright shame to put the man away without some- thing being said, and so concluded to make a few re- marks himself. So when the time came he cleared his throat, and in a pious whine said : " Dear friends, this corpse has been a member of this church for forty years ! " " Crucify Him ! " cried the relentless rabble. The vociferations of that infuriated mob shook the temple from foundation to turret top. Often in civil strife had been witnessed some such animosity and hatred of the multitudes. Truly all the phantoms of hell seem to have assembled in Jerusalem, and out through the funeral gate poured the mob. Here comes Judas, leading the devil's crowd. Turn- ing to the Pharisees, he said, " Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is He; hold Him fast." See the smile on his hypocritical, sanctimonious countenance, as he rushes forward shouting, " Hail, Master ! " and kisses Him. THE THREE GROUPS 253 Jestis answers, '' Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss ? " They seize Him, and take Him to the High Priest's house, where He is condemned on false testimony to a felon's death on the cross. "Must Jesus bear the cross alone, And all the world go free? No ! There's a cross for every one, And there's a cross for me." As one has beautifully pictured the scene, by saying he imagined that had we been there, and God had given us power of vision, we might have seen the hilltops cov- ered with angels, and the air filled with the heavenly hosts, all gazing breathless upon that scene. The arch- angel opened the door of heaven, and cried: " O Jesus ! if you want me to come to your help, raise your head and look this way; and I will come with a legion of angels to your help ! " But Jesus suffered on. He imagined the archangel once more leaning over the battlements of heaven, and crying again, with a voice that shook the earth : " O Jesus ! thou Son of God ! If you want me to come and hurl that howling, bloodthirsty mob into hell, tear your right hand loose from the cross and wave it ! " But Jesus clenched His fingers over the nails in His hands and suft'ered on. Why ? To open up a plan of salvation which, if we will accept, will keep us out of hell. Suddenly He cried : " It is finished ! " and the Holy Spirit plucked the olive branch of peace from the cross, and winging His flight back burst through the gates of glory, shouting : " Peace ! Peace ! Peace ! has been made through His death on the cross." S54 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY How many will go with Jesus to the last ditch ? Thou- sands will; but there are many who, like the disciples, follow Him to the Garden, but forsake Him at the Cross. How many will say with Jesus, " Not my will, but Thine be done." Say it with me : " Not my will, but " finish the sentence. All the peace, all the power, all the blessing of a Christian life and eternal joy are found in the three words you have left out — " Thine be done." It costs some too much to say, " Thine be done." One says, " If I say that the saloon-keepers won't come to my store to trade. If I said that I would have to close my store on the Sabbath." " If I said that I could not accept Mrs. So-and-So's invitation to a card party." " If I said that I would have to pay my debts." *' If I said that I would have to go home and burn up the prizes I have won at progressive euchre." '' If I said that I could not go to the brothel any more and crawl into the arms of infamy." " If I should say, * Thy will be done/ I should have to throw the wine out of my cellar and break up my beer bottles. I am going to have a few bottles for dinner to-night." " I could not go to the ball game on Sunday afternoon if I said that." " I would have to stop lying about my neighbors if I said that." Oh, yes, it costs too much to say " Thine be done." That is the reason you lose out. That's the reason you have moral curvature of the spine. That's the reason your spiritual batting average is not up to God's league standard. " Not my will, but " there's where you cash in. There's where you go into the ditch. There's where you turn off the light. There's where you hang up the receiver. There's where you ring off. There's where you puncture your tire. There's where you strike out. It costs too much to say, " Thine be done." THE THREE GROUPS ^55 " Say, papa, may I go with you ? " asked a little boy of his father. '' Yes, son, come on," said the father, as he threw the ax over his shoulder, and, accompanied by a friend, went to the woods and felled a tree. The little fellow said: " Say, papa, can I go and play in the water in the lagoon ? " ** Yes, but be careful, and don't get into the deep water; keep close to the bank." The little fellow was playing, digging wells, picking up stones and shells, and talking to himself, when pretty soon the father heard him cry : ** Hurry, papa, hurry ! " The father leaped to his feet, grabbed the ax and ran to the lagoon and saw the boy floundering in deep water, with hands outstretched, a look of horror on his face, as he cried: " Hurry, papa, hurry ; the alligator has got me ! " The hideous, amphibious monster had been hibernating, and had come out, lean, lank, hungry, voracious, and seized the boy. The father leaped into the lagoon and was just about to sink the ax through the head of the monster, when he turned and swished the water with his huge tail like the screw of an ocean steamer, and the little fellow cried out: ** Hurry, papa, hurry ! " The blood-flecked foam told the story. When I read that, for days I could not eat, for nights I could not sleep. I said : " O God, what if that had been my boy ! " There are influences in this world worse than an alli- gator, and they are ripping and tearing to shreds our virtue, our morality. Young men are held by intemper- 256 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY ance; others by vice. Drunkards are crying to the church, " Hurry faster ! " and the church members sit on the bank playing cards, sit there drinking beer and reading novels. "Hurry!" They are splitting hairs over fool things, instead of trying to keep sinners out of hell! " Faster ! Faster ! Faster ! " "Lord, is it I?" < H < O o Q o M H W o u ^ .S' ^'m:„^' o X ., :>(_ o o g H W W UNDER THE SUN What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under 'the sun ? — Eccl. i :3. THIS question is asked and answered by King Sol- omon, and in our language it means about this : " What good does a man get out of life if he lives only for what this world can give ? " If any man has ever been able to give the right answer to this great question, out of his own wisdom and ex- perience, that man was Solomon. If any man ever came into this world with a gold spoon in his mouth, he cer- tainly did. The devil has a mortgage on some people^ from the cradle, but Solomon had no such handicap, for he was w^ell born. He was the favorite son of one of the greatest and best men who ever lived, for his father. King David, was a man after God's own heart — which means that he just suited the Lord. Solomon was made king of a great kingdom in his early manhood, while his father was still alive to counsel and help him. From this we see that he had every ad- vantage that high station and boundless wealth and oppor- tunity could give him. He had wisdom, riches, wealth and honor such as no king ever had before him or since. An invincible army stood ready to do his bidding, and all the power of a great nation that was under the especial protection and favor of God was behind him. He had only to command, and it was done; to express a wish, and it was gratified. He had received the best 257 £58 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY education it was possible to give him, and was called the wisest of men. The fame of his wisdom covered the earth, and caused the Queen of Slieba, with a great retinue, to make a long pilgrimage of weary weeks and months, to sit at his feet in wonder. She looked upon the beauty of his wonderful palace and the magnificent temple he had built. She reviewed his matchless army; considered the numbers of men who served him and the elegance of their livery; then she looked in amazement upon the wealth of gold and precious things that sur- rounded him, and took her departure, declaring that the half had not been told her. This is the kind of ability Solomon had with which to answer his own question. He wrote three thousand proverbs and a thousand and five songs, all full of wis- dom. If he wasn't qualified to speak as an expert, where can we find one? Let us see how well qualified he was to know what he was talking about from his own actual experience. Every great pleasure was at his finger-tips. If he wanted any- thing he had only to reach out his soft, jeweled hand and take it. His kingdom had peace and rest from war during all of his reign, so that he had plenty of time to enjoy himself. And from what he says of himself he lost no time, for he took about all the degrees and invented a few of his own. He was a thirty-third degree sport. He lived in a palace, surrounded by courtiers who were not spring chickens, and all highbrows themselves. He was honored, admired and flattered as few men have been. No greater honor than his could be known, no greater wisdom found in any books, and no higher station attained. He was so rich that his wealth could not be measured. He had forty thousand horses and twenty UNDER THE SUN 259 thousand horsemen. The high cost of Hving never troubled him, for his provisions for his household and attendants one day were: Two hundred and eighty-one bushels of fine flour; five hundred and sixty-six bushels of meal; ten fat oxen out of the stall; twenty oxen out of the pasture ; one hundred sheep, besides harte, roebuck, fallow deer and fatted fowl. Solomon had no ambition that had not been achieved ; no curiosity that had not been satisfied. Like his princely father, he was a close observer, and nothing escaped him, so that he was able to say : " I have seen all the works that are done under the sun," meaning that the world had nothing more to show him or to give him — and that was certainly going some. At some time in our lives we have all envied men of great scholarship and intellectual attainments, and have thought of what a foretaste of heaven it would be to have the time and opportunity to learn all the things we would like to know. We have believed that one of the greatest joys this life could give is the joy of knowing things. Well, Solomon not only drank that well dry, but he pulled out the pump, for he exhausted all the schools and colleges of his day, and gave all his teachers nervous prostration in their vain endeavor to teach him something more than he already knew. And then when he had pumped that fountain dry, he sighed and said : " Go to, now ; I will see what I can get out of mirth and pleasure,'* and then he cut loose on that line, and began to carry on in a way to make a baseball fan at the world's series look like a dummy in a clothing store window. He got into his golden chariot with the diamond-set wheels and went round the track in a way to set the bleachers crazy. At breakneck speed he galloped over the rose-lined avenues of sensuous pleasures that opened S60 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY for him in every direction, looking as if they led straight to paradise; but ere long his shining car of delight lost a wheel and he was down in the mud again, and crying out to any who might be following in his wake: *' Go back ! Don't come this way, for here all is vanity and vexation of spirit ! " Then he took to wine and the rosiest kind of dissipa- tion. He hit up the booze. He tried a lot of things. He had a great natatorium built, that was supported by great lioi^s. Then he began to love many strange women, laying hold on folly with both hands. That's where he struck out. He had seven hundred wives and three hun- dred concubines, but soon had to give the same verdict as before, and again cry out: " Vanity, vanity ; all is vanity ! " Then he thinks he has discovered something really substantial, and so goes to building great works and houses, chief of which is the magnificent temple, still called by his name. It required seven years to build it, and took the combined efforts of one hundred and eighty-three thousand Jews and strangers to do the work. It took ten thousand men eleven years to cut the trees. There were eighty thousand hewers of wood, and seventy thousand burden bearers. There were eighty thousand squared stones, all so perfectly shaped in the quarries that the sound of neither hammer nor mallet was heard in putting them together in the temple. At the completion of the work there was a feast of seven days at its dedication, and Solomon sacrificed one hundred and twenty thousand sheep and twenty thousand oxen. The temple was built of white marble, so artfully joined that it appeared like one stone. The roof was of olive wood, covered with pure gold. That is where the idea WOMEN ONLY MEETING, THOUSANDS BEING TURNED AWAY. UNDER THE SUN 261 of covering the domes of many of our capitol buildings with gold leaf originated. When the sunshine fell on the temple its splendor was so dazzling that the eyes were almost blinded. The temple courts and apartments could house three hundred thousand people. There were fourteen hundred and fifty-three columns of Parian marble; twenty-nine hundred and six pilasters or columns. Over three billion dollars' worth of gold was used. One billion dollars' worth of silver was used on the floors and walls, which were overlaid with gold and silver. There were two hundred targets of beaten gold, with six hundred shekels of gold in each target. There were three hundred targets with three hundred shekels in each target. There were three hundred shields of beaten gold, with three pounds of gold in each shield, and the value of the gold that came to Solomon in one year was about twenty millions of dollars. When the temple was dedicated the glory of God filled it. Then Solomon turned his great talent and wealth toward making a beautiful Jerusalem, by planting vine- yards and laying out gardens that were like Fairyland, and then like a tale of magic he produced orchards, in which he had a great collection of the finest and rarest trees in all the world. Trees from every clime, and flowers of every kind and hue were there, and all these were kept green and beautiful by irrigation from artificial lakes. It is doubtful if the world had ever seen greater beauty than Solomon with his unlimited power produced in Jerusalem at that time, but even all this pleased his fancy only for a little while, and soon he seems to have nothing but dust in his mouth, and again cries out: "All is vanity!" ^6^ THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY But almost immediately he seems to have taken up another whim, and says : " I got me servants and maidens, and also had great possessions of great and small cattle, above all that were in Jerusalem before me. I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings, and of the provinces. I got me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instru- ments, and that of all sorts," meaning, no doubt, that he became an art collector, and began to feed on the beauti- ful, the artistic and esthetic, somewhat as millionaires are doing now, securing for himself the very best to be had in painting, old china, bric-a-brac, sculpture, musical instruments, singers and performers, and then at voluptu- ous ease he would lie on a princely couch that seemed almost to float in the air, and drink to the full all he could get out of them in the way of enjoyment. But presently he is again almost dying with disappoint- ment, and crying out in the same old doleful tone : " All is vanity and vexation of spirit ! " Meaning that there was nothing in it all but an empty puff of air that could only fill a bubble for a moment. And then he goes on to say : " So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem; and whatever mine eyes desired I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labor. Then I looked on all the works my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do, and " Behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun ! " And so this wise and honored and wealthy man goes on drinking first from one golden cup and then another, only to dash them all away as soon as tasted in bitter UNDER THE SUN 263 disappointment, and then after he had tried them all, to say, '' Not one can satisfy ! " confirming what his father David had said in the statement, *' The young Hons do lack and suffer hunger," and just what every millionaire on earth to-day knows from his own experience. To find starvation of the most awful kind to-day, don't go down into the slums, but go to the people w4io are enormously wealthy. Andrew Carnegie says there are no happy millionaires, and Andy ought to know, for he's got the dough. John D. Rockefeller has about as good as confessed that he got more out of the first thousand dollars he made than out of any ten millions he has made since, and to-day he is perhaps the hungriest man in all the world. Every man wants to be satisfied. I do. So do you. Every one is reaching out for happiness and peace and rest. There are men before me who have tried many things in pursuit of happiness. You have climbed high and you have probed deep, and some of you have not found what you have sought. All who are here are on the verge of eternity. The past is simply a memory, the future an uncertainty. No matter how old you are; no matter if your hair is gray; no matter what your bank account may be ; some of you must say, " I have not found happiness. I am a failure. My life has been a failure. All is vanity and vexation of spirit!" Why don't you be a man ? Why don't you show a man's courage, and take up the cross of the Son of God ? Why don't you rise to what you might be? We were all meant for better things. You were never meant for the slop and the swill barrels of the devil. Why do you let the devil control you? Why do you let him make you a pawn on the board on which he plays his game ? Why do you spend your money for that which is ^64 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY not bread? Is there any bread in rum? Ask the poor fellows who have been spending their earnings for drink during all these years. Ask their wives and their chil- dren. No bread for them. Ask the saloon-keeper. There is bread in it for him, but none for those who drink what he sells. But to go back to Solomon's doleful cry of " All is vanity ! " What does it mean ? Was Solomon a dys- peptic, as most millionaires are ? Have you ever noticed that it takes more religion to make a dyspeptic smile than it does to make a healthy man shout? Was there something wrong with Solomon's liver, or what was the matter? Was the trouble all with Solomon, or is all creation out of joint? Is there no good to be found in any of the things with which he employed his time? Is going to school no better than wasting time in idle- ness? Does a keen appreciation of the l^eautiful carry with it a curse and not a blessing? Is there no benefit in architecture, music or sculpture ? Is there nothing but evil in wealth, wisdom and high station in life? Was Solomon really starving while apparently feeding on the finest of the wheat ? He said so many things that appear to contradict all he said about vanity and vexation of spirit — and so what does it mean? But wait a moment. Here is something that seems to throw light on the matter. When Solomon says, " All is vanity," he also says, " under the sun," and that shows the standpoint from which he drew his conclusions. What we see as we go through life always depends upon where we stand to look. Many a man who tries to talk as if he were standing on a mountain, shows by what he says that he is up to his eyes in the mud. When a man tells you that the whisky business is a good thing for the country, you know that he is looking UNDER THE SUN 265 at things through the eyes of a brewer or a saloon-keeper, and not through the eyes of a father who has a son that has become a drunkard. When a man tells you that he don't believe in foreign missions, you know that he don't know any more about what pure and undefiled religion is than a jack rabbit knows about running for president. From what he says you know the viewpoint from which he has come to his conclusion. To know a man's viewpoint is to know why he sees the thing he claims to see, and now we know why Solomon said: '* All is vanity and vexation of spirit ! " It was because he was looking at things from the viewpoint of '' under the sun." As if a man could tell what a rainbow were like while standing on his head in a dark cellar. In the little book of Ecclesiastes, from which the text is taken, the expression '' under the sun " occurs thirty- one times, as if Solomon wanted every one to understand that what he said therein was said from the standpoint of low ground. The great king was looking at things from a low, sensual, materialistic plane, and from that viewpoint every word he said was true. Take away God, take away the Bible, take away inspiration and revelation, take away all hope of a better life in the world to come — destroy all thought of resurrection, and put in its place nothing but hopeless and endless night, and you have nothing left that is worth living for. The life of the greatest and wisest man is then no better than that of a fool. The best fruits of the world would then turn to ashes on the lips, and it were better to die than to live. Blot out everything except what we can know tl\rough our senses, and keep from us all light from a source higher than the sun, and the very best this life can give is worse than nothing at all. Destroy in every man the ^66 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY divine spark that tells him there is a God, and that there is a beyond, and every grave would hold a suicide. Let all hope die, and despair would reign. We have only begun to know a little about the soul when we discover that nothing under the sun can satisfy it. It was this great truth Solomon began to realize after he found nothing but disappointment in the very best the world could give him. Under the sun nothing lasts ; nothing endures ; nothing satisfies. No sooner do we be- gin to think we have a thing safe forever than it is gone. We love but to lose. Whatever we have is ours but for one brief moment, and the anguish of our loss is a wound that never heals. No happiness is possible with- out the hope of certainty, and the thing we feel we must have mocks us as it flies. No fountain under the sun can hold enough to satisfy an immortal spirit, and that very fact proves us to be spirits in prison while we are here. All the gold mines in the world have not given up treasure enough to satisfy the man who has a greed for gain. The man with a hunger for honor and dis- tinction has never been able to get enough of it, and the same can be said of everything else for which men strive and struggle and destroy each other and themselves. Nothing this world can give is worth while, unless while living in it we can have more than is revealed by the light of the sun. Destroy the Bible and all faith in God, and we might as well eat, drink and be merry and die. Nothing will do unless it can give us the wings of the morning and let us mount higher than the sun, for what can a mole know about the sunrise, or a man in a pit know about the beauty of the mountains? No heaven we can build for ourselves without God can be more than a little ante-room to hell. Without God and reve- UNDER THE SUN 26T lation and the Bible and hope of heaven, all is indeed vanity and vexation of spirit. But at last Solomon spreads the wings of faith and gets higher than the sun, and when he does the change in his viewpoint changes the meaning of life, for now he can see with a clear eye. I know a man who through some difficulty with his vision can see scarcely anything a little distance away, but one day he went up in a balloon, and when over a half-mile high he could see like a bird. In fact he could see better than he had ever believed anybody could see, and it was that way with Solomon when he reached the place where his faith could lay hold on God. Listen to this, and note how his vision has expanded, and his sight cleared up : " Surely I know (no uncertainty about that) that it shall be well with them that fear God." There is no more talk about everything being vanity now, and the reason is because at last he has a viewpoint higher than the sun, as is always the case with even the humblest man who has faith in God. Solomon can now see that nothing good is ever lost, and that bread cast on the waters is sure to return after many days. He now sees that wisdom is better than weapons of war, the plain meaning of which in our day is that good common-sense is better protection than a slungshot. And then, to sum up, he closes the book by saying : *' Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." And there is no vanity about anything God does. And now let us employ our time for a little while g68 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY with some of the men who have looked at Hfe from a viewpoint higher than the sun. It was this that kept Noah working away on the ark for a hundred and twenty years, without seeing a flash of hghtning or hearing a clap of thunder. Had he been living only for what he could see, it would never have been said of him that " he was a just man and perfect, and walked with God/' The man who walks with God will not spend much time in thinking about the bugs that may be creeping under his feet. Abraham was another man who had a faith that lifted him higher than the sun, when looking for " a city which had foundations, whose maker and builder was God." You never hear a word from that grand old man about all being vanity and vexation of spirit. And then there was Moses. He had a vision that pierced the clouds and went far beyond the sun, when he saw that " the reproach of Christ " would bring him greater and more lasting riches than the treasures of Egypt, that he might have had by simply folding his arms and doing nothing. But he endured as seeing Him who is invisible, and that made it easy for him to refuse to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Neither was he looking from the low plane of " under the sun," when in bidding farewell to the army he had brought out of Egypt, he said : " The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." A man must have a sweep of faith reaching higher than the sun before he can say things like that. There is not a word about " under the sun " in the chapter where grand old General Joshua says, " As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," and no such words as " vanity and vexation of spirit " ever fell from the lips of that great captain of iron courage. UNDER THE SUN 269 Samuel was looking at things from much higher than the sun when he said, " To obey is better than sacrifice," and so was Job when he said, " I will trust Him though He slay me," and '' I know that my redeemer lives ! " Ezra/ was not standing on low ground when " he pre- pared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it," or when he said, " The hand of our God is upon all of them for good that seek Him, and His power and His wrath is against all them that forsake Him." The same was true of Nehemiah, when, in building up the wall that was broken down, he said, '' I am doing a great work." From " under the sun " it would have looked very small. David was looking from higher than the sun, or he could never have said, " The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them. O taste, and see that the Lord is good ; blessed is the man that trusteth in Him ! " And Daniel had a vision that swept far higher than the sun when he went to the lions' den w^ith no more anxiety than you and I would go to dinner. Stephen's viewpoint was from much higher than any- where " under the sun," when he cried out, " Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God ! " and then went to his cruel death with the light of heaven on his face. And Paul was looking from higher than the stars, or he could never have said : " For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens ! " And so it was also with John the beloved, when near the close of his long and busy life he took up the much worn pen with which he had written so much that will ^70 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY still b€ bright when the stars are dim, and wrote the precious words that have been shining down the centuries ever since : " Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God; therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him ; for we shall see Him as He is ! " And then still later, when a white-haired prisoner on the Isle of Patmos, and just before he left the world to be forever with the Lord, John again had a vision of things infinitely higher than the sun, and once more took up the stylus and wrote : " And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse ; and He that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. . . . And He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood; and His name is called the Word of God. . . . And He hath on His vesture and on His thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords ! " Jude also was looking from very much higher than the sun when he declared with unhesitating confidence : " That He is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with ex- ceeding joy." And O how much higher than the sun was Jesus looking from when He said : " Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions : if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." UNDER THE SUN 271 And then, when after the shame of the cross and the grave, He stood on resurrection ground, how infinitely far above the sun was His eye fixed when He said to the eleven faithful ones : " All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth ; go ye therefore, and teach all na- tions, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." And thank God the time will surely come, when in our vision we shall not be confined to the low plane described as " under the sun," but when with Him in whom we have believed we shall be lifted " far above all princi- pality and power, and might and dominion," and be with Him forever in heavenly places, where we shall no more see as through a glass darkly, but face to face, and where we shall know as we are known. WONDERFUL His name shall be called Wonderful. — Isa. 9:6. IN olden times all names meant something, and this is still the case among Indians and all other people who are living in a primitive way. Whenever you know an Indian's name and the meaning of it, you know something about the Indian. Such names as Kill Deer, Eagle Eye, Buffalo Face and Sitting Bull tell us some- thing about the men who possessed them. This tendency to use names that are expressive still crops out in camp life, and whenever men are thrown together in an unconventional way. In mining, military and lumber camps nearly every man has a nickname that indicates some peculiarity or trait of character. Usually a man's nickname is nearer the real man than his right name. All of our family names to-day had their origin in something that meant something. All Bible names have a meaning, and when you read the Scriptures it will always help you to a better understanding of their mean- ing to look up the definition of all proper names. There are two hundred and fifty-six names given in the Bible for the Lord Jesus Christ, and I suppose this was because He was infinitely beyond all that any one name could express. Of the many names given to Christ it is m^r purpose at this time to briefly consider this one : *'' His name shall be called Wonderful." Let us look into it somewhat 272 WONDERFUL 273 and see whether He was true to the name given Him in a prophecy eight hundred years before He was bom. Does the name fit Him ? Is it such a name as He ought to have? Wonderful means something that is transcendently be- yond the common ; something that is away beyond the ordinary. It means something that is altogether unlike anything else. We say that Yellowstone Park, Niagara Falls and the Grand Canon of the Colorado are wonder- ful because there is nothing else like them. When David killed Goliath with his sling he did a wonderful thing, because nobody else ever did anything like it. It was wonderful that the Red Sea should open to make a highway for Israel, and wonderful that the sun should stand still for Joshua. Let us see whether Jesus was true to His name. His birth was wonderful, for no other ever occurred that was like it. It was wonderful in that He had but one human parent, and so inherited the nature of man and the nature of God. He came to be the Prince of princes, and the King of kings, and yet His birth was not looked forward to in glad expectation, as the birth of a prince usually is in the royal palace, and celebrated with marked expressions of joy all over the country, as has repeatedly happened within the recollection of many who are here. There was no room for Him at the inn, and He had to be born in a stable, and cradled in a manger, and yet angels proclaimed His birth with joy from the sky, to a few humble shepherds in sheepskin coats, who were watching their flocks by night. Mark how He might have come with all the pomp and glory of the upper world. It would have been a great condescension for Him to have been born in a 274 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY palace, rocked in a golden cradle and fed with golden spoons, and to have had the angels come down and be His nurses. But He gave up all the glory of that world, and was born of a poor woman, and His cradle was a manger. Think what He had come for. He had come to bless, and not to curse ; to lift up, and not to cast down. He had come to seek and to save that which was lost. To give sight to the blind; to open prison doors and set captives free ; to reveal the Father's love ; to give rest to the weary ; to be a blessing to the whole world, and yet there was no room for Him. He came to do that, and yet many of you have no room for Him in your hearts. His birth was also wonderful in this, that the wise men of the East were guided from far across the desert to His birthplace by a star. Nothing like this ever an- nounced the coming of any one else into this world. As soon as His birth was known the king of the country sought His life, and ordered the slaughter of the Inno- cents at Bethlehem. The babies were the first Christian martyrs. His character was wonderful, for no other has ever approached it in perfection. It is wonderful that the greatest character ever known should have come out of such obscurity, to become the most famous in all history. That such a time and such a country and such a people should have produced Jesus Christ can be accounted for on no other ground than His divinity. On his return from a trip to the Holy Land a minister was asked what had made the greatest impression upon him while there. " Nazareth," he answered, and for this reason : " The same kind of people are living there to-day as in the time of Jesus, and they are about the worst speci- mens of humanity I have seen anywhere. Lazy, lustful, WONDERFUL 275 ignorant and unspeakably wicked, and to think of His coming out from such a people is to me a sure proof of His divinity. Had I not been a believer in His divinity before going there, I should have to believe in it now." His life was wonderful. Wonderful for its unselfish- ness, its sinlessness and its usefulness. Even His enemies could not bring against Him any graver charge than that He claimed God for His Father, and that He would do good on the Sabbath day. Not the slightest evidence of selfishness or self-interest can be found in the story of His life. He was always helping others, but not once did He do anything to help Himself. He had the power to turn stones into bread, but went hungry forty days without doing it. While escaping from enemies who were determined to put Him to death He saw a man who had been blind from birth, and stopped to give him sight, doing so at the risk of His life. He never sought His own in any way, but lived for others every day of His life. His first miracle was performed, not before a mul- titude to spread His own fame_, but in a far-away hamlet, to save a peasant's wife from humiliation. He had com- passion on the hungry multitude and wept over Jerusa- lem, but He never had any mercy on Himself. His teaching was wonderful. It was wonderful for the way in which He taught ; for its simplicity and clear- ness, and adaptation to the individual. Nowhere do you find Him seeking the multitude, but He never avoided the individual. And His teaching was always adapted to the comprehension of those whom He taught. It is said that the common people heard Him gladly, and this shows that they understood what He said. He put the cookies on the lower shelf. No man had to take a dic- tionary with him when he went to hear the Sermon on the Mount. He illustrated His thought and made plain 276 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY His meaning by the most wonderful word-pictures. The preacher who would reach the people must have some- thing to say, and know how to say it so that those who hear will know just what he means. Jesus made His meaning clear by using plenty of illus- trations. He didn't care a rap what the scribes and Pharisees thought about it^ or said about it. He wanted the people to know what He meant, and that is why He was always so interesting. The preacher who can't make his preaching interesting has no business in the pulpit. If he can't talk over ten minutes without making people begin to snap their watches and go to yawning all over the house, he has misunderstood the Lord about his call to preach. Jesus was interesting because He could put the truth before people in an interesting way. We are told that without a parable He spake not to any man. He m.ade people see things, and see them clearly. It is wonderful that this humble Galilean peasant, who may never have gone to school a day in His life, should have made Himself a Teacher of teachers for all time. The pedagogy of to-day is modeling after the manner of Christ closer and closer every day. He was wonderful in His originality. The originality of Jesus is a proof of His divinity. The human mind cannot create anything in an absolute sense. It can build out of almost any kind of material, but it cannot create. There is no such thing as out-and-out originality belong- ing to man. You cannot imagine anything that does not resemble something you have previously seen or heard of. I grant that you can take a cow and a horse and a dog and a sheep and from them make animals enough to fill Noah's ark, but you must have the cow and the horse and the dog and the sheep for a beginning. Everything WONDERFUL 277 you make will simply be a modification of the various forms and properties of them. There is said to be nothing new under the sun, and there is a sense in which it is true. Everything is the outgrowth of something else. The first railway cars looked like the old stage-coaches, and the first automo- biles looked like carriages. It is that way about every- thing. No man ever made a book, or even a story, that was altogether unlike all others. The stories we hear to-day on the Irish and Dutch are older than the Irish and Dutch. You can find stories like them in the earliest literature, but you can't find any stories anywhere in any literature that even in the remotest way resemble the parables of Jesus. Such par- ables as the prodigal son and the Good Samaritan are absolutely new creations, and so proclaim Jesus as divine, because He could create. His teaching was wonderful, not only in the way He taught, but in what He taught. He taught that He was greater than Moses. Think of the audacity of it ! Mak- ing such claims as that to the Jews, who regarded Moses as being almost divine. Think of the audacity of some man of obscure and humble parentage standing before us Americans and trying to make us think he was greater than George Washington. Jesus also declared that He fulfilled the prophecies and the law of Moses, and the only effort He ever made to prove His claim was to point to the works that He did. The first thing an impostor always does is to over- prove his case. Jesus never turned His hand over to try to convince His enemies that He was the Christ. You have to explain a coal-oil lamp, but you don't need to waste any breath in giving information about the power of the sun. The springtime will do that by making 278 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY all nature burst into bud, flower and leaf, and the power of Christ is shown just as convincingly in the changed lives of men and women who believe in Him. Jesus taught that all would be lost who did not believe on Him. I have seen multitudes of saved people, but I have yet to see one who did not get his salvation by believing on Christ. Find the place in this world that comes the nearest to being like hell itself, and you will find it filled with those who are haters of Jesus Christ. You can't argue it. Go into saloons, gambling hells, and such places, and the people you find there are all haters of Jesus Christ, and the more of them you find the more the place in which you find them will be like hell itself. Jesus taught that He was equal to God. He said, ''He that hateth Me hateth My Father also'* (John 15:23). Did you ever know of anybody else making such claims? He said, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Offering to bear the burden of the whole world. Think of it ! He said, " I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly .'' And He said, " I am the resurrection and the life ; and he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." Surely He was wonderful in what He taught. It is not surprising that He so stirred them in the Capernaum synagogue, where He taught them not as the scribes, but as one having authority. Is it any wonder that they were right after Him for heresy ? Let any one to-day begin to teach in our churches something as entirely new as the teachings of Jesus were, and see what will happen. He was wonderful in what He prophesied of Himself. He foretold how He would die, and when He would die. WONDERFUL 279 It was wonderful that He should have been betrayed into the hands of those who sought His life, by one of His own trusted disciples, and wonderful that He should have been sold for so low a price. Wonderful, too, that He should have been condemned to death in the way in which He was, by both the re- ligious and civil authorities, and on the testimony of false witnesses, in the name of God, when all the laws of God were defied in the trial. It was wonderful that He was tormented and tortured so cruelly before being sent to the cross, and that He should have been put to death in the brutal manner in which He was. The time of His death was also wonderful; on the day of the Passover, thus Himself becoming the real Passover, to which the passover lamb had so long pointed. The great publicity of His death was also wonderful. It is doubtful if any other death was ever witnessed by so many people. Hundreds of thousands of people were in Jerusalem, who had come from everywhere to attend the Passover. The sky was darkened, and the sun hid his face from the awful scene. A great earthquake shook the city ; the dead came out of their graves, and went into the city, appearing unto many, and the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom. And re- member that up to that time no eye had been allowed to look behind that veil, except that of the high priest, and then only once a year, on the great Day of Atone- ment. His resurrection was wonderful. He had foretold it to His disciples, and had done so frequently, always saying, whenever He spoke of His death, that He would rise again on the third day, and yet every one of them appeared to forget all about it, and not one of them was expecting it. None of them thought of going to the 280 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY sepulcher on the morning of the third day, except the women, and they only to prepare His body more fully for the grave. Womanhood has always been on the firing line. This shows how fully they had abandoned all hope when they saw Him dead. Some left the city, for we are told of two who went to Emmaus. The manner of His resurrection was godlike. No human mind could ever have imagined such a scene. Had some man de- scribed it in the way in which he thought it should have occurred, he would have had earthquakes and thunders and a great commotion in the heavens. A sound like that of the last trump would have proclaimed to all the terrified inhabitants of Jerusalem that He was risen. But see how far different it was. An angel rolled away the stone from the mouth of the sepulcher as quietly as the opening of the buds in May, and the women, who were early there, found no disorder in the grave, but the linen clothes with which they had tenderly robed His body were neatly folded and tidily placed. And then how wonderful are the recorded appearances after the resurrection, again so different from what man would have had them. He appeared to every one of His friends, and to His best friends, but not a single one of His enemies got to see Him. I know that this story of the resurrection is true, because none but God would have had things happen in the order that they did, and in the way in which they occurred. Had the story been false the record would have made Jesus go to Pilate and the high priest, and to the others who had put Him to death, to prove that He was risen. The effect of His teaching upon the world has been wonderful. Remember that He left no great colleges to WONDERFUL 281 promulgate His doctrines, but committed them to a few humble fishermen, whose names are now the most illus- trious in all history. Looked at from the human side alone, how great was the probability that everything He had said would be forgotten within a few years. He never wrote a sermon. He published no books. Not a thing He said was engraved upon stone or scrolled upon brass, and yet His doctrines have endured for two thou- sand years. They have gone to the ends of the earth, and have wrought miracles wherever they have gone. They have lifted nations out of darkness and degradation and sin, and have made the wilderness to blossom as the rose. When Jesus began His ministry Rome ruled the world, and her invincible legions were everywhere, but now through the teachings of the humble Galilean peasant, whom her minions put to death, her power and her re- ligion are gone. The great temple of Diana of the Ephe- sians is in ruins, and no worshipper of her can be found. When Jesus fed the five thousand with a few loaves and fishes, and healed the poor woman who touched the hem of His garment, there wasn't a church, or a hospital, or an insane asylum, or other eleemosynary institution in the world, and now they are nearly as countless as the sands upon the seashore. When the bright cloud hid Him from the gaze of those who loved Him with a de- votion that took them to martyrdom, the only record of His sayings was graven upon their hearts, but now libraries are devoted to the consideration of them. No (words were ever so weighty or so weighed as those of Him who was so poor that He had not where to lay His head. The scholarship of the world has sat at His feet with bared head, and has been compelled to say again and again, " Never man spake as He spake." His 28£ THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY utterances have been translated into every known tongue, and have carried healing on their wings wherever they have gone. No other book has ever had a tithe of the circulation of that which contains His words, and not only that, but His thoughts and the story of His life are so interwoven in all literature that if a man should never read a line in the Bible, and yet be a reader at all he could not remain ignorant of the Christ. He is true to His name because He is a wonderful Savior now. You have only to lift your eyes and look about you to see that His wonderful salvation is going on everywhere to-day. This vast audience throws the lie back into your teeth when you say the religion of Jesus Christ is dying out. There has never been a time when the love of Christ gripped the hearts of humanity as it does to-day. When John the Baptist, in prison, sent two of his dis- ciples to Jesus, saying : " Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another?" Jesus sent this answer to John : " The blind receive their sight ; the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached unto them " ; and that test of His power is as apparent in nearly every part of the world to-day as it was in Galilee. If you have eyes to see the works of God, you will always find them going on. The heavens declare the glory of God, but there are people so blind they can't see anything but a spell of weather in the rainbow. Jerry McAuley in prison, a man who had lived by crime, and who had never heard the name of God outside of profanity; as blind and dead to anything good as a stone, one Sunday in the prison chapel heard a verse of Scripture quoted that took hold of his attention. He thought he would like to see it and read it for himself. WONDERFUL 283 So he took the Bible in his cell and began to search for it. He didn't know but one sure way to find it, and that was to begin at the first verse in the Bible and read straight on until he came to it. The verse he wanted was in Hebrews, away over in the back part of the New Testament. Jerry read on, chapter after chapter, and day after day, looking for that verse, but long before he found it he found Jesus Christ — just as some of you would do if you would only be honest with God, and give Him a chance at you by reading His word. From that time on everybody who came near Jerry McAuley knew that the eyes of the man born blind had been opened in him. He started the Water Street Mission in New York, where I don't believe a service was ever held in which somebody was not converted. Any number of men who were headed straight for the devil are preaching the gospel to-day because they were stopped by the light of God and the voice of His Christ as suddenly at St. Paul was. Yes, He is a wonderful Savior because He is able to save to the uttermost now. A man would be a great surgeon who could save ninety per cent, of those upon whom he operated, but mark this : Jesus Christ never lost a case. He never found a case that was too hard for Him. His disciples were continu- ally finding cases they thought were hopeless, and this shows how little they knew Him while He was with them. Jesus never sent anybody away who came honestly and earnestly seeking His help. They brought to Him all kinds of desperate cases, but at a word or a touch from Him their troubles were all gone. The hardest cases were no more difficult for Him than the easiest, and the same is true to-day, for there is no change in Him. He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. He 284 THE REAL BILLY SUNDAY can save the scarlet sinner — the man who commits murder — as easily as He can the woman who cheats at cards. He is a wonderful Savior, too, because He can save so quickly. Quicker than thought He can give you life. It is only, look and live. As quick as you can come He receives you, and as quickly as you could receive a present you had been wanting for years, you can have salvation. " Him that comcth to Me I will in nowise cast out.'' " To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God." No need of taking very much time about that. In a meeting Thomas Harrison was holding, a railroad engineer came forward with his watch in his hand and said, " Mr. Harrison, can I be saved in ten minutes ? I must leave here to take my train out then." " Yes," replied Harrison, " you can be saved in ten seconds." The man dropped on his knees, was quickly saved and had seven minutes to spare. A conductor on a fast Pennsylvania train, in Ohio, was converted while crossing a bridge fifty feet long, when going at the rate of a mile a minute. Yes, indeed, He is a wonderful Savior because He can save so quickly. Moody used to tell of a banker in San Francisco, who was awakened in the night by a burglar at his bedside. The robber held a revolver almost against his face, and said, "If you move I'll kill you ! " The banker said, " God have mercy on my soul ! " and knocked the burglar down before he could pull the trigger, and was soundly converted before the man struck the floor, as his life afterward proved. And now I come to the last evidence I will give you that He is true to His name, and that is — He is a wonderful Savior because He saved me. There is nothing that can be so convincing to a man as his own WONDERFUL ^85 experience. I do not know that I am the son of my mother any more certainly than I know that I am a child of God, and I do not know that I have been born in a natural way any more convincingly than I know that I have been born of the Spirit. And now let me ask you this: Has this wonderful Savior saved you? Do you know Him as your Savior? Have you ever given Him your case? When the proof is so overwhelming that He does save, and has been saving for centuries, and that none have ever been saved or ever can be saved except through Him, is it not won- derful that any one can be indifferent to the claims of Jesus Christ? PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA This book, the only authorized story of Mr. Sunday's life ever written, may be obtained by writing the Elmhurst Book Company, Elm- hurst, 111. $1.00 net, $1,13 postpaid OTHER PUBLICATIONS Sermons by Mr, Sunday issued in Booklet Form Get on the Water Wagon Mothers The Second Coming of Christ Three Groups Moral Lepers What Shall the End Be ? Each locts., postpaid I2cts. Address all inquiries and orders to ELMHURST BOOK COMPANY ELMHURST, ILL. MAIL-ORDER DISTRIBUTORS DATE DUE »s^ VfHEtiinMK--!* im^ DEMCO 38-297