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Burning Truths from 
 Billy's Bat 
 
 A Graphic Description of the 
 Remarkable Conversion of 
 
 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 (The World's Famous Evangelist) 
 
 Embodying Anecdotes, Terse 
 
 Sayings, etc., Compiled from 
 
 Various Sources 
 
 1914 
 
 Diamond Publishing Co., 
 Philadelphia, Pa. 
 

 
 Copyright, 1914, 
 By JOSEPH PALLEN 
 
 MAY 21 1914 
 
 if* 
 
 ©CI.A374160 
 Kb f 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Mr. Sunday's Early Life 9 
 
 Conversion of "Billy" Sunday 9 
 
 Beacon Lights on Billy's Trail 16 
 
 Hard to Keep Good Man Down 17i 
 
 Honor Your Wife 18 
 
 Two Pictures of American Homes 18 
 
 Kind Words to Children 19 
 
 Tribute to Wife 20 
 
 Scores Smart Set 20 
 
 Father Gives Up, but Mother Doesn't 22 
 
 Bright Word Picture to Mothers 22 
 
 Bravest Battle Ever Fought 22 
 
 One Act, One Word Will Blight a Child 23 
 
 Touching Tribute to Mother's Love 24 
 
 Every Child a Trust to Mother 25 
 
 Says Men Are What Mothers Make Them 2^ 
 
 Songs of Mothers Sweetest 26 
 
 Gathering Up the Sunbeams 28 
 
 Start Children Right 28 
 
 Dancing Worst of Amusements 29 
 
 Ballroom Permits Liberties 30 
 
 On Motherhood 31 
 
 Too Many Girls Are Not in Love 32 
 
 High Spots in Sermon to Women 32 
 
 Picking a Husband 33 
 
 Thy Kingdom Come 34 
 
 Hot Shots on Cards and Gambling 36 
 
 Taboo on Theatre 39 
 
 Taboo on Wedding Knots 4(1 
 
 Every Palace Not a Home 41 
 
 Drawing the Line on Christians 42 
 
 The Preachers and the Laymen 44 
 
 Belshazzar's Feast 45 
 
 A Remarkable Praver 47 
 
 Hitting the Sawdust Trail, Origin 49 
 
 Trying to Serve God and the Devil 5© 
 
PAGE 
 
 Inconsistent Church Members 50 
 
 Christians Can't Live Double Lives 51 
 
 A High Tribute to General Lee 52 
 
 Expose of Graft Stories 53 
 
 Women Have Same Right as Men 54 
 
 Backsliders Like Groundhogs 57 
 
 True to Lodge, False to Christ 57 
 
 Sunday to Society Women 58 
 
 Consolation for Old Maids 66 
 
 Girls Who Flirt 66 
 
 Drinking and Matrimony 67 
 
 Says Society's to Blame 68 
 
 Some Extra Shots 68 
 
 Billy's Sketch of Leper Bathing 69 
 
 Snapshots from Sermons 71 
 
 A Trip Through the Bible 72 
 
 Defends Divine Origin of the Bible 74 
 
 Spiritualism on the Grill 75 
 
 Straight Shots from the Shoulder 75 
 
 Others Suffer from Your Sins 79 
 
 Lessons from Story of Pilate 80 
 
 Moral Truths 80 
 
 These Three Will Ruin City 81 
 
 Billy's Key to Success 82 
 
 A Few Bunts to Live Students 84 
 
 Tribute to the Holidays 85 
 
 Living Up to One's Profession 89 
 
 Stray Shots from the Gallery 89 
 
 Some Hot Ones, Fired at Random 90 
 
 A Characteristic Prayer 90 
 
 Sunday's Bombshells 92 
 
 Sundayisms 96 
 
 Sunday's Prayer for Strength 98 
 
 Faith of Great Men 99 
 
 Bible Above All 99 
 
 Some Home Runs 100 
 
 Up to Mothers 100 
 
 Electric Flashes 101 
 
 Sunday on Evolution 103 
 
Rev. William A. Sunday 
 
 (The World's Famous Evangelist) 
 
 His Early Life, a Dramatic Portrayal of His 
 
 Conversion, and the Disintegration of the 
 
 Old White Stocking Baseball Team, 
 
 of Which He was a Member 
 
 Rev. "Billy" Sunday (as he is familiarly known) was 
 born in a log cabin in the backwoods of Story County, 
 Iowa, November 19, 1862. Not long after his birth his 
 father went, to the Civil War and never returned. Billy 
 remained home until he was about fourteen years of age, 
 and as a hired hand later lived with Colonel John Scott, 
 former Lieutenant Governor of Iowa, and was enabled 
 to acquire a high-school education. He tried various lines 
 of work, from a hired hand at sixteen years old to a fur- 
 niture polisher, driver of a hearse, member of a volunteer 
 hose company, railroad fireman, ball player, student and 
 now evangelist. 
 
 mr. Sunday's remarkable conversion. 
 "Twenty-seven years ago I walked down a street in 
 Chicago in company with some ball players who were 
 famous in this world — some of them are dead now — and 
 
10 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 we went into a saloon. It was Sunday afternoon and we 
 got tanked up and then went and sat down on a corner. 
 I never go by that street without thanking God for saving 
 me. It was a vacant lot at that time. We sat down on a 
 curbing. Across the street a company of men and women 
 were playing on instruments — horns, flutes and slide trom- 
 bones — and the others were singing the gospel hymns 
 that I used to hear my mother sing back in the log cabin 
 in Iowa and back in the old church where I used to go 
 to Sunday school. 
 
 "And God painted on the canvas of my recollection 
 and memory a vivid picture of the scenes of other days 
 and other faces. 
 
 "won't you come?" 
 "Many have long since turned to dust. I sobbed and 
 sobbed and a young man stepped out and said: 'We are 
 going down to the Pacific Garden mission. Won't you 
 come down to the mission? I am sure you will enjoy it. 
 You can hear drunkards tell how they have been saved 
 and girls tell how they have been saved from the red light 
 district. I arose and said to the boys: "I'm through. 
 We've come to the parting of the ways," and I turned my 
 back on them. Some of them laughed and some of them 
 mocked me; one of them gave me encouragement; others 
 never said a word. Twenty-seven years ago I turned and 
 left that little group on the corner of State and Madison 
 streets, walked to the little mission, fell on my knees and 
 staggered out of sin and into the arms of the Saviour. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 11 
 
 I went over to the west side of Chicago where I was 
 keeping company with a girl now my wife, Nell. I mar- 
 ried Nell. She was a Presbyterian, so I am a Presby- 
 terian. Had she been a Catholic, I would have been a 
 Catholic — because I was hot on the trail of Nell. 
 
 The next day I had to go out to the ball park and prac- 
 tice. Every morning at 10 o'clock we had to be out there 
 and practice. I never slept that night. I was afraid of the 
 horse-laugh that the gang would give me because I had 
 taken my stand for Jesus Christ. 
 
 I walked down to the old ball grounds. I will never 
 forget it. I slipped my key into the wicket gate and the 
 first man to meet me after I got inside was Mike Kelley. 
 
 Up came Mike Kelley. He said : "Bill I'm proud of you — 
 religion is not my long suit, but I'll help you all I can. 
 Up came Anson, Pfeffer, Clarkson, Flint, McCormick, 
 Burns, Williamson and Dalrymple. There wasn't a fel- 
 low in that gang who knocked, every fellow had a word 
 of encouragement for me. 
 
 That afternoon we played the old Detroit club. We 
 were neck and neck for the championship. That club 
 had Thompson, Richardson, Rowe, Dunlap, Hanlon and 
 Bennett, and they could play ball. I was playing right 
 field and John G. Clarkson was pitching. He was as fine 
 pitcher as ever crawled into a uniform. There are some 
 pitchers today, O'Toole, Bender, Wood, Mathewson, John- 
 son, Marquard, but I do not believe any one of them 
 stood in the class with Clarkson. 
 
12 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 We had two men out and they had a man on second 
 and one on third, and Bennett, their old catcher was at 
 the bat. Charley had three balls and two strikes on him. 
 Charley couldn't hit a high ball. I don't mean a Scotch 
 high-ball, but he could kill them when they went about 
 his knee. 
 
 I hollered to Clarkson and said : "One more and we got 
 'em." 
 
 You know every pitcher digs a hole in the ground where 
 he puts his foot when he is pitching. John stuck his foot 
 in the hole and he went clear to the ground. Oh, he could 
 make them dance. He could throw over-handed, and the 
 ball would go down and up like that. He is the only man 
 on earth I have seen do that. The ball would go by so 
 fast that a thermometer would drop two degrees. John 
 went clear down, and as he went to throw the ball his 
 right foot slipped, and the ball went low instead of high. 
 
 I saw Charley swing hard and heard the bat hit the 
 ball with a terrific blow. Bennett had smashed the ball 
 on the nose. I saw the ball rise in the air and knew it 
 was going clear over my head. 
 
 I could judge within ten feet of where the ball would 
 light. I turned my back to the ball and ran. 
 
 The field was crowded with people and I yelled : 'Stand 
 back!' and the crowd opened like the Red Sea opened for 
 the rod of Moses. I ran on, and as I ran I made a prayer; it 
 wasn't theological, either, I tell you. I said : "God, if 
 you ever helped mortal man, help me to get that ball, and 
 you haven't got much time to make up your mind, either." 
 
The Famous Evangelist 13 
 
 I ran and jumped over the bench and stopped. I 
 thought I was close enough to catch it. I looked back 
 and saw it going over my head, and I jumped and shoved 
 my left hand out and the ball hit it and stuck. At the rate 
 I was going, the momentum carried me on and I fell un- 
 der the feet of a team of horses. I jumped up with the 
 ball in my hand. Up came Tom Johnson. He was after- 
 wards Mayor of Cleveland. "Here is $10.00 Bill; buy your- 
 self the best hat in Chicago. That catch won me $1,500. 
 Tomorrow go and buy yourself the best suit of clothes 
 you can find in Chicago." 
 
 An old Methodist minister said to me a few years ago : 
 "Why, William, you didn't take the $10.00 did you." I 
 said: "You bet I did." 
 
 Listen! Mike Kelley was sold to Boston for $10,000. 
 Mike got half of the purchase price. He came up to me 
 and showed me a check for $5,000. John L. Sullivan 
 the champion fighter, went around with a subscription 
 paper and the boys raised over $12,000 to buy Mike a 
 house. 
 
 They gave Mike a deed to the house and they had 
 $1,500 left and gave him a certificate of deposit for that. 
 His salary for playing with Boston was $4,700 a year. 
 At the end of that season Mike had spent the $5,000 
 purchase price and the $5,000 he received as salary and 
 the $1,500 they gave him and had a mortgage on the 
 house. And when he died in Pennsylvania they went 
 around with a subscription to get money enough to put 
 
14 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 him in the ground. Mike sat there on the corner with me 
 twenty-seven years ago, when I said: "Goodbye, boys, 
 I'm through." 
 
 A. G. Spalding signed up a team to go around the world. 
 I was the first man he asked to sign a contract and Cap- 
 tain Anson was the second. 
 
 I was sliding to second base one day. I always slid 
 head first, and I hit a stone and cut a ligament loose in 
 my knee. 
 
 I got a doctor and had my leg fixed up and he said to 
 me : "William, if you don't go on that trip I will give you 
 a good leg." I obeyed and I have as good a leg today as 
 I ever had. They offered to wait for me at Honolulu and 
 Australia. 
 
 Spalding said: "Meet us in England, and play with us 
 through England, Scotland and Wales." I didn't go. 
 
 Ed Williamson, our old short-stop, was a fellow weigh- 
 ing 225 pounds, and a more active man you never saw. 
 He went with them, and while they were on the ship 
 crossing the English channel a storm arose. The captain 
 thought the ship would go down. Then he dropped on 
 his knees and promised God to be true, and God spoke 
 and the waves were still. They came back to the United 
 States and Ed. came back to Chicago and started a saloon 
 on Dearborn Street. 
 
 I would go there and give tickets for the Y. M. C. A. 
 meetings and would talk with him, and would cry like a 
 baby, I would get down and pray for him. When he died 
 
The Famous Evangelist 15 
 
 they put him on the table and cut him open and took out 
 his liver. It was so big it would not go in a candy bucket. 
 
 Ed Williamson sat there on the street corner with me 
 twenty-seven years ago when I said, "Goodbye, boys, I'm 
 through." 
 
 Frank Flint, our old catcher, who caught for nineteen 
 years, drew $3,200 a year on an average. He caught 
 before they had chest protectors and masks and gloves. 
 He caught bare-handed. Every bone in the ball of his 
 hand was broken. You never saw a hand like Frank 
 had. Every bone in his face was broken and his nose and 
 cheekbones, and the shoulder and ribs had all been 
 broken. 
 
 I've seen old Frank Flint sleeping on a table in a stale 
 beer joint and I've turned my pockets inside out and said : 
 "You're welcome to it, old pal." 
 
 He drank on and on, and one day in winter he staggered 
 out of a stale beer joint and stood on a corner and was 
 seized with a fit of coughing. 
 
 The blood streamed out of his nose, his mouth and his 
 eyes. Down the street came a woman. She took one 
 look and said: "My God, is it you, Frank? And the old 
 love came back. 
 
 The wife called two policemen and a cab and started 
 with him to her boarding house. They broke all speed 
 regulations. She called five of the best physicians, and 
 they listened to the beating of his heart — eight, nine, ten, 
 eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen — and the doctor said: 
 
16 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 "He will be dead in about four hours." She said : "Frank 
 the end is near," and he said: "Send for Bill." 
 
 They telephoned me and I came. When I reached his 
 bedside he said to me: "There's nothing in the life of 
 years ago I care for now. I can hear the grandstand 
 hiss when I strike out. I can hear the bleachers cheer 
 when I make a hit that wins the game, but there is no- 
 thing that can help me now, and if the umpire calls me 
 out now, won't you say a few words over me, Bill?" 
 
 He struggled as he had years ago on the diamond when 
 he tried to reach home — but the great Umpire of the uni- 
 verse yelled: "You're out." And the great gladiator of 
 the diamond was no more. 
 
 Frank Flint sat on the street corner drunk with me 
 twenty-seven years ago in Chicago when I said: "I'll 
 bid you goodbye, boys, I'm going to Jesus." Say men, did 
 Twin the game of life, or did they? 
 
 BEACON LIGHTS ON BILLY'S TRAIL. 
 
 I owe God everything. I owe the devil nothing except 
 the best fight I can put up against him. 
 
 The church needs more of God and less dress and strife 
 over money. 
 
 Judas bought a ticket to hell for thirty pieces of silver, 
 and it wasn't a round-trip ticket, either. 
 
 Every saloon gives the devil a better chance to land 
 your boy in hell. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 17 
 
 You breed more infidels with your "divine philosophy" 
 than all the Ingersols in the world. 
 
 The church doesn't need new members as much as she 
 needs to have the old bunch made over. 
 
 A lot of people, from the way they live, make you think 
 they've got a ticket to heaven on a Pullman parlor car, 
 and have ordered the porter to wake 'em when they get 
 there. But they'll get side-tracked almost before they're 
 started. 
 
 HARD TO KEEP A GOOD MAN DOWN. 
 
 "Somebody says: 'But you don't know my circum- 
 stances, Mr. Sunday. I'm handicapped by my parents. 
 I'm handicapped by poverty.' Listen! Go down tonight 
 and get down your books and read of the men of history 
 who have crept and crawled from the sewers of poverty 
 and the quagmires of squalor. Obscurity never kept Ben- 
 jamin Franklin walking the streets of Philadelphia gnaw- 
 ing at his loaf. Obscurity didn't keep Edison working as 
 a telegraph operator at $60.00 a month. Obscurity didn't 
 keep David herding sheep. If gold and diamonds weren't 
 so hard to get they wouldn't be worth so much. Obscurity 
 didn't keep Grant in a tannery. Obscurity didn't keep 
 Garfield on the towpath of a canal. If you've got it in 
 you, squalor and want can't keep you down." 
 
 "If you are going to win out you must have grit. That 
 means you must be able to say "no" when asked to do 
 
18 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 wrong, so loud it will stagger hell. Or "yes" so loud it 
 will gladden the angles of God. Put up your dukes and 
 fight the devil." 
 
 HONOR YOUR WIFE BEFORE SHE DIES. 
 
 "Don't wait until your wife dies before you brag on her. 
 Tell her that coffee was fine. Tell her how you like those 
 biscuits — not those big four-story ones, but the little flat 
 fellows with crust on both sides — that's the kind I like. 
 Think of the days you bought her gumdrops and candy 
 hearts with reading on them. I wish I had all the money 
 I've spent on candy hearts with reading on them. You've 
 bought 'em, too, you fellows, haven't you Ha, ha ! Thought 
 so! (Here Mr. Sunday recited the poem, "Kiss Her.") 
 Some fellows pet dogs more than they pet their wives. 
 
 "Play with the children. You say, 'Bill, I haven't any.' 
 I say, 'Then get some.' 
 
 TWO PICTURES OF AMERICAN HOMES. 
 
 I think one of the prettiest pictures ever looked upon 
 is to see a father with the religion of Jesus Christ in his 
 heart, and a mother with the religion of Jesus Christ in 
 her heart, and to see them throw their arms about their 
 eldest child, and the oldest child throw his arms about 
 their next oldest child, and that child take the next old- 
 est child by the hand, and on until the youngest and all 
 with happiness in their hearts and songs on their lips, 
 start for heaven. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 19 
 
 And I think the blackest, darkest picture ever looked 
 upon is to see a father without the religion of Jesus Christ 
 in his heart, and a be-frizzled society woman without the 
 religion of Jesus Christ in her heart, and the next oldest 
 child, and on down until the baby in the cradle, and to 
 see that father and mother lock arms and all start to hell, 
 like many of them are doing today. 
 
 KIND WORDS TO HELP CHILDREN. 
 
 There are fewer things more important in the home 
 than conversation. Think of the good you can do in your 
 home with your voice. You use it to give pain, but the con- 
 versation in your home ought to be loving. In many 
 homes they have no conversation. There is no affectionate 
 greeting in the morning when the children start for 
 school, no little kiss to linger on their lips, and when they 
 come home at noon, hungry, there is no kind greeting. 
 The old man never says a word unless he growls for you 
 to pass something, and so far as anyone would know, you 
 would be in a deaf and dumb asylum. No fireside chats 
 with the children. 
 
 You are down at some fool club, some lodge; you are 
 off to some literary social, beer and wine-drinking hell, 
 and you let your children go to the devil. You turn them 
 over to some nurse, whose only interest in the child is so 
 many dollars per week. 
 
20 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 EVANGELIST PAYS TRIBUTE TO WIFE. 
 
 Sunday humorously complimented his wife at the tab- 
 ernacle meeting Thursday night. He quoted "Battling" 
 Nelson's statement that Mrs. Sunday was worth $10,000,- 
 000.00, but said Bat had the estimate too low. 
 
 Sunday began by speaking of the traits of various na- 
 tions. "Scotch blood" he said, "stands for persistency, 
 stick-to-it-iveness, faithfulness and bulldog tenacity. I 
 guess I ought to know, for Ma's full-blooded Scotch, and 
 I don't know what I'd do without her." 
 
 SEVERELY SCORES "SMART SET" BUNCH. 
 
 And of the women in our "smart set" nowadays. Too 
 much can not be said in condemnation of them. Too 
 much time is spent by them outside of their homes. They 
 have thrown to the wind all womanly modesty and pru- 
 dence. They are flattered and cajoled, and they look up- 
 on themselves as sort of an especial form upon which to 
 hang the latest creation of a Worth or a Redfern. They 
 have digestive apparatus with which to digest highly sea- 
 soned foods which some rich husband can buy and cram 
 into their gullets. And they lend their presence to vaud- 
 eville, and have vaudeville performances in their homes, 
 and their children are allowed to witness performances 
 which border on the obscene. And they indulge in gamb- 
 ling to such an extent, poker, roulette wheels, champagne, 
 
The Famous Evangelist 21 
 
 and all the whole long list, my friends, and they are more 
 familiar with poker chips and gambling devices and friv- 
 olity than they are with their Bible, the English language 
 or classic literature. 
 
 "No man lives to himself alone. When you go to hell 
 you're going to drag someone else down with you, and if 
 you go to heaven you're going to take someone else with 
 you. You say you hate sin. Of course you do if you have 
 respect. You never saw anyone in this town who hates 
 sin worse than I, or loves a sinner more than I. I'm fight- 
 ing for the sinners. I'm fighting to save your soul, just 
 as a doctor fights to save your life from a disease." 
 
 "If there is a father that hits the booze, he doesn't want 
 his son to. If he is keeping someone on the side, he 
 doesn't want his son to. In other words, you would not 
 want your son to live like you if you are not living right." 
 
 "Look on the bright side. Every time you smile you 
 put a crimp in the undertaker's business, keep the hearse 
 standing in the shed, keep the embalming fluid out of 
 your veins, and keep the quartet from singing 'Lead, 
 Kindly Light.' " 
 
22 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 SUNDAY'S BRIGHT WORD PICTURES IN HIS 
 SERMON TO MOTHERS. 
 
 Father Gives up but Mother Doesn't. 
 
 "Fathers often give up. The old man often goes to 
 boozing, becomes dissipated, takes a dose of poison and 
 commits suicide, but the mother will stand by the home 
 and keep the little band together if she has to manicure 
 her fingernails over a washboard to do it. If men had 
 half as much grit as the women, there would be different 
 stories written about a good many homes. Look at her 
 work! It is the greatest in the world; in its far-reaching 
 importance it is transcendently above everything in the 
 universe — her task in molding hearts and lives and shap- 
 ing character. If you want to find greatness, don't go 
 toward the throne; go to the cradle, and the nearer you 
 get to the cradle, the nearer to greatness. The launching 
 of a boy or girl to live for Christ is greater work than to 
 launch a battleship." 
 
 BRAVEST BATTLE FOUGHT IN WORLD. 
 
 "The bravest battle that ever was fought, 
 
 Shall I tell you where and when? 
 On the maps of the world you'll find it not— 
 
 'Twas fought by the mothers of men. 
 
 "Nay, not with cannon or battle shot. 
 
 With sword or nobler pen. 
 Nay, not with eloquent word or thought, 
 
 From mouths of wonderful men. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 23 
 
 "But deep in a walled up woman's heart — 
 
 Of woman that would not yield, 
 But bravely, silently bore her part — 
 
 Lo, there is the battlefield. 
 
 "No marshaling troops, no bivouac song, 
 
 No banner to gleam and wave; 
 But oh! these battles, they last so long — 
 
 From babyhood to the grave." 
 
 "There is a mighty power in a mother's kiss — inspira- 
 tion, courage, hope, ambition. One kiss made Benjamin 
 West a painter, and the memory of it clung to him through 
 life. One kiss will drive away the fear in the dark and 
 make the little one brave. It will give strength where 
 there is weakness." 
 
 ONE ACT, ONE WOBD WILL BLIGHT CHILD. 
 
 "There is power enough in a word or act to blight a 
 boy, and through him, curse a community. There is 
 power enough in a word or act to tincture the life of that 
 child so it will become a power to lift the world to Jesus 
 Christ. The mothers will put in motion influences that 
 will either touch heaven or hell. Talk about greatness! 
 Oh, you wait until you reach the mountains of eternity, 
 then read the mothers' names in God's hall of fame, and 
 see who they have been in this world. I want to tell you 
 women, fooling away your time hugging and kissing a 
 poodle dog, caressing a Spitz, drinking a society bran 
 
24 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 mash and a cocktail, and playing cards, is mighty small 
 business to moulding the life of a child." 
 
 "When God gave the office of mother to women it was 
 just like giving you his own right hand. Think of what 
 importance is attached to it! Think of the mother's 
 power! There is more power in a mother's hand than in 
 a king's scepter." 
 
 TOUCHING TRIBUTE TO MOTHER'S LOVE. 
 
 "I once read the story of an angel who stole out of 
 heaven and came to this world one bright sunshiny day; 
 roamed through the field, forest, city and hamlet, and as 
 the sun went down, plumed his wings for the return flight. 
 The angel said : 'Now that my visit is over, before I return 
 I must gather some mementoes of my trip.' He looked at 
 the beautiful flowers in the garden and said, 'How lovely 
 and fragrant,' and plucked the rarest roses, made a bou- 
 quet, and said, 'I see nothing more beautiful and fragrant 
 than these flowers.' The angel looked further and saw 
 a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked child, and said, "that baby 
 is prettier than the flowers; I will take that, too; and, 
 looking beyond to the cradle, he saw a mother's love pour- 
 ing out over her babe like a gushing spring, and the angel 
 said, 'The mother's love is the prettiest thing I have seen; 
 I will take that too.' And with these three treasures the 
 heavenly messenger winged his flight to the pearly gates, 
 saying: 'Before I go in I must examine the mementoes of 
 
The Famous Evangelist 25 
 
 my trip to the earth.' He looked at the flowers; they had 
 withered. He looked at the baby's smile; it had faded. 
 He looked at the mother's love; it shone in all its pristine 
 beauty. Then he threw away the withered flowers, cast 
 aside the faded smile, and with the mother's love pressed 
 to his breast, swept through the gates into the city, shout- 
 ing that the only thing he had found that would retain its 
 fragrance from earth to heaven is a mother's love." 
 
 EVERY CHILD IS A TRUST TO MOTHER. 
 
 "Every child is put in a mother's arms as a trust from 
 God, and she has to answer to God for the way she deals 
 with that child. No mother on God's earth has any right 
 to raise her children for pleasure. She has no right to 
 send them to dancing school and haunts of sin. You have 
 no right to do those things that will curse your children. 
 That babe is put in your arms to train for the Lord. No 
 mother has any more right to raise her children for pleas- 
 ure than I have to pick your pockets or throw red pepper 
 in your eyes. She has no more right to do that than a 
 bank cashier has to rifle the vaults and take the savings 
 of the people. One of the worst sins you can commit is to 
 be unfaithful to your trust." 
 
 "The biggest place in the world is that which is being 
 filled by the people who are in close touch with youth. 
 Reing a king, an emperor or a president is mighty small 
 business compared to being a mother, or the teacher of 
 
26 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 children, whether in a public school or in a Sunday school, 
 and they fill places so great that there isn't an angel in 
 heaven that wouldn't be glad to give a bushel of diamonds 
 to boot to come down here and take their place. Com- 
 manding an army is little more than sweeping a street 
 or pounding an anvil compared with the training of a 
 boy or girl." 
 
 SAYS MEN ARE WHAT MOTHERS MAKE THEM. 
 
 "Emerson said: 'Men are what their mothers make 
 them.' They are what their mothers make them, and if 
 the mothers of today were true to their trust, then they 
 could send their boys to college and need not be afraid 
 of them coming back infidels, like many of them do. There 
 is no power on earth that can lift to heaven or shove to 
 hell like the touch of a mother's hand. Everywhere men 
 have been brought back from the valley of the shadow 
 of death simply by the touch of mother's hand." 
 
 SONGS OF MOTHER SWEETEST TO HEAR. 
 
 "There is power in a mother's song, too. It's the best 
 music the world ever heard. There is no brass band or 
 pipe organ that can hold a candle to mother's song, the 
 kind she sings gets tangled up in your heart strings. There 
 would be a disappointment in the music of heaven to me 
 if there were no mothers there to sing. The song of an 
 angel or a seraph would not have much charm for me. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 27 
 
 What would you care for an angel's song if there is no 
 mother's song? The song of a mother is sweeter than that 
 ever sung by minstrel or written by poet. Talk about 
 sonnets ! You ought to hear the mother sing when her babe 
 is on her breast, when her heart is filled with emotion, 
 Her voice may not please an artist, but it will please any 
 one who has a heart in him. The songs that have moved 
 the world are not the songs written by the great masters. 
 I think when we reach heaven it will be found that some 
 of the best songs we will sing there will be those we 
 learned at mother's knee." 
 
 "There is power in a mother's love. A mother's love 
 must be like God's love. How God could ever tell the 
 world that He loved it without a mother's help has often 
 puzzled me. If the devils in hell ever turned pale, it was 
 the day when mother's love flamed up for the first time in 
 a woman's heart. If the devil ever got 'cold feet,' it was 
 that day, in my judgment." 
 
 "To teach a child to love the truth and hate a lie, to love 
 purity and hate vice, is greater than inventing a flying 
 machine that will take you to the moon, or to the North 
 pole. Unconsciously, you set in motion influences that 
 will damn or bless the old universe and bring new worlds 
 out of chaos and transform them for God," 
 
28 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 GATHERING UP THE SUNBEAMS. 
 
 "If we knew the baby fingers pressed against the window 
 pane, 
 
 Would be cold and still tomorrow, never trouble us again. 
 
 Would the bright eyes of our darling catch the frown up- 
 on our brow? 
 
 Would the prints of little fingers vex us then as they do 
 now? 
 
 Let us gather up the sunbeams lying all around our path, 
 
 Let us keep the wheat and roses, casting out the thorns 
 and chaff! 
 
 We shall find our sweetest comforts in the blessings of to- 
 day, and 
 
 With patient hand removing all the briers from our way." 
 
 START CHILDREN RIGHT, ONLY SOLUTION. 
 
 "When God wants to throw a world out into space he 
 is much concerned about it. The first mile that world 
 takes settles its course for eternity. When God throws a 
 child out into the world he is mighty anxious that it gets 
 a right start. The Catholics are right when they say: 'Give 
 us the children until they are ten years old, and we don't 
 care who has them after that.' The Catholics are not 
 losing any sleep about losing men and women from their 
 church membership. It is the only church that has ever 
 shown us the only sensible way to reach the masses — that 
 is, by getting hold of the children. That's the only way 
 on God's earth you will ever solve the problem of reach- 
 
The Famous Evangelist 29 
 
 ing the masses. You get the boys and girls started right 
 and the devil will hang crepe on his door, bank his fires, 
 and hell will be "for rent." 
 
 "There is power in a mother's smile. See the boy, how 
 he will outdo himself if he knows his mother is watching 
 him, and it makes the hard places easy and the dark 
 places light. A long face and a gloomy look are about 
 the last things you ought to give to your children if you 
 want to inspire and cheer them." 
 
 DANCING WORST OF AMUSEMENTS. 
 
 The dance is the hotbed of iniquity, and I denounce it 
 as the rottenest, most hellish, vice-producing institution 
 that ever wriggled from the depths of perdition. 
 
 The dance is simply a hugging match set to music. 
 
 Dancing is not an innocent amusement. It has caused 
 the downfall of more girls than anything else. 
 
 Three-fourths of the fallen women in big cities, fell be- 
 cause of the dance. 
 
 You'd just as soon husk corn by moonlight as to dance 
 with your own wife. It's the other fellow's wife, some 
 other fellow's sister that you want to dance with. 
 
 A man will wallow and get so low he'll have to climb 
 a hill to get into hell, then make a bluff at reforming and 
 society takes him in. Then at the dance he'll breathe 
 promises into the ears of some innocent young girl, gain 
 her confidence and then ruin her. 
 
30 Rev, "Billy" Sunday 
 
 You say you need exercise and that's why you dance. 
 All right, then, let women dance with women, and men 
 with men. 
 
 The dance brings vice and virtue into such close con- 
 tact that virtue loses. 
 
 Any church that encourages dancing is too low down to 
 deserve the name of church. 
 
 If there are variations of hell, the dancer will crack 
 brimstone in the hottest spot. 
 
 If there was nothing but card players and dancers in 
 the church, how it would stink and rot! 
 
 DECLARES BALLROOM PERMITS LIBERTIES. 
 
 You grant men liberties on the ball room floor that if 
 any man attempted in your home and your husband 
 found you at it, he would have no trouble in securing a 
 divorce, and if he shot the man, no jury in the world 
 would convict him for it. 
 
 If I found any man hugging Mrs. Sunday as a man does 
 in a dance, I'd clear for action like a battleship, and give 
 him HIS. 
 
 Where do you find your most accomplished dancers? 
 In the brothels. 
 
 When a girl gets so low that she'll smoke and drink, she 
 is on the toboggan slide and going to hell fast. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 31 
 
 And you fellows like to "sit out" a dance. I always did 
 think it was a foolish proposition to gallop a mile to get 
 a hug. 
 
 The round and square dances look alike to me. It 
 doesn't take very long to cut the corners off. 
 
 There was a time in America when the stately cotillion 
 seemed to satisfy, but it is too slow now for the hot blood 
 of the Twentieth Century. The young people must have 
 something that will chase hurdles through their veins. 
 
 WHAT BILLY SAID ON MOTHERHOOD. 
 
 "I don't believe there is an angel in heaven that would 
 not come to earth and be honored with motherhood if 
 God would grant them that privilege. Like produces like 
 in animals and in human beings. Blood will tell in 
 horses, sheep, quadruped and in human beings. A con- 
 sumptive mother will produce a consumptive child, and 
 the same is true of its paternity. It is time to lay aside 
 mock modesty. You can't trifle with God's rules. So- 
 ciety has just about put maternity out of fashion. When 
 you stop to consider the average society woman I do not 
 think maternity has lost anything. The child of affluence 
 is turned over to nurses at birth and is fed on prepared 
 foods and knows nothing of its mother. The children of 
 humbler homes are raised by their mothers, instead of 
 being turned over to governesses. These mothers spend 
 their time in bridge parties, gadding, and fondling pet 
 
32 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 dogs; no wonder men go to the clubs. No man wants to 
 play second fiddle to a bow-legged bulldog. I am sure I 
 would not!" 
 
 TOO MANY GIRLS ARE NOT IN LOVE. 
 
 "There are too many girls marry for other causes than 
 love. I think ambition, indolence, avarice, laziness and 
 indifference lead more girls to the altar than love. Girls 
 not actuated by the noblest of human feeling, but simply 
 willing to pay the price for a good time. They are not 
 moved by the nobler desires of manhood and woman- 
 hood. Maternity is the highest possible gift of God to 
 woman. The up-to-date women pride themselves on 
 their criminal knowledge. Some girls marry for society, 
 some marry for home, some marry for ease, some marry 
 to reform man; he wouldn't marry you to reform you — 
 you little fool. It is no easier to make a kingly husband 
 out of a beer-soaked, cigaret-smoking specimen of a man 
 than a prostitute can make a queenly wife." 
 
 HIGH SPOTS IN BILLY'S SERMON TO WOMEN. 
 
 Up to Women to Save World. 
 
 "Woman lives on a higher plane morally than man. No 
 woman was ever ruined that some brute of a man did not 
 take the initiative. Women have kept themselves purer 
 than men. I believe a good woman is the best thing this 
 side of heaven, and a bad woman the worst thing this 
 side of hell. I think they rise higher and sink lower than 
 
The Famous Evangelist 33 
 
 men. I think she is the purest on earth or the most de- 
 graded on earth. Our homes are on the level with women. 
 Towns are on the level with homes. Nations are on the 
 level with towns. What our women are, the towns will 
 be. What the town is the men will be. The devil and 
 women can damn this world, and Jesus and women can 
 save this world. The womanhood of the world has to 
 settle the destiny of the world. I believe there is some- 
 thing unfinished in the makeup of a girl with the absence 
 of religion. The average girl of today no longer looks 
 forward to motherhood as the crowning glory of woman- 
 hood." 
 
 GIVES ADVICE ON PICKING A HUSBAND. 
 
 "Say, girls, don't simper and look silly when you speak 
 about love. There is nothing silly about it although some 
 folks are silly because they are in love; love is the noblest 
 and purest gift to man and womanhood. Don't let your 
 actions advertise "Man Wanted Quick." That is the sur- 
 est way not to get a real one. You might get something 
 with pantaloons on, but that is not a man. Some men 
 should be arrested for going around and being disguised 
 as men. Don't get excited and try to hurry things along. 
 If the man wants you he'll come around in his good time; 
 and don't try to do half the courting. Don't bestow the 
 love that God gave you to bestow upon a baby on a poodle 
 dog. Dogs are all right in their places, but their place is 
 out in the kennel." 
 
34 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 don't let girls marry infidels. 
 
 "Don't teach your girls, — mothers, — that the only thing 
 in the world is to marry. A girl is a big fool to marry an 
 infidel. God says be ye not unequally yoked with unbe- 
 lievers. If she does she will have a hard life as sure as 
 she lives. The offsprings of such marriages either follow 
 in the footsteps of their father, and go to hell, or cling to 
 their mother and are sneered at all their life by their 
 father." 
 
 "THY KINGDOM GOME." 
 
 If you really pray "Thy Kingdom Come" you will pray 
 with your hands, feet and money as well as with your 
 voice, every day. 
 
 Your religion should mean that you're going to bring 
 about the conversion of the world before you sit down to 
 breakfast. 
 
 The minister who prays with a true appreciation of 
 "Thy Kingdom Gome" don't cater to the small highbrow 
 bunch of his church. He puts the cookies on the bottom 
 shelf. 
 
 The man who truly prays "Thy Kingdom Gome" won't 
 slip coppers in the collection plate and then go home with 
 his head up singing "Jesus Paid It All." 
 
 When we really mean what we are praying, the old 
 devil won't own an inch of this world. We won't need 
 
The Famous Evangelist 35 
 
 any penitentiary then, or jails or have any murders, or 
 young girls robbed of their womanhood. 
 
 God never meant anybody to offer up a prayer that was 
 measured in square miles. 
 
 Some people here are so busy singing about the streets 
 of glory that they forget to sweep the snow off their 
 own streets. 
 
 Talk about non-church goers — it makes me sick. Why 
 don't you talk about the non-going church? 
 
 The proof of the pudding is not found in smelling the 
 bag or chewing the strings. There are lots of church 
 members who only smell the bag and chew the rag. 
 
 Christianity must be a good thing or why would they 
 try to counterfeit it. You never heard of a counterfeit in- 
 fidel. 
 
 The man who refuses to be a Christian because there 
 are hypocrites in the church is a fool. 
 
 You can find about everything in the ordinary church 
 from a humming bird to a turkey buzzard. 
 
 I could no more shock some of you fellows than I could 
 pour something on a skunk and make him smell good. 
 
 The inconsistency you talk about is in your life, not in 
 the Bible. 
 
 Talk to people on business and they'll talk sense; talk 
 to them on religion and they'll talk nonsense. 
 
 Christianity is the one thing that allows the angel to 
 take hold of you and strangle the animal in you. 
 
36 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 HOT SHOTS ON CARDS AND GAMBLING. 
 
 If you have a deck of cards and a Bible in your home, 
 throw the deck in the alley. Either throw the cards out 
 and keep the Bible, or throw out the Bible and keep the 
 cards. 
 
 What's the difference between a game of cards and a 
 game of checkers? Just as much difference as between 
 heaven and hell. 
 
 It is said nine-tenths of the gamblers are taught in their 
 homes by their mothers, and 80 per cent by Christian 
 people. 
 
 I believe that cards and dancing are doing more to 
 damn the spiritual life of the church than the grog-shops, 
 though you can't accuse me of being a friend of that stink- 
 ing, dirty, rotten, hell-soaked business. 
 
 I believe more people backslide on account of the social 
 side than on account of the saloon. 
 
 Lots of church members have cards on their tables as 
 often as food. 
 
 A billiard table is the first cousin to a saloon. 
 
 The saloonkeepers and gamblers laugh every time they 
 read the announcement of a euchre or card party in the 
 newspapers, for they know it will only be a question of 
 time until they get the players. 
 
 You have no right to find fault with the city officials 
 because they don't suppress gambling when it is carried 
 on right in your home. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 39 
 
 EVANGELIST PUTS TABOO ON THEATER. 
 
 The theater, as conducted today, is one of the rottenest 
 institutions outside of hell. 
 
 It is upon the charred souls of women that most of the 
 men who are a power in the theatrical world have climbed 
 to their height. 
 
 The theater is corrupting, educationally, commercially 
 and morally. 
 
 It is almost impossible to find in the theater decency 
 and purity. 
 
 The church and the theater have nothing in common. 
 
 The only way to reform the theater is to turn it into 
 something else. 
 
 The rogue and scoundrelism and man's infidelity form 
 the groundwork of most plays. 
 
 The day is long past when any number of serious- 
 minded citizens look to the theater for inspiration or in- 
 struction. 
 
 If it were not for the leg shows the theater would go 
 bankrupt. 
 
 Booth and Garrick would not allow their own children 
 to go to the theater. 
 
 Smiling religion — that's what we want. 
 
 The devil can't laugh — poor devil. 
 
 God enjoys a little fun. He made the parrot, donkey, 
 monkey and some of you folks. 
 
 The Lord wants the best; why can't he have it? 
 
40 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 Some men are so rotten and vile they ought to be dis- 
 infected and take a bath in carbolic acid and formalde- 
 hyde every five minutes. 
 
 To see some people you would think that the essentials 
 of Christianity is to have a face so long you could eat oat- 
 meal out of a gas pipe. Religion is not cramp colic. 
 
 I want to lift the burden tonight from the heads of un- 
 offending womanhood and hurl it at the heads of offend- 
 ing manhood. 
 
 Some people have just enough religion to give them 
 goosepimples. Get in the game. Some of you have just 
 enough religion to get to the edge of life but not faith 
 enough to plunge in. 
 
 Don't find fault with your physician until after you 
 have tried his remedy; don't find fault with God until you 
 have tried him. 
 
 I know some fellows here who are afraid to come to 
 the Tabernacle and do one thing decent before going to 
 Hell. I despise a religious coward. 
 
 Society takes no notice of sin at first; it waits for the 
 mute evidences of that sin. 
 
 BILLY PUTS TABOO ON WEDDING KNOTS. 
 
 Although an ordained minister, in all of his twenty- 
 seven years' experience as an evangelist, Mr. Sunday has 
 united but one couple in marriage. And that, he declares, 
 he did very reluctantly. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 41 
 
 In nearly every city where Billy has a campaign, he is 
 besieged by young men and young women who want him 
 to marry them. But Billy states that there is absolutely 
 nothing doing in that line. He has performed his first 
 and last marriage ceremony, and says he will stick to 
 plain evangelism, and leave the marrying part to other 
 ministers. 
 
 EVEBY PALACE IS NOT A HOME. 
 
 "I have walked and ridden and driven over the hills 
 and through the valleys and looked at your beautiful 
 homes and your spacious lawns and your happy children; 
 you can build your palaces and amass your fortunes; your 
 sideboards can groan beneath the weight of gold and sil- 
 ver, cut glass and hand-painted china; and you can let 
 your little ones play over your Brussels carpet or your 
 Persian or Axminster rugs; and you can have a retinue 
 of servants to wait upon you and do your bidding and 
 satisfy your slightest desire; and you can loll upon your 
 oriental divans and breathe the perfumed air and watch 
 the sparkling water as it spurts from fountains; and you 
 can look at your rare paintings and ransack Europe in 
 order to find the masterpieces; and you can lie there with 
 some one to fan you, and take your afternoon siesta; and 
 you can sit and gormandize upon all the viands that the 
 earth can produce; and your chef may be a Frenchman 
 whose ability would command a princely fortune even in 
 the homes of the crowned heads of Europe. 
 
42 Rev. "Bilhf Sunday 
 
 "But, after all, if you sit behind the tapestry and look 
 out through the plate-glass and wait for the staggering 
 reeking, vomiting, spewing, drink-soaked, drunken sot of 
 a son, or you wait for the coming of the steps of a girl 
 who has lost her virtue, I tell you, all that wealth can 
 bring you will fly and you will think you are sitting in a 
 sepulchre and the rich furniture will simply become the 
 bones of other days and other faces, for nothing can make 
 happy the father or the mother who has a drunken sot of 
 a boy, as many of them have today, and nothing can make 
 happy the father or the mother of a girl who has sold her 
 womanhood for gain. And I tell you, not only should our 
 homes be the center of all that is pure, but all that is 
 cheerful and bright." 
 
 | * DRAWING THE LINE ON CHRISTIANS. 
 
 Too many of you kneel at the communion table and 
 then beat down the wages of your employes so their chil- 
 dren go to bed hungry at night. 
 
 What God wants is workers and boosters; not knockers 
 and iconoclasts. 
 
 Every time a lazy man looks towards heaven, the 
 angels close the door. 
 
 It would be a Godsend if the church could smell a little 
 gunpowder. A little persecution would be a good thing to 
 get rid of the parasites and driftwood in the churches. 
 
 Enthusiasm for Jesus Christ is like the measles and 
 diphtheria — it's catching. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 43 
 
 You sing "Calvary in Heaven," and yet you put the 
 wrong figures on the ledger book; you profess brotherly 
 love, and yet slander your neighbor. 
 
 There is no use trying to build a revival on a bottle of 
 booze and on skullduggery and intrigue. I'm just trying 
 to clear away the debris now. 
 
 A lot of people will wear out ten pair of holdbacks and 
 only one pair of tugs working for God. 
 
 Too many churches are frauds, four-flushers, excess 
 baggage and false alarms. 
 
 The dude who splutters and splurges and spends his 
 daddy's dough, is the missing link between man and the 
 monkey. 
 
 You say religion causes insanity; I say you're a liar! 
 
 You tell the doctor, who says you need beer for your 
 health that he's a liar. 
 
 Knowledge is of no benefit unless you use it. 
 
 The world is being born into sin 20 to 1 faster than into 
 the spirit of God. 
 
 Religion doesn't make anybody mad; it's hell that 
 makes men mad. 
 
 Any fool can criticise; it needs neither brains nor heart 
 to find fault. 
 
 Churches in New York City have 50,000 less members 
 today than a "year ago. 
 
 All denominations are failing to reach the multitude. 
 
 You're either a patriot or a traitor to God's cause in this 
 revival. 
 
44 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 The man with real red blood in his veins scorns the 
 path of roses our modern churches have made to accept 
 Christ. 
 
 Criticism is the scales on which you weigh yourself. 
 
 THE PREACHERS AND THE LAYMEN. 
 
 Lots of churches will sidestep the man with two dol- 
 lars, but who ever heard of a man with five hundred 
 thousands being turned out of church. 
 
 Lots of sermons today are nothing but a book review 
 with a little religion tacked on the end. 
 
 A poor sinner couldn't find Jesus Christ in some of the 
 churches with a searchlight. 
 
 We've got too many preachers breaking their necks, 
 trying to please the worldly gang that is going to increase 
 their salaries. 
 
 Nobody nowadays is afraid of God; the picture of Jesus 
 Christ is fading from the world; the word of God has been 
 discarded as being too crude for this enlightened age. 
 
 Many churches are nothing but social clearance houses. 
 
 There are lots of people in this city who would rather 
 have their friends go to hell than be saved by my preach- 
 ing. 
 
 The best Christian will be the best citizen everywhere. 
 
 An employer is a thief if he takes advantage of his em- 
 ploye by not paying him for the honest work he does; 
 
The Famous Evangelist 45 
 
 the employe is a thief who does not give honest toil for 
 honest wages. 
 
 Public opinion is not always competent to judge 
 whether or not a man is worthy. 
 
 BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST. 
 
 What the Bible says. 
 
 "Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand 
 of his lords and drank wine before the thousands. 
 
 "Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine, commanded to 
 bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Ne- 
 buchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in 
 Jerusalem; that the king and his princes, his wives and 
 his concubines might drink therein. 
 
 "They drank wine and praised the gods of gold, and of 
 silver, of brass, of iron, of wood and of stone. 
 
 "In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand 
 and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster 
 of the wall of the king's palace; and the king saw part of 
 the hand that wrote. 
 
 "Then the king's countenance was changed and his 
 thoughts troubled him so that the joints of his loins were 
 loosed and his knees smote one against another. 
 
 "The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the 
 Chaldeans and the soothsayers. 
 
46 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 "Then came the king's wise men; but they could not 
 read the writing nor make known to the king the inter- 
 pretation thereof. 
 
 "Then was Daniel brought before the king, and the king 
 said : "If thou canst read the writing thou shalt be clothed 
 with scarlet and have a chain of gold about thy neck and 
 shalt be third ruler of the kingdom. 
 
 "Then Daniel answered and said before the king. Let 
 thy gifts be to thyself and give thy rewards to another; 
 yet I will read the writing and make known unto the king 
 the interpretation. 
 
 And this is the writing that was written : MENE, MENE, 
 TEKEL, UPHARSIN." 
 
 BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST. 
 "Billy" Sunday's Version. 
 
 Belshazzar's feast was no common beer, pretzel and 
 dill pickle blow-out, but the real goods. Nude and lewd 
 women wormed and wriggled their way through the ban- 
 quet hall. The bunch began to get soused and the revelry 
 increased. 
 
 Then came the obscene song, the drunken hiccough, the 
 slavering lip, and the guffaw of idiotic laugh bursting 
 from the lips of princes, flushed, reeling and bloodshot, 
 while mingled with it all were the hurrahs for great Bels- 
 hazzar. 
 
 Then from the atmosphere flashed an armless hand 
 which wrote upon the frieze in words that blazed like 
 
The Famous Evangelist 47 
 
 fire and glistened like gold. Terror froze Belshazzar to 
 the very soul. His countenance changed, his thoughts 
 troubled him so that the joints of his loins were loose 
 and his knees smote together. I tell you old "Bel" was 
 about all in. 
 
 In a few moments he hoarsely cried : "Bring in the as- 
 trologers, the Chaldeans and the soothsayers (we'd call 
 'em mediums today). And in came the Magi and when 
 they couldn't decipher the heiroglyphics. Belshazzar 
 cried, "Give 'em the hook." 
 
 Then he sent for Daniel on his mother's advice. 
 
 I can see him say: "Put her there Dan," as he slapped 
 his hand in Daniel's, and say, "My maw's be tellin' me 
 about you. This bunch has got on my nerves. The four- 
 flushers have been feedin' and fattenin' around here and 
 can't read that writing. If you'll do it I'll give you a chain 
 and a ring of gold. 
 
 But Daniel said: "Nothin' doing on the chain and ring 
 proposition, Bel." Then Daniel read the writing. "MENE, 
 MENE, TEKEL, UPHABSIN." 
 
 A BEMABKABLE PBAYEB. 
 
 Sunday, says Devil Growls when 10,000 Confess their 
 
 Wrongs. 
 
 "Oh, Jesus, isn't this a great spectacle? This must make 
 you smile, Jesus. I know it does me. And devil, this 
 sight must make you growl. I can hear you saying, 
 'What's Bill Sunday doing up there? Look at that crowd 
 
48 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 of 10,000 people standing because they're sorry they 
 broke any of God's commandments. We've got to get 
 busy or we'll lose thousands. Come on all you devils, 
 get out of hell. Get out I say.' 
 
 "And Jesus, I'll bet all those devils are trembling when 
 they look up here, and I'll bet all the angels in heaven 
 are rejoicing and shouting with joy. I can see mothers 
 and fathers up there saying, 'Get back, Moses, get back 
 Solomon, get back David, you haven't got any children 
 down there. Let me look and see if my boy or girl is in 
 that audience. Yes, there she is down in section 27; yes, 
 there is my boy over by post 14; thank God for that.' 
 
 And, oh, Jesus, if any preacher here tonight has got 
 cold feet, help him to stiffen up ; give him backbone so he 
 can fight for you. And, Jesus, bless these preachers, thank 
 them for deepening the spirit here tonight. Bless all 
 newspaper boys who are giving us such wonderful re- 
 ports. Bless all in their offices that we met the other day 
 — all of the clerks, stenographers, printers, pressmen and 
 from the men that own the papers down to the boys that 
 sell the papers on the street. 
 
 And, Jesus, bless this choir, bless the ushers, bless the 
 Chief, the Mayor, the Governor, help the state officials, 
 Jesus. And bless this old state and this city and may we 
 have a rousing time here. Guide us and keep us for your 
 sake, Jesus, amen, amen, amen and amen. Good night." 
 
The Famous Evangelist 49 
 
 "HITTING THE SAWDUST TRAIL." 
 
 The meaning "to hit the sawdust trail," has a beautiful 
 and appropriate meaning. It was first used when Sun- 
 day and his party were in the midst of a campaign among 
 the lumbermen on Puget Sound. At the tabernacle at 
 Bellingham, Washington. The floor of the tabernacle was 
 covered with the sawdust from the lumber camp and the 
 lumbermen, when any of their men went down front to 
 speak to Rev. Sunday, called it "Hitting the Trail." 
 
 In the lumber camps in the mountains there is a trail 
 that leads through the fastness of the wooded mountain 
 side covered by wood chips, so as to make it conspicuous 
 by night as well as by day. The woodsmen some time 
 wander far away from camp and are lost in the primeval 
 forest. In their wanderings, if they can "hit the trail," 
 they are saved, as it leads to the safety and shelter of the 
 camp. So on the pathway of life if you can, "hit the 
 trail," of God's mercy through the Lord Jesus Christ you 
 are led to safety. So these rude lumbermen called the 
 giving up of self to God and going down the sawdust 
 isle of the tabernacle — "Hitting the Trail." 
 
 The phrase stuck to the Sunday party ever since and 
 it has a thrilling touch of the wildwood and a meaning 
 that is very appropriate and beautiful when tnken in the 
 language of the backwoods. 
 
50 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 TRYING TO SERVE GOD AND THE DEVIL. 
 
 It would almost be a blessing if a wave of scarlet fever 
 or small-pox could visit some city just after a revival and 
 sweep into heaven thousands who had been converted 
 before they were given a chance to backslide. 
 
 Lots of people never get any place to backslide from. 
 
 The man who keeps his store open on Sunday is an an- 
 archist. I don't mean the hotel man or the restaurant 
 proprietor, for some things are an absolute necessity. 
 
 You never saw a dancing, card-playing and theatre- 
 gadding church member that amounted to the snap of 
 your finger. 
 
 Belonging to a church won't save you. A thief can be 
 a church member. 
 
 There's too much playing tag with God, and hide-and- 
 seek with the devil nowadays. 
 
 There's too much joining the church today and too little 
 joining Jesus. 
 
 Even preachers, elders, deacons and stewards may not 
 be members of the body of Christ, but merely church 
 members. 
 
 INCONSISTENT CHURCH MEMBERS. 
 
 Don't start a Christian life and compromise on a pack 
 of cards. 
 
 Religion is not for time, money, applause or politics, 
 but for God first, last and all the time. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 51 
 
 There never was an honest draft from an honest heart 
 that was refused at the bank window of heaven. 
 
 If you worked for God as hard as you do for the devil, 
 you wouldn't be up against it. 
 
 If you're a backslider, you're a liar, a perjurer and 
 you've broken your marriage vows with God. 
 
 Many men may be true to their business, to their lodge 
 and to their wives, but dirty liars to God. 
 
 You can graduate from the best university on God's 
 dirt and make a cold storage plant out of your brain, but 
 without Jesus you aren't worth a cent. 
 
 There is as much connection between some church 
 members and Jesus as there is between a wooden leg and 
 the man that wears it. 
 
 Life is just chuck full of half-done things. 
 
 CHRISTIANS CAN'T LIVE DOUBLE LIVES. 
 
 It don't make any difference with God whether the one 
 who sins wears a coat or petticoat; plug hat or a hairpin. 
 
 This double-standard business is the curse of humanity 
 today. God demands the same standard of purity in man 
 as he does in woman. 
 
 There are a lot of lobsters here tonight who, if their 
 wives lived the lives they did, would be down at the court 
 house whining for divorces tomorrow morning. 
 
52 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 You can't cut the week up into seven parts, call six 
 secular and one Sunday when you go to church and listen 
 to a little sermonette, and expect to be saved. 
 
 You are a blackguard liar when you say every man 
 and woman have a price. Most men are honest; most 
 women are virtuous. It's the dishonest man and the 
 woman with no virtue that are in the minority. 
 
 Lots of people start on a royal race in life, but compro- 
 mise at the finish in a mouse hole. 
 
 A HIGH TRIBUTE TO THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 
 OF GEN. LEE. 
 
 Billy Sunday paid the following tribute to the Christian 
 character of General Robert E. Lee, commander of the 
 Confederate forces in the Civil War: 
 
 "There is no man I so delight to honor as the man who 
 is true. There is no woman I so delight to honor as the 
 woman who is true. There is no one I so abhor as a man 
 or woman whose words are untruth and whose promises 
 are as vapor. I may differ from a man in politics or re- 
 ligion, and if he is living up to his highest ideals, even if 
 I think those ideals wrong, I respect him and I will do 
 my best to clear up his errors and lead him to the sunlit 
 hills of God's pardon. 
 
 "At the beginning of the Civil War General Robert E. 
 Lee said to General Scott that he was a Union man at 
 heart, but that his native state of Virginia had seceded 
 
The Famous Evangelist 53 
 
 and that as a loyal son he felt he must cast his fortunes 
 with the Confederacy. As the war proceeded, Lee saw the 
 bright hopes of the Confederacy fade, saw its govern- 
 ment overturned and broken at his feet. When the end 
 came he was a prematurely old man, his health fled, his 
 fortune gone, his property at Arlington confiscated. At 
 that time of despair there came to him the officers of the 
 Louisiana Lottery company, offering to make him its 
 president. 
 
 " 'But, gentlemen,' he said, 'I don't know anything about 
 the lottery business.' 
 
 " 'That makes no difference,' they said, 'we do. We 
 want the use of your name, and we will give you $10,000 
 a year.' 
 
 "General Lee buttoned his coat over his sunken breast, 
 brushed back his gray hair from his forehead, and said: 
 'Gentlemen, my good name and my self respect are all 
 that is saved from the wreck, and they are not for sale. 
 You cannot buy Robert E. Lee.' 
 
 "My father was a Union soldier. I am a loyal Ameri- 
 can, but I say that Robert E. Lee was one of the noblest 
 Christian characters this country has ever produced, and 
 that Stonewall Jackson was another." 
 
 EXPOSES FALSEHOOD OF "GRAFT" STORIES. 
 
 Billy Sunday takes frequent raps at those who knock 
 him and accuse him of grafting. Wednesday night he 
 became reminiscent for a few minutes and referred to his 
 
54 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 turning down big offers from baseball teams, to become 
 a Y. M. C. A. secretary. 
 
 "When I turned down offers of $500.00 and even $1,- 
 000 a month from ball teams, to make $83.00 as a Y. M. 
 C. A. secretary, they never called me a grafter, and in 
 those days we were up against hard times," he said. "For 
 six months I got no salary; I went hungry at noon and 
 walked to and from work to save car fare. 
 
 "Then there's another lie they tell about me and it is 
 that I own a saloon in Chicago. I don't know what all 
 they tell about me, but I do not and never did own a 
 single piece of property in Chicago." 
 
 WOMEN HAVE THE SAME RIGHTS AS MEN. 
 
 "God has marked out the same path for men and for 
 women to follow. Away with the hellish doctrine of a 
 double standard of living in this twentieth century. It 
 makes no difference whether the one who sins wears a 
 plug hat or a petticoat. Young fellow, your sister has as 
 good a right to live as you do, as you have. She has as 
 good a right to walk up street smoking a cigaret as you 
 have. Your wife has as good a right to line up before a 
 bar and put 10 beers under her belt as you have. She has 
 as good a right to go to the corner grocery in the evening 
 and sit around and put her feet up on the stove and settle 
 the questions of the day, as you have. She has as good a 
 right as you have to walk down street with a half a plug 
 
The Famous Evangelist 57 
 
 of Lorillard's sticking out of her mouth and spit enough 
 to drown a jackrabbit as you have. I wouldn't clean out 
 your old spittoon for you. I'd throw it at your old head. 
 Yes, sir. Mop up your own slop, you old hog." 
 
 SAYS BACKSLIDERS LIKE GROUNDHOGS. 
 
 "The invitation is never given at a revival but there are 
 those who will respond to it and for a time will live as 
 Christians should. Then, when the revival is over and 
 the routine of everyday life begins, they slip gradually 
 back into their former ways. They are like the ground- 
 hog. When spring comes the groundhog awakes from his 
 winter's sleep and emerges into the sunlight and lives an 
 active life until the storms of winter come again. Then he 
 crawls into his hole of hibernation and falls into a sleep 
 of months. Oh, it is easy to think of things divine when 
 the revival is on and there is inspiration on every side 
 and the bands are playing and the crowds are marching. 
 These groundhog people have family prayer then, and 
 they attend to their religious duties faithfully, but when 
 the revival is over they begin to relapse into their old 
 ways." 
 
 TRUE TO LODGE; FALSE TO CHRIST. 
 
 "They tell me a lodge man will share his last dollar 
 with a needy person, die for the widow or the orphan, 
 put his head on the track ahead of the Twentieth Cen- 
 tury Limited or allow himself to be shot to pieces before 
 
58 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 he would be false to the vows he took amid the scent of 
 the orange blossoms. That sounds like a good man; but 
 there are lots of men who will be true in all these things, 
 and false to Jesus Christ. They will go to church and 
 partake of the communion, then will go out and line up 
 in front of some bar or tell smutty stories. True in bus- 
 iness, true in society, true in the home, but a perjurer in 
 the sight of God. If you are such a man you are a back- 
 slider — a backslider, sir, and a liar." 
 
 "Girls, you are a fool if you will walk along the street 
 with a fellow who smokes a cigaret as he walks with you. 
 He wouldn't walk with you if you smoked one." 
 
 SUNDAY ADVISES SOCIETY WOMEN TO SAVE 
 
 SOULS. 
 
 "No doubt you women have a retinue of servants and 
 haven't dirtied your hands in dishwater for so long that 
 you have forgotten how it feels. But you have souls to 
 save, and don't wait until just before the undertaker 
 backs up to your door." 
 
 Mr. Sunday took Van Dyke's sketch, "The Lost Word," 
 as a theme for his talk. He related how Hermas, the 
 pagan, after accepting Christianity for several years, 
 grew tired of it and sold the Word of Jesus for gold, pleas- 
 ure and worldly success. He demonstrated to the club 
 women that, if they had ever known Jesus, they could 
 read their heart's biography. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 59 
 
 "Without that word you are nonentities !" said Sunday, 
 "Without that word you are lost. And you can't find it 
 in society. Do as society wants you to do, and you will 
 not be doing as Jesus wants you to do. If ease, comfort, 
 luxury and the chasing of the phantoms of pleasure have 
 led you away from the old landmarks and moorings, get 
 back, my friends, get back." 
 
 The man that bucks the jackpot until 3 o'clock in the 
 morning is just as good as the church member that plays 
 for a prize. 
 
 There's nothing too hard for God. 
 
 If your heart is full of sin you'll never be satisfied until 
 you get others to sin likewise. 
 
 Bad as is physical leprosy, moral leprosy is ten thou- 
 sand times worse. 
 
 Suppose every young man in the city who is a moral 
 leper were compelled and impelled by some uncontroll- 
 able impulse to make public the sins you've committed. 
 
 There's a day of judgment coming when God will peel 
 off the bark and find many full of wormholes. 
 
 Suppose all had glass doors in our hearts. I think we 
 would want stained glass windows, heavy tapestry and 
 thick curtains. 
 
 God never made Hell for man. God made Hell for the 
 devil. If you follow the devil you must go to the abode 
 of the devil. 
 
 You may live in the most beautiful house and the world 
 passes by your door not knowing of the sadness and sor- 
 
60 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 row within. But it will out. If the world never finds it 
 out, it'll meet you at the throne of God. 
 
 It's the men of means, wealth and leisure that support 
 dens of vice. 
 
 The devil will let you have an easy time until God asks 
 you to do personal work. 
 
 Some people think it is beneath their dignity to do per- 
 sonal work for God. 
 
 If it is beneath your dignity to do personal work, then 
 you are above Christ. 
 
 If you haven't got religion enough to smile, there's a 
 leak in your fountain. 
 
 I pity that boy or that girl who has no incentive from a 
 father or mother to be a Christian. 
 
 Sissy, that fellow wouldn't go with you to reform you. 
 
 Those most likely to be affected by your sins are those 
 nearest and dearest to you. 
 
 Society needs a new division of anathemas. Stop hurl- 
 ing your anathemas at that girl and hurl them at that 
 fellow. 
 
 If we only knew the secrets in the hearts and lives of a 
 great many we envy, we would be filled with sadness and 
 sorrow. 
 
 I wish to God the church were as afraid of imperfection 
 as it is of perfection. 
 
 If the saloon is no place for a boy it's no place for a 
 man either. You'll get what's coming to you, too, before 
 I'm through if you stand with that damnable bunch. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 61 
 
 I had to say no to fifteen or twenty cities to come here. 
 
 The curse of the church is not so much sins of com- 
 mission as sins of omission. 
 
 Two things I try to do — strengthen the faith and clarify 
 the vision of those that believe; help bring the unsaved to 
 Christ. 
 
 Nobody begins to live until they become a Christian. 
 You're not ready to die unless you're ready to live. 
 
 You can learn something from some politicians — energy 
 and organization. 
 
 It won't be long until the entire State of Iowa is cleared 
 of the liquor traffic. Only twenty counties remain wet 
 and these are going dry with a rapidity almost dazzling. 
 
 It's hard for you to teach the baby how to walk; it's 
 harder for the baby to learn how to walk. 
 
 I never saw a revival movement yet until God's people 
 fell on their knees and renewed their vows of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 Personal work is a difficult form of work; more difficult 
 than preachings, singing, attending conventions. 
 
 Some things must be faultless to be valuable. 
 
 Love is the greatest thing in the world; character the 
 grandest. 
 
 You can bury a man, but his character will beat the 
 hearse back from the graveyard. 
 
 Don't your hearts say, you must forsake sin before you 
 can expect pardon? 
 
62 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 I will preach with all the power I have against sin, but 
 I will never "bawl" a man out. 
 
 God is doing His best to keep men out of hell; men are 
 doing their best to get into hell. 
 
 God cannot and will not put the good and bad in the 
 same place. 
 
 What did Jesus ever do that was not for the good of 
 humanity? 
 
 Jesus Christ never preached a funeral sermon; that 
 was out of his line. 
 
 If you are in favor of something Jesus is against, then 
 he does not want you. 
 
 Jesus Christ is against all wrong. Are you? 
 
 Jesus stands for a square deal all around. 
 
 Are you against the saloon? Jesus Christ is. 
 
 Jesus Christ was the bravest man who ever lived. I 
 am tired of hearing him referred to as a dough-faced 
 person. 
 
 Something is expected of a Godless person that is not 
 of a sinner. 
 
 I do not care a rap for your claps or applause unless 
 your acts take the form of living your Christianity. 
 
 Without faith there would not be a factory or a bank 
 here. 
 
 Nothing was ever accomplished without men first be- 
 lieving something. 
 
 The man who is a Christian has life more abundantly 
 than an infidel. 
 
 Christ turned houses of mourning into houses of joy. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 65 
 
 You act as though you had reached the apex and writ- 
 ten "finis" after everything you do. We haven't learned 
 the a b c's of what is yet to come in this old world. 
 
 There's a law of gravitation in character as well as in 
 matter. 
 
 A saloonkeeper does not enjoy a prayer meeting. 
 
 With everything wicked men can do today they try to 
 check religion. Yet religion never will be stopped. You 
 might as well try to dam Niagara Falls with toothpicks. 
 
 For twenty-seven and a half years I have been a Chris- 
 tian. I defy the devil or anyone else on earth or in hell 
 to prove that I don't live what I preach. 
 
 A motorman might as well try to run his car up yonder 
 hill by blowing his breath against the front vestibule as 
 to expect salvation without Jesus Christ. 
 
 You can't stop religion by making fun of it. 
 
 If it's wrong for me to hit the booze, it's wrong for you. 
 
 God says, if you give me a chance, old man, I can make 
 you sober and keep you sober. 
 
 Take out of this town what Christianity has done for it 
 and its real estate would not be worth ten cents by Christ- 
 mas. 
 
 Do not be deluded to believing that all you need is sin- 
 cerity of thought. A man may believe he can handle 
 nitro-glycerine with impunity, but if he does he will be 
 slivered into atoms. 
 
 I know Jesus made good with me. Has he with you? 
 
66 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 Wherever Jesus' teachings have gone joy has followed. 
 
 Jesus Christ has crowned womanhood and placed gar- 
 lands on her head. 
 
 Some men bequeath disease and cravings for drink to 
 their children. 
 
 If Paul and Silas had looked as gloomy as some of you 
 coming to the Tabernacle that man in jail would not be 
 liberated yet. 
 
 Jesus bled and died to save you. Whosoever will. 
 
 I am traveling to heaven according to a time-card, the 
 gospel schedule. 
 
 CONSOLATION FOR THE OLD MAIDS. 
 
 "Take this from Uncle Fuller: 'Don't worry if you 
 don't marry, there are worse things in the world than 
 being an old maid, and one of them is marrying the wrong 
 man. Love is the divinest gift of God to man and woman. 
 Some of the noblest women in the world have been old 
 maids; they are not old maids, simply ladies-in-waiting, 
 but I tell you girls I would rather be an old maid, with 
 dogs, cats, furniture and bric-a-brac than to be yoked to 
 a profane, cigaret smoking, cursing, whisky-soaked, jug- 
 handle for a husband.' " 
 
 TAKES RAP AT GIRLS WHO FLIRT. 
 
 "I wish I could make a girl that flirts see herself as 
 others see her. If you make eyes at a man on the street he 
 will pay you back. It means that if you don't care any 
 
The Famous Evangelist 67 
 
 more than that for yourself why should he? It takes a 
 whole lot of nerve for a fellow to look a girl in the face and 
 say: 'Will you be my wife and partner and help me fight 
 the battle during life?' But I think it means a whole lot 
 more to the girl who has to answer and fight that ques- 
 tion; but the fool girl loafs around, waits to be chosen 
 and takes the first chance she gets and seems to think that 
 if they get made one the laws of man can make them two 
 again. The divorce laws are damnable and pernicious." 
 
 DRINKING AND MATRIMONY. 
 
 No man ever intended being a drunkard. He started 
 out a moderate drinker. 
 
 If any young buck would come and ask to take my 
 daughter out on a midnight joy ride, so help me God, I 
 certainly would land on him. 
 
 If these automobiles and carriages could talk, there'd 
 be something doing. 
 
 The reason we've got so many little whip-poor-will 
 widows nowadays is that they married men to reform 
 them. 
 
 Girls, you sell yourselves too cheap. You'll keep com- 
 pany with some miserable young buck who'll dodge into 
 a doorway so as not to be embarrassed by the look of 
 recognition from some fallen woman on the street, just 
 to have "steady" company. 
 
68 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 SAYS SOCIETY TO BLAME FOR SINNERS. 
 
 I say, you card playing women for little prizes such as 
 a dinky cream pitcher or pair of silk hose (maybe you've 
 got 'em on now) are responsible for many of the gamb- 
 lers, because you started 'em. 
 
 The purer life for men and women will never come till 
 the girls raise the standard of their company. Then we'll 
 clean up some of these young bucks around town. 
 
 I believe the man who will seduce an innocent young 
 girl and sell her into a life of shame, ought to be shot on 
 the spot. 
 
 Society takes no notice of an innocent flirtation. It 
 waits till the mute evidence of a girl's downfall cannot be 
 concealed, then gasps in horror and turns her out. 
 
 Society is responsible for the sins of those you saw 
 starting toward hell and didn't warn 'em. 
 
 Society's to blame for many a blithering drunkard, for 
 starting him drinking at a fashionable party. 
 
 SOME EXTRA SHOTS TO THE OUTFIELD. 
 
 If I can send one girl from the red light back to home, 
 mother and God, then I'll be repaid for having stood all 
 your bitter raillery and your mockery. Mock you old 
 devil, mock. 
 
 Gehazi was the first grafter mentioned in the Bible. 
 
 If by some power I could yank a string and pull from 
 you all the clothes you are wearing that are not paid for, 
 
The Famous Evangelist 69 
 
 some of you would have left only a celluloid collar and 
 pair of socks. 
 
 Many a fool today, when told what to do to keep out 
 of hell, gets mad at God. 
 
 Some fellows are so rotten that they ought to be disin- 
 fected for two years and then given a bath in carbolic 
 acid and formaldehyde before they should be allowed to 
 speak to a decent woman. 
 
 Christian Scientists, I notice, always answer the call 
 for dinner just as quick as I do. 
 
 Don't condemn your doctor until you try his remedies. 
 
 The devil's no fool. If you get to playing tag with him 
 he'll touch you on the shoulder, say "tag, you're it," and 
 get your goat. He's never idle. He never gets the rheu- 
 matiz, peritonitis, gout or appendicitis. 
 
 BILLY'S SKETCH OF LEPER BATHING IN JORDAN. 
 
 Billy Sunday's impersonation of the leper Naaman, 
 entering the waters of the Jordan river to dip seven times, 
 given Thursday night in his sermon on "The Moral 
 Leper," in the language of the vaudeville press agent, 
 was a "bell-ringer." 
 
 Billy, in the role of Naaman, made things so realistic 
 that his vast audience could almost expand their imagin- 
 ation enough to see the muddy waters of the river, the 
 slippery bank and the frightened and shivering Naaman, 
 
70 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 endeavoring to bolster up enough courage to plunge in 
 and take his seven dips to be cured of leprosy. 
 
 Billy cautiously approached the water's edge, stuck one 
 toe in to ascertain the temperature of the water, drew it 
 back with a shiver and an U-u-gh, but that's cold!" Then 
 he stopped to explain that Naaman was not accustomed 
 to such surroundings, but was used to a porcelain bath 
 tub at home and to a "crooked-handle dingaramus" to 
 rub his back with. With this Billy went through the con- 
 tortions of a man trying to reach the hollow of his back 
 with a brush or sponge. 
 
 SAYS WATER MADE NAAMAN SHIVER. 
 
 He told of a big "snake doctor" stinging Naaman on the 
 shoulder, emitting an unearthly screech and slapping one 
 hand to the offended spot. Then he tried the water again. 
 He got part way in, slipped, stubbed his toe and went hob- 
 bling about on his left foot, holding the other in both 
 hands as his facial contortions told of Naaman's pain 
 after getting hurt. He shivered again, let his teeth chat- 
 ter with a loud "b-r-r-r," as he again went into the water, 
 pinched his nose shut after taking a long breath, squinted 
 his eyes and "ducked" under the surface, coming up splut- 
 tering, spitting and choking. 
 
 Then Billy told of the spots of leprosy on Naaman be- 
 ginning to itch. He nearly had every one in the taber- 
 nacle scratching arms and legs as he vigorously rubbed 
 
The Famous Evangelist 71 
 
 various spots on his body, and scratched 'em. Then he 
 resumed his ducking stunt. After the seventh dip, he told 
 of Naaman's flesh being covered with the delicate skin 
 of a babe and of him emerging from the river no longer 
 a leper. Here Sunday ended his monologue with the ex- 
 clamation, "Gee, wonder what Mrs. Naaman and the kids 
 will say when I come home and they see me cured." 
 
 SNAPSHOTS FROM SUNDAY'S SERMONS. 
 
 God never owned a slave. All the service you render 
 for God is or should be prompted by gratitude. 
 
 It's hell and damnation that put men and women in the 
 asylums and jails. 
 
 If my vehemence and exertions amaze you, your apathy 
 and laziness stagger me. 
 
 If God could get possession of all the flesh and blood 
 that belongs to Him, He could create a commotion in 
 this city in 48 hours. 
 
 Some people work only with their mouths. But God 
 wants that part of you that's on the ground as well as in 
 the air. 
 
 Christianity and red whiskey don't stay in the same 
 hide together. 
 
 Bill Shakespeare was onto his job when he said "What 
 fools these mortals be." 
 
 The Lord's having just as bad a time today with the 
 folks here as with the old Jews out there in the wilder- 
 ness. 
 
J 
 
 11 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 It gives me prostration to see how some people do 
 things in this world. It's no wonder the devil's got a 
 mortgage on the world and is about ready to foreclose it. 
 
 Some churches have 500 in the congregation and about 
 25 turn out at prayer meeting. Where are the other 475? 
 They have just as much right to be there as the 25. 
 
 Faith is like a headlight on a train. 
 
 I don't believe one-half the people in the churches were 
 ever converted or had an experience. 
 
 I believe in experimental religion. 
 
 Faith is above all other graces; it honors God and 
 brings blessings to the individual. 
 
 The average preacher don't pray much more than five 
 minutes each day; the average churchgoer not more than 
 three minutes. 
 
 If we got what was coming to us — it'd be Hell for all of 
 us. 
 
 A TRIP THROUGH THE BIBLE WITH BILLY SUNDAY. 
 
 An Example of the Evangelist's Power 
 in Painting Word Pictures. 
 
 Twenty-seven years ago with the Holy Spirit as my 
 guide, I entered at the portico of Geneses and went into 
 the art gallery of the Old Testament, where, on the wall, 
 hung pictures of Enoch, Noah, Jacob, Abraham, Elijah, 
 David, Daniel and other famous prophets of old. Then 
 I passed into the music room .of the Psalms, where the 
 
The Famous Evangelist 73 
 
 spirit swept the keyboard of my nature and brought forth 
 the dirge — like a wail of the weeping prophet, Jeremiah, 
 to the grand exultant strain of the 24th Psalm and where 
 every reed and pipe in God's great organ of nature seemed 
 to respond to the tuneful harp of David, as he played for 
 King Saul in his melancholy moods. 
 
 Next I passed into the business office of Proverbs, then 
 into the chapel of Ecclesiastes, where the voice 
 of the preacher was heard; then over into the conserva- 
 tory of the songs of Solomon, where the Lily of the Valley 
 and the Rose of Sharon and sweet-scented spices per- 
 fumed my life. Then I stepped into the prophetic room 
 and saw through telescopes various stars, some pointing 
 to far-off stars and others to nearby stars, but all concen- 
 trated upon the bright and Morning Star which was to 
 rise above the moon-lit hills of Judea, while shepherds 
 guarded their flock by night. 
 
 From there I passed into the audience room and 
 caught a vision of the King from the standpoint of Mat- 
 thew, Mark, Luke and John. I then went into the Acts of 
 the Apostles, where the Holy Spirit was doing office work in 
 the formation of the Infant Church. From here I went to 
 the correspondence room where Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
 John, Paul, Peter, James and Judah sat at their desks, 
 penning their epistles to the church. Then I passed last 
 of all into the throne room of Revelations and the king 
 sitting high upon his throne. 
 
74 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 DEFENDS DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 If the Bible were the dreams of men, it would have 
 gone down long ago. But it still stands like a light-house, 
 shining out into the darkness, surrounded by thousands 
 of dead birds, which have battered their brains out, 
 knocking it. 
 
 The biggest fool today is the man who sneers at the 
 word of God. 
 
 God's word can't be overthrown. It is too hard for the 
 tooth of time and will last forever. 
 
 God's plan in the beginning was that man should never 
 die and that no man should ever work. Now, because 
 of sin, white or black, Christian or skeptic, civilized or 
 savage, it's work for you or over the hills to the poor 
 house. 
 
 You can say, if you want to, that your great-great-great- 
 great-grandfather was a monkey with a prehensile tail, 
 playing in the back alley, all right, but you can't connect 
 me with your monkey ancestors. 
 
 Why is it that corn that is fed to chickens makes 
 feathers; that fed to sheep makes wool; that fed to the 
 cow makes milk, and that which you eat goes into brain? 
 
 The men who undertake to overthrow the Bible will 
 find the biggest job they ever had on their hands, and a 
 lot of these lobsters have already gone to the mat for the 
 count. 
 
 Don't you feel like brutes; don't you feel lower than 
 snakes when you raise you voice against the Bible and 
 
The Famous Evangelist 75 
 
 this campaign, which is working for the influence of 
 Christianity? 
 
 You can take all the books of all ages and nations, 
 and take out all that is good and noble in them, and 
 you can't produce a book which will touch the hem of the 
 Bible, which, is the word of God. 
 
 SPIRITUALISM ON THE GRILL. 
 
 Spiritualism is of the devil, pure and simple. I have no 
 quarrel with you if you're a spiritualist, but I have with 
 that damnable doctrine. 
 
 Spiritualism is as old as the Egyptian mummies or the 
 sphinx. It had long, gray hair and walked on crutches of 
 decrepitude before Athens or Rome had a single mud hut 
 or Romulus and Remus had been nourished by the wolf. 
 It cannot work in the light, but needs darkness, because 
 its deeds are evil. I never knew a confirmed spiritualist 
 who had a normal physical body. Their religion is un- 
 clean. Christian science is the worst tommyrot since the 
 Third Century. 
 
 STRAIGHT SHOTS FROM THE SHOULDER. 
 
 Bryan, clean as a hound's tooth — he's a friend of mine, 
 too — isn't afraid to put a Bible under his arm and preach 
 the word of God. 
 
 The churches used to be daffy over high-critic preach- 
 ers. Nowadays your high-critic preachers are wearing 
 
76 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 out shoe leather and going blind reading the want col- 
 umns, trying to find jobs. 
 
 Down in Georgia they were having a dress ball. Huh! 
 Better call it an undress ball. 
 
 Religion will do more for the world than it is now, as 
 soon as God gets more than dimes and nickles to work 
 with. 
 
 Some ministers are as crazy after sensation as the "yel- 
 lowest" newspaper that ever came off the press. 
 
 Some of you society women are so stuck-up with pride 
 that you can't lie straight in bed at night. 
 
 These long-winded prayers will never get anything for 
 Christ. 
 
 In nearly every church there is a little bunch that prays 
 and all the rest are going to the devil. 
 
 What Shakespeare says is "literatwah," but what Bill 
 Sunday says is "vulgwah." 
 
 The worst thing that ever wriggled out of hell is a 
 church scrap. 
 
 I believe that some time in the life of every man and 
 woman there will come a time when they will pray. 
 
 "I'd like to see the day," said Sunday, "when there 
 wouldn't be a store open on Saturday night. I can't see 
 to save my gizzard why it's necessary. People can do 
 their shopping early. If they'd close the stores Saturday 
 evening the same as on other days, the church attend- 
 ances would be doubled. But of course, when you do 
 
The Famous Evangelist 79 
 
 anything to help humanity, some yellow dog has got to 
 block it. And you employers and proprietors sit around 
 in the churches and wonder why the attendance is so 
 small, when you're to blame yourself by making your em- 
 ployes work themselves to death so that they are too tired 
 to go to church." 
 
 OTHERS SUFFER FROM YOUR SINS. 
 
 "When you come staggering home, cussing right and 
 left and spewing and spitting, your wife suffers, your chil- 
 dren suffer, you infernal old devil. Don't think that you 
 are the only one that suffers. You're placing a stain on 
 your wife and your children. If you're a dirty, low-down, 
 filthy, drunken, whisky-soaked bum you'll affect all with 
 whom you come in contact. If you're a God-fearing man 
 you will influence all with whom you come in contact. 
 You can't live by yourself. 
 
 "Personal liberty is not personal license. Our fore- 
 fathers did not fight and die for personal license, but for 
 personal liberty bounded by laws. Personal license is 
 the liberty of a red-handed anarchist. Personal license 
 is the liberty of a burglar, of a seducer, of a raper, of a 
 wolf that wants to remain in a sheep fold, or the fox in a 
 henroost." 
 
80 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 LESSONS FROM STORY OF PILATE. 
 
 Pilate was a pliable, plastic, rathole, stand pat, peanut, 
 lunch counter politician of his day. 
 
 Pilate sent Jesus to an innocent death to please the ma- 
 chine politicians. 
 
 Away with your hell-born, stinking lie of Unitarianism 
 that Jesus was not a good man. He was either the Son 
 of God or a fraud and liar, and I believe Him to be the 
 Son of God. 
 
 God keeps no half-way house. It's either heaven or hell 
 for everyone. 
 
 A millionaire will go to hell just as fast as a hobo count- 
 ing the ties on a railroad, if he doesn't live true to God. 
 
 I challenge all the infidels on the earth to find one flaw 
 in the character of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Even if Jesus wasn't the Son of God I would worship 
 Him anyway, for he is my ideal. I can't conceive a 
 grander character. 
 
 MORAL TRUTHS BILLY GAVE TO MEN. 
 
 Lyman Beecher was the father of more brain than any 
 other man. 
 
 It's everybody's business how you live. 
 
 Law stands between you and personal liberty. 
 
 I brand that man with a black brand whose iniquities 
 are responsible for the fall of others. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 81 
 
 No man lives to himself alone. 
 
 No man will argue that sin is a good thing. 
 
 It doesn't take boys long to get on the wrong track. 
 
 There are little frizzled top sissies who know more 
 about vice than their gray-haired grandmothers. 
 
 As a rule a man wants something better for his children 
 than he had himself. 
 
 You would not want your son to live like you, if you 
 are not living right. 
 
 A young buck that cusses will crush your daughter's 
 honor like he would an eggshell. 
 
 If you never become religious, men, for God's sake stop 
 your cussing. 
 
 Like produces like in everything. * * Blood 
 
 will tell. 
 
 SAYS THESE THREE WILL RUIN CITY. 
 
 "No man can be a good husband, no man can be a good 
 father, no man can be a respectable citizen, no man can 
 be a gentleman, and cuss. You can hang out a sign of 
 gentleman, but when you cuss you might as well take it in. 
 
 "There are three things which will ruin any town, open 
 license saloons, open stores on the Sabbath day and a 
 dirty, cussing, swearing gang of blacklegs on the streets. 
 Let a town be known for these three things, and these 
 alone, and you could never start a boom half big enough 
 to get one man there." 
 
82 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 "You can't go anywhere any more, in a car, a depot, a 
 restaurant, but what you find some fiend with his foul- 
 mouthed oaths ready to spew them out. What an awful 
 place hell will be when it gets all of that bunch down 
 there." 
 
 "Say, boys, if I was on a jury and you could prove to me 
 that a father had stolen a loaf of bread to keep his wife 
 from starving, you could keep me in the room until the 
 ants took me out through the keyhole before I'd stick 
 him. That may not be law, I don't know, but you'll find 
 there is a big streak of humanity in Bill." 
 
 do god's will. 
 
 He told the women that it was not sufficient to be fam- 
 iliar with all the poets and the books of etiquette to get 
 into heaven. The one essential thing is the doing of the 
 will of God, he said. 
 
 Mr. Sunday showed through the story of Lady Anne 
 Erskine of Rome, how the devil and Christ are bidding 
 for their souls — the devil offering beauty, pleasure, ad- 
 ulation and ease; Jesus promising peace, joy and eternal 
 happiness — and it was left to them to choose. 
 
 BILLY'S KEYS TO SUCCESS. 
 
 "Dig the foundation deep, young man; 
 
 Plant firm the outer wall. 
 Build it well what ere you do; 
 Build it straight and strong and true; 
 
 Build it clean and high and broad, 
 
 Build it for the eye of God." 
 
The Famous Evangelist 83 
 
 Have some definite aim in life. Don't drift 'round and 
 'round like a log in a whirlpool. 
 
 Do the best you can and you will win; God could not 
 ask more than that. 
 
 Not only aim high, but muster up enough power to 
 pierce the opposition and to ring the bell. 
 
 Don't try to build character with a whisky bottle, a 
 pack of cards, a libertine life and cigarets. Put the Bible 
 and Jesus Christ in your life instead. 
 
 Be careful what you read. Don't read bad, worthless 
 books. 
 
 Don't assassinate every noble desire that comes to you. 
 
 Get a good introduction of yourself to yourself and find 
 out how little you really know. 
 
 Cut out the cigarets, boys, or they'll cut you out. Just 
 take that from your Uncle Fuller. 
 
 Have the grit of Sampson in your system so that you 
 won't tremble when the lions roar. 
 
 Don't have your veins filled with ice water. Get some 
 pepper, ginger and tabasco sauce into them. 
 
 Be a live wire. Be like the man with the itch; make 
 everybody scratch when they come near you. 
 
 Remember, you're not measured by your size, but by 
 what you are. 
 
 If your pockets are empty, fill your heart with resolu- 
 tions and get into the game. Don't sit on the bleachers 
 and growl. 
 
84 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 You can't determine success by the rattle of the cash 
 register. 
 
 The limbs of the tree of knowledge hang so low that 
 anybody with ambition can reach up and pluck the fruit. 
 
 Cities are whirlpools that whirl you into the jaws of 
 hell. 
 
 A FEW BUNTS TO LIVE STUDENTS. 
 
 It's a sad day for the young man when President Taft's 
 overcoat won't make him a vest, he's so chesty. 
 
 Education is knowing what you want, knowing how to 
 get it, and knowing what to do with it after you get it. 
 
 If you find a fellow on the top of the hill, he never "lit" 
 there; he climbed. 
 
 You can't measure manhood by a tape line around the 
 waist. 
 
 Parents, don't try to make your boy another "you." If 
 God had wanted another "you," he would have made you 
 twins. 
 
 You can't always tell the size of a man by the fuss he 
 makes. A frog makes more noise than a whale. 
 
 We can build universities, tax the people to support 
 them and furnish the best curriculum on God's dirt, but 
 we can't make something out of a nonentity. 
 
 When a girl is seventeen and is introduced to a young 
 man, she asks, "Who is he?" At twenty-two she asks, 
 "What is he?" and at thirty-five she cries, "For God's 
 sake, where is he?" 
 
The Famous Evangelist 85 
 
 If I had lived in Napoleon's day I would have followed 
 his star for he could hit the ball. 
 
 You can hear more curbstone, barbershop and livery 
 stable theology in this city today than ever before. 
 
 All some men are fit for is to make one more when the 
 census count is taken. 
 
 The man who has nothing but money is the poorest man 
 on earth. 
 
 It's the false ideal that strews this world with wrecks. 
 
 SUNDAY'S TRIBUTE TO THE HOLIDAYS. 
 
 "I'm glad we celebrate the Fourth of July, when we can 
 uncork our enthusiasm and shoot firecrackers and eat 
 peanuts and drink red lemonade, for it makes us realize 
 that we are living in the greatest nation that man's eye 
 ever saw or God's hand ever made. I'm glad we have 
 Labor day, when the man who toils can have a holiday of 
 his own. I'm glad we celebrate Easter to commemorate 
 the time when the Son of Man arose in conquering ma- 
 jesty. I'm glad we celebrate Thanksgiving, when we sit 
 at our sumptuously laden tables and recall that as a na- 
 tion we have never gone to bed hungry and that our gran- 
 aries have never been empty, and reflect that we have one 
 state that can raise corn enough to feed us all. America 
 can feed the world. I pay tribute to the man with the din- 
 ner bucket, with bundles of muscle that knot like steel. 
 All these days are days of precious memories, days that 
 
86 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 make the nation strong and great, days that make us bet- 
 ter men and women." 
 
 "If you are well prepared for life you'll never wear 
 out shoe leather hunting for a job, and you'll never be- 
 come blind reading the 'Help wanted' ads." 
 
 "What songs do the people go daffy over today? Listen 
 and I'll tell you." 
 
 "Love your neighbor as yourself, 
 
 But let his wife alone; 
 For if you don't he'll soon get wise, 
 
 And then you'll lose your own." 
 
 And here Sunday named some of the popular songs he 
 said were causing divorces. Among them were: "My 
 Wife's Gone to the Country," "I Love My Wife, But Oh 
 You Kid," and "I'll Trust My Wife With Fifty Men, But 
 With One?— Not On Your Life." 
 
 Sunday pointed out five things which he stated he con- 
 sidered necessary qualifications to win in life: Blood, en- 
 vironment, grit, education and religion. He then added 
 that the first four without the fifth meant nothing at all, 
 and pleaded with his youthful audience to trust in God. 
 
 "It takes more than a mortarboard cap, pipe, peg-top 
 trousers, a cane and your 'rah, rah, rah,' to make a man 
 out of you. It takes character and determination. It pays 
 to feed the Bible to the children," Sunday said. 
 
CQ 
 
The Famous Evangelist 89 
 
 LIVING UP TO ONE'S PROFESSION. 
 
 You can summon all your card-playing, theatre-going 
 church members and they can't drive the devil out of a 
 boy as big as a peanut. 
 
 If you want the world to be better after awhile, then 
 keep the devil out of your boys and girls now. 
 
 I am an "amen" Christian, but I don't shout it any 
 louder than I live it. 
 
 You're killing religion with your dignity today. 
 
 Lots of people would go to hell sure if they died out of 
 Lent season. 
 
 One-half the professing Christians amount to little or 
 nothing as a spiritual force. 
 
 SOME STRAY SHOTS FOR THE GALLERY. 
 
 I'm a graduate of the university of poverty and have 
 taken several post-graduate courses there, too. 
 
 Some of you sing, "I'm standing on the solid rock," 
 through a set of false teeth that you haven't paid for yet. 
 
 Nine-tenths of the church members are bench warmers. 
 
 "Not my will but" — it costs some of you too much to 
 complete the other three words — "Thine be done." That's 
 why your spiritual batting average is only fifteen when it 
 ought to be nine hundred. 
 
 I'd rather see a child in the mouth of a crocodile than 
 to see it dragged down by some immoral influence. 
 
 Go into the church and you'll find most of the bunch 
 nearer the theatre and card party than to Jesus. 
 
90 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 The nearer to Jesus the more elbow room there is; the 
 farther away you find the biggest crowd. 
 
 SOME HOT ONES SHOT AT RANDOM. 
 
 You don't see the "S. R. O." (standing room only) signs 
 in the churches; you have to go to the theatre to see them. 
 
 Show me a church where the minister hasn't any con- 
 cern in a spiritual revival, and I will show you a rich, 
 fashionable, third-rate amusement bureau with religion 
 left out. 
 
 You'll spend more time and money getting a steer 
 ready for a business deal, than you will to start your boys 
 on a safe trip to heaven. 
 
 If you're afraid to take your stand for fear of being 
 ridiculed by the miserable bunch that won't trot square, 
 you ought to be ashamed to call yourself a man. 
 
 If you are in a business that religion hurts, you are a 
 moral pauper and in a mighty dirty, rotten, stinking bus- 
 iness. 
 
 The trouble with a great many men is they have got all 
 their property and religion in their wives' name. 
 
 ONE OF "BILLY" SUNDAY'S CHARACTERISTIC 
 PRAYERS. 
 
 "Well, Lord, we pray Thou will help us. I'm glad, 
 Jesus, that I can stand here today and say that after all 
 these years of trusting in Thee, Thou hast helped me. 
 Help them, God. We beseech Thee to help us here today. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 91 
 
 Help us as we go along from day to day. There'll be 
 troubles, the way will be dark and dreary sometimes. 
 The sun will not always shine, there'll be rain and dark 
 clouds, but they'll soon clear away. It is the work of the 
 devil to make it hard for us. It is the devil's work to make 
 us weak physically, so that it will be hard to bear the 
 strain of God's work. Oh, devil, why do you strike us 
 when we're down? Why do you prey upon our weak- 
 nesses? Why do you do it? You know, devil, you and I 
 are enemies. We always have been. 
 
 "There's no compromise between us. You know, devil, 
 I've never uttered a word, preached a sermon or written 
 a line that I didn't believe was right and that I'll not 
 stand upon. I wouldn't take back a single thing I ever 
 said. And say, devil, if there's anything in my sermons 
 that doesn't hurt you, tell me, and I'll take it out, and 
 Lord, if there's anything in my sermons that doesn't help 
 your work, tell me, and I'll take it out. I've learned to 
 love these people Lord. Oh, their friendship and gener- 
 osity have been wonderful. I never saw such love and 
 kindness, Jesus. I've been overwhelmed by it. And now, 
 today, there may still be some who have not yet taken 
 their stand, and who'll be the first to come down and take 
 me by the hand." 
 
92 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 SOME OF SUNDAY'S BOMBSHELLS. 
 
 If I ever accepted the pastorate of a church I'd buy a 
 round trip ticket. 
 
 But believe me, I'd skin the bunch while I was on the 
 job. 
 
 Too many people desert the prayer meeting for a card 
 party or a Dutch lunch. 
 
 Paul was an evangelist. Wherever he preached they 
 had to call out the cops to protect him. He always had 
 a riot or a revival. 
 
 We need a revival because the churches are critical, 
 cold, blown in the bottle, stamped on the cork — petrified. 
 You can't scald a hog in ice-water. 
 
 The world would sink into hell before the Fourth of 
 July if it had to depend on "ethical" revivals. 
 
 If you want to see this city as God wants it to be you'll 
 help. If you want it to be as hell and the devil wants it, 
 then knock. 
 
 There are two gangs in every church — the rubs and the 
 anti-rubs. 
 
 Some people have sat in their pews so long that they 
 are mildewed. 
 
 There are multitudes in heaven that have crept and 
 crawled out of the quagmire of filth and the cesspools of 
 iniquity and drunkenness. V- ; 
 
 It takes the combined efforts of the Trinity to keep you 
 out of hell. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 93 
 
 I'll do anything on earth to help a sinner. I'll do any- 
 thing in the world to put the devil and all his cohorts in 
 hell. 
 
 Conversion must be effected by the influence of the 
 truth on the mind. 
 
 Truth resisted, loses its power on the mind that resists 
 and each resistance weakens the truth. 
 
 When God begins to show His power, then the devil 
 and all of the demons get busy. 
 
 Religion makes its appeal to your sensibility, not your 
 intellect. 
 
 The way into the kingdom is heart first, not head first. 
 
 God is not an explanation; God is a revelation. 
 
 Most people are converted at revival services. 
 
 If you are thirty and have not been converted, the 
 chances are that if you are not converted now, you will 
 never be converted. 
 
 If it weren't for revivals, just think what hell would be 
 like. 
 
 If you spurn Jesus Christ you are doing the same thing 
 which the Pharisees did. 
 
 Some say a revival is only temporary; so is a bath, but 
 it does you good. 
 
 Trouble with some fellows is that they have their re- 
 ligion and property in their wives' names. You've got 
 to be something more than a brother-in-law to God. 
 
 If God had his way there'd be no saloons. 
 
94 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 The history of the church is a history of revivals; when 
 any preacher talks against revivals, he's a damn scoun- 
 drel. 
 
 What the Church of God needs today is a baptism of 
 horse sense. 
 
 Some people never read the Bible from week-end to 
 week-end. No wonder they are dried up like an Egyptian 
 mummy. 
 
 Religion doesn't affect some poor old sinners any more 
 than shooting peas at the Rock of Gibraltar with a pop 
 gun. 
 
 If I can win a man over to Christianity — to keep a 
 drunkard sober, even just for a year, it's worth every 
 dollar. 
 
 Some of the worst knockers I have in this county are 
 the preachers — sour grapes; that's the only way I can see 
 it. 
 
 You've been so dignified, stiff and worldly until you've 
 grieved the Spirit of God. 
 
 Give the Lord a main line and see what he'll do these 
 days. 
 
 Never saw God bless a stingy gang yet. 
 
 I feel like a shouting Methodist. When you get a Pres- 
 byterian shouting there's something doing. 
 
 I am pleading for the old-fashioned Pentacostal revival. 
 My evangelism is 2,000 years old; as old as the nails in 
 the cross. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 95 
 
 If a city sags morally, the reason is not with God, but 
 with her citizenship. They'd rather have a dirty, rotten 
 town. 
 
 The biggest coward in America today, the biggest cow- 
 ard we have in the profession of Christian religion, who 
 is afraid to come out and declare himself in a campaign 
 like this is the business man. He is afraid of some saloon 
 keeper, some brewer, some gambler and others of that 
 kind — they're afraid they will lose their trade by it, and 
 by the eternal God they ought to be punished before the 
 moon changes. 
 
 I believe you are getting ready to place this town on 
 the map as a place where the name of God and decency 
 are revered. 
 
 Over your head, the devil and the angels of God are 
 locked in a struggle for your soul. 
 
 When you work for Jesus you must expect to be abused. 
 
 Heaven wants to save you, earth to cheat you and hell 
 to damn you. 
 
 You are just as good as you want to be and not a whit 
 better. 
 
 You haven't got money enough in your bank vault to 
 hire me to come here if I didn't care for the welfare of 
 your souls. 
 
 If man wrote the Bible we'd never been told that Noah 
 got drunk. Man would have left such things out, but God 
 didn't. He put everything in whether pleasant or un- 
 pleasant. 
 
96 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 When you swell up like a poisoned pup and think you 
 are complimenting God by being present here tonight, 
 then God's got nothing for you. 
 
 Some of the biggest heathens this side of hell are right 
 here tonight. 
 
 "No trade" is the passport by which 90 per cent of the 
 men are entering the prisons and penitentiaries. 
 
 You may be lower down in the sight of God than the 
 one whom you condemn. 
 
 The devil believes in God and in hell. He's more or- 
 thodox than some preachers I know who preach that 
 there is no hell. 
 
 How can you pray when you look at the throne of God 
 through the bottom of a beer glass. 
 
 Some people pray as though they never expected any- 
 thing and they're not disappointed. 
 
 How can you pray and say "Thy will be done," when 
 you have the booze wagon drive up to your back gate 
 twice every week. 
 
 SUNDAYISMS. 
 
 I wish to God we all could see what a common sense 
 proposition religion really is. 
 
 Graft has a stranglehold on religion today. 
 
 A preacher told me that in a certain town an under- 
 taker came to him and offered a rake-off if he'd throw the 
 funerals his way. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 97 
 
 The church member that rents his property for a saloon 
 is as bad as the saloon keeper himself. 
 
 Something has to be done to save this nation. 
 
 We are trying to apologize for man's condition today 
 on an economic basis. 
 
 A free nation cannot endure if it is dominated by graft- 
 ers, special interests, thieves and crooks. 
 
 The constitution was cradled in prayer. 
 
 You spend a whole lot of money for flowers at the fun- 
 eral of your wife that you might have spent for a hired 
 girl. 
 
 It's a good thing for you I'm not God for about fifteen 
 minutes. I'd keep the undertaker busy unless you squared 
 up. 
 
 I could no more shock some of you folks than I could 
 pour something on a skunk to make it smell sweet. 
 
 It makes no difference whether you kneel before God 
 as a millionaire or a hobo — it's a case of sin and salva- 
 tion. 
 
 I don't care whether you hot-footed it to the Tabernacle 
 tonight or rode in an auto. 
 
 God puts no premium on laziness. You can bank on 
 that — Jesus Christ is the center, circumference and nu- 
 cleus of the Old and New Testament. 
 
 I believe that no man disbelieves in hell unless he finds 
 himself on the straight road to hell. 
 
 I wonder God is doing as well as He is with the bunch 
 He has to work with. 
 
98 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 The new idea in religion says the world is getting bet- 
 ter and better. That's not true. The world is getting 
 worse and worse. 
 
 Don't storm and fuss at God about the plans of re- 
 demption when you don't know beans about a housefly. 
 
 The greatest scientists, the greatest painters, the great- 
 est inventors, the greatest astronomers, have all been 
 Christians. 
 
 If you are a member of a Masonic lodge, give me your 
 hand or take off that badge. Especially do I challenge 
 you if you are a Knight Templar, with your sword drawn 
 in defense of the gospel I am preaching. 
 
 AT A PRAYER MEETING, MR. SUNDAY OFFERED 
 
 THE FOLLOWING PRAYER, PLEADING TO GOD 
 
 TO GIVE HIM STRENGTH TO CARRY ON HIS 
 
 WORK. 
 
 "Oh Jesus, we're not making an excuse. We're not 
 trying to offer an excuse for not doing things as perhaps 
 we might have done. But our voice is hoarse, we feel 
 the strain of his campaign, our health is not the best, and 
 we pray to Thee for more strength with which to battle 
 down the forces of sin and hell. But Jesus, we're will- 
 ing to fight for you, no matter how bad we feel. We'll 
 stick to it, Jesus as long as you will let us. But, Jesus, 
 don't you think for a minute we're trying to give some ex- 
 cuse. We're tired, but on the job, and we want to stick 
 to it, so help us all and give us strength for Your sake. 
 Amen." 
 
The Famous Evangelist 99 
 
 FAITH OF GREAT MEN. 
 
 Washington, in the snow at Valley Forge, knelt down 
 and prayed for victory; Abraham Lincoln got down on 
 his knees at the White House and prayed to God; Burke, 
 Bismarck, Gladstone, Garfield, the immortal and martyred 
 McKinley, Hays and Roosevelt all had faith in God and 
 have prayed to him in times of war or trouble. Cleve- 
 land, Harrison and Woodrow Wilson believe in the Bible. 
 Milton, Longfellow, Shakespeare and all other famous 
 poets drew their inspirations from the Bible; famous ar- 
 tists dipped their brushes into the light of heaven and why 
 can't we all have that same faith? 
 
 BIBLE ABOVE ALL. 
 
 Man has assailed the Bible for ages. All who have un- 
 dertaken the job have found it the biggest one they ever 
 tackled and have been compelled to go to the mat and 
 take the count. But the Bible has withstood the ravages 
 of time, and today it stands buttressed about with the 
 demolished theories of speculators like the lonely light- 
 house on the distant island, the sands about her covered 
 with the bodies of seabirds that have battered their lives 
 out against her light windows. The conflicts of the ages 
 have swayed around this old book and the shores of time 
 have been strewn with broken and demolished theories 
 while the old ship Zion speeds on her way as strong as 
 ever with the banner floating from her mast. 
 
100 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 SUNDAY KNOCKS OUT SOME "HOME" RUNS. 
 On Training Children at Home. 
 
 Blood tells: the time to start training the boy right is 
 seventy-five years before he is born. 
 
 The reason there are so many nickel theatres and hell- 
 holes in the wall is because the home is not made at- 
 tractive enough to retain the boy and girl. 
 
 Of all the devil-inspired sentences this is the limit: 
 "Children should be seen and not heard." 
 
 The biggest mistake we ever made was to take from the 
 teachers the right to lick the kids. 
 
 I believe the downfall of most men and women can be 
 traced to same defect in the home. 
 
 A home must be something more than four walls and a 
 roof. 
 
 The biggest monstrosity God ever looked at is the 
 mother with her children playing about her feet and they 
 not getting an inspiration of Jesus. 
 
 We're neglecting the home for the club, the lodge, the 
 card party, the literary society and the social function. 
 
 If a firm advertised for a bookkeeper it would expect 
 something else than just a man on legs; something else 
 than just a slot machine to shove its salary into every 
 Saturday night. 
 
 UP TO MOTHERS. 
 
 God pity us. If mothers had failed as fathers have, 
 God would have dumped you into hell long ago. 
 
 God bless the women. I believe in women's rights. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 101 
 
 If some of you women had to get to heaven on the tes- 
 timony of your washerwomen, would you make it? 
 
 If you see a kid with its stockings hanging down like the 
 skin on a rhinoceros, and a dirty nose, it don't take a 
 prophet to say, "Ma's gone to the club." 
 
 Outlawism is not settled by the street mob — it is settled 
 in the home. 
 
 I haven't much faith in the woman who talks heaven 
 and makes her home a hell. 
 
 Don't tell the children what you don't mean. 
 
 Don't talk about your neighbors or anybody else. 
 
 Don't hurt your children's self-respect by punishing 
 them in the presence of company. Wait until the com- 
 pany is gone, then dust both hemispheres. 
 
 Don't lie to your children, and then wonder where they 
 learned to lie. 
 
 Don't be a fool, and if you've got plenty of income, 
 overdress your children and send them to school to make 
 the children of some poor, conscientious man dissatisfied 
 because their dad can't give them as nice clothes. 
 
 ELECTRIC FLASHES. 
 
 The young man or woman who is ashamed of his or 
 her father or mother, is a fool and too low down for me 
 to spit on. 
 
 To hear boys cuss you'd think cussing was a part of the 
 school curriculum. 
 
102 Rev. "Billy" Sunday 
 
 The woman who tries to rid herself of the responsibili- 
 ties of maternity, is as red-handed and black-hearted a 
 murderess as she who chokes to death her 12-months old 
 babe. 
 
 Of all the contemptable, triple-extract of hell, God-for- 
 saken, hell-born, infamous, vile, stinking and damnable 
 people, the murderer who disguises under the title of 
 doctor is the worst. 
 
 A gambler, if he wins, is a thief, and if he loses, he's a 
 fool. So he's both a thief and a fool, no matter how you 
 look at it. 
 
 If a church runs a lottery, then it's a thief. 
 
 There are three ways of spreading news, telephone, tel- 
 egraph and tell-a-woman. But that's really an insult, 
 for some of these old he-gossipers have got the women 
 backed off the boards. 
 
 I pity the woman who'll slap Jesus in the face to please 
 some miserable society gang. 
 
 The dance hall has proved to be the biggest graveyard 
 this side of hell for young girls. 
 
 The fellow who lives purely for the gratification of his 
 lust, is so low down he'd have to take an airship to reach 
 hell. 
 
 The most useless woman on God's dirt is the society 
 woman. 
 
 It's a good thing to have money and all it will buy, but 
 it's a better thing to sit down and think whether you've 
 got what money can't buy. 
 
The Famous Evangelist 103 
 
 We're making money by the bucketfuls in this country, 
 and we're going to hell in carload lots and on excursion 
 rates, too. 
 
 Citizens who will not live on a level with the Ten Com- 
 mandments ought to be in the penitentiary. Public 
 opinion does not always judge correctly. 
 
 SUNDAY ON EVOLUTION. 
 
 "The Bible says: 'In the beginning G-O-D, God!' I don't 
 know when that beginning was, but in the beginning God ! 
 whether it was 6,000 years ago or a hundred of millions 
 of years ago, as some cranks now claim, created the 
 heaven and the earth. I don't believe the doctrine of evo- 
 lution. Did this tabernacle evolute? No: common sense 
 will tell you that. Did flowers evolute? If things have 
 evoluted, why haven't they been improved upon during all 
 these years? Flowers found today along the Nile grew 
 there in exactly the same form centuries ago. Have they 
 evoluted? You can put a gold belt around a hog, tie his 
 sides up with ribbons and he'll still squeal for slop. He's 
 the same old hog. Has he evoluted? If you believe 
 human beings evoluted from the ape, all right. If you 
 believe that your great-great-great-great-grandfather was 
 a monkey with a prehensile tail around the limb of a 
 cocoanut tree, all right; but don't connect your monkey 
 ancestors with me. Listen here, I'm going to stick by that 
 book — the Bible if I die the very next instant." 
 

 
 
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