Burning Truths from Billy’s Bat

(The World’s Famous Evangelist)

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 furniture polisher, driver of a hearse, member of a volunteer hose company, railroad fireman, ball player, student and now evangelist.

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“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 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 trombones—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.”

“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.

I went over to the west side of Chicago where I was keeping company with a girl now my wife, Nell. I married Nell. She was a Presbyterian, so I am a Presbyterian. 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 practice. 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 fellow 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, Johnson, Marquard, but I do not believe any one of them stood in the class with Clarkson.

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.”

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 under the feet of a team of horses. I jumped up with the ball in my hand. Up came Tom Johnson. He was afterwards Mayor of Cleveland. “Here is $10.00 Bill; buy yourself 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 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 Captain 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 weighing 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 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: “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 nothing 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 universe 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 I win the game of life, or did they?

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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.

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.

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“Somebody says: ‘But you don’t know my circumstances, 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 Benjamin Franklin walking the streets of Philadelphia gnawing 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 wrong, so loud it will stagger hell. Or “yes” so loud it will gladden the angels of God. Put up your dukes and fight the devil.”

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“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.’”

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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 oldest child by the hand, and on until the youngest and all with happiness in their hearts and songs on their lips, start for heaven.

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.

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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 conversation 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.

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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 prudence. They are flattered and cajoled, and they look upon 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 seasoned foods which some rich husband can buy and cram into their gullets. And they lend their presence to vaudeville, and have vaudeville performances in their homes, and their children are allowed to witness performances which border on the obscene. And they indulge in gambling to such an extent, poker, roulette wheels, champagne, and all the whole long list, my friends, and they are more familiar with poker chips and gambling devices and frivolity 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 fighting 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.’”

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“There is a mighty power in a mother’s kiss—inspiration, 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.”

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“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 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.”

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“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 bouquet, 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 pouring 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 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, shouting that the only thing he had found that would retain its fragrance from earth to heaven is a mother’s love.”

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“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 pleasure 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. Being a king, an emperor or a president is mighty small business compared to being a mother, or the teacher of 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. Commanding an army is little more than sweeping a street or pounding an anvil compared with the training of a boy or girl.”

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“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.”

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“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. 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.”

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“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 reaching 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.”

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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 because 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.

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 contact 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!

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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.

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.

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“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 consumptive 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. Society has just about put maternity out of fashion. When you stop to consider the average society woman I do not think maternity has lost anything. The 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 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!”

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“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 womanhood. 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.”

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“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 men. I think she is the purest on earth or the most degraded 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 something 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 womanhood.”

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“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 surest 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.”

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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 Come” 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 Come” 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 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 infidel.

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.

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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.

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.

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“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 silver, 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.

“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.”

---

Too many of you kneel at the communion table and then beat down the wages of your employes so their children 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.

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.

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.

---

Lots of churches will sidestep the man with two dollars, 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 preaching.

The best Christian will be the best citizen everywhere.

An employer is a thief if he takes advantage of his employe by not paying him for the honest work he does; 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 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 Nebuchadnezzar 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.

“Then came the king’s wise men; but they could not read the writing nor make known to the king the interpretation 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 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 banquet 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 Belshazzar.

Then from the atmosphere flashed an armless hand which wrote upon the frieze in words that blazed like 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 astrologers, 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, UPHARSIN.”

---

“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 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 reports. 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.”

---

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.

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.

---

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.

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 compromise at the finish in a mouse hole.

---

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 religion, 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 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 government 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 American, 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.”

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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 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.”

---

“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 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.”

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“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 Century Limited or allow himself to be shot to pieces before 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 business, true in society, true in the home, but a perjurer in the sight of God. If you are such a man you are a backslider—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.”

---

“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, pleasure and worldly success. He demonstrated to the club women that, if they had ever known Jesus, they could read their heart’s biography.

“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 thousand times worse.

Suppose every young man in the city who is a moral leper were compelled and impelled by some uncontrollable 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 sorrow 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 personal 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 hurling 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.

I had to say no to fifteen or twenty cities to come here.

The curse of the church is not so much sins of commission 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 Christianity.

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?

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 believing something.

The man who is a Christian has life more abundantly than an infidel.

Christ turned houses of mourning into houses of joy.

You act as though you had reached the apex and written “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 Christian. 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 Christmas.

Do not be deluded to believing that all you need is sincerity 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?

Wherever Jesus’ teachings have gone joy has followed.

Jesus Christ has crowned womanhood and placed garlands 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.

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“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 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 question; 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.”

---

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 company 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.

---

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, 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 disinfected 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 rheumatiz, peritonitis, gout or appendicitis.

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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 imagination enough to see the muddy waters of the river, the slippery bank and the frightened and shivering Naaman, 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 contortions of a man trying to reach the hollow of his back with a brush or sponge.

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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 hobbling 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 chatter 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 spluttering, spitting and choking.

Then Billy told of the spots of leprosy on Naaman beginning to itch. He nearly had every one in the tabernacle scratching arms and legs as he vigorously rubbed 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 exclamation, “Gee, wonder what Mrs. Naaman and the kids will say when I come home and they see me cured.”

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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 wilderness.

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.

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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 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 conservatory of the songs of Solomon, where the Lily of the Valley and the Rose of Sharon and sweet-scented spices perfumed 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 concentrated 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 Matthew, 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.

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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 unclean. Christian science is the worst tommyrot since the Third Century.

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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 preachers. Nowadays your high-critic preachers are wearing out shoe leather and going blind reading the want columns, 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 “yellowest” 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 attendances would be doubled. But of course, when you do 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 employes work themselves to death so that they are too tired to go to church.”

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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.

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.

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“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.”

“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.”

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He told the women that it was not sufficient to be familiar 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, adulation and ease; Jesus promising peace, joy and eternal happiness—and it was left to them to choose.

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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 resolutions and get into the game. Don’t sit on the bleachers and growl.

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.

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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?”

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.

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“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 majesty. I’m glad we celebrate Thanksgiving, when we sit at our sumptuously laden tables and recall that as a nation we have never gone to bed hungry and that our granaries 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 dinner bucket, with bundles of muscle that knot like steel. All these days are days of precious memories, days that make the nation strong and great, days that make us better 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 become blind reading the ‘Help wanted’ ads.”

“What songs do the people go daffy over today? Listen and I’ll tell you.”

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 considered necessary qualifications to win in life: Blood, environment, 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.

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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.

The nearer to Jesus the more elbow room there is; the farther away you find the biggest crowd.

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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 concern 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 business.

The trouble with a great many men is they have got all their property and religion in their wives’ name.

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“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. 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 weaknesses? 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 generosity 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.”

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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 undertaker came to him and offered a rake-off if he’d throw the funerals his way.

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 grafters, special interests, thieves and crooks.

The constitution was cradled in prayer.

You spend a whole lot of money for flowers at the funeral 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 salvation.

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 nucleus 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.

The new idea in religion says the world is getting better and better. That’s not true. The world is getting worse and worse.

Don’t storm and fuss at God about the plans of redemption when you don’t know beans about a housefly.

The greatest scientists, the greatest painters, the greatest 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.

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“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 willing 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 excuse. 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.”

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Man has assailed the Bible for ages. All who have undertaken 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.

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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.

If some of you women had to get to heaven on the testimony 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 company 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.

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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.

The woman who tries to rid herself of the responsibilities 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-forsaken, 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, telegraph 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.

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 Commandments ought to be in the penitentiary. Public opinion does not always judge correctly.

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“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 evolution. 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.”