"Billy" Sunday, the Man and His Message: With his own words which have won thousands for ChristEllis, William T. (William Thomas)
Religion
"Billy" Sunday, the Man and His Message: With his own words which have won thousands for Christ
Ellis, William T. (William Thomas)
Baseball players -- United States -- Biography; Evangelists -- United States -- Biography; Sunday, Billy, 1862-1935
Because he preaches both to employers and to employed, Sunday is able
to apply the healing salt of the gospel at the point of contact between
the two. From Columbus it is reported that a number of business men
voluntarily increased the wages of their helpers, especially the women,
because of the evangelist's utterances.
A horse jockey out West reached the core of the matter when he said to
a friend of mine concerning Billy Sunday, "He sets people to thinking
about other people." There you have the genesis and genius and goal of
social service. No other force that operates among men is equal to the
inspirations and inhibitions of the Christian religion in the minds of
individuals. The greatest service that can be done to any community is
to set a considerable proportion of its people to endeavoring honestly
to live out the ideals of Jesus Christ.
It is simply impossible to enumerate anything like a representative
number of incidents of the community value of Billy Sunday's work. They
come from every angle and in the most unexpected ways. A banker, who
is not a member of any church, showed me the other day a letter he had
received from a man who had defrauded him out of a small sum of money
years before. The banker had never known anything about the matter
and did not recall the man's name. What did amaze him, and set him to
showing the letter to all of his friends, was this man's restitution,
accompanied by an outspoken testimony to his new discipleship to Jesus
Christ, upon which he had entered at the inspiration of Billy Sunday.
The imagination is stirred by a contemplation of what these individual
cases of regeneration imply. Consider the homes reunited; consider the
happy firesides that once were the scene of misery; measure, if you
can, the new joy that has come to tens of thousands of lives in the
knowledge that they have given themselves unreservedly to the service
of Jesus Christ.
The dramatic, human side of it strikes one ever and anon. I chanced
to see a young man "hit the trail" at Scranton whose outreachings I
had later opportunity to follow. The young man is the only son of his
parents and the hope of two converging family lines. Grandparents
and parents, uncles and aunts, have pinned all of their expectations
on this one young man. He was a youth of parts and of force and a
personality in the community. When, on the night of which I write, he
came forward up the "sawdust trail" to grasp the evangelist's hand,
his aged grandfather and his mother wept tears of joy. The grandfather
himself also "hit the trail" at the Scranton meetings and has since
spent his time largely in Christian work. It is impossible to say how
this young man's future might have spelled sorrow or joy for the family
circle that had concentrated their hopes on him. But now it is clear
that his conversion has brought to them all a boon such as money could
not have bought nor kings conferred.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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