"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
So Naaman goes into the muddy water and the water begins to lubricate
those old sores, and it begins to itch, and he says, "Gee whizz," like
many a young fellow today who goes to a church and just gets religion
enough to make him feel miserable. An old fellow in Iowa came to me and
said, "Bill, I have been to hear you every night and you have done me
a lot of good. I used to cuss my old woman every day and I ain't cussed
her for a week. I'm getting a little better."
The Joy of Religion
The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion
to make them miserable. If there is no joy in religion, you have got a
leak in your religion. Some haven't religion enough to pay their debts.
Would that I might have a hook and for every debt that you left unpaid
I might jerk off a piece of clothing. If I did some of you fellows
would have not anything on but a celluloid collar and a pair of socks.
Some of you have not got religion enough to have family prayer. Some
of you people haven't got religion enough to take the beer bottles out
of your cellar and throw them in the alley. You haven't got religion
enough to tell that proprietor of the red light, "No, you can't rent my
house after the first of June;" to tell the saloon-keeper, "You can't
rent my house when your lease runs out"; and I want to tell you that
the man that rents his property to a saloon-keeper is as low-down as
the saloon-keeper. The trouble with you is that you are so taken up
with business, with politics, with making money, with your lodges, and
each and every one is so dependent on the other, that you are scared
to death to come out and live clean cut for God Almighty. You have not
fully surrendered yourself to God.
The matter with a lot of you people is that your religion is not
complete. You have not yielded yourself to God and gone out for God
and God's truth. Why, I am almost afraid to make some folks laugh for
fear that I will be arrested for breaking a costly piece of antique
bric-à-brac. You would think that if some people laughed it would break
their faces. To see some people you would think that the essential of
orthodox Christianity is to have a face so long you could eat oatmeal
out of the end of a gas pipe. Sister, that is not religion; I want to
tell you that the happy, smiling, sunny-faced religion will win more
people to Jesus Christ than the miserable old grim-faced kind will in
ten years. I pity anyone who can't laugh. There must be something wrong
with their religion or their liver. The devil can't laugh.
So I can see Naaman as he goes into the water and dips seven times, and
lo! his flesh becomes again as a little child's. When? When he did what
God told him to do.
I have seen men come down the aisle by the thousands, men who have
drank whisky enough to sink a ship. I have seen fallen women come to
the front by scores and hundreds, and I have seen them go away cleansed
by the power of God. When? When they did just what God told them to do.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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