"Billy" Sunday, the Man and His Message: With his own words which have won thousands for Christ — John Shaqi
"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
"Years afterwards I said, 'I ought to be a Christian,' and I got on my
knees to pray, and the Lord seemed to touch me on the back and say,
'Bill, you owe that Farmers' Bank fifteen dollars with interest,' and
I said, 'Lord, the bank don't know that I got that fifteen dollars,'
and the Lord said 'I know it'; so I struggled along for years, probably
like some of you, trying to be decent and honest and right some wrong
that was in my life, and every time I got down to pray the Lord would
say, 'Fifteen dollars with interest, Nevada County, Iowa; fifteen
dollars, Bill.' So years afterwards I sent that money back, enclosed
a check, wrote a letter and acknowledged it, and I have the peace of
God from that day to this, and I have never swindled anyone out of a
dollar."
There are other kinds of education besides those which award students a
sheepskin at the end of a stated term. Sunday has no sheepskin--neither
has he the sheep quality which marks the machine-made product of any
form of training. His school has been a diversity of work, where he
came face to face with the actualities of life. He early had to shift
for himself. He learned the priceless lesson of how to work, regardless
of what the particular task might be, whether it was scrubbing floors
(and he was an expert scrubber of floors!), or preaching a sermon
to twenty thousand persons. He had a long hard drill in working
under authority: that is why he is able to exercise authority like
a major-general. Because personally he has experienced, with all of
the sensitiveness of an American small boy, the bitter injustice of
over-work and under-pay under an oppressive task-master, he is a voice
for the toilers of the world. In this same diversified school of
industry he learned the lesson of thoroughness which is now echoed by
every spike in his tabernacle and every gesture in his sermons. Such a
one as he could not have come from a conventional educational course.
It needed this hard school to make such a hardy man.
It was while a youth in Marshalltown, Iowa, playing baseball on the
lots, that Sunday came to his own. Captain A. C. Anson, the famous
leader of the Chicago "White Sox," chanced to see the youth of twenty,
whose phenomenal base-running had made him a local celebrity. It is no
new experience for Sunday to be a center of public interest. He has
known this since boyhood. The local baseball "hero" is as big a figure
in the eyes of his own particular circle as ever a great evangelist
gets to be in the view of the world. Because his ears early became
accustomed to the huzzahs of the crowd, Sunday's head has not been
turned by much of the foolish adulation which has been his since he
became an evangelist.
A level head, a quick eye, and a body which is such a finely trained
instrument that it can meet all drafts upon it, is part of Sunday's
inheritance from his life on the baseball diamond.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account