"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
Probably Sunday does not know that in all the Oriental, and some
European, languages there is a special form of speech reserved for
royalty; and that it would be an affront to address a king by the same
term as the commoner. The outward signs of this mental attitude of
reverence in prayer are unquestionably lacking in Sunday.
His usual procedure is to begin to pray at the end of a sermon, without
any interval or any prefatory remarks, such as "Let us pray." For an
instant, the crowd does not realize that he is praying. He closes his
eyes and says, "Now Jesus, you know," and so forth, just as he would
say to the chorister, "Rody, what is the name of that delegation?"
Indeed, I have heard him interject just this inquiry into a prayer. Or
he will mention "that Bible class over to my right, near the platform."
He will use the same colloquial figures of speech in a prayer--baseball
phrases, for instance--that he does in his sermons. Sometimes it is
really difficult to tell whether he is addressing the Lord or the
audience.
More direct familiar, childish petitions were never addressed to the
Deity than are heard at the Sunday meetings. They run so counter to
all religious conceptions of a reverential approach to the throne of
grace that one marvels at the charity of the ministers in letting him
go unrebuked. But they say "It's Billy," and so it is. That is the
way the man prays in private, for I have heard him in his own room,
before starting out to preach; and in entirely the same intimate,
unconventional fashion he asks the help of Jesus in his preaching and
in the meetings. But to the prayers themselves:
"O God, help this old world. May the men who have been drunkards be
made better; may the men who beat their wives and curse their children
come to Jesus; may the children who have feared to hear the footsteps
of their father, rejoice again when they see the parent coming up
the steps of the home. Bring the Church up to help the work. Bless
them, Lord. Bless the preachers: bless the officials of the Church
and bless everyone in them. Save the men in the mines. Save the poor
breaker boys as they toil day by day in dangers; save them for their
mothers and fathers and bring them to Jesus. Bless the policemen, the
newspapermen and the men, women and children; the men and girls from
the plants, factories, stores and streets. Go into the stores every
morning and have prayer meetings so that the clerks may hear the Word
of God before they get behind the counters and sell goods to the trade.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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