"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
What Evangelist Sunday says to his congregations is sometimes less
significant than what he helps his congregation to say to the world.
Let us take a sample meeting in the Pittsburgh campaign, with the
tremendous deliverance which it made upon the subject of revivals and
conversions.
A "sea of faces" is a petrified phrase, which means nothing to most
readers. Anybody who will stand on the platform behind Billy Sunday at
one of his great tabernacles understands it. More than twenty thousand
faces, all turned expectantly toward one man, confront you. The faces
rather than the hair predominate. There are no hats in sight.
Like the billows along the shore, which may be observed in detail,
the nearer reaches of this human sea are individualized. What a
Madonna-face yonder girl has! See the muscles of that young man's jaw
working, in the intensity of his interest. The old man who is straining
forward, so as not to miss a word, has put a black and calloused hand
behind his ear. That gray-haired woman with the lorgnette and rolls
of false hair started out with the full consciousness that she was a
"somebody": watch her wilt and become merely a tired, heart-hungry old
woman. And the rows and rows of undistinguished commonplace people,
just like the crowds we meet daily in the street cars.
Somehow, though, each seems here engaged in an individual transaction.
A revival meeting accents personality. Twenty or thirty rows down the
big congregation begins to blurr in appearance, and individual faces
are merged in the mass. The host, which is but an agglomeration of
individuals, is impressive. The "sea of faces" is more affecting than
old ocean's expanse.
Where else may one so see "the people"; or fundamental human nature so
expressing itself? One compares these crowds with the lesser throngs
that followed Jesus when he walked the earth, and recalls that "greater
works than these shall they do." There is a sermon in every aspect of
the Billy Sunday meetings.
Curiously, people will reveal more of themselves, be more candid
concerning their inner experiences, in a crowd than when taken one
by one. Thus this congregation is a rare laboratory. Tonight the
evangelist is going to make an experiment upon revivals and their value.
It is common to object to revivals and to revivalists. Billy Sunday's
reply to this is simply unanswerable: he appeals to the people
themselves for evidence. By a show of hands--and he conducts this
experiment in practically every community he visits--he gives a
convincing demonstration that it is by special evangelistic efforts
that most Christians have entered the Church of Christ. By the same
method, he shows that youth is the time to make the great decision.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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