"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
Not only the community in which the meetings are being held furnish
these delegations, but the surrounding territory is drawn upon. It
is by no means an unknown thing for a single delegation, numbering
a thousand or fifteen hundred men, to come a distance of fifteen or
twenty-five miles to attend a Sunday Tabernacle service. Almost every
evening there are lines of special cars waiting for these deputations
who have come from afar, with their banners and their badges and their
bands, all bent upon hearing and being heard at the Tabernacle.
The crowd spirit is appealed to by this method. The every-day instinct
of loyalty to one's craft or crowd is aroused. Each delegation
feels its own identity and solidarity, and wants to make as good
a showing as possible. There is considerable wholesome emulation
among the delegations representing the same craft or community. Of
course, the work of making ready the delegation furnishes a topic
for what is literally "shop talk" among working men; and naturally
each group zealously watches the effect of its appearance upon the
great congregation. Delegations get a very good idea of what their
neighbors think of them by the amount of applause with which they are
greeted. Thus when the whole force of a daily newspaper appears in
the Tabernacle its readers cheer vociferously. Every delegation goes
equipped with its own battle cry, and prepared to make as favorable a
showing as possible.
All this is wholesome for the community life. It fosters loyalty in
the varied groups that go to make up our society. Any shop is the
better for its workers, led by their heads of departments and by their
employers, having gone in a solid phalanx to a Tabernacle meeting.
Every incident of that experience becomes an unfailing source of
conversation for long days and weeks to follow.
[Illustration: THE TABERNACLE AT SCRANTON, PENNSYLVANIA, TYPICAL OF
THE AUDITORIUMS THAT ARE ERECTED WHEREVER CAMPAIGNS ARE CONDUCTED.
TO DEADEN SOUND THE FLOOR IS COVERED WITH SAWDUST, WHENCE THE NAME
"SAWDUST TRAIL." TO PREVENT THE POSSIBILITY OF A PANIC, NO BOARD IS
FASTENED WITH MORE THAN TWO NAILS, AND THERE IS A DOOR AT THE END OF
EVERY AISLE.]
Naturally, too, each delegation, delighted with the showing it has
made at the Tabernacle, and with the part it has borne in the meeting,
becomes one more group of partisans for the Billy Sunday campaign. Men
who would not go alone to the Tabernacle, cannot in loyalty well refuse
to stand by their own crowd. So it comes to pass that the delegation
idea penetrates every level and every section of the community. A
shrewder scheme for reaching the last man could scarcely be devised.
Thousands who are impervious to religious appeals quickly respond to
the request that they stand by their shop-mates and associates.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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