"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
The stuff of which the young man's moral character was made is revealed
by the fact that he deliberately rejected a $500-a-month baseball
contract in order to serve Christ at a personal sacrifice. This
incident reveals the real temper of Sunday, and is to be borne in mind
when discussion is raised concerning the large offerings which are made
to him now in his successful evangelistic work. That act was not the
deed of a money-loving man. If it does not spell consecration, it is
difficult to define what it does mean.
Doubtless there were many who thought this ending of a conspicuous
baseball career an anti-climax, even as the flight of Moses into the
wilderness of Sinai apparently spelled defeat. Out of such defeats and
sacrifices as these grow the victories that best serve the world and
most honor God.
CHAPTER IV
A Curbstone Recruit
You've got to sign your own Declaration of Independence before you can
celebrate your Fourth of July victory.--BILLY SUNDAY.
Nobody this side of heaven can tell to whom the credit belongs for any
great life or great work. But we may be reasonably sure that the unsung
and unknown women of the earth have a large part in every achievement
worth while.
Mrs. Clark, saintly wife of Colonel Clark, the devoted founder of the
Pacific Garden Rescue Mission in Chicago, is one of that host of women
who, like the few who followed Jesus in his earthly ministry, have
served in lowly, inconspicuous ways, doing small tasks from a great
love. Night after night, with a consecration which never flagged, she
labored in the gospel for a motley crowd of men and women, mostly
society's flotsam and jetsam, many of whom found this hospitable
building the last fort this side of destruction.
A single visit to a down-town rescue mission is romantic, picturesque
and somewhat of an adventure--a sort of sanctified slumming trip. Far
different is it to spend night after night, regardless of weather or
personal feelings, in coming to close grips with sin-sodden men and
women, many of them the devil's refuse. A sickening share of the number
are merely seeking shelter or lodging or food: sin's wages are not
sufficient to live upon, and they turn to the mercy of Christianity
for succor. Never to be cast down by unworthiness or ingratitude, to
keep a heart of hope in face of successive failures, and to rejoice
with a shepherd's joy over the one rescued--this is the spirit of the
consecrated rescue-mission worker.
Such a woman was Mrs. Clark, the spiritual mother to a multitude of
redeemed men. Of all the trophies which she has laid at the feet of her
Lord, the redemption of Billy Sunday seems to human eyes the brightest.
For it was this woman who persuaded him to accept Christ as his
Saviour: he whose hand has led perhaps a quarter of a million persons
to the foot of the Cross was himself led thither by this saintly woman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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