"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
When we contemplate the relation of that one humble rescue mission in
Chicago, the monument of a business man's consecration to Christ, to
the scores of Sunday Tabernacles over the land; and when we connect the
streams of penitents on the "sawdust trail" with that one young man of
twenty-five going forward up the aisle of the rude mission room, we
realize afresh that God uses many workers to carry on his one work;
and that though Paul may plant and Apollos water, it is God alone who
giveth the increase.
It was one evening in the fall of 1887 that Sunday, with five of his
baseball team mates, sat on the curbstone of Van Buren Street and
listened to the music and testimonies of a band of workers from the
Pacific Garden Rescue Mission. The deeps of sentiment inherited from a
Christian mother, and the memories of a Christian home, were stirred
in the breast of one of the men; and Sunday accepted the invitation of
a worker to visit the mission. Moved by the vital testimonies which he
heard, he went again and again; and at length, after conversation and
prayer with Mrs. Clark, he made the great decision which committed him
to the Christian life.
Sunday's own story of his conversion is one of the most thrilling of
all the evangelist's messages. It is a human document, a leaf in that
great book of Christian evidences which God is still writing day by day.
"Twenty-seven years ago I walked down a street in Chicago in company
with some ball players who were famous in this world--some of them are
dead now--and we went into a saloon. It was Sunday afternoon and we
got tanked up and then went and sat down on a corner. I never go by
that street without thanking God for saving me. It was a vacant lot
at that time. We sat down on a curbing. Across the street a company
of men and women were playing on instruments--horns, flutes and slide
trombones--and the others were singing the gospel hymns that I used to
hear my mother sing back in the log cabin in Iowa and back in the old
church where I used to go to Sunday school.
"And God painted on the canvas of my recollection and memory a vivid
picture of the scenes of other days and other faces.
"Many have long since turned to dust. I sobbed and sobbed and a young
man stepped out and said, 'We are going down to the Pacific Garden
Mission. Won't you come down to the mission? I am sure you will enjoy
it. You can hear drunkards tell how they have been saved and girls tell
how they have been saved from the red-light district.'
"I arose and said to the boys, 'I'm through. I am going to Jesus
Christ. We've come to the parting of the ways,' and I turned my back on
them. Some of them laughed and some of them mocked me; one of them gave
me encouragement; others never said a word.
"Twenty-seven years ago I turned and left that little group on the
corner of State and Madison Streets and walked to the little mission
and fell on my knees and staggered out of sin and into the arms of the
Saviour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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