"They say to me, 'Bill, you rub the fur the wrong way.' I don't; let the cats turn 'round." Again, "It isn't a good thing to have synonyms for sin. Adultery is adultery, even though you call it affinity." Again, "Paul said he would rather speak five words that were understood than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue. That hits me. I want people to know what I mean, and that's why I try to get down where they live. What do I care if some puff-eyed, dainty little dibbly-dibbly preacher goes tibbly-tibbling around because I use plain Anglo-Saxon words." Two important points are to be considered in connection with Sunday's vigorous vocabulary; the first is that what he says does not sound as bad as it seems in cold type. Often he is incorrectly reported. The constant contention of his friends is that he should be heard before being criticized. The volume of testimony of all the men who have heard him--preachers, professors and purists--is that his addresses which seem shocking when reported are not shocking when heard. On the public square in Scranton a great sign was displayed by the local committee: +------------------------------------+ | BE FAIR! | | | | DON'T JUDGE BILLY SUNDAY UNTIL YOU | | HAVE HEARD HIM YOURSELF. | | | | NO REPORT, VERBAL OR PRINTED, CAN | | DO HIM PERFECT JUSTICE. | +------------------------------------+ One Scranton business man put it this way: "Type is cold; his sermons are hot." Sunday speaks with his eyes, with his gestures and with every muscle of his body; and all this must be taken into account in weighing his words. Assuredly his message in its totality does not shock anybody. That is why preachers sit through his arraignment of a deficient church and ministry and applaud him. They find in his severest utterances a substantial volume of undoubted truth. The second point is that the most vigorous speech is used earliest in an evangelistic campaign. That is one way of stirring up the Church, and of attracting attention to the meetings. Sunday goads Christians to an interest. Apparently he purposely speaks to arouse resentment, if no other form of interest is awakened in his hearers. The latter part of a Sunday campaign is singularly free from his denunciations, from his invective and from his slang. There is a clear method in his procedure, which is always followed in about the same course.