"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
Sunday would be the last man to expect everybody to approve all that
he says, either in form or in substance. I don't; and I know no other
thinking observer of his meetings who does. No more do I expect him
to approve all that is said in this book. Nevertheless, there remains
the unanswerable rejoinder to all criticism of Evangelist Sunday's
utterances and message: he "delivers the goods." He does arouse
communities to an interest in religion as no other preacher of our
generation. He helps people "get right with God." His campaigns promote
righteousness, diminish wickedness and strengthen the Church.
As samples of the pungent sort of speech with which Sunday's discourses
are flavored I have selected these shakings from his salt-cellar:
Live so that when the final summons comes you will leave something
more behind you than an epitaph on a tombstone or an obituary in a
newspaper.
You can find anything in the average church today, from a humming bird
to a turkey buzzard.
The Lord is not compelled to use theologians. He can take snakes,
sticks or anything else, and use them for the advancement of his
cause.
The Lord may have to pile a coffin on your back before he can get you
to bend it.
Don't throw your ticket away when the train goes into a tunnel. It
will come out the other side.
The safest pilot is not the fellow that wears the biggest hat, but the
man who knows the channels.
If a man goes to hell he ought to be there, or he wouldn't be there.
I am preaching for the age in which I live. I am just recasting my
vocabulary to suit the people of my age instead of Joshua's age.
The Church gives the people what they need; the theater gives them
what they want.
Death-bed repentance is burning the candle of life in the service of
the devil, and then blowing the smoke into the face of God.
Your reputation is what people say about you. Your character is what
God and your wife know about you.
When your heart is breaking you don't want the dancing master or
saloon-keeper. No, you want the preacher.
Don't you know that every bad man in a community strengthens the
devil's mortgage?
Pilate washed his hands. If he had washed his old black heart he would
have been all right.
It takes a big man to see other people succeed without raising a howl.
It's everybody's business how you live.
Bring your repentance down to a spot-cash basis.
I believe that cards and dancing are doing more to dam the spiritual
life of the Church than the grog-shops--though you can't accuse me of
being a friend of that stinking, dirty, rotten, hell-soaked business.
If you took no more care of yourself physically than spiritually,
you'd be just as dried up physically as you are spiritually.
We place too much reliance upon preaching and upon singing, and too
little on the living of those who sit in the pews.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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