"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
Listen! Here is an extract from the _Saturday Evening Post_ of November
9, 1907, taken from a paper read by a brewer. You will say that a man
didn't say it: "It appears from these facts that the success of our
business lies in the creation of appetite among the boys. Men who have
formed the habit scarcely ever reform, but they, like others, will die,
and unless there are recruits made to take their places, our coffers
will be empty, and I recommend to you that money spent in the creation
of appetite will return in dollars to your tills after the habit is
formed."
What is your raw material, saloons? American boys. Say, I would not
give one boy for all the distilleries and saloons this side of hell.
And they have to have 2,000,000 boys every generation. And then you
tell me you are a man when you will vote for an institution like that.
What do you want to do, pay taxes in money or in boys?
I feel like an old fellow in Tennessee who made his living by catching
rattlesnakes. He caught one with fourteen rattles and put it in a box
with a glass top. One day when he was sawing wood his little five-year
old boy, Jim, took the lid off and the rattler wriggled out and struck
him in the cheek. He ran to his father and said, "The rattler has bit
me." The father ran and chopped the rattler to pieces, and with his
jackknife he cut a chunk from the boy's cheek and then sucked and
sucked at the wound to draw out the poison. He looked at little Jim,
watched the pupils of his eyes dilate and watched him swell to three
times his normal size, watched his lips become parched and cracked, and
eyes roll, and little Jim gasped and died.
The father took him in his arms, carried him over by the side of the
rattler, got on his knees and said, "O God, I would not give little Jim
for all the rattlers that ever crawled over the Blue Ridge mountains."
And I would not give one boy for every dirty dollar you get from the
hell-soaked liquor business or from every brewery and distillery this
side of hell.
In a Northwest city a preacher sat at his breakfast table one Sunday
morning. The doorbell rang; he answered it; and there stood a little
boy, twelve years of age. He was on crutches, right leg off at the
knee, shivering, and he said, "Please, sir, will you come up to the
jail and talk and pray with papa? He murdered mamma. Papa was good and
kind, but whisky did it, and I have to support my three little sisters.
I sell newspapers and black boots. Will you go up and talk and pray
with papa? And will you come home and be with us when they bring him
back? The governor says we can have his body after they hang him."
The preacher hurried to the jail and talked and prayed with the man. He
had no knowledge of what he had done. He said, "I don't blame the law,
but it breaks my heart to think that my children must be left in a cold
and heartless world. Oh, sir, whisky did it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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