"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 Lord had a job for me, but I had so much to do,
I said: "You get somebody else--or, wait till I get through.
I don't know how the Lord came out, but he seemed to get along--
But I felt kinda sneakin' like, 'cause I know'd I done him wrong--
One day I needed the Lord, needed him myself--needed him right
away--
And he never answered me at all, but I could hear him say--
Down in my accusin' heart--"Nigger, I'se got too much to do,
You get somebody else, or wait till I get through."
Now when the Lord he have a job for me, I never tries to shirk;
I drops what I have on hand and does the good Lord's work;
And my affairs can run along, or wait till I get through,
Nobody else can do the job that God's marked out for you.'"
"I will tell you many young people are good in the beginning, but they
are like the fellow that was killed by falling off a skyscraper--they
stop too quick. They go one day like a six-cylinder automobile with
her carbureters working; the next day they stroll along like a fellow
walking through a graveyard reading the epitaphs on the tombstones. It
is the false ideals that strew the shores with wrecks, eagerness to
achieve success in realms we can not reach that breeds half the ills
that curse today. One hundred years from tonight what difference will
it make whether you are rich or poor; whether learned or illiterate.
"'It matters little where I was born,
Whether my parents were rich or poor;
Whether they shrunk from the cold world's scorn,
Or lived in pride of wealth secure.
But whether I live an honest man,
And hold my integrity firm in my clutch;
I tell you--my neighbor--as plain as I can,
That matters much.'
"The engineer is bigger than the locomotive, because he runs it.
"Do your best and you will never wear out shoe leather looking for
a job. Do your best, and you will never become blind reading 'Help
Wanted' ads in a newspaper. Be like the fellow that went to college and
tacked the letter V up over his door in his room. He was asked what
that stood for, and he said valedictorian, and he went out carrying the
valedictory with him.
"'If I were a cobbler, best of all cobblers I would be.
If I were a tinker, no tinker beside should mend an old tea
kettle for me.'"
In dealing with the unreality of many preachers, Sunday pictures a
minister as going to the store to buy groceries for his wife, but using
his pulpit manner, his pulpit tone of voice and his pulpit phraseology.
This is so true to life that it convulses every congregation that hears
it. In these few minutes of mimicry the evangelist does more to argue
for reality and genuineness and unprofessionalism on the part of the
clergy than could be accomplished by an hour's lecture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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