Chapter II: Part 2

Then from the atmosphere flashed an armless hand which wrote upon the frieze in words that blazed like fire and glistened like gold. Terror froze Belshazzar to the very soul. His countenance changed, his thoughts troubled him so that the joints of his loins were loose and his knees smote together. I tell you old “Bel” was about all in.

In a few moments he hoarsely cried: “Bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans and the soothsayers (we’d call ’em mediums today). And in came the Magi and when they couldn’t decipher the heiroglyphics, Belshazzar cried, “Give ’em the hook.”

Then he sent for Daniel on his mother’s advice.

I can see him say: “Put her there Dan,” as he slapped his hand in Daniel’s, and say, “My maw’s be tellin’ me about you. This bunch has got on my nerves. The four-flushers have been feedin’ and fattenin’ around here and can’t read that writing. If you’ll do it I’ll give you a chain and a ring of gold.”

But Daniel said: “Nothin’ doing on the chain and ring proposition, Bel.” Then Daniel read the writing. “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.”

A REMARKABLE PRAYER.

_Sunday says Devil Growls when 10,000 Confess their Wrongs._

“Oh, Jesus, isn’t this a great spectacle? This must make you smile, Jesus. I know it does me. And devil, this sight must make you growl. I can hear you saying, ‘What’s Bill Sunday doing up there? Look at that crowd of 10,000 people standing because they’re sorry they broke any of God’s commandments. We’ve got to get busy or we’ll lose thousands. Come on all you devils, get out of hell. Get out I say.’

“And Jesus, I’ll bet all those devils are trembling when they look up here, and I’ll bet all the angels in heaven are rejoicing and shouting with joy. I can see mothers and fathers up there saying, ‘Get back, Moses, get back Solomon, get back David, you haven’t got any children down there. Let me look and see if my boy or girl is in that audience. Yes, there she is down in section 27; yes, there is my boy over by post 14; thank God for that.’

“And, oh, Jesus, if any preacher here tonight has got cold feet, help him to stiffen up; give him backbone so he can fight for you. And, Jesus, bless these preachers, thank them for deepening the spirit here tonight. Bless all newspaper boys who are giving us such wonderful reports. Bless all in their offices that we met the other day—all of the clerks, stenographers, printers, pressmen and from the men that own the papers down to the boys that sell the papers on the street.

“And, Jesus, bless this choir, bless the ushers, bless the Chief, the Mayor, the Governor, help the state officials, Jesus. And bless this old state and this city and may we have a rousing time here. Guide us and keep us for your sake, Jesus, amen, amen, amen and amen. Good night.”

“HITTING THE SAWDUST TRAIL.”

The meaning “to hit the sawdust trail,” has a beautiful and appropriate meaning. It was first used when Sunday and his party were in the midst of a campaign among the lumbermen on Puget Sound. At the tabernacle at Bellingham, Washington. The floor of the tabernacle was covered with the sawdust from the lumber camp and the lumbermen, when any of their men went down front to speak to Rev. Sunday, called it “Hitting the Trail.”

In the lumber camps in the mountains there is a trail that leads through the fastness of the wooded mountain side covered by wood chips, so as to make it conspicuous by night as well as by day. The woodsmen some time wander far away from camp and are lost in the primeval forest. In their wanderings, if they can “hit the trail,” they are saved, as it leads to the safety and shelter of the camp. So on the pathway of life if you can, “hit the trail,” of God’s mercy through the Lord Jesus Christ you are led to safety. So these rude lumbermen called the giving up of self to God and going down the sawdust isle of the tabernacle—“Hitting the Trail.”

The phrase stuck to the Sunday party ever since and it has a thrilling touch of the wildwood and a meaning that is very appropriate and beautiful when taken in the language of the backwoods.

TRYING TO SERVE GOD AND THE DEVIL.

It would almost be a blessing if a wave of scarlet fever or small-pox could visit some city just after a revival and sweep into heaven thousands who had been converted before they were given a chance to backslide.

Lots of people never get any place to backslide from.

The man who keeps his store open on Sunday is an anarchist. I don’t mean the hotel man or the restaurant proprietor, for some things are an absolute necessity.

You never saw a dancing, card-playing and theatre-gadding church member that amounted to the snap of your finger.

Belonging to a church won’t save you. A thief can be a church member.

There’s too much playing tag with God, and hide-and-seek with the devil nowadays.

There’s too much joining the church today and too little joining Jesus.

Even preachers, elders, deacons and stewards may not be members of the body of Christ, but merely church members.

INCONSISTENT CHURCH MEMBERS.

Don’t start a Christian life and compromise on a pack of cards.

Religion is not for time, money, applause or politics, but for God first, last and all the time.

There never was an honest draft from an honest heart that was refused at the bank window of heaven.

If you worked for God as hard as you do for the devil, you wouldn’t be up against it.

If you’re a backslider, you’re a liar, a perjurer and you’ve broken your marriage vows with God.

Many men may be true to their business, to their lodge and to their wives, but dirty liars to God.

You can graduate from the best university on God’s dirt and make a cold storage plant out of your brain, but without Jesus you aren’t worth a cent.

There is as much connection between some church members and Jesus as there is between a wooden leg and the man that wears it.

Life is just chuck full of half-done things.

CHRISTIANS CAN’T LIVE DOUBLE LIVES.

It don’t make any difference with God whether the one who sins wears a coat or petticoat; plug hat or a hairpin.

This double-standard business is the curse of humanity today. God demands the same standard of purity in man as he does in woman.

There are a lot of lobsters here tonight who, if their wives lived the lives they did, would be down at the court house whining for divorces tomorrow morning.

You can’t cut the week up into seven parts, call six secular and one Sunday when you go to church and listen to a little sermonette, and expect to be saved.

You are a blackguard liar when you say every man and woman have a price. Most men are honest; most women are virtuous. It’s the dishonest man and the woman with no virtue that are in the minority.

Lots of people start on a royal race in life, but compromise at the finish in a mouse hole.

A HIGH TRIBUTE TO THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER OF GEN. LEE.

Billy Sunday paid the following tribute to the Christian character of General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate forces in the Civil War:

“There is no man I so delight to honor as the man who is true. There is no woman I so delight to honor as the woman who is true. There is no one I so abhor as a man or woman whose words are untruth and whose promises are as vapor. I may differ from a man in politics or religion, and if he is living up to his highest ideals, even if I think those ideals wrong, I respect him and I will do my best to clear up his errors and lead him to the sunlit hills of God’s pardon.

“At the beginning of the Civil War General Robert E. Lee said to General Scott that he was a Union man at heart, but that his native state of Virginia had seceded and that as a loyal son he felt he must cast his fortunes with the Confederacy. As the war proceeded, Lee saw the bright hopes of the Confederacy fade, saw its government overturned and broken at his feet. When the end came he was a prematurely old man, his health fled, his fortune gone, his property at Arlington confiscated. At that time of despair there came to him the officers of the Louisiana Lottery company, offering to make him its president.

“‘But, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I don’t know anything about the lottery business.’

“‘That makes no difference,’ they said, ‘we do. We want the use of your name, and we will give you $10,000 a year.’

“General Lee buttoned his coat over his sunken breast, brushed back his gray hair from his forehead, and said: ‘Gentlemen, my good name and my self respect are all that is saved from the wreck, and they are not for sale. You cannot buy Robert E. Lee.’

“My father was a Union soldier. I am a loyal American, but I say that Robert E. Lee was one of the noblest Christian characters this country has ever produced, and that Stonewall Jackson was another.”

EXPOSES FALSEHOOD OF “GRAFT” STORIES.

Billy Sunday takes frequent raps at those who knock him and accuse him of grafting. Wednesday night he became reminiscent for a few minutes and referred to his turning down big offers from baseball teams, to become a Y. M. C. A. secretary.

“When I turned down offers of $500.00 and even $1,000 a month from ball teams, to make $83.00 as a Y. M. C. A. secretary, they never called me a grafter, and in those days we were up against hard times,” he said. “For six months I got no salary; I went hungry at noon and walked to and from work to save car fare.

“Then there’s another lie they tell about me and it is that I own a saloon in Chicago. I don’t know what all they tell about me, but I do not and never did own a single piece of property in Chicago.”

WOMEN HAVE THE SAME RIGHTS AS MEN.

“God has marked out the same path for men and for women to follow. Away with the hellish doctrine of a double standard of living in this twentieth century. It makes no difference whether the one who sins wears a plug hat or a petticoat. Young fellow, your sister has as good a right to live as you do, as you have. She has as good a right to walk up street smoking a cigaret as you have. Your wife has as good a right to line up before a bar and put 10 beers under her belt as you have. She has as good a right to go to the corner grocery in the evening and sit around and put her feet up on the stove and settle the questions of the day, as you have. She has as good a right as you have to walk down street with a half a plug of Lorillard’s sticking out of her mouth and spit enough to drown a jackrabbit as you have. I wouldn’t clean out your old spittoon for you. I’d throw it at your old head. Yes, sir. Mop up your own slop, you old hog.”

SAYS BACKSLIDERS LIKE GROUNDHOGS.

“The invitation is never given at a revival but there are those who will respond to it and for a time will live as Christians should. Then, when the revival is over and the routine of everyday life begins, they slip gradually back into their former ways. They are like the groundhog. When spring comes the groundhog awakes from his winter’s sleep and emerges into the sunlight and lives an active life until the storms of winter come again. Then he crawls into his hole of hibernation and falls into a sleep of months. Oh, it is easy to think of things divine when the revival is on and there is inspiration on every side and the bands are playing and the crowds are marching. These groundhog people have family prayer then, and they attend to their religious duties faithfully, but when the revival is over they begin to relapse into their old ways.”

TRUE TO LODGE; FALSE TO CHRIST.

“They tell me a lodge man will share his last dollar with a needy person, die for the widow or the orphan, put his head on the track ahead of the Twentieth Century Limited or allow himself to be shot to pieces before he would be false to the vows he took amid the scent of the orange blossoms. That sounds like a good man; but there are lots of men who will be true in all these things, and false to Jesus Christ. They will go to church and partake of the communion, then will go out and line up in front of some bar or tell smutty stories. True in business, true in society, true in the home, but a perjurer in the sight of God. If you are such a man you are a backslider—a backslider, sir, and a liar.”

“Girls, you are a fool if you will walk along the street with a fellow who smokes a cigaret as he walks with you. He wouldn’t walk with you if you smoked one.”

SUNDAY ADVISES SOCIETY WOMEN TO SAVE SOULS.

“No doubt you women have a retinue of servants and haven’t dirtied your hands in dishwater for so long that you have forgotten how it feels. But you have souls to save, and don’t wait until just before the undertaker backs up to your door.”

Mr. Sunday took Van Dyke’s sketch, “The Lost Word,” as a theme for his talk. He related how Hermas, the pagan, after accepting Christianity for several years, grew tired of it and sold the Word of Jesus for gold, pleasure and worldly success. He demonstrated to the club women that, if they had ever known Jesus, they could read their heart’s biography.

“Without that word you are nonentities!” said Sunday, “Without that word you are lost. And you can’t find it in society. Do as society wants you to do, and you will not be doing as Jesus wants you to do. If ease, comfort, luxury and the chasing of the phantoms of pleasure have led you away from the old landmarks and moorings, get back, my friends, get back.”

The man that bucks the jackpot until 3 o’clock in the morning is just as good as the church member that plays for a prize.

There’s nothing too hard for God.

If your heart is full of sin you’ll never be satisfied until you get others to sin likewise.

Bad as is physical leprosy, moral leprosy is ten thousand times worse.

Suppose every young man in the city who is a moral leper were compelled and impelled by some uncontrollable impulse to make public the sins you’ve committed.

There’s a day of judgment coming when God will peel off the bark and find many full of wormholes.

Suppose all had glass doors in our hearts. I think we would want stained glass windows, heavy tapestry and thick curtains.

God never made Hell for man. God made Hell for the devil. If you follow the devil you must go to the abode of the devil.

You may live in the most beautiful house and the world passes by your door not knowing of the sadness and sorrow within. But it will out. If the world never finds it out, it’ll meet you at the throne of God.

It’s the men of means, wealth and leisure that support dens of vice.

The devil will let you have an easy time until God asks you to do personal work.

Some people think it is beneath their dignity to do personal work for God.

If it is beneath your dignity to do personal work, then you are above Christ.

If you haven’t got religion enough to smile, there’s a leak in your fountain.

I pity that boy or that girl who has no incentive from a father or mother to be a Christian.

Sissy, that fellow wouldn’t go with you to reform you.

Those most likely to be affected by your sins are those nearest and dearest to you.

Society needs a new division of anathemas. Stop hurling your anathemas at that girl and hurl them at that fellow.

If we only knew the secrets in the hearts and lives of a great many we envy, we would be filled with sadness and sorrow.

I wish to God the church were as afraid of imperfection as it is of perfection.

If the saloon is no place for a boy it’s no place for a man either. You’ll get what’s coming to you, too, before I’m through if you stand with that damnable bunch.

I had to say no to fifteen or twenty cities to come here.

The curse of the church is not so much sins of commission as sins of omission.

Two things I try to do—strengthen the faith and clarify the vision of those that believe; help bring the unsaved to Christ.

Nobody begins to live until they become a Christian. You’re not ready to die unless you’re ready to live.

You can learn something from some politicians—energy and organization.

It won’t be long until the entire State of Iowa is cleared of the liquor traffic. Only twenty counties remain wet and these are going dry with a rapidity almost dazzling.

It’s hard for you to teach the baby how to walk; it’s harder for the baby to learn how to walk.

I never saw a revival movement yet until God’s people fell on their knees and renewed their vows of Christianity.

Personal work is a difficult form of work; more difficult than preachings, singing, attending conventions.

Some things must be faultless to be valuable.

Love is the greatest thing in the world; character the grandest.

You can bury a man, but his character will beat the hearse back from the graveyard.

Don’t your hearts say, you must forsake sin before you can expect pardon?

I will preach with all the power I have against sin, but I will never “bawl” a man out.

God is doing His best to keep men out of hell; men are doing their best to get into hell.

God cannot and will not put the good and bad in the same place.

What did Jesus ever do that was not for the good of humanity?

Jesus Christ never preached a funeral sermon; that was out of his line.

If you are in favor of something Jesus is against, then he does not want you.

Jesus Christ is against all wrong. Are you?

Jesus stands for a square deal all around.

Are you against the saloon? Jesus Christ is.

Jesus Christ was the bravest man who ever lived. I am tired of hearing him referred to as a dough-faced person.

Something is expected of a Godless person that is not of a sinner.

I do not care a rap for your claps or applause unless your acts take the form of living your Christianity.

Without faith there would not be a factory or a bank here.

Nothing was ever accomplished without men first believing something.

The man who is a Christian has life more abundantly than an infidel.

Christ turned houses of mourning into houses of joy.

You act as though you had reached the apex and written “finis” after everything you do. We haven’t learned the a b c’s of what is yet to come in this old world.

There’s a law of gravitation in character as well as in matter.

A saloonkeeper does not enjoy a prayer meeting.

With everything wicked men can do today they try to check religion. Yet religion never will be stopped. You might as well try to dam Niagara Falls with toothpicks.

For twenty-seven and a half years I have been a Christian. I defy the devil or anyone else on earth or in hell to prove that I don’t live what I preach.

A motorman might as well try to run his car up yonder hill by blowing his breath against the front vestibule as to expect salvation without Jesus Christ.

You can’t stop religion by making fun of it.

If it’s wrong for me to hit the booze, it’s wrong for you.

God says, if you give me a chance, old man, I can make you sober and keep you sober.

Take out of this town what Christianity has done for it and its real estate would not be worth ten cents by Christmas.

Do not be deluded to believing that all you need is sincerity of thought. A man may believe he can handle nitro-glycerine with impunity, but if he does he will be slivered into atoms.

I know Jesus made good with me. Has he with you?

Wherever Jesus’ teachings have gone joy has followed.

Jesus Christ has crowned womanhood and placed garlands on her head.

Some men bequeath disease and cravings for drink to their children.

If Paul and Silas had looked as gloomy as some of you coming to the Tabernacle that man in jail would not be liberated yet.

Jesus bled and died to save you. Whosoever will.

I am traveling to heaven according to a time-card, the gospel schedule.

CONSOLATION FOR THE OLD MAIDS.

“Take this from Uncle Fuller: ‘Don’t worry if you don’t marry, there are worse things in the world than being an old maid, and one of them is marrying the wrong man. Love is the divinest gift of God to man and woman. Some of the noblest women in the world have been old maids; they are not old maids, simply ladies-in-waiting, but I tell you girls I would rather be an old maid, with dogs, cats, furniture and bric-a-brac than to be yoked to a profane, cigaret smoking, cursing, whisky-soaked, jug-handle for a husband.’”

TAKES RAP AT GIRLS WHO FLIRT.

“I wish I could make a girl that flirts see herself as others see her. If you make eyes at a man on the street he will pay you back. It means that if you don’t care any more than that for yourself why should he? It takes a whole lot of nerve for a fellow to look a girl in the face and say: ‘Will you be my wife and partner and help me fight the battle during life?’ But I think it means a whole lot more to the girl who has to answer and fight that question; but the fool girl loafs around, waits to be chosen and takes the first chance she gets and seems to think that if they get made one the laws of man can make them two again. The divorce laws are damnable and pernicious.”

DRINKING AND MATRIMONY.

No man ever intended being a drunkard. He started out a moderate drinker.

If any young buck would come and ask to take my daughter out on a midnight joy ride, so help me God, I certainly would land on him.

If these automobiles and carriages could talk, there’d be something doing.

The reason we’ve got so many little whip-poor-will widows nowadays is that they married men to reform them.

Girls, you sell yourselves too cheap. You’ll keep company with some miserable young buck who’ll dodge into a doorway so as not to be embarrassed by the look of recognition from some fallen woman on the street, just to have “steady” company.

SAYS SOCIETY TO BLAME FOR SINNERS.

I say, you card playing women for little prizes such as a dinky cream pitcher or pair of silk hose (maybe you’ve got ’em on now) are responsible for many of the gamblers, because you started ’em.

The purer life for men and women will never come till the girls raise the standard of their company. Then we’ll clean up some of these young bucks around town.

I believe the man who will seduce an innocent young girl and sell her into a life of shame, ought to be shot on the spot.

Society takes no notice of an innocent flirtation. It waits till the mute evidence of a girl’s downfall cannot be concealed, then gasps in horror and turns her out.

Society is responsible for the sins of those you saw starting toward hell and didn’t warn ’em.

Society’s to blame for many a blithering drunkard, for starting him drinking at a fashionable party.

SOME EXTRA SHOTS TO THE OUTFIELD.

If I can send one girl from the red light back to home, mother and God, then I’ll be repaid for having stood all your bitter raillery and your mockery. Mock you old devil, mock.

Gehazi was the first grafter mentioned in the Bible.

If by some power I could yank a string and pull from you all the clothes you are wearing that are not paid for, some of you would have left only a celluloid collar and pair of socks.

Many a fool today, when told what to do to keep out of hell, gets mad at God.

Some fellows are so rotten that they ought to be disinfected for two years and then given a bath in carbolic acid and formaldehyde before they should be allowed to speak to a decent woman.

Christian Scientists, I notice, always answer the call for dinner just as quick as I do.

Don’t condemn your doctor until you try his remedies.

The devil’s no fool. If you get to playing tag with him he’ll touch you on the shoulder, say “tag, you’re it,” and get your goat. He’s never idle. He never gets the rheumatiz, peritonitis, gout or appendicitis.

BILLY’S SKETCH OF LEPER BATHING IN JORDAN.

Billy Sunday’s impersonation of the leper Naaman, entering the waters of the Jordan river to dip seven times, given Thursday night in his sermon on “The Moral Leper,” in the language of the vaudeville press agent, was a “bell-ringer.”

Billy, in the role of Naaman, made things so realistic that his vast audience could almost expand their imagination enough to see the muddy waters of the river, the slippery bank and the frightened and shivering Naaman, endeavoring to bolster up enough courage to plunge in and take his seven dips to be cured of leprosy.

Billy cautiously approached the water’s edge, stuck one toe in to ascertain the temperature of the water, drew it back with a shiver and an “U-u-gh, but that’s cold!” Then he stopped to explain that Naaman was not accustomed to such surroundings, but was used to a porcelain bath tub at home and to a “crooked-handle dingaramus” to rub his back with. With this Billy went through the contortions of a man trying to reach the hollow of his back with a brush or sponge.

SAYS WATER MADE NAAMAN SHIVER.

He told of a big “snake doctor” stinging Naaman on the shoulder, emitting an unearthly screech and slapping one hand to the offended spot. Then he tried the water again. He got part way in, slipped, stubbed his toe and went hobbling about on his left foot, holding the other in both hands as his facial contortions told of Naaman’s pain after getting hurt. He shivered again, let his teeth chatter with a loud “b-r-r-r,” as he again went into the water, pinched his nose shut after taking a long breath, squinted his eyes and “ducked” under the surface, coming up spluttering, spitting and choking.

Then Billy told of the spots of leprosy on Naaman beginning to itch. He nearly had every one in the tabernacle scratching arms and legs as he vigorously rubbed various spots on his body, and scratched ’em. Then he resumed his ducking stunt. After the seventh dip, he told of Naaman’s flesh being covered with the delicate skin of a babe and of him emerging from the river no longer a leper. Here Sunday ended his monologue with the exclamation, “Gee, wonder what Mrs. Naaman and the kids will say when I come home and they see me cured.”

SNAPSHOTS FROM SUNDAY’S SERMONS.

God never owned a slave. All the service you render for God is or should be prompted by gratitude.

It’s hell and damnation that put men and women in the asylums and jails.

If my vehemence and exertions amaze you, your apathy and laziness stagger me.

If God could get possession of all the flesh and blood that belongs to Him, He could create a commotion in this city in 48 hours.

Some people work only with their mouths. But God wants that part of you that’s on the ground as well as in the air.

Christianity and red whiskey don’t stay in the same hide together.

Bill Shakespeare was onto his job when he said “What fools these mortals be.”

The Lord’s having just as bad a time today with the folks here as with the old Jews out there in the wilderness.

It gives me prostration to see how some people do things in this world. It’s no wonder the devil’s got a mortgage on the world and is about ready to foreclose it.

Some churches have 500 in the congregation and about 25 turn out at prayer meeting. Where are the other 475? They have just as much right to be there as the 25.

Faith is like a headlight on a train.

I don’t believe one-half the people in the churches were ever converted or had an experience.

I believe in experimental religion.

Faith is above all other graces; it honors God and brings blessings to the individual.

The average preacher don’t pray much more than five minutes each day; the average churchgoer not more than three minutes.

If we got what was coming to us—it’d be Hell for all of us.

A TRIP THROUGH THE BIBLE WITH BILLY SUNDAY.

_An Example of the Evangelist’s Power in Painting Word Pictures._

Twenty-seven years ago with the Holy Spirit as my guide, I entered at the portico of Geneses and went into the art gallery of the Old Testament, where, on the wall, hung pictures of Enoch, Noah, Jacob, Abraham, Elijah, David, Daniel and other famous prophets of old. Then I passed into the music room of the Psalms, where the spirit swept the keyboard of my nature and brought forth the dirge—like a wail of the weeping prophet, Jeremiah, to the grand exultant strain of the 24th Psalm and where every reed and pipe in God’s great organ of nature seemed to respond to the tuneful harp of David, as he played for King Saul in his melancholy moods.

Next I passed into the business office of Proverbs, then into the chapel of Ecclesiastes, where the voice of the preacher was heard; then over into the conservatory of the songs of Solomon, where the Lily of the Valley and the Rose of Sharon and sweet-scented spices perfumed my life. Then I stepped into the prophetic room and saw through telescopes various stars, some pointing to far-off stars and others to nearby stars, but all concentrated upon the bright and Morning Star which was to rise above the moon-lit hills of Judea, while shepherds guarded their flock by night.

From there I passed into the audience room and caught a vision of the King from the standpoint of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I then went into the Acts of the Apostles, where the Holy Spirit was doing office work in the formation of the Infant Church. From here I went to the correspondence room where Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James and Judah sat at their desks, penning their epistles to the church. Then I passed last of all into the throne room of Revelations and the king sitting high upon his throne.

DEFENDS DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE.

If the Bible were the dreams of men, it would have gone down long ago. But it still stands like a light-house, shining out into the darkness, surrounded by thousands of dead birds, which have battered their brains out, knocking it.

The biggest fool today is the man who sneers at the word of God.

God’s word can’t be overthrown. It is too hard for the tooth of time and will last forever.

God’s plan in the beginning was that man should never die and that no man should ever work. Now, because of sin, white or black, Christian or skeptic, civilized or savage, it’s work for you or over the hills to the poor house.

You can say, if you want to, that your great-great-great-great-grandfather was a monkey with a prehensile tail, playing in the back alley, all right, but you can’t connect me with your monkey ancestors.

Why is it that corn that is fed to chickens makes feathers; that fed to sheep makes wool; that fed to the cow makes milk, and that which you eat goes into brain?

The men who undertake to overthrow the Bible will find the biggest job they ever had on their hands, and a lot of these lobsters have already gone to the mat for the count.

Don’t you feel like brutes; don’t you feel lower than snakes when you raise you voice against the Bible and this campaign, which is working for the influence of Christianity?

You can take all the books of all ages and nations, and take out all that is good and noble in them, and you can’t produce a book which will touch the hem of the Bible, which, is the word of God.

SPIRITUALISM ON THE GRILL.

Spiritualism is of the devil, pure and simple. I have no quarrel with you if you’re a spiritualist, but I have with that damnable doctrine.

Spiritualism is as old as the Egyptian mummies or the sphinx. It had long, gray hair and walked on crutches of decrepitude before Athens or Rome had a single mud hut or Romulus and Remus had been nourished by the wolf. It cannot work in the light, but needs darkness, because its deeds are evil. I never knew a confirmed spiritualist who had a normal physical body. Their religion is unclean. Christian science is the worst tommyrot since the Third Century.

STRAIGHT SHOTS FROM THE SHOULDER.

Bryan, clean as a hound’s tooth—he’s a friend of mine, too—isn’t afraid to put a Bible under his arm and preach the word of God.

The churches used to be daffy over high-critic preachers. Nowadays your high-critic preachers are wearing out shoe leather and going blind reading the want columns, trying to find jobs.

Down in Georgia they were having a dress ball. Huh! Better call it an undress ball.

Religion will do more for the world than it is now, as soon as God gets more than dimes and nickles to work with.

Some ministers are as crazy after sensation as the “yellowest” newspaper that ever came off the press.

Some of you society women are so stuck-up with pride that you can’t lie straight in bed at night.

These long-winded prayers will never get anything for Christ.

In nearly every church there is a little bunch that prays and all the rest are going to the devil.

What Shakespeare says is “literatwah,” but what Bill Sunday says is “vulgwah.”

The worst thing that ever wriggled out of hell is a church scrap.

I believe that some time in the life of every man and woman there will come a time when they will pray.

“I’d like to see the day,” said Sunday, “when there wouldn’t be a store open on Saturday night. I can’t see to save my gizzard why it’s necessary. People can do their shopping early. If they’d close the stores Saturday evening the same as on other days, the church attendances would be doubled. But of course, when you do anything to help humanity, some yellow dog has got to block it. And you employers and proprietors sit around in the churches and wonder why the attendance is so small, when you’re to blame yourself by making your employes work themselves to death so that they are too tired to go to church.”

OTHERS SUFFER FROM YOUR SINS.

“When you come staggering home, cussing right and left and spewing and spitting, your wife suffers, your children suffer, you infernal old devil. Don’t think that you are the only one that suffers. You’re placing a stain on your wife and your children. If you’re a dirty, low-down, filthy, drunken, whisky-soaked bum you’ll affect all with whom you come in contact. If you’re a God-fearing man you will influence all with whom you come in contact. You can’t live by yourself.

“Personal liberty is not personal license. Our forefathers did not fight and die for personal license, but for personal liberty bounded by laws. Personal license is the liberty of a red-handed anarchist. Personal license is the liberty of a burglar, of a seducer, of a raper, of a wolf that wants to remain in a sheep fold, or the fox in a henroost.”

LESSONS FROM STORY OF PILATE.

Pilate was a pliable, plastic, rathole, stand pat, peanut, lunch counter politician of his day.

Pilate sent Jesus to an innocent death to please the machine politicians.

Away with your hell-born, stinking lie of Unitarianism that Jesus was not a good man. He was either the Son of God or a fraud and liar, and I believe Him to be the Son of God.

God keeps no half-way house. It’s either heaven or hell for everyone.

A millionaire will go to hell just as fast as a hobo counting the ties on a railroad, if he doesn’t live true to God.

I challenge all the infidels on the earth to find one flaw in the character of Jesus Christ.

Even if Jesus wasn’t the Son of God I would worship Him anyway, for he is my ideal. I can’t conceive a grander character.

MORAL TRUTHS BILLY GAVE TO MEN.

Lyman Beecher was the father of more brain than any other man.

It’s everybody’s business how you live.

Law stands between you and personal liberty.

I brand that man with a black brand whose iniquities are responsible for the fall of others.

No man lives to himself alone.

No man will argue that sin is a good thing.

It doesn’t take boys long to get on the wrong track.

There are little frizzled top sissies who know more about vice than their gray-haired grandmothers.

As a rule a man wants something better for his children than he had himself.

You would not want your son to live like you, if you are not living right.

A young buck that cusses will crush your daughter’s honor like he would an eggshell.

If you never become religious, men, for God’s sake stop your cussing.

Like produces like in everything.... Blood will tell.

SAYS THESE THREE WILL RUIN CITY.

“No man can be a good husband, no man can be a good father, no man can be a respectable citizen, no man can be a gentleman, and cuss. You can hang out a sign of gentleman, but when you cuss you might as well take it in.

“There are three things which will ruin any town, open license saloons, open stores on the Sabbath day and a dirty, cussing, swearing gang of blacklegs on the streets. Let a town be known for these three things, and these alone, and you could never start a boom half big enough to get one man there.”

“You can’t go anywhere any more, in a car, a depot, a restaurant, but what you find some fiend with his foul-mouthed oaths ready to spew them out. What an awful place hell will be when it gets all of that bunch down there.”

“Say, boys, if I was on a jury and you could prove to me that a father had stolen a loaf of bread to keep his wife from starving, you could keep me in the room until the ants took me out through the keyhole before I’d stick him. That may not be law, I don’t know, but you’ll find there is a big streak of humanity in Bill.”

DO GOD’S WILL.

He told the women that it was not sufficient to be familiar with all the poets and the books of etiquette to get into heaven. The one essential thing is the doing of the will of God, he said.

Mr. Sunday showed through the story of Lady Anne Erskine of Rome, how the devil and Christ are bidding for their souls—the devil offering beauty, pleasure, adulation and ease; Jesus promising peace, joy and eternal happiness—and it was left to them to choose.

BILLY’S KEYS TO SUCCESS.

“Dig the foundation deep, young man;
Plant firm the outer wall.
Build it well what ere you do;
Build it straight and strong and true;
Build it clean and high and broad,
Build it for the eye of God.”

Have some definite aim in life. Don’t drift ’round and ’round like a log in a whirlpool.

Do the best you can and you will win; God could not ask more than that.

Not only aim high, but muster up enough power to pierce the opposition and to ring the bell.

Don’t try to build character with a whisky bottle, a pack of cards, a libertine life and cigarets. Put the Bible and Jesus Christ in your life instead.

Be careful what you read. Don’t read bad, worthless books.

Don’t assassinate every noble desire that comes to you.

Get a good introduction of yourself to yourself and find out how little you really know.

Cut out the cigarets, boys, or they’ll cut you out. Just take that from your Uncle Fuller.

Have the grit of Sampson in your system so that you won’t tremble when the lions roar.

Don’t have your veins filled with ice water. Get some pepper, ginger and tabasco sauce into them.

Be a live wire. Be like the man with the itch; make everybody scratch when they come near you.

Remember, you’re not measured by your size, but by what you are.

If your pockets are empty, fill your heart with resolutions and get into the game. Don’t sit on the bleachers and growl.

You can’t determine success by the rattle of the cash register.

The limbs of the tree of knowledge hang so low that anybody with ambition can reach up and pluck the fruit.

Cities are whirlpools that whirl you into the jaws of hell.

A FEW BUNTS TO LIVE STUDENTS.

It’s a sad day for the young man when President Taft’s overcoat won’t make him a vest, he’s so chesty.

Education is knowing what you want, knowing how to get it, and knowing what to do with it after you get it.

If you find a fellow on the top of the hill, he never “lit” there; he climbed.

You can’t measure manhood by a tape line around the waist.

Parents, don’t try to make your boy another “you.” If God had wanted another “you,” he would have made you twins.

You can’t always tell the size of a man by the fuss he makes. A frog makes more noise than a whale.

We can build universities, tax the people to support them and furnish the best curriculum on God’s dirt, but we can’t make something out of a nonentity.

When a girl is seventeen and is introduced to a young man, she asks, “Who is he?” At twenty-two she asks, “What is he?” and at thirty-five she cries, “For God’s sake, where is he?”

If I had lived in Napoleon’s day I would have followed his star for he could hit the ball.

You can hear more curbstone, barbershop and livery stable theology in this city today than ever before.

All some men are fit for is to make one more when the census count is taken.

The man who has nothing but money is the poorest man on earth.

It’s the false ideal that strews this world with wrecks.

SUNDAY’S TRIBUTE TO THE HOLIDAYS.

“I’m glad we celebrate the Fourth of July, when we can uncork our enthusiasm and shoot firecrackers and eat peanuts and drink red lemonade, for it makes us realize that we are living in the greatest nation that man’s eye ever saw or God’s hand ever made. I’m glad we have Labor day, when the man who toils can have a holiday of his own. I’m glad we celebrate Easter to commemorate the time when the Son of Man arose in conquering majesty. I’m glad we celebrate Thanksgiving, when we sit at our sumptuously laden tables and recall that as a nation we have never gone to bed hungry and that our granaries have never been empty, and reflect that we have one state that can raise corn enough to feed us all. America can feed the world. I pay tribute to the man with the dinner bucket, with bundles of muscle that knot like steel. All these days are days of precious memories, days that make the nation strong and great, days that make us better men and women.”

“If you are well prepared for life you’ll never wear out shoe leather hunting for a job, and you’ll never become blind reading the ‘Help wanted’ ads.”

“What songs do the people go daffy over today? Listen and I’ll tell you.”

“Love your neighbor as yourself,
But let his wife alone;
For if you don’t he’ll soon get wise,
And then you’ll lose your own.”

And here Sunday named some of the popular songs he said were causing divorces. Among them were: “My Wife’s Gone to the Country,” “I Love My Wife, But Oh You Kid,” and “I’ll Trust My Wife With Fifty Men, But With One?—Not On Your Life.”

Sunday pointed out five things which he stated he considered necessary qualifications to win in life: Blood, environment, grit, education and religion. He then added that the first four without the fifth meant nothing at all, and pleaded with his youthful audience to trust in God.

“It takes more than a mortarboard cap, pipe, peg-top trousers, a cane and your ‘rah, rah, rah,’ to make a man out of you. It takes character and determination. It pays to feed the Bible to the children,” Sunday said.

LIVING UP TO ONE’S PROFESSION.

You can summon all your card-playing, theatre-going church members and they can’t drive the devil out of a boy as big as a peanut.

If you want the world to be better after awhile, then keep the devil out of your boys and girls now.

I am an “amen” Christian, but I don’t shout it any louder than I live it.

You’re killing religion with your dignity today.

Lots of people would go to hell sure if they died out of Lent season.

One-half the professing Christians amount to little or nothing as a spiritual force.

SOME STRAY SHOTS FOR THE GALLERY.

I’m a graduate of the university of poverty and have taken several post-graduate courses there, too.

Some of you sing, “I’m standing on the solid rock,” through a set of false teeth that you haven’t paid for yet.

Nine-tenths of the church members are bench warmers.

“Not my will but”—it costs some of you too much to complete the other three words—“Thine be done.” That’s why your spiritual batting average is only fifteen when it ought to be nine hundred.

I’d rather see a child in the mouth of a crocodile than to see it dragged down by some immoral influence.

Go into the church and you’ll find most of the bunch nearer the theatre and card party than to Jesus.

The nearer to Jesus the more elbow room there is; the farther away you find the biggest crowd.

SOME HOT ONES SHOT AT RANDOM.

You don’t see the “S. R. O.” (standing room only) signs in the churches; you have to go to the theatre to see them.

Show me a church where the minister hasn’t any concern in a spiritual revival, and I will show you a rich, fashionable, third-rate amusement bureau with religion left out.

You’ll spend more time and money getting a steer ready for a business deal, than you will to start your boys on a safe trip to heaven.

If you’re afraid to take your stand for fear of being ridiculed by the miserable bunch that won’t trot square, you ought to be ashamed to call yourself a man.

If you are in a business that religion hurts, you are a moral pauper and in a mighty dirty, rotten, stinking business.

The trouble with a great many men is they have got all their property and religion in their wives’ name.

ONE OF “BILLY” SUNDAY’S CHARACTERISTIC PRAYERS.

“Well, Lord, we pray Thou will help us. I’m glad, Jesus, that I can stand here today and say that after all these years of trusting in Thee, Thou hast helped me. Help them, God. We beseech Thee to help us here today. Help us as we go along from day to day. There’ll be troubles, the way will be dark and dreary sometimes. The sun will not always shine, there’ll be rain and dark clouds, but they’ll soon clear away. It is the work of the devil to make it hard for us. It is the devil’s work to make us weak physically, so that it will be hard to bear the strain of God’s work. Oh, devil, why do you strike us when we’re down? Why do you prey upon our weaknesses? Why do you do it? You know, devil, you and I are enemies. We always have been.

“There’s no compromise between us. You know, devil, I’ve never uttered a word, preached a sermon or written a line that I didn’t believe was right and that I’ll not stand upon. I wouldn’t take back a single thing I ever said. And say, devil, if there’s anything in my sermons that doesn’t hurt you, tell me, and I’ll take it out, and Lord, if there’s anything in my sermons that doesn’t help your work, tell me, and I’ll take it out. I’ve learned to love these people Lord. Oh, their friendship and generosity have been wonderful. I never saw such love and kindness, Jesus. I’ve been overwhelmed by it. And now, today, there may still be some who have not yet taken their stand, and who’ll be the first to come down and take me by the hand.”

SOME OF SUNDAY’S BOMBSHELLS.

If I ever accepted the pastorate of a church I’d buy a round trip ticket.

But believe me, I’d skin the bunch while I was on the job.

Too many people desert the prayer meeting for a card party or a Dutch lunch.

Paul was an evangelist. Wherever he preached they had to call out the cops to protect him. He always had a riot or a revival.

We need a revival because the churches are critical, cold, blown in the bottle, stamped on the cork—petrified. You can’t scald a hog in ice-water.

The world would sink into hell before the Fourth of July if it had to depend on “ethical” revivals.

If you want to see this city as God wants it to be you’ll help. If you want it to be as hell and the devil wants it, then knock.

There are two gangs in every church—the rubs and the anti-rubs.

Some people have sat in their pews so long that they are mildewed.

There are multitudes in heaven that have crept and crawled out of the quagmire of filth and the cesspools of iniquity and drunkenness.

It takes the combined efforts of the Trinity to keep you out of hell.

I’ll do anything on earth to help a sinner. I’ll do anything in the world to put the devil and all his cohorts in hell.

Conversion must be effected by the influence of the truth on the mind.

Truth resisted, loses its power on the mind that resists and each resistance weakens the truth.

When God begins to show His power, then the devil and all of the demons get busy.

Religion makes its appeal to your sensibility, not your intellect.

The way into the kingdom is heart first, not head first.

God is not an explanation; God is a revelation.

Most people are converted at revival services.

If you are thirty and have not been converted, the chances are that if you are not converted now, you will never be converted.

If it weren’t for revivals, just think what hell would be like.

If you spurn Jesus Christ you are doing the same thing which the Pharisees did.

Some say a revival is only temporary; so is a bath, but it does you good.

Trouble with some fellows is that they have their religion and property in their wives’ names. You’ve got to be something more than a brother-in-law to God.

If God had his way there’d be no saloons.

The history of the church is a history of revivals; when any preacher talks against revivals, he’s a damn scoundrel.

What the Church of God needs today is a baptism of horse sense.