Chapter III: Part 3

Some people never read the Bible from week-end to week-end. No wonder they are dried up like an Egyptian mummy.

Religion doesn’t affect some poor old sinners any more than shooting peas at the Rock of Gibraltar with a pop gun.

If I can win a man over to Christianity—to keep a drunkard sober, even just for a year, it’s worth every dollar.

Some of the worst knockers I have in this county are the preachers—sour grapes; that’s the only way I can see it.

You’ve been so dignified, stiff and worldly until you’ve grieved the Spirit of God.

Give the Lord a main line and see what he’ll do these days.

Never saw God bless a stingy gang yet.

I feel like a shouting Methodist. When you get a Presbyterian shouting there’s something doing.

I am pleading for the old-fashioned Pentacostal revival. My evangelism is 2,000 years old; as old as the nails in the cross.

If a city sags morally, the reason is not with God, but with her citizenship. They’d rather have a dirty, rotten town.

The biggest coward in America today, the biggest coward we have in the profession of Christian religion, who is afraid to come out and declare himself in a campaign like this is the business man. He is afraid of some saloon keeper, some brewer, some gambler and others of that kind—they’re afraid they will lose their trade by it, and by the eternal God they ought to be punished before the moon changes.

I believe you are getting ready to place this town on the map as a place where the name of God and decency are revered.

Over your head, the devil and the angels of God are locked in a struggle for your soul.

When you work for Jesus you must expect to be abused.

Heaven wants to save you, earth to cheat you and hell to damn you.

You are just as good as you want to be and not a whit better.

You haven’t got money enough in your bank vault to hire me to come here if I didn’t care for the welfare of your souls.

If man wrote the Bible we’d never been told that Noah got drunk. Man would have left such things out, but God didn’t. He put everything in whether pleasant or unpleasant.

When you swell up like a poisoned pup and think you are complimenting God by being present here tonight, then God’s got nothing for you.

Some of the biggest heathens this side of hell are right here tonight.

“No trade” is the passport by which 90 per cent of the men are entering the prisons and penitentiaries.

You may be lower down in the sight of God than the one whom you condemn.

The devil believes in God and in hell. He’s more orthodox than some preachers I know who preach that there is no hell.

How can you pray when you look at the throne of God through the bottom of a beer glass.

Some people pray as though they never expected anything and they’re not disappointed.

How can you pray and say “Thy will be done,” when you have the booze wagon drive up to your back gate twice every week.

SUNDAYISMS.

I wish to God we all could see what a common sense proposition religion really is.

Graft has a stranglehold on religion today.

A preacher told me that in a certain town an undertaker came to him and offered a rake-off if he’d throw the funerals his way.

The church member that rents his property for a saloon is as bad as the saloon keeper himself.

Something has to be done to save this nation.

We are trying to apologize for man’s condition today on an economic basis.

A free nation cannot endure if it is dominated by grafters, special interests, thieves and crooks.

The constitution was cradled in prayer.

You spend a whole lot of money for flowers at the funeral of your wife that you might have spent for a hired girl.

It’s a good thing for you I’m not God for about fifteen minutes. I’d keep the undertaker busy unless you squared up.

I could no more shock some of you folks than I could pour something on a skunk to make it smell sweet.

It makes no difference whether you kneel before God as a millionaire or a hobo—it’s a case of sin and salvation.

I don’t care whether you hot-footed it to the Tabernacle tonight or rode in an auto.

God puts no premium on laziness. You can bank on that—Jesus Christ is the center, circumference and nucleus of the Old and New Testament.

I believe that no man disbelieves in hell unless he finds himself on the straight road to hell.

I wonder God is doing as well as He is with the bunch He has to work with.

The new idea in religion says the world is getting better and better. That’s not true. The world is getting worse and worse.

Don’t storm and fuss at God about the plans of redemption when you don’t know beans about a housefly.

The greatest scientists, the greatest painters, the greatest inventors, the greatest astronomers, have all been Christians.

If you are a member of a Masonic lodge, give me your hand or take off that badge. Especially do I challenge you if you are a Knight Templar, with your sword drawn in defense of the gospel I am preaching.

AT A PRAYER MEETING, MR. SUNDAY OFFERED THE FOLLOWING PRAYER, PLEADING TO GOD TO GIVE HIM STRENGTH TO CARRY ON HIS WORK.

“Oh Jesus, we’re not making an excuse. We’re not trying to offer an excuse for not doing things as perhaps we might have done. But our voice is hoarse, we feel the strain of his campaign, our health is not the best, and we pray to Thee for more strength with which to battle down the forces of sin and hell. But Jesus, we’re willing to fight for you, no matter how bad we feel. We’ll stick to it, Jesus as long as you will let us. But, Jesus, don’t you think for a minute we’re trying to give some excuse. We’re tired, but on the job, and we want to stick to it, so help us all and give us strength for Your sake. Amen.”

FAITH OF GREAT MEN.

Washington, in the snow at Valley Forge, knelt down and prayed for victory; Abraham Lincoln got down on his knees at the White House and prayed to God; Burke, Bismarck, Gladstone, Garfield, the immortal and martyred McKinley, Hays and Roosevelt all had faith in God and have prayed to him in times of war or trouble. Cleveland, Harrison and Woodrow Wilson believe in the Bible. Milton, Longfellow, Shakespeare and all other famous poets drew their inspirations from the Bible; famous artists dipped their brushes into the light of heaven and why can’t we all have that same faith?

BIBLE ABOVE ALL.

Man has assailed the Bible for ages. All who have undertaken the job have found it the biggest one they ever tackled and have been compelled to go to the mat and take the count. But the Bible has withstood the ravages of time, and today it stands buttressed about with the demolished theories of speculators like the lonely light-house on the distant island, the sands about her covered with the bodies of seabirds that have battered their lives out against her light windows. The conflicts of the ages have swayed around this old book and the shores of time have been strewn with broken and demolished theories while the old ship Zion speeds on her way as strong as ever with the banner floating from her mast.

SUNDAY KNOCKS OUT SOME “HOME” RUNS.

_On Training Children at Home._

Blood tells: the time to start training the boy right is seventy-five years before he is born.

The reason there are so many nickel theatres and hell-holes in the wall is because the home is not made attractive enough to retain the boy and girl.

Of all the devil-inspired sentences this is the limit: “Children should be seen and not heard.”

The biggest mistake we ever made was to take from the teachers the right to lick the kids.

I believe the downfall of most men and women can be traced to some defect in the home.

A home must be something more than four walls and a roof.

The biggest monstrosity God ever looked at is the mother with her children playing about her feet and they not getting an inspiration of Jesus.

We’re neglecting the home for the club, the lodge, the card party, the literary society and the social function.

If a firm advertised for a bookkeeper it would expect something else than just a man on legs; something else than just a slot machine to shove its salary into every Saturday night.

UP TO MOTHERS.

God pity us. If mothers had failed as fathers have, God would have dumped you into hell long ago.

God bless the women. I believe in women’s rights.

If some of you women had to get to heaven on the testimony of your washerwomen, would you make it?

If you see a kid with its stockings hanging down like the skin on a rhinoceros, and a dirty nose, it don’t take a prophet to say, “Ma’s gone to the club.”

Outlawism is not settled by the street mob—it is settled in the home.

I haven’t much faith in the woman who talks heaven and makes her home a hell.

Don’t tell the children what you don’t mean.

Don’t talk about your neighbors or anybody else.

Don’t hurt your children’s self-respect by punishing them in the presence of company. Wait until the company is gone, then dust both hemispheres.

Don’t lie to your children, and then wonder where they learned to lie.

Don’t be a fool, and if you’ve got plenty of income, overdress your children and send them to school to make the children of some poor, conscientious man dissatisfied because their dad can’t give them as nice clothes.

ELECTRIC FLASHES.

The young man or woman who is ashamed of his or her father or mother, is a fool and too low down for me to spit on.

To hear boys cuss you’d think cussing was a part of the school curriculum.

The woman who tries to rid herself of the responsibilities of maternity, is as red-handed and black-hearted a murderess as she who chokes to death her 12-months old babe.

Of all the contemptable, triple-extract of hell, God-forsaken, hell-born, infamous, vile, stinking and damnable people, the murderer who disguises under the title of doctor is the worst.

A gambler, if he wins, is a thief, and if he loses, he’s a fool. So he’s both a thief and a fool, no matter how you look at it.

If a church runs a lottery, then it’s a thief.

There are three ways of spreading news, telephone, telegraph and tell-a-woman. But that’s really an insult, for some of these old he-gossipers have got the women backed off the boards.

I pity the woman who’ll slap Jesus in the face to please some miserable society gang.

The dance hall has proved to be the biggest graveyard this side of hell for young girls.

The fellow who lives purely for the gratification of his lust, is so low down he’d have to take an airship to reach hell.

The most useless woman on God’s dirt is the society woman.

It’s a good thing to have money and all it will buy, but it’s a better thing to sit down and think whether you’ve got what money can’t buy.

We’re making money by the bucketfuls in this country, and we’re going to hell in carload lots and on excursion rates, too.

Citizens who will not live on a level with the Ten Commandments ought to be in the penitentiary. Public opinion does not always judge correctly.

SUNDAY ON EVOLUTION.

“The Bible says: ‘In the beginning G-O-D, God!’ I don’t know when that beginning was, but in the beginning God! whether it was 6,000 years ago or a hundred of millions of years ago, as some cranks now claim, created the heaven and the earth. I don’t believe the doctrine of evolution. Did this tabernacle evolute? No: common sense will tell you that. Did flowers evolute? If things have evoluted, why haven’t they been improved upon during all these years? Flowers found today along the Nile grew there in exactly the same form centuries ago. Have they evoluted? You can put a gold belt around a hog, tie his sides up with ribbons and he’ll still squeal for slop. He’s the same old hog. Has he evoluted? If you believe human beings evoluted from the ape, all right. If you believe that your great-great-great-great-grandfather was a monkey with a prehensile tail around the limb of a cocoanut tree, all right; but don’t connect your monkey ancestors with me. Listen here, I’m going to stick by that book—the Bible if I die the very next instant.”