Part 2

“There is power enough in a word or act to blight a boy, and through him, curse a community. There is power enough in a word or act to tincture the life of that child so it will become a power to lift the world to Jesus Christ. The mothers will put in motion influences that will either touch heaven or hell. Talk about greatness! Oh, you wait until you reach the mountains of eternity, then read the mothers’ names in God’s hall of fame, and see who they have been in this world. I want to tell you women, fooling away your time hugging and kissing a poodle dog, caressing a Spitz, drinking a society bran mash and a cocktail, and playing cards, is mighty small business to moulding the life of a child.”

“When God gave the office of mother to women it was just like giving you his own right hand. Think of what importance is attached to it! Think of the mother’s power! There is more power in a mother’s hand than in a king’s scepter.”

TOUCHING TRIBUTE TO MOTHER’S LOVE.

“I once read the story of an angel who stole out of heaven and came to this world one bright sunshiny day; roamed through the field, forest, city and hamlet, and as the sun went down, plumed his wings for the return flight. The angel said: ‘Now that my visit is over, before I return I must gather some mementoes of my trip.’ He looked at the beautiful flowers in the garden and said, ‘How lovely and fragrant,’ and plucked the rarest roses, made a bouquet, and said, ‘I see nothing more beautiful and fragrant than these flowers.’ The angel looked further and saw a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked child, and said, ‘That baby is prettier than the flowers; I will take that, too;’ and, looking beyond to the cradle, he saw a mother’s love pouring out over her babe like a gushing spring, and the angel said, ‘The mother’s love is the prettiest thing I have seen; I will take that too.’ And with these three treasures the heavenly messenger winged his flight to the pearly gates, saying: ‘Before I go in I must examine the mementoes of my trip to the earth.’ He looked at the flowers; they had withered. He looked at the baby’s smile; it had faded. He looked at the mother’s love; it shone in all its pristine beauty. Then he threw away the withered flowers, cast aside the faded smile, and with the mother’s love pressed to his breast, swept through the gates into the city, shouting that the only thing he had found that would retain its fragrance from earth to heaven is a mother’s love.”

EVERY CHILD IS A TRUST TO MOTHER.

“Every child is put in a mother’s arms as a trust from God, and she has to answer to God for the way she deals with that child. No mother on God’s earth has any right to raise her children for pleasure. She has no right to send them to dancing school and haunts of sin. You have no right to do those things that will curse your children. That babe is put in your arms to train for the Lord. No mother has any more right to raise her children for pleasure than I have to pick your pockets or throw red pepper in your eyes. She has no more right to do that than a bank cashier has to rifle the vaults and take the savings of the people. One of the worst sins you can commit is to be unfaithful to your trust.”

“The biggest place in the world is that which is being filled by the people who are in close touch with youth. Being a king, an emperor or a president is mighty small business compared to being a mother, or the teacher of children, whether in a public school or in a Sunday school, and they fill places so great that there isn’t an angel in heaven that wouldn’t be glad to give a bushel of diamonds to boot to come down here and take their place. Commanding an army is little more than sweeping a street or pounding an anvil compared with the training of a boy or girl.”

SAYS MEN ARE WHAT MOTHERS MAKE THEM.

“Emerson said: ‘Men are what their mothers make them.’ They are what their mothers make them, and if the mothers of today were true to their trust, then they could send their boys to college and need not be afraid of them coming back infidels, like many of them do. There is no power on earth that can lift to heaven or shove to hell like the touch of a mother’s hand. Everywhere men have been brought back from the valley of the shadow of death simply by the touch of mother’s hand.”

SONGS OF MOTHER SWEETEST TO HEAR.

“There is power in a mother’s song, too. It’s the best music the world ever heard. There is no brass band or pipe organ that can hold a candle to mother’s song, the kind she sings gets tangled up in your heart strings. There would be a disappointment in the music of heaven to me if there were no mothers there to sing. The song of an angel or a seraph would not have much charm for me. What would you care for an angel’s song if there is no mother’s song? The song of a mother is sweeter than that ever sung by minstrel or written by poet. Talk about sonnets! You ought to hear the mother sing when her babe is on her breast, when her heart is filled with emotion. Her voice may not please an artist, but it will please any one who has a heart in him. The songs that have moved the world are not the songs written by the great masters. I think when we reach heaven it will be found that some of the best songs we will sing there will be those we learned at mother’s knee.”

“There is power in a mother’s love. A mother’s love must be like God’s love. How God could ever tell the world that He loved it without a mother’s help has often puzzled me. If the devils in hell ever turned pale, it was the day when mother’s love flamed up for the first time in a woman’s heart. If the devil ever got ‘cold feet,’ it was that day, in my judgment.”

“To teach a child to love the truth and hate a lie, to love purity and hate vice, is greater than inventing a flying machine that will take you to the moon, or to the North pole. Unconsciously, you set in motion influences that will damn or bless the old universe and bring new worlds out of chaos and transform them for God.”

GATHERING UP THE SUNBEAMS.

“If we knew the baby fingers pressed against the window pane, Would be cold and still tomorrow, never trouble us again, Would the bright eyes of our darling catch the frown upon our brow? Would the prints of little fingers vex us then as they do now?

Let us gather up the sunbeams lying all around our path, Let us keep the wheat and roses, casting out the thorns and chaff! We shall find our sweetest comforts in the blessings of today, and With patient hand removing all the briers from our way.”

START CHILDREN RIGHT, ONLY SOLUTION.

“When God wants to throw a world out into space he is much concerned about it. The first mile that world takes settles its course for eternity. When God throws a child out into the world he is mighty anxious that it gets a right start. The Catholics are right when they say: ‘Give us the children until they are ten years old, and we don’t care who has them after that.’ The Catholics are not losing any sleep about losing men and women from their church membership. It is the only church that has ever shown us the only sensible way to reach the masses—that is, by getting hold of the children. That’s the only way on God’s earth you will ever solve the problem of reaching the masses. You get the boys and girls started right and the devil will hang crepe on his door, bank his fires, and hell will be “for rent.”

“There is power in a mother’s smile. See the boy, how he will outdo himself if he knows his mother is watching him, and it makes the hard places easy and the dark places light. A long face and a gloomy look are about the last things you ought to give to your children if you want to inspire and cheer them.”

DANCING WORST OF AMUSEMENTS.

The dance is the hotbed of iniquity, and I denounce it as the rottenest, most hellish, vice-producing institution that ever wriggled from the depths of perdition.

The dance is simply a hugging match set to music.

Dancing is not an innocent amusement. It has caused the downfall of more girls than anything else.

Three-fourths of the fallen women in big cities, fell because of the dance.

You’d just as soon husk corn by moonlight as to dance with your own wife. It’s the other fellow’s wife, some other fellow’s sister that you want to dance with.

A man will wallow and get so low he’ll have to climb a hill to get into hell, then make a bluff at reforming and society takes him in. Then at the dance he’ll breathe promises into the ears of some innocent young girl, gain her confidence and then ruin her.

You say you need exercise and that’s why you dance. All right, then, let women dance with women, and men with men.

The dance brings vice and virtue into such close contact that virtue loses.

Any church that encourages dancing is too low down to deserve the name of church.

If there are variations of hell, the dancer will crack brimstone in the hottest spot.

If there was nothing but card players and dancers in the church, how it would stink and rot!

DECLARES BALLROOM PERMITS LIBERTIES.

You grant men liberties on the ball room floor that if any man attempted in your home and your husband found you at it, he would have no trouble in securing a divorce, and if he shot the man, no jury in the world would convict him for it.

If I found any man hugging Mrs. Sunday as a man does in a dance, I’d clear for action like a battleship, and give him HIS.

Where do you find your most accomplished dancers? In the brothels.

When a girl gets so low that she’ll smoke and drink, she is on the toboggan slide and going to hell fast.

And you fellows like to “sit out” a dance. I always did think it was a foolish proposition to gallop a mile to get a hug.

The round and square dances look alike to me. It doesn’t take very long to cut the corners off.

There was a time in America when the stately cotillion seemed to satisfy, but it is too slow now for the hot blood of the Twentieth Century. The young people must have something that will chase hurdles through their veins.

WHAT BILLY SAID ON MOTHERHOOD.

“I don’t believe there is an angel in heaven that would not come to earth and be honored with motherhood if God would grant them that privilege. Like produces like in animals and in human beings. Blood will tell in horses, sheep, quadruped and in human beings. A consumptive mother will produce a consumptive child, and the same is true of its paternity. It is time to lay aside mock modesty. You can’t trifle with God’s rules. Society has just about put maternity out of fashion. When you stop to consider the average society woman I do not think maternity has lost anything. The child of affluence is turned over to nurses at birth and is fed on prepared foods and knows nothing of its mother. The children of humbler homes are raised by their mothers, instead of being turned over to governesses. These mothers spend their time in bridge parties, gadding, and fondling pet dogs; no wonder men go to the clubs. No man wants to play second fiddle to a bow-legged bulldog. I am sure I would not!”

TOO MANY GIRLS ARE NOT IN LOVE.

“There are too many girls marry for other causes than love. I think ambition, indolence, avarice, laziness and indifference lead more girls to the altar than love. Girls not actuated by the noblest of human feeling, but simply willing to pay the price for a good time. They are not moved by the nobler desires of manhood and womanhood. Maternity is the highest possible gift of God to woman. The up-to-date women pride themselves on their criminal knowledge. Some girls marry for society, some marry for home, some marry for ease, some marry to reform man; he wouldn’t marry you to reform you—you little fool. It is no easier to make a kingly husband out of a beer-soaked, cigaret-smoking specimen of a man than a prostitute can make a queenly wife.”

HIGH SPOTS IN BILLY’S SERMON TO WOMEN.

_Up to Women to Save World._

“Woman lives on a higher plane morally than man. No woman was ever ruined that some brute of a man did not take the initiative. Women have kept themselves purer than men. I believe a good woman is the best thing this side of heaven, and a bad woman the worst thing this side of hell. I think they rise higher and sink lower than men. I think she is the purest on earth or the most degraded on earth. Our homes are on the level with women. Towns are on the level with homes. Nations are on the level with towns. What our women are, the towns will be. What the town is the men will be. The devil and women can damn this world, and Jesus and women can save this world. The womanhood of the world has to settle the destiny of the world. I believe there is something unfinished in the makeup of a girl with the absence of religion. The average girl of today no longer looks forward to motherhood as the crowning glory of womanhood.”

GIVES ADVICE ON PICKING A HUSBAND.

“Say, girls, don’t simper and look silly when you speak about love. There is nothing silly about it although some folks are silly because they are in love; love is the noblest and purest gift to man and womanhood. Don’t let your actions advertise “Man Wanted Quick.” That is the surest way not to get a real one. You might get something with pantaloons on, but that is not a man. Some men should be arrested for going around and being disguised as men. Don’t get excited and try to hurry things along. If the man wants you he’ll come around in his good time; and don’t try to do half the courting. Don’t bestow the love that God gave you to bestow upon a baby on a poodle dog. Dogs are all right in their places, but their place is out in the kennel.”

DON’T LET GIRLS MARRY INFIDELS.

“Don’t teach your girls,—mothers,—that the only thing in the world is to marry. A girl is a big fool to marry an infidel. God says be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers. If she does she will have a hard life as sure as she lives. The offsprings of such marriages either follow in the footsteps of their father, and go to hell, or cling to their mother and are sneered at all their life by their father.”

“THY KINGDOM COME.”

If you really pray “Thy Kingdom Come” you will pray with your hands, feet and money as well as with your voice, every day.

Your religion should mean that you’re going to bring about the conversion of the world before you sit down to breakfast.

The minister who prays with a true appreciation of “Thy Kingdom Come” don’t cater to the small highbrow bunch of his church. He puts the cookies on the bottom shelf.

The man who truly prays “Thy Kingdom Come” won’t slip coppers in the collection plate and then go home with his head up singing “Jesus Paid It All.”

When we really mean what we are praying, the old devil won’t own an inch of this world. We won’t need any penitentiary then, or jails or have any murders, or young girls robbed of their womanhood.

God never meant anybody to offer up a prayer that was measured in square miles.

Some people here are so busy singing about the streets of glory that they forget to sweep the snow off their own streets.

Talk about non-church goers—it makes me sick. Why don’t you talk about the non-going church?

The proof of the pudding is not found in smelling the bag or chewing the strings. There are lots of church members who only smell the bag and chew the rag.

Christianity must be a good thing or why would they try to counterfeit it. You never heard of a counterfeit infidel.

The man who refuses to be a Christian because there are hypocrites in the church is a fool.

You can find about everything in the ordinary church from a humming bird to a turkey buzzard.

I could no more shock some of you fellows than I could pour something on a skunk and make him smell good.

The inconsistency you talk about is in your life, not in the Bible.

Talk to people on business and they’ll talk sense; talk to them on religion and they’ll talk nonsense.

Christianity is the one thing that allows the angel to take hold of you and strangle the animal in you.

HOT SHOTS ON CARDS AND GAMBLING.

If you have a deck of cards and a Bible in your home, throw the deck in the alley. Either throw the cards out and keep the Bible, or throw out the Bible and keep the cards.

What’s the difference between a game of cards and a game of checkers? Just as much difference as between heaven and hell.

It is said nine-tenths of the gamblers are taught in their homes by their mothers, and 80 per cent by Christian people.

I believe that cards and dancing are doing more to damn 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.

I believe more people backslide on account of the social side than on account of the saloon.

Lots of church members have cards on their tables as often as food.

A billiard table is the first cousin to a saloon.

The saloonkeepers and gamblers laugh every time they read the announcement of a euchre or card party in the newspapers, for they know it will only be a question of time until they get the players.

You have no right to find fault with the city officials because they don’t suppress gambling when it is carried on right in your home.

EVANGELIST PUTS TABOO ON THEATER.

The theater, as conducted today, is one of the rottenest institutions outside of hell.

It is upon the charred souls of women that most of the men who are a power in the theatrical world have climbed to their height.

The theater is corrupting, educationally, commercially and morally.

It is almost impossible to find in the theater decency and purity.

The church and the theater have nothing in common.

The only way to reform the theater is to turn it into something else.

The rogue and scoundrelism and man’s infidelity form the groundwork of most plays.

The day is long past when any number of serious-minded citizens look to the theater for inspiration or instruction.

If it were not for the leg shows the theater would go bankrupt.

Booth and Garrick would not allow their own children to go to the theater.

Smiling religion—that’s what we want.

The devil can’t laugh—poor devil.

God enjoys a little fun. He made the parrot, donkey, monkey and some of you folks.

The Lord wants the best; why can’t he have it?

Some men are so rotten and vile they ought to be disinfected and take a bath in carbolic acid and formaldehyde every five minutes.

To see some people you would think that the essentials of Christianity is to have a face so long you could eat oatmeal out of a gas pipe. Religion is not cramp colic.

I want to lift the burden tonight from the heads of unoffending womanhood and hurl it at the heads of offending manhood.

Some people have just enough religion to give them goosepimples. Get in the game. Some of you have just enough religion to get to the edge of life but not faith enough to plunge in.

Don’t find fault with your physician until after you have tried his remedy; don’t find fault with God until you have tried him.

I know some fellows here who are afraid to come to the Tabernacle and do one thing decent before going to Hell. I despise a religious coward.

Society takes no notice of sin at first; it waits for the mute evidences of that sin.

BILLY PUTS TABOO ON WEDDING KNOTS.

Although an ordained minister, in all of his twenty-seven years’ experience as an evangelist, Mr. Sunday has united but one couple in marriage. And that, he declares, he did very reluctantly.

In nearly every city where Billy has a campaign, he is besieged by young men and young women who want him to marry them. But Billy states that there is absolutely nothing doing in that line. He has performed his first and last marriage ceremony, and says he will stick to plain evangelism, and leave the marrying part to other ministers.

EVERY PALACE IS NOT A HOME.

“I have walked and ridden and driven over the hills and through the valleys and looked at your beautiful homes and your spacious lawns and your happy children; you can build your palaces and amass your fortunes; your sideboards can groan beneath the weight of gold and silver, cut glass and hand-painted china; and you can let your little ones play over your Brussels carpet or your Persian or Axminster rugs; and you can have a retinue of servants to wait upon you and do your bidding and satisfy your slightest desire; and you can loll upon your oriental divans and breathe the perfumed air and watch the sparkling water as it spurts from fountains; and you can look at your rare paintings and ransack Europe in order to find the masterpieces; and you can lie there with some one to fan you, and take your afternoon siesta; and you can sit and gormandize upon all the viands that the earth can produce; and your chef may be a Frenchman whose ability would command a princely fortune even in the homes of the crowned heads of Europe.

“But, after all, if you sit behind the tapestry and look out through the plate-glass and wait for the staggering reeking, vomiting, spewing, drink-soaked, drunken sot of a son, or you wait for the coming of the steps of a girl who has lost her virtue, I tell you, all that wealth can bring you will fly and you will think you are sitting in a sepulchre and the rich furniture will simply become the bones of other days and other faces, for nothing can make happy the father or the mother who has a drunken sot of a boy, as many of them have today, and nothing can make happy the father or the mother of a girl who has sold her womanhood for gain. And I tell you, not only should our homes be the center of all that is pure, but all that is cheerful and bright.”

DRAWING THE LINE ON CHRISTIANS.

Too many of you kneel at the communion table and then beat down the wages of your employes so their children go to bed hungry at night.

What God wants is workers and boosters; not knockers and iconoclasts.

Every time a lazy man looks towards heaven, the angels close the door.

It would be a Godsend if the church could smell a little gunpowder. A little persecution would be a good thing to get rid of the parasites and driftwood in the churches.

Enthusiasm for Jesus Christ is like the measles and diphtheria—it’s catching.

You sing “Calvary in Heaven,” and yet you put the wrong figures on the ledger book; you profess brotherly love, and yet slander your neighbor.

There is no use trying to build a revival on a bottle of booze and on skullduggery and intrigue. I’m just trying to clear away the debris now.

A lot of people will wear out ten pair of holdbacks and only one pair of tugs working for God.

Too many churches are frauds, four-flushers, excess baggage and false alarms.

The dude who splutters and splurges and spends his daddy’s dough, is the missing link between man and the monkey.

You say religion causes insanity; I say you’re a liar!

You tell the doctor, who says you need beer for your health that he’s a liar.

Knowledge is of no benefit unless you use it.

The world is being born into sin 20 to 1 faster than into the spirit of God.

Religion doesn’t make anybody mad; it’s hell that makes men mad.

Any fool can criticise; it needs neither brains nor heart to find fault.

Churches in New York City have 50,000 less members today than a year ago.

All denominations are failing to reach the multitude.

You’re either a patriot or a traitor to God’s cause in this revival.

The man with real red blood in his veins scorns the path of roses our modern churches have made to accept Christ.

Criticism is the scales on which you weigh yourself.

THE PREACHERS AND THE LAYMEN.

Lots of churches will sidestep the man with two dollars, but who ever heard of a man with five hundred thousands being turned out of church.

Lots of sermons today are nothing but a book review with a little religion tacked on the end.

A poor sinner couldn’t find Jesus Christ in some of the churches with a searchlight.