Part 3

We’ve got too many preachers breaking their necks, trying to please the worldly gang that is going to increase their salaries.

Nobody nowadays is afraid of God; the picture of Jesus Christ is fading from the world; the word of God has been discarded as being too crude for this enlightened age.

Many churches are nothing but social clearance houses.

There are lots of people in this city who would rather have their friends go to hell than be saved by my preaching.

The best Christian will be the best citizen everywhere.

An employer is a thief if he takes advantage of his employe by not paying him for the honest work he does; the employe is a thief who does not give honest toil for honest wages.

Public opinion is not always competent to judge whether or not a man is worthy.

BELSHAZZAR’S FEAST.

_What the Bible says._

“Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords and drank wine before the thousands.

“Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king and his princes, his wives and his concubines might drink therein.

“They drank wine and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood and of stone.

“In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace; and the king saw part of the hand that wrote.

“Then the king’s countenance was changed and his thoughts troubled him so that the joints of his loins were loosed and his knees smote one against another.

“The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans and the soothsayers.

“Then came the king’s wise men; but they could not read the writing nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof.

“Then was Daniel brought before the king, and the king said: “If thou canst read the writing thou shalt be clothed with scarlet and have a chain of gold about thy neck and shalt be third ruler of the kingdom.”

“Then Daniel answered and said before the king, “Let thy gifts be to thyself and give thy rewards to another; yet I will read the writing and make known unto the king the interpretation.”

“And this is the writing that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.”

BELSHAZZAR’S FEAST.

_“Billy” Sunday’s Version._

Belshazzar’s feast was no common beer, pretzel and dill pickle blow-out, but the real goods. Nude and lewd women wormed and wriggled their way through the banquet hall. The bunch began to get soused and the revelry increased.

Then came the obscene song, the drunken hiccough, the slavering lip, and the guffaw of idiotic laugh bursting from the lips of princes, flushed, reeling and bloodshot, while mingled with it all were the hurrahs for great Belshazzar.

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.