Billy Sunday

"Then there is music. When you get to heaven you'll find that not all have been preached there. They have been sung there. God pity us when music is not for the glory of God. Some of you will sing for money and for honor, but you won't sing in the church. Much of the church music today is all poppycock and nonsense. Some of these high-priced sopranos get up in church and do a little diaphragm wiggle and make a noise like a horse neighing. I don't wonder the people in the congregation have a hard time of it."

So Sunday sets the city to singing. His sermons are framed in music – and not music that is a performance by some soloist, but music that ministers to his message. His gospel is sung as well as preached. The singing is as essential a part of the service as the sermon. Everybody likes good music, especially of a popular sort. Sunday sees that this taste is gratified.

The Tabernacle music in itself is enough to draw the great throngs which nightly crowd the building. The choir furnishes not only the melodies but also a rare spectacle. This splendid regiment of helpers seated back of the speaker affects both the eyes and the ears of the audiences. Without his choirs Sunday could scarcely conduct his great campaigns. These helpers are all volunteers, and their steadfast loyalty throughout weeks of strenuous meetings in all kinds of weather is a Christian service of the first order.

True, membership in a Sunday choir is in itself an avocation, a social and religious interest that enriches the lives of the choir members. They "belong" to something big and popular. They have new themes for conversation. New acquaintances are made. The associations first formed in the Sunday choir have in many cases continued as the most sacred relations of life. The brightest spot in the monotony of many a young person's life has been his or her membership in the Billy Sunday choir.

The choir also has the advantage of a musical drill and experience which could be secured in no other fashion. All the advantages of trained leadership are given in return for the volunteer service. Incidentally, the choir members know that they are serving their churches and their communities in a deep and far-reaching fashion.

Many visitors to the Sunday Tabernacle are surprised to find that the music is of such fine quality. There is less "religious rag-time" than is commonly associated with the idea of revival meetings. More than a fair half of the music sung is that which holds an established place in the hymnody of all churches.

There is more to the music of a campaign than the volume of singing by the choir, with an occasional solo by the chorister or some chosen person. A variety of ingenious devices are employed to heighten the impression of the music. Thus a common antiphonal effect is obtained by having the choir sing one line of a hymn and the last ten rows of persons in the rear of the Tabernacle sing the answering line. The old hymn "For You I am Praying" is used with electrical effect in this fashion. Part singing is employed in ways that are possible only to such a large chorus as the musical director of the Sunday campaigns has at his command.

A genius for mutuality characterizes the Sunday song services. The audiences are given a share in the music. Not only are they requested to join in the singing, but they are permitted to choose their favorite hymns, and frequently the choir is called upon to listen while the audience sings.

Various delegations are permitted to sing hymns of their own choice. Diversity, and variety and vim seem to be the objective of the musical part of the program. From half an hour to an hour of this varied music introduces each service. When the evangelist himself is ready to preach, the crowd has been worked up into a glow and fervor that make it receptive to his message.

If some stickler for ritual and stateliness objects that these services are entirely too informal, and too much like a political campaign, the partisan of Mr. Sunday will heartily assent. These are great American crowds in their every-day humor. These evangelistic meetings are not regular church services. It has already been made plain that there is no "dim religious light" about the Sunday Tabernacle meetings.

It is a tribute to the comprehensiveness of the Sunday method that they bring together the most representative gatherings imaginable every day under the unadorned rafters of the big wooden shell called the Tabernacle. Shrewdly, the evangelist has made sure of the democratic quality of his congregation. He has succeeded in having the gospel sing its way into the affection and interest of every-day folk.

It is no valid objection to the Sunday music that it is so thoroughly entertaining. The Tabernacle crowds sing, not as a religious duty, but for the sheer joy of singing. One of the commonest remarks heard amid the crowd is "I never expect to hear such singing again till I get to Heaven." It is real Christian ministry to put the melodies of the Gospel into the memories of the multitudes, and to brighten with the songs of salvation the gray days of the burden-bearers of the world. Boys and men on the street whistle Gospel songs. The echoes of Tabernacle music may be heard long after Mr. Sunday has gone from a community in ten thousand kitchens and in the shops and factories and stores of the community. This is the strategy of "the expulsive power of a new affection." These meetings give to Christians a new and jubilant affirmation, instead of a mere defense for their faith. The campaign music carries the campaign message farther than the voice of any man could ever penetrate.

Upon the place of music in the Christian life Sunday says: "For sixteen years there had been no songs in Jerusalem. It must have been a great loss to the Jews, for everywhere we read we find them singing. They sang all the way to the Red Sea, they sang when Jesus was born, they sang at the Last Supper and when Jesus was arisen.

"Song has always been inseparably associated with the advancement of God's word. You'll find when religion is at low ebb the song will cease. Many of the great revivals have been almost entirely song. The great Welsh revival was mostly song. In the movements of Martin Luther, Wesley, Moody and Torrey you will find abundance of song. When a church congregation gets at such low ebb that they can't sing and have to hire a professional choir to sing for them, they haven't got much religion. And some of those choir members are so stuck up they won't sing in a chorus. If I had a bunch like that they'd quit or I would.

"Take the twenty-fourth Psalm, 'Lift up your heads, O ye gates,' and the thirty-third Psalm. They were written by David to be sung in the temple.

"I can imagine his singing them now. They were David's own experiences. Look at them. Now you hear an old lobster get up to give an experience, 'Forty years ago I started forth – .' The same old stereotyped form.

"There's many a life today which has no song. The most popular song for most of you would be,

"'Where is that joy which once I knew,When first I loved the Lord?'"

Right behind you where you left it when you went to that card party; right where you left it when you began to go to the theater; right where you left it when you side-stepped and backslid; right where you left it when you began paying one hundred dollars for a dress and gave twenty-five cents to the Lord; right where you left it when you began to gossip."

CHAPTER XXI

The Prophet and His Own Time

There wouldn't be so many non-church goers if there were not so many non-going churches. – Billy Sunday.

A prophet to his own generation is Billy Sunday. In the speech of today he arraigns the sins of today and seeks to satisfy the needs of today. A man singularly free and fearless, he applies the Gospel to the conditions of the present moment. Knowing life on various levels, he preaches with a definiteness and an appropriateness that echo the prophet Nathan's "Thou art the man." By the very structure of Billy Sunday's mentality it is made difficult for him to be abstract. He has to deal definitely with concrete sins.

Now a pastor would find it difficult to approach, in the ruthless and reckless fashion of Billy Sunday, the shortcomings of his members and neighbors. He has to live with his congregation, year in and year out; but the evangelist is as irresponsible as John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan. He has no affiliations to consider and no consequences to fear, except the Kingdom's welfare. His only concern is for the truth and applicability of his message. He is perfectly heedless about offending hearers. Those well-meaning persons who would compare Billy Sunday with the average pastor should bear this in mind.

A rare gift of satire and scorn and invective and ridicule has been given to Sunday. He has been equipped with powerful weapons which are too often missing from the armory of the average Gospel soldier. His aptitude for puncturing sham is almost without a peer in contemporary life. Few orators in any field have his art of heaping up adjectives to a towering height that overwhelms their objective.

Nor does the Church escape Sunday's plain dealing. He treats vigorously her shortcomings and her imperfections. Usually, the persons who hear the first half dozen or dozen sermons in one of his campaigns are shocked by the reckless way in which the evangelist handles the Church and church members.

Others, forewarned, perceive the psychology of it. It is clear that in Sunday's thinking the purity of the Church is all-important. Complacency with any degree of corruption or inefficiency on her part he would regard as sin. So he unsparingly belabors the Church and her ministry for all the good that they have left undone and all amiss that they have done.

The net result of this is that the evangelist leaves on the minds of the multitudes, to whom the Church has been a negligible quantity, a tremendous impression of her pre-eminent importance. It is true that sometimes, after a Sunday campaign, a few ministers have to leave their churches, because of the new spirit of efficiency and spirituality which he has imparted. They have simply been unable to measure up to the new opportunity. On the whole, however, it is clear that he imparts a new sense of dignity and a new field of leadership to the ministers of the Gospel in the communities he has served. Testimony on this point seems to be conclusive.

Given prophets of today, with the conviction that both Church and social life should square with the teaching of Jesus Christ, and you have revolutionary possibilities for any community. Fair samples of Sunday's treatment of the Church and of society are these:

"There is but one voice from the faithful preacher about the Church – that is she is sick. But we say it in such painless, delicate terms; we work with such tender massage, that she seems to enjoy her invalidism. I'm coming with my scalpel to cut into the old sores and ulcers and drive them out. I feel the pulse and say it's pus temperature. The temperature's high. I'm trying to remove from the Church the putrefying abscess which is boring into its vitals. About four out of every five who have their names on our church records are doing absolutely nothing to bring anybody to Christ and the Church is not a whit better for their having lived in it. Christians are making a great deal of Lent. I believe in Lent. I'll tell you what kind, though. I believe in a Lent that is kept 365 days in the year for Jesus Christ. That is the kind I like to see. Some people will go to hell sure if they die out of the Lenten season. I hate to see a man get enough religion in forty days to last him and then live like the devil the rest of the year. If you can reform for forty days you can reform for the year.

"The Jewish Church ran up against this snag and was wrecked. The Roman Catholic Church ran up against it and split. All of the churches today are fast approaching the same doom.

"The dangers to the Church, as I see them, are assimilation with the world, the neglect of the poor, substitution of forms for godliness; and all summed up mean a fashionable church with religion left out. Formerly Methodists used to attend class meetings. Now these are abandoned in many churches. Formerly shouts of praise were heard. Now such holy demonstration is considered undignified. Once in a while some good, godly sister forgets herself and pipes out in a falsetto, apologetic sort of a key: 'Amen, Brother Sunday.' I don't expect any of those ossified, petrified, dyed-in-the-wool, stamped-on-the-cork Presbyterians or Episcopalians to shout, 'Amen,' but it would do you good and loosen you up. It won't hurt you a bit. You are hidebound. I think about half the professing Christians amount to nothing as a spiritual force. They have a kind regard for religion, but as for evangelical service, as for a cheerful spirit of self-denial, as for prevailing prayer, willingness to strike hard blows against the devil, they are almost a failure. I read the other day of a shell which had been invented which is hurled on a ship and when it explodes it puts all on board asleep. I sometimes think one of these shells has hit the Church.

"What are some people going to do about the Judgment? Some are just in life for the money they get out of it. They will tell you north is south if they think they can get a dollar by it. They float get-rich-quick schemes and anything for money. I haven't a word to say about a man who has earned his money honestly, uses it to provide for his family and spends the surplus for good. You know there is a bunch of mutts that sit around on stools and whittle and spit and cuss and damn and say that every man who has an honest dollar ought to divide it with them, while others get out and get busy and work and sweat and toil and prepare to leave something for their wives and families when they die, and spend the rest for good.

"Old Commodore Vanderbilt had a fortune of over $200,000,000, and one day when he was ill he sent for Dr. Deems. He asked him to sing for him that old song:

'Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,Come, ye wounded, sick and sore.'

The old commodore tossed from side to side, looked around at the evidence of his wealth, and he said: 'That's what I am, poor and needy.' Who? Commodore Vanderbilt poor and needy with his $200,000,000? The foundation of that fabulous fortune was laid by him when he poled a yawl from New York to Staten Island and picked up pennies for doing it. The foundation of the immense Astor fortune was laid by John Jacob Astor when he went out and bought fur and hides from trappers and put the money in New York real estate. The next day in the street one man said to another: 'Have you heard the news? Commodore Vanderbilt is dead.' 'How much did he leave?' 'He left it all.'

"Naked you came into this world, and naked you will crawl out of it. You brought nothing into the world and you will take nothing out, and if you have put the pack screws on the poor and piled up a pile of gold as big as a house you can't take it with you. It wouldn't do you any good if you could, because it would melt."

CHAPTER XXII

Those Billy Sunday Prayers

I never preach a sermon until I have soaked it in prayer. – Billy Sunday.

Concerning prayers of Sunday there is little to be said except to quote samples of them and let the reader judge for himself.

That they are unconventional no one will deny; many have gone farther and have said that they are almost sacrilegious. The charge has often been made that the evangelist addresses his prayers to the crowd instead of to God. No one criticism has oftener been made of Mr. Sunday by sensitive and thoughtful ministers of the Gospel, than that his public prayers seem to be lacking in fundamental reverence.

The defender of Sunday rejoins, "He talks to Jesus as familiarly as he talks to one of his associates." Really, though, there is deep difference. His fellow-workers are only fellow-workers, but of the Lord, "Holy and reverend is his name." Many of the warmest admirers of the evangelist do not attempt to defend all of his prayers.

Probably Sunday does not know that in all the Oriental, and some European, languages there is a special form of speech reserved for royalty; and that it would be an affront to address a king by the same term as the commoner. The outward signs of this mental attitude of reverence in prayer are unquestionably lacking in Sunday.

His usual procedure is to begin to pray at the end of a sermon, without any interval or any prefatory remarks, such as "Let us pray." For an instant, the crowd does not realize that he is praying. He closes his eyes and says, "Now Jesus, you know," and so forth, just as he would say to the chorister, "Rody, what is the name of that delegation?" Indeed, I have heard him interject just this inquiry into a prayer. Or he will mention "that Bible class over to my right, near the platform." He will use the same colloquial figures of speech in a prayer – baseball phrases, for instance – that he does in his sermons. Sometimes it is really difficult to tell whether he is addressing the Lord or the audience.

More direct familiar, childish petitions were never addressed to the Deity than are heard at the Sunday meetings. They run so counter to all religious conceptions of a reverential approach to the throne of grace that one marvels at the charity of the ministers in letting him go unrebuked. But they say "It's Billy," and so it is. That is the way the man prays in private, for I have heard him in his own room, before starting out to preach; and in entirely the same intimate, unconventional fashion he asks the help of Jesus in his preaching and in the meetings. But to the prayers themselves:

"O God, help this old world. May the men who have been drunkards be made better; may the men who beat their wives and curse their children come to Jesus; may the children who have feared to hear the footsteps of their father, rejoice again when they see the parent coming up the steps of the home. Bring the Church up to help the work. Bless them, Lord. Bless the preachers: bless the officials of the Church and bless everyone in them. Save the men in the mines. Save the poor breaker boys as they toil day by day in dangers; save them for their mothers and fathers and bring them to Jesus. Bless the policemen, the newspapermen and the men, women and children; the men and girls from the plants, factories, stores and streets. Go into the stores every morning and have prayer meetings so that the clerks may hear the Word of God before they get behind the counters and sell goods to the trade.

"Visit this city, O Lord, its schools and scholars, and bless the school board. Bless the city officials. Go down into the city hall and bless the mayor, directors and all the rest. We thank thee that the storm has passed. We believe that we will learn a lesson of how helpless we are before thee. How chesty we are when the sun shines and the day is clear, but, oh! how helpless when the breath of God comes and the snowflakes start to fall; when the floods come we get on our knees and wring our hands and ask mercy from thee. Oh, help us, O Lord.

"When the people get to hell – I hope that nobody will ever go there and I am trying my best to save them – they will know that they are there because they lived against God. I am not here to injure them; I am not here to wreck homes; I am here to tell them of the blessing you send down when they are with you. We pray for the thousands and thousands that will be saved."

"Thank you, Jesus. I came to you twenty-seven years ago for salvation and I got salvation. Thank the Lord I can look in the face of every man and woman of God everywhere and say that for all those years I have lived in salvation. Not that I take any credit to myself for that; it was nothing inherent in me; it was the power of God that saved me and kept me.

"O Lord, sweep over this town and save the business men of this community, the young men and women. O God, save us all from the cesspools of hell and corruption. Help me, Lord, as I hurl consternation into the ranks of that miserable, God-forsaken crew who are feeding, fattening and gormandizing on the people! Get everybody interested in honesty and decency and sobriety and make them fight to the last ditch for God. There are too many cowards, four-flushers in the Church."

"O Jesus, we thank God that you came into this old world to save sinners. Keep us, Lord. Hear us, O God, ere we stumble on in darkness. Lead the hundreds here to thy throne. Help the professing Christians who have not done as they should in the past, to come down this trail and take a more determined stand for thee. Help the official boards, the trustees of our churches, to show the way to hundreds by themselves confessing sin. Help them to say, 'O Lord, I haven't been square with thee. It is possible for me to improve my business and I can certainly improve my service to thee. I know and I believe in God and I believe in hell and heaven.' Lead them down the trail, Lord."

"O Lord, there are a lot of people who step up to the collection plate at church and fan. And Lord, there are always people sitting in the grandstand and calling the batter a mutt. He can't hit a thing or he can't get it over the base, or he's an ice wagon on the bases, they say. O Lord, give us some coachers out at this Tabernacle so that people can be brought home to you. Some of them are dying on second and third base, Lord, and we don't want that. Lord, have the people play the game of life right up to the limit so that home runs may be scored. There are some people, Lord, who say, 'Yes, I have heard Billy at the Tabernacle and oh, it is so disgusting: really it's awful the way he talks.' Lord, if there weren't some grouches and the like in the city I'd be lost. We had a grand meeting last night, Lord, when the crowd come down from Dicksonville (or what was that place, Rody?), Dickson City, Lord, that's right. It was a great crowd. There's an undercurrent of religion sweeping through here, Lord, and we are getting along fine.

"There are some dandy folks in Scranton, lots of good men and women that are with us in this campaign, and Lord, we want you to help make this a wonderful campaign. It has been wonderful so far. Lord, it's great to see them pouring in here night after night. God, you have the people of the homes tell their maids to go to the meeting at the Y. W. C. A. Thursday afternoon, and God, let us have a crowd of the children here Saturday. Rody is going to talk to them, Lord. He can't preach and I can't sing, but the children will have a big time with him, Lord. Lord, I won't try to stop people from roasting and scoring me. I would not know what to do if I didn't get some cracks from people now and then."

"Well, Jesus, I don't know how to talk as I would like to talk. I am at a loss as to just what to say tonight. Father, if you hadn't provided salvation, we'd all be pretty badly off. Knowing the kind of life I live and the kind of lives other people live, I know you are very patient and kind, but if you can do for men and women what you did for me, I wish it would happen. I wouldn't dare stand up and say that I didn't believe in you. I'd be afraid you'd knock me in the head. I'd be afraid you'd paralyze me or take away my mind. I'm afraid you'd do that. There are hundreds here tonight who don't know you as their Saviour. The Bible class believes you are Jesus of Nazareth, but they don't know you as their personal Saviour. And these other delegations, Lord, help them all to come down. Well, well, well, it's wonderful – 'I find no fault in Him.' Amen."

"Oh, devil, why do you hit us when we are down? Old boy, I know that you have no time for me and I guess you have about learned that I have no time for you. I will never apologize to you for anything I have done against you. If I have ever said anything that does not hurt you, tell me about it and I will take it out of my sermon."

"We thank thee, Jesus, for that manifestation of thy power in one of the big factories of the city. Lord, we are told that of eighty men who used to go to a saloon for their lunch seventy-nine go there no more. All these men heard the 'booze' sermon. Lord, they are working on the one man who is standing out and they'll get him, too. The saloon-keeper is standing with arms akimbo behind the bar, but his old customers give the place the go-by. Thank you, Jesus."

"Well, Jesus, I've been back in Capernaum tonight. I've been with you when you cast the devil out of that man. They all said, 'We know you're helping us, but you're hurting the hog business.' I've been with you when you got in the boat. And Jesus arose and said to the sea: 'Peace, be still.'