“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.