His is not a mystical, meditative faith. It is dynamic, practical, immediate. According to his ever-recurring reasoning, if one is not passing on the fruits of religion to somebody else—if one is not hitting hard blows at the devil or really doing definite tasks for God and the other man—then one has not the real brand of Christianity. Sunday's preaching has hands, with "punch" to them, as well as lift; and feet, with "kick" in them, as well as ministry.
Like a colliery mined on many levels, Sunday's preaching reaches all classes. Everybody can appreciate the social service value of converting a gutter bum and making him a self-supporting workman. Is it any less social service to convert a man—I cite an actual instance from Pittsburgh—who had lately lost a twelve-thousand-dollar-a-year position through dissipation, and so thoroughly to help him find himself that before the meetings were over he was back in his old office, once more drawing one thousand dollars a month?
To a student of these campaigns, it seems as if business has sensed, better than the preachers, the economic waste of sin.
A careful and discriminating thinker, the Rev. Joseph H. Odell, D.D., formerly pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Scranton, wrote an estimate of Billy Sunday and his work for The Outlook, in which he explains why his church, which had been opposed to the coming of the evangelist, reversed its vote:
Testimony, direct and cumulative, reached the ears of the same refined and reverent men and women. The young business men, even those from the great universities, paused to consider. The testimony that changed the attitudes of the Church came from judges, lawyers, heads of corporations and well-known society leaders in their respective communities. The testimony was phenomenally concurrent in this: that, while it did not endorse the revivalist's methods, or accept his theological system, or condone his roughness and rudeness, it proved that the preaching produced results.
"Produced results!" Every one understood the phrase; in the business world it is talismanic. As the result of the Billy Sunday campaigns—anywhere and everywhere—drunkards became sober, thieves became honest, multitudes of people engaged themselves in the study of the Bible, thousands confessed their faith in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world, and all the quiescent righteousness of the community grew brave and belligerent against vice, intemperance, gambling, and political dishonesty.
During the last week of February I went to Pittsburgh for the purpose of eliciting interest in the candidacy of J. Benjamin Dimmick for the nomination of United States Senator. Billy Sunday had closed his Pittsburgh campaign a few days earlier. My task was easy. A group of practical politicians met Mr. Dimmick at dinner. They were the men who had worked the wards of Allegheny County on behalf of Penrose and the liquor interests for years. Together they were worth many thousands of votes to any candidate; in fact, they were the political balance of power in that county. They knew everything that men could know about the ballot, and some things that no man should know. Solidly, resolutely, and passionately they repudiated Penrose. "No one can get our endorsement in Allegheny County, even for the office of dog-catcher, who is not anti-booze and anti-Penrose," they asserted. When asked the secret of their crusader-like zeal against the alliance of liquor and politics, they frankly ascribed it to Billy Sunday; they had been born again—no idle phrase with them—in the vast whale-back tabernacle under the preaching of the baseball evangelist.
Billy Sunday deals with the very springs of action; he seeks to help men get right back to the furthermost motives of the mind. "If you're born again, you won't live knowingly in sin. This does not mean that a Christian cannot sin, but that he does not want to sin." This truth the evangelist illustrates by the difference between a hog and a sheep. The sheep may fall into the mud, but it hates it and scrambles out. A hog loves the mud and wallows in it.
Nobody can measure the results of the social forces which this simple-thinking evangelist sets to work. His own figure of the dwarf who could switch on the electric lights in a room as easily as a giant, comes to mind. He has sent into Christian work men who can do a kind of service impossible to Sunday himself. Thus, one of Sunday's converts out in Wichita, two years ago, was Henry J. Allen, editor of The Beacon and Progressive candidate for governor. Mr. Allen became a member of one of the celebrated "Gospel Teams," which, since the Sunday meetings, have been touring Kansas and neighboring states and have won more than eleven thousand converts. It was in a meeting held by this band that William Allen White, the famous editor, author and publisher, took a definite stand for Christ and Christian work. One of the most interesting facts about Sunday's work is this one that the three greatest editors in the State of Kansas today are his direct or indirect converts. An "endless chain" letter would be easier to overtake than the effects of a Sunday revival campaign.
In the face of the mass of testimony of this sort is it any wonder that business men deem a Sunday campaign worth all it costs, merely as an ethical movement? The quickest and cheapest way to improve morals and the morale of a city is by a revival of religion. Thus it is illuminating to learn that there were 650 fewer inmates in the Allegheny County jail, during the period of the Sunday revival meetings, than during the same time in the preceding year.
From Pittsburgh also comes the remarkable story that the Cambria Steel Company, one of the largest steel concerns in the country, has established a religious department in connection with its plant, and placed a regularly ordained minister in charge of it. This as an avowed result of the Sunday campaign.
The Rev. Dr. Maitland Alexander, D.D., pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, is sponsor for this news, and he also declares that nine department stores of Pittsburgh are now holding prayer-meetings every morning at eight o'clock. These two statements are taken from Dr. Alexander's address to a body of ministers in New York City. He is reported to have said also: