"Billy" Sunday, the Man and His Message / With his own words which have won thousands for Christ

by William T. Ellis

The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is no joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion. Some haven't religion enough to pay their debts. Would that I might have a hook and for every debt that you left unpaid I might jerk off a piece of clothing. If I did some of you fellows would have not anything on but a celluloid collar and a pair of socks.

Some of you have not got religion enough to have family prayer. Some of you people haven't got religion enough to take the beer bottles out of your cellar and throw them in the alley. You haven't got religion enough to tell that proprietor of the red light, "No, you can't rent my house after the first of June;" to tell the saloon-keeper, "You can't rent my house when your lease runs out"; and I want to tell you that the man that rents his property to a saloon-keeper is as low-down as the saloon-keeper. The trouble with you is that you are so taken up with business, with politics, with making money, with your lodges, and each and every one is so dependent on the other, that you are scared to death to come out and live clean cut for God Almighty. You have not fully surrendered yourself to God.

The matter with a lot of you people is that your religion is not complete. You have not yielded yourself to God and gone out for God and God's truth. Why, I am almost afraid to make some folks laugh for fear that I will be arrested for breaking a costly piece of antique bric-à-brac. You would think that if some people laughed it would break their faces. To see some people you would think that the essential of orthodox Christianity is to have a face so long you could eat oatmeal out of the end of a gas pipe. Sister, that is not religion; I want to tell you that the happy, smiling, sunny-faced religion will win more people to Jesus Christ than the miserable old grim-faced kind will in ten years. I pity anyone who can't laugh. There must be something wrong with their religion or their liver. The devil can't laugh.

So I can see Naaman as he goes into the water and dips seven times, and lo! his flesh becomes again as a little child's. When? When he did what God told him to do.

I have seen men come down the aisle by the thousands, men who have drank whisky enough to sink a ship. I have seen fallen women come to the front by scores and hundreds, and I have seen them go away cleansed by the power of God. When? When they did just what God told them to do.

I wish to God the Church were as afraid of imperfection as it is of perfection.

I saw a woman that for twenty-seven years had been proprietor of a disorderly house, and I saw her come down the aisle, close her doors, turn the girls out of her house and live for God. I saw enough converted in one town where there were four disorderly houses to close their doors; they were empty; the girls had all fled home to their mothers.

Out in Iowa a fellow came to me and spread a napkin on the platform—a napkin as big as a tablecloth. He said: "I want a lot of shavings and sawdust."

"What for?"

"I'll tell you; I want enough to make a sofa pillow. Right here is where I knelt down and was converted and my wife and four children, and my neighbors. I would like to have enough to make a sofa pillow to have something in my home to help me think of God. I don't want to forget God, or that I was saved. Can you give me enough?"