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

by William T. Ellis

The suggestion evidently met with the approval of the husband, because ever afterward the man of God enjoyed this hospitality. I sometimes thought she might have been a new woman of the olden times, because no mention is made of the husband. You never hear of some old lobsters unless they are fortunate enough to marry a woman who does things and their name is always mentioned in connection with what the wife does.

You know there are homes in which the advent of one, two and possibly three children is considered a curse instead of a blessing. God, in his providence, has often denied the honor of maternity to some women. But there are married women who shrink from maternity, not because of ill health, but simply because they love ease, because they love fine garments and ability to flirt like a butterfly at some social function.

Crimes have been and are being committed; hands are stained with blood; and that very crime has made France the charnel house of the world. And America, we of our boasted intelligence and wealth, we are fast approaching the same doom, until or unless it behooves somebody with grit and courage to preach against the prevailing sins and run the risk of incurring the displeasure of people who divert public attention from their own vileness rather than condemn themselves for the way they are living. They say the man who is preaching against it is vulgar, rather than the man who did it.

I am sure there is not an angel in heaven that would not be glad to come to earth and be honored with motherhood if God would grant her that privilege. What a grand thing it must be, at the end of your earthly career, to look back upon a noble and godly life, knowing you did all you could to help leave this old world to God and made your contributions in tears and in prayers and taught your offspring to be God-fearing, so that when you went you would continue to produce your noble character in your children.

Maternity Out of Fashion

Society has just about put maternity out of fashion. When you stop to consider the average society woman I do not think maternity has lost anything. The humbler children are raised by their mothers instead of being turned over to a governess.

"Society Has Just About Put Maternity Out of Fashion"

There are too many girls who marry for other causes than love. I think ambition, indulgence and laziness lead more girls to the altar than love—girls not actuated by love, but simply willing to pay the price of wifehood to wear fine clothes. They are not moved by the noble desires of manhood or womanhood.

Some girls marry for novelty and some girls marry for a home. Some fool mothers encourage girls to marry for ease so they can go to the matinee and buzz around. Some fool girls marry for money and some girls marry for society, because by connecting their name with a certain family's they go up a rung in the social ladder, and some girls marry young bucks to reform them—and they are the biggest fools in the bunch, because the bucks would not marry the girls to reform them.