[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."