Then there is your grumbling and fault-finding. When speaking of people behind their backs, telling their faults, whether real or imaginary, and that is slander. When you sit around and rip people up behind their backs at your old sewing societies, when you rip and tear and discuss your neighbors and turn the affair into a sort of a great big gossiping society, with your fault-finding, grumbling and growling. There is a big difference between levity and happiness, and pleasure, and all that sort of thing.
Make up your mind that God has given himself up for you. I would like to see something come thundering along that I would have more interest in than I have in the cause of God Almighty! God has a right to the first place. God is first, remember that.
Multitudes of people are willing to do anything that doesn't require any self-denial on their part.
I am not a member of any lodge, and never expect to be, but if I were a member of a lodge and there were a prayer-meeting and a lodge-meeting coming on Wednesday night, I would be at the prayer-meeting instead of at the lodge-meeting. I am not against the lodges; they do some good work in the world, but that doesn't save anyone for God. God is first and the lodge-meeting is second. God is first and society second. God is first and business is second. "In the beginning, God!" That is the way the Bible starts out and it ought to be the way with every living being. "In the beginning, God." Seek you first God and everything else shall be added unto you. Christianity is addition; sin is subtraction. Christianity is peace, joy, salvation, heaven. Sin takes away peace, happiness, sobriety, and it takes away health. You are robbing God of the time that you misspend. You are robbing God when you spend time doing something that don't amount to anything, when you might do something for Christ. You are robbing God when you go to foolish amusements, when you sit around reading trashy novels instead of the Word of God.
"Oh, Lord, revive thy work!"
I have only two minutes more and then I am through. Bad temper. Abuse your wife and abuse your children; abuse your husband; turn your old gatling-gun tongue loose. A lady came to me and said, "Mr. Sunday, I know I have a bad temper, but I am over with it in a minute." So is the shotgun, but it blows everything to pieces.
And, finally, you abuse the telephone girl because she doesn't connect you in a minute. Bad temper. I say you abuse your wife, you go cussing around if supper isn't ready on time; cussing because the coffee isn't hot; you dig your fork into a hunk of beefsteak and put it on your plate and then you say: "Where did you get this, in the harness shop? Take it out and make a hinge for the door." Then you go to your store, or office, and smile and everybody thinks you are an angel about to sprout wings and fly to the imperial realm above. Bad temper! You growl at your children; you snap and snarl around the house until they have to go to the neighbors to see a smile. They never get a kind word—no wonder so many of them go to the devil quick.
[CHAPTER XXIV]
An Army with Banners
The man who is right with God will not be wrong with anything that is good.—Billy Sunday.