"If I knew, when the undertaker pumps that pink stuff into me and embalms me, that the end of all had come, I would still be glad I lived a Christian life, because it meant a life of decency," he said. "I would rather go through the world without knowing the multiplication table than never to know the love of Christ. I don't underestimate the value of an education, boys, but just try living on oatmeal porridge. Get your education, but don't lose sight of Jesus."
"Once you have made your plan, cling to it. Be a man, even in situations of great danger. The man whose diet is swill will be at home with the hogs in any pen. He's bound to have bristles sticking through his skin. If Abraham Lincoln had read about Alkali Ike, or Three Fingered Pete, do you think he would ever have been President? While other young men were waking up with booze-headaches, he was pulling up his old-fashioned galluses and saying, 'I'm going to be a man.'
"And one morning the world awoke, rubbed its sleepy eyes and looked around for a man for a certain place. It found Abraham Lincoln and raised him from obscurity to the highest pinnacle of popular favor. He was a man and his example should be a guiding influence in the life of every American citizen."
Booze, evil women, licentious practices, cigarettes—all these came under the ban of Mr. Sunday's system of Christian living. He spared no words; he called a spade a spade and looked at modern affairs without colored glasses.
"You can't find a drunkard who ever intended to be a drunkard," argued Mr. Sunday. "He just intended to be a moderate drinker. He was up against a hard game, a game you can't beat."
He asserted that he could get more nourishment from a little bit of beef extract, placed on the edge of a knife blade, than can be obtained from 800 gallons of the best beer brewed.
Talking about riches, he suggested that King Solomon, with his wealth, could have hired Andrew Carnegie as a chauffeur or J. Pierpont Morgan to cut the lawns around his palace. "Money isn't all there is in this world, but neither is beer," he said. "I don't want to see you students get the booze habit, just because we are licensing men at so much per year to make you staggering, reeling, drunken sots, murderers, thieves and vagabonds."
The double standard of living was bitterly attacked by the revivalist, who said one of the crying needs of America was the recognition of a single standard of living.
"It makes no difference to God whether the sinner wears a plug hat and pair of suspenders or a petticoat and a willow plume. No man who deliberately drugs a girl and sends her into a life of shame ought to be permitted in good society. He ought to be shot at sunrise." This sentiment evoked a tremendous round of applause, and cries of "Amen!" and "Good, Bill!" were not infrequent.
"The avenging God is on his trail and the man who wrecks women's lives is going to crack brimstone on the hottest stone in hell, praise God," the speaker continued. "If we are to conciliate this unthinkable and unspeakable practice of vampires feeding on women's virtue, we might as well back-pedal in the progress of the nations. The virtue of womanhood is the rampart of our civilization and we must not let it be betrayed."