The University of Pennsylvania, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1749, is the fourth in age of American universities, antedated only by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton by one year. It is located in a city of a million and three-quarters people. It now enrolls 6,632 students, representing every state in the Union, and fifty-nine foreign countries. There are 250 from Europe and Asia, and 150 from Latin America; so that in the cosmopolitanism of its make-up, probably no American university equals it. Its Young Men's Christian Association employs twenty-seven secretaries, its Bible classes on week days gather 650 students, and every Fraternity House has its own Bible Class. But attendance upon daily prayers is not obligatory, and less than a hundred, on an average, are seen at those services.
Into this cosmopolitan University Billy Sunday came like a cyclone. After preaching in Scranton three times on the Sabbath, to audiences aggregating 30,000 people, he traveled all night, reached Philadelphia Monday morning, took an automobile spin to the baseball park, where he was a famous player twenty years ago, and preached three times in the University of Pennsylvania gymnasium, which was seated with chairs, and accommodated 3,000 hearers.
There were three services—noon, afternoon and evening. Tickets were issued, red, white and blue, each good for one service, and that one exclusively. Not a person was admitted without a ticket. The long lines reached squares away, and the police kept the people moving in order.
What does such a spectacle mean in a great old university, in a great city? Such a student body knows slang, and athleticism, and all sorts of side plays. No doubt there was plenty of criticism and questioning; but a spectator who had his eyes and ears and mind open, would say, that in getting a response to the religious appeal, Billy Sunday's Monday in the University of Pennsylvania scored high.
This effort for quickening religious interests in the University was not a spasmodic effort for one day; there had been the most careful preparations beforehand, in consultation with leading ministers of all denominations in the city, to seek out students of every denomination. Lists were carefully made and cards put in the hands of ministers and Christian workers, with the understanding that all the young men of the University should be visited in a friendly and Christian spirit by representatives of various churches. The results, of course, remain to be seen, but after this effort, no student need say, "No man cares for my soul."
The conclusion of the whole matter, of course, is that the old-time religion, the gospel of our fathers and our mothers, is still the deepest need of all sorts and conditions of men. The religion that saved the outcast in the gutter is adequate to redeem the man in the university.
[CHAPTER XXVIII]
The Christian's Daily Helper
Too much of the work of the Church today is like a squirrel in a cage—lots of activity, but no progress.—Billy Sunday.
In the course of one of his campaigns, Sunday sweeps the arc of the great Christian doctrines. While he stresses ever and again the practical duties of the Christian life, yet he makes clear that the reliance of the Christian for all that he hopes to attain in character and in service is upon the promised Helper sent by our Lord, the ever-present Holy Spirit. One of the evangelist's greatest sermons is upon this theme, and no transcript of his essential message would be complete without it.
"THE HOLY SPIRIT"
The personality, the divinity and the attributes of the Holy Ghost afford one of the most inspiring, one of the most beneficial examples in our spiritual life. We are told that when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, he came as the rushing of a mighty wind and overurging expectancy. When Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan, of John, out from the expanse of heaven was seen to float the Spirit of God like a snowflake, and they heard a sound as of whirring wings, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove hovered over the dripping locks of Christ. Neither your eyes nor mine will ever behold such a scene; neither will our ears ever hear such a sound again. You cannot dissect or weigh the Holy Spirit, nor analyze him as a chemist may analyze material matter in his laboratory, but we can all feel the pulsing of the breath of his eternal love.
The Holy Spirit is a personality; as much a personality as Christ, or you or I. "Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself." He is to us what Jesus was when he was on earth. Jesus always speaks of the Holy Spirit in the future tense. He said, "It is expedient that I go away; if I go not away the Spirit will not come. It is expedient for you that I go away, but when I am gone, then I will send Him unto you who is from the Father." So we are living today in the beneficence of the Holy Spirit.
No Universal Salvation