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

by William T. Ellis

Oh, I'll harness dem hosses to de temp'rance cart,

Hit 'em wid a gad to gib 'em a start,

I'll teach 'em how for to haw and gee,

For dem big hosses can't run over me.—Cho.

[A] Reproduced by permission. Copyright, 1887, by Fillmore Bros. Homer A. Rodeheaver owner. International copyright secured.

Sunday is the Peter the Hermit of the temperance crusade. He inflames men's passions for this righteous war. Most critics call his sermon on "booze" his greatest achievement. He treats the theme from all angles—economic, social, human, and religious. When he puts a row of boys up on the platform and offers them as one day's contribution to the saloon's grist of manhood which must be maintained, the result is electric; all the militant manhood of the men before him is urged to action.

THE FAMOUS "BOOZE" SERMON

Here we have one of the strangest scenes in all the Gospels. Two men, possessed of devils, confront Jesus, and while the devils are crying out for Jesus to leave them, he commands the devils to come out, and the devils obey the command of Jesus. The devils ask permission to enter into a herd of swine feeding on the hillside. This is the only record we have of Jesus ever granting the petition of devils, and he did it for the salvation of men.

Then the fellows that kept the hogs went back to town and told the peanut-brained, weasel-eyed, hog-jowled, beetle-browed, bull-necked lobsters that owned the hogs, that "a long-haired fanatic from Nazareth, named Jesus, has driven the devils out of some men and the devils have gone into the hogs, and the hogs into the sea, and the sea into the hogs, and the whole bunch is dead."