Sunday is for an Instant Down on All Fours.
Sunday is a physical sermon. In a unique sense he glorifies God with his body. Only a physique kept in tune by clean living and right usage could respond to the terrific and unceasing demands which Sunday makes upon it. When in a sermon he alludes to the man who acts no better than a four-footed brute, Sunday is for an instant down on all fours on the platform and you see that brute. As he pictures a man praying he sinks to his knees for a single moment. When he talks of the death-bed penitent as a man waiting to be pumped full of embalming fluid, he cannot help going through the motions of pumping in the fluid. He remarks that death-bed repentance is "burning the candle of life in the service of the devil, and then blowing the smoke in God's face"—and the last phrase is accompanied by "pfouff!" In a dramatic description of the marathon he pictures the athlete falling prostrate at the goal and—thud!—there lies the evangelist prone on the platform. Only a skilled baseball player, with a long drill in sliding to bases, could thus fling himself to the floor without serious injury. On many occasions he strips off his coat and talks in his shirt sleeves. It seems impossible for him to stand up behind the pulpit and talk only with his mouth.
The fact is, Sunday is a born actor. He knows how to portray truth by a vocal personality. When he describes the traveler playing with a pearl at sea, he tosses an imaginary gem into the air so that the spectators hold their breath lest the ship should lurch and the jewel be lost. Words without gesture could never attain this triumph of oratory.
A hint of Sunday's state of mind which drives him to such earnestness and intensity in labor is found in quotations like the following:
"You will agree with me, in closing, that I'm not a crank; at least I try not to be. I have not preached about my first, second, third or hundredth blessing. I have not talked about baptism or immersion. I told you that while I was here my creed would be: 'With Christ you are saved; without him you are lost.' Are you saved? Are you lost? Going to heaven? Going to hell? I have tried to build every sermon right around those questions; and also to steer clear of anything else, but I want to say to you in closing, that it is the inspiration of my life, the secret of my earnestness. I never preach a sermon but that I think it may be the last one some fellow will hear or the last I shall ever be privileged to preach. It is an inspiration to me that some day He will come.
"'It may be at morn, when the day is awaking,
When darkness through sunlight and shadow is breaking,
That Jesus will come, in the fullness of glory,
To receive from the world his own.
"'Oh joy, Oh delight, to go without dying,