Some day a learned university professor, with a string of titles after his name, will startle the world by breaking away from the present conventionalism in sociology, and will conduct elaborate laboratory experiments in human betterment on the field of a Billy Sunday campaign. His conclusion will surely be that the most potent force for the service of society—the shortest, surest way of bettering the human race—is by the fresh, clear, sincere and insistent preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Of course, the New Testament has been teaching that for nearly twenty centuries, but the world has not yet comprehended the practicability of the program. Your learned professor may prove, by literally thousands of incidents, that honesty, chastity, brotherliness, and idealism have been more definitely promoted by revivals of religion than by legislative or educational programs. All that the social reformers of our day desire may be most quickly secured by straight-out preaching of the Gospel. The shortcut to a better social order is by way of converted men and women. And when a modern scholar comes to demonstrate this he will draw largely upon the aftermath of the Sunday campaigns for his contemporaneous evidence.
If there is one phrase which, better than another, can describe a Billy Sunday campaign it is "restitution and righteousness." In season and out, the evangelist insists upon a changed life as the first consequence of conversion. His message runs on this wise:
"You ought to live so that every one who comes near you will know that you are a Christian. Do you? Does your milkman know that you are a Christian? Does the man who brings your laundry know that you belong to church? Does the man who hauls away your ashes know that you are a Christian? Does your newsboy know that you have religion? Does the butcher know that you are on your way to heaven? Some of you buy meat on Saturday night, and have him deliver it Sunday morning, just to save a little ice, and then you wonder why he doesn't go to church.
"Does Your Newsboy Know that You Have Religion?"
"If you had to get into heaven on the testimony of your washer-woman, could you make it? If your getting into heaven depended on what your dressmaker knows about your religion, would you land? If your husband had to gain admittance to heaven on the testimony of his stenographer, could he do it? If his salvation depended on what his clerks tell about him, would he get there? A man ought to be as religious in business as he is in church. He ought to be as religious in buying and selling as he is in praying.
"There are so many church members who are not even known in their own neighborhood as Christians. Out in Iowa where a meeting was held, a man made up his mind that he would try to get an old sinner into the Kingdom, and after chasing him around for three days he finally cornered him. Then he talked to that old fellow for two hours, and then the old scoundrel stroked his whiskers, and what do you think he said? 'Why, I've been a member of the church down there for fourteen years.' Just think of it! A member of the church fourteen years, and a man had to chase him three days, and talk with him two hours to find it out.
"You have let Jesus in? Yes, but you have put him in the spare-room. You don't want him in the rooms where you live. Take him down into the living-room. Take him into the dining-room. Take him into the parlor. Take him into the kitchen. Live with him. Make him one of the family."
Then follows a Sundayesque description of how Jesus would find beer in the refrigerator and throw it out; how he would find cards on the table and throw them out; how he would find nasty music on the piano and throw it out; how he would find cigarettes and throw them out.