The Washington times., 1902-07-06

| Billy Sunday, who used TO play rignt
field with Captain Anson's White Stock
ings. counted up the other day, and
found that his soul saving operations
throughout the Middle West during the
past year had netted him somewhere in
the neighborhood of $4,000. says the
Brooklyn Eagle Mr.. Sunday is not
mercenary and he thinks more Of con-
verts than he does of money. but he
mentioned his profits to an interviewer
simply because he had been asked If it
hadn't been something in the nature OF
a sacrifice to shift from the high salary
Of a professional baseball player to the
supposed uncertain income Of an itin-
Grant evangelist.
God has been right good to u.s." Is
the way Mr.. Sunday puts 1t. He gave
US 81 200 for a months work in Belyi-
dere. H.: $1,000 for the same length Of
Wheaton where they are mostly Chi
cago millionaircs, We drew $500 In
thirty days
Since success even of an evangelical
sort is measured in way by the amount
of ones income, the ball player revival
ist and his friends figure that he is the
top notcher among evangelists. Ger
tainly no one since Mr.. MooGy's death
has saved SO many of the perishing or
made so much money while doing it.
Out in Iowa where Mr.. Sunday has con-
verted more than 10000 persons during
his ministry. people assert that he, is
destined to be greater reviyalist than
Mr.. Moody. He has enough calls" now
from Western towns which think they
need Christening to occupy all of his
time for the next eighteen months.
These things have a tendency to make
Mr.. Sunday rather more than satisfied
with the fate that tempted him away
about ten years ago. He thinks the
luckiest thing that ever happened him
was when an Iowa rustic, he wandered
into mission in Chicago and was per-
suaded by the words of a revivalist and
the music of wheezy reed organ ''to
be born again." On that night, twenty
years ago. MIR. Sunday decided he would
become a preacher. The idea stuck i'll
his brain through all his brilliant career
as a ball player until he found the op-
portunity to abandon professional ath-
letics and enter the Young Mems Chris
tian Association as an assistant 5ecre-
tary at $500 a year. He had educated
himself at Northwestern University
while he was playing ball. so he was
fairly well equipped to take up the
work of exhortation and advice.
Mr. Sundays revival methods are ali
his own. He throws out the life line"
in q fashion distinctly unique. No
shouting and jumping. no frenzy and no
Mysteries among the converts at his
meetings He talks to his congregations
! in a sane and reasonable fashion. When
he has them convinced that they are a
pretty bad lot he asks them to come
to the front. There are no mourners'
benches Instead there are chairs upon
which he invites the penitents to sit
while he circulates among them and
| talks to them calmly. He takes the
name of each subject and turns him over
to the pastor of the denomina ton for
which he expresses a preference, and
refuses to be longer responsible for him
Mr. Sunday himself is affiliated with no
denomination.
| His plan is to stay a month in each
place. For the first two weeks he does
not give the invitation" He tells the
people funny stories and amuses them
with certain bizarre methods of preach
ing. The third week he devotes to- an
exposition of sin as he has found it
among the people with whom he is
laboring. During the fourth week he
shows the sinner the way TO repentance
He is 1.-THE, well built, swarthy
| chap, forty years old. and with the look
of man much younger. In the pulpit
he wears business clothing. we'll tailored
and with some pretension to prevailing
styles. II he gets warm he removes his
coat-not because he is warm. neces-
sarily. but because it makes him differ
ent from other preachers. That is his
principal aim-to be different. In
Wheaton the other night he made a run
ming leap from the pulpit, landed in the
aisle and sprinted around the church.
! preaching all the while.