The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-08-14
FROM M TO PULPIT.

Brooklyn Eagle.

Winning Fame as n Preacher.
Brooklyn Eagle.
Billy Sunday. who used 10 play right
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 $1,000. Mr.. Sunday
is not mercenary and he thinks more Of
converts than he does OF money. but he
mentioned his profits 10 an interviewer
simply because he had been asked II IL
hadn't been something in the nature OF a
sacrifice TO shift from the high salary OF
a professional baseball player 10 the sup
posed uncertain income OF an itinerant
evangelist.
GOD has been right good TO US" is the
way Mr.. Sunday puts II. He gave US
$3.50 for a months work in Belvidere.
ILL.,; s1.@0 for the same length OF time in
Pennington. and even in frosty Wheaton.
where they are mostly Chicago million
aires. we drew $500 in thirty days"
Since success even of an evangelieal
sort is measured in a way by the amount
or ones income, the ball player revivalist
and his friends figure that he is the top
notcher among evangelists. Certainly no
one since Mr.. Moody's death has saved so
many OF the perishing or made SO much
money while doing IL. Out In Iowa where
Mr.. Sunday has converted more than TO-
UO persons during his ministry, people as
sert that he is destined 10 be a greater re-
vivalist than Mr.. Moody. He has enough
calls now from Western towns which
think they need Christening 10 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 from
the diamond and a 5000 salary about ten
years ago. He thinks the luckiest thing
that ever happened TO him was when an
Iowa rustic he wandered into a mission in
Chicago and was persuaded by the words
of a revivalist and the music OF a wheezy
reed organ Ito be born again" On that
night, twenty years ago, Mr.. Sunday de-
cided he would become a preacher. The
idea stuck i'm his brain through all his
brilliant career as a ball player until ne
found the opportunity TO abandon profess
sional athletics and enter the Young Mems
Christian Association as an assistant sec
rotary at $500 a year. He had educated
himselg at Northwestern University while
he was playing ball, so he was fairly wei
equipped to take up the work Of eXhorta-
ton and advice.
Mr.. Sundays eviva methods are all his
own. He throws out the life line" in a
fashion distinctly unique. No shouting
among the converts at his meetings. lie
talks TO his congregations in d sane and
reasonable fashion. When he has them
convinced that they are a pretty bad lot he
asks them TO come up 20 the front. There
are no mourners' benches. Instead there
are chairs upon which he invites the peni-
tents to sit while he circulates among
them and talks TO them calmly. He takes
the name Of each subject and turns him
over 10 the pastor OF the denomination for
which he expresses a preference, and re-
fuses to be longer responsible for him. Mr..
Sunday himself is affiliated with no denom-
nation.
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 preaching. The third
week he devotes TO an exposition Of sin as
he found II among the people with whom
he is laboring. During the fourth week he
shows the sinner the way to repentance.
He is a 1.-THE, well-built, swarthy chap,
forty years old, and with the look of a man
much younger. In the pulpit he wears bus
mess clothing, well tailored and with some
pretension TO prevailing styles. If he gets
warm he removes his oat-no because he
is warm, necessarily, but because il makes
him different from other preachers.