The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1908-11-30

! ball field was his preparatory school
He had lots of motherwit to begin
with; he is no fool; he doesn't loon
! it. he has good head on him; his
! thinking is clear, vivid, good, and MS
/ speech full of images, smiles, cpl
! grams, wise saws, shrewdness, humol
! and wit. and he has the art OF put
| ting things, plus He has got up a
series of sermons to last five or SIN
weeks. that he keeps repeating IN
different places, revising, adding to-
subtracting from, polishing, and in
r-ost of them are passages OF rare
beauty, full of literary excellence,
administrations. wit that scalds vice,
sarcasm that blisters sin. slang that
eats like acid, ridicule of folly that
scales and sears like iron rust. Plain
ly, he has literary ambition. In one
skit, that day, he spoke of Vesuvius
erupting lin hemorrhage of lava,
and that red-hot image was not half
bad. He admitted that he is a great
borrower of telling things, and, for
getting where he found them, he
can't give credit All great speakers.
Mirabeau, Pitt, Fox, Bright, Disraeli,
Golden, Cough, Ingersoll, are plag-
iarists in that way, and Sunday owns
that he takes good things wherever
he find them, and he passes them
on, bettered. Literary theft is no
crime when the thief improves on
the swag. But theology. creed, is not
one of the things Sunday takes. |
heard him twice, az. he did not
squeak and gibber theology or creed
once. That's one great gain of his
over a theologue. He talked conduct,
conduct, conduct, from beginning so
end; get right with your family,
with your neighbors, with your com
munity; be manly; don't be a hypo-
critic; better be bold bad man than a
prating sneak: lead virtuous, clean,
healthy lives that your children may
not Justly fire Parthian arrows at
you for any faults of constitution in
herited from you as vicious, sinful
parents. Matthew Arnold insisted
that three-fourths of life are conduct.
He under-estimated it; life is all con-
duct and Sunday gets his grip and
cinch on the masses by preaching
Strenuously conduct, morals, and let
ting theology slide, letting creed
slide, cutting out vicarious atone
ment, trinity, pre-destination, cleo
ton, and all the rest of that ineffable
did or can understand. Conduct
what kind of man or woman are
you? Are you decent, honest, true
blue, kind, clean, helpful, or are you
a hypocrite, a liar, cheat. sneak,
a snake in the grass, a pismire on
general grounds? You can have al
most any brand of religion you like,
and it hardly matters, but it is all
important whether you are good,
decent man or not. No man can
harm God, but any man can do i'm
mense mischief to his fellows. Con-
duct-that is the final thing.
| confess, those two sermons who'll
ly changed the impression I had had
of Billy Sunday. He strikes one as
a sincere, honest man. Sure, he's no
CRATER, faker or hireling. Vast
crowds get dead stuck ON him. and
at the end of his services they rain
money on him; he makes no demand,
sets no price, charges no fee-the
floating kidney salary is voluntary
His revenues beat Bryan's. If he
took no vacation, but worked the
year round, his receipts would top
those Of the President Of the United
States, for he gets about 81 900 per
week, and if there's any virtue in be-
ing immensely interesting he earns
every cent his admirers give him. He
is worth an acre lot full of ordinary
preache-s-why should not he get
their combined pay? Folks give as
they like, without his urge. That is
no graft or guile, is it?
Is his work, is his influence, per-
manent? Does his army of converts
stick? They say not. Well, mem
bers of other churches backslide,
don't they? No one sticks like a
postage stamp all the time, does he?
In this world, all things are in con
slant fiux, nothing stays put. for
physical or moral, is al
ways Juggling away at atoms and
pulling them down. 1t is
not in human nature to abide in
moods of exaltation. There must be
reaction. the pendulum must swing
t'other way, or the clock stops ut
terly. | saw an hour of Sundays
style of converting people, and,
while / do not pretend to know what
conversion is, this Ottumwa article
seemed to me a pretty sleazy thing.
The spiritual fabric was not close
knit and firmly woven, and must
ravel or fragile. This process look
ed too easy like rolling off log.
This. If it was conversion, was as
easy as blowing your nose with a Sc
ries of snorts into a red bandana
handkerchief. I knew by sight the
Finney brand of conversions they
were as serious as having all your
molar teeth yanked out, as tough
and circulating as "borning a
baby as fearful as falling in an epi.
leptic fit at the feet of horses. / I