Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1914-04-17


rewritten from the time when Con-
stantine swung an empire into the
Christian fold and became an object
Of suspicion for all succeeding gener~
atoms.
Early missionaries who made their
way north from Italy into the wilds
of Gaul. Germany and the British Isles
are accredited with wonderful results
in converting the natives to the Chris
tian faith. Yet, 1t is admitted history
that in many instances, a tribe or
clan followed blindly in the wake of
its leader and religious o~bservances
were laid on and OF like a mantle.
Neither win the history of the modern
church stand scrutiny If the inner
motives that prompted all of the lead
ers are questioned in the light of high
moral standards. Henry VIII divorced
England from the Roman church that
he might divorce himself from an
Objectionable wife. The princes OF
Northern Germany espoused the cause
of Luther, because it gave them a
pretext to war against the domination
of the House of Austria. Yet, In the
history of the world and the advance
of religion, all of these men and their
actions have played important and
lasting parts.
Criticism, is, and always has been,
directed against the methods and the
results achieved in evangelical and
general Christian work. An unbiased
contemplation of history simply com
paIo 4bo oopoluciou fhot +bora are at
the present time no recognized stand
ards whereby the work of various men
in various ages may be measured hon
estly.
It is only possible. therefore, to
estimate Rev. Mr.. Sunday by compar-
ing his admitted achievements with
the accredited achievements of tho
great historical evangelists, and with
these 1t would eem that he ranks In
every way a peer. Coming from the
comparative obscurity of what is gen.
orally known as the Middle West, he
has in late years challenged the atten-
ton Of the entire country, and there
has been devoted to him recently q
considerable amount of disinterested
attention from which a concensus OF
judgment can be established.
AS early as June, 1910, DIR. Thomas
=. Green, writing in Hampton's mag
azine, said, after an extended descrip-
ton of the mans
.aThat's Billy Sunday, Americas great
evangelist. On the platform he plays
ball. Attitude, gestures, methods-he
crouches. PUSHES, whirls, bangs his mes
sage out, as If he were at the bat in the
last inning, will two men out and the
bases full. And he can go into any city
in America and for six weeks talk to six
thousand people twice a day and simply
turn that community inside out. Over
1000 people have been converted under
his pr-eaching-and he says, ninety per
cent. of them stick"
Even earlier chan that Lindsay Den
ison writing in the September, 1907,
number of the American Magazine,
without making a pretense to direct
interest in religion. nor posing al an
authority on that subject, wrote:
ST v seen many a university football
victory celebration; I have seen several
riots of Joy after a Yale-Harvard boat
race; 1 was in the headquarters of Dis
trict Attorney Jerome of New York when
the word came, on election night, that he
had beaten Independently the candidates
of all the regular parties. But I have
never seen any crowd more beside itself
than was the congregation of the taber-
i nacle when the meeting was over. The
noise was inchoate until Fred Fischer
took charge and organized 1t. There were
a hundred dangerous PUSHES by people at
the back to reach the platform and Bill
Sunday. Fischer got them singing. When
they were tired of singing q tune. he asked
them to whistle 1t and then to hum 1t.
Now and then somebody got up and in
terrupted by calling for three cheers for
Billy Sundayl And when 1t was an
nounced that altogether Sunday had won
lib Fairfield souls from the Devil for
Christ 1t seemed as though the roof was
tugging at the rafters."
After the remarkable work in Co
1umbus the larger magazines began to
give more and more attention to the
career of this evangelist. Bruce Bar
ton was assigned by Golfers to make
q close study of the man and his
method, and In the spring of 1913 he
made this summing up:
TITS fourteenth-centpry theology, you
say, and perhaps that's true. But there
is no can't in 1t. 1t is the hard-hitting
message or a strong man, stirred TO the
depths of his soul by the spectacle Of
puny, impotent, mortal men setting them
selves in revolt against the purpose OF
Almighty God. And men respond to it.
the leading men OF the city-editors, mer-
chants, bankers, as well as the rank and
file. No other evangelist owes so little
of his success to emotionalism: none
other can number a larger proportion OF
men and women ON mis- convert rolls.
'You must hear him more than once to
know his power: indeed It is quite the
cumulative effect of his meetings, night
after night, to represent him adequately.
The particular sermon that you may hear
may seem to you overdrawn, even futile;
the immediate effect Of It on the converts
who come forward may appear all out OF
proportion to its worth. You should have
heard them all. I heard him once in a
little town In Central nlinois-a rainy
night, when he spoke with difficulty and.
to nv mind. poorly. .SurelY., I said to