Omaha daily bee., 1916-12-04
Boston and Billy Sunday
Literary Digest

Boston wants the same things OF the base ball
evangelist that the rest have had, but MI Joseph
Edgar Chamberlain says he is not giving 1t. In
stead, he seems to be deliberately doing less in
the way of shocking and startling than he did in
Paterson and ephia-toning himself down.
diluting himself, cajoling the Unitarians (part OF
the time), throwing bouquets to DR.. Claiming,
Charlotte Cushman, and Fanny Davenport, cut
ting out the toughest passages" Boston. it APP
pears, doesn't altogether feel pleased, for when
they bargained for Billy" Sunday they knew
what it was they asked for The writer for The
Transcript feels that Sunday is going to have
harder game to play in Boston than he ever
played before:
''He is himself up against diminishing energy
and weakening voice, And then, even though
the tabernacle audience may be very receptive,
it has probably the Boston habit of Analysing a
speaker IN pretty thorough fashion. No doubt
the audience, or the major part Of it, will demand
the full rendition OF the regular Billy" Sunday
thing. What came we out for to see? Not
dignihed rhetorician, surely Generally speaking,
the more extraordinary the things reported OF
Sunday in the last seven or eight years since he
became national figure, the more fierce the de-
mand is upon Billy for shocking words and
antics. He has to make good along that line &C
cording to a more and more startling standard.
His performance is like eating opiun-you have
to eat more and more all the while in order to get
the effect If Sunday does not do little more
in each place than he did in the last place, he is
doing less
"And yet, is that what he is doing2 Mani
festly not One effect will be that if Sunday has
great spiritual powers, he will have to reveal
them more truly and strikingly than he has ever
revealed them before. That is the direction in
which he will really have to make good Just in
the proportion that he suppresses the niounte-
bank, he will have to make the prophet appear.
If there is prophet there-then, as he would
put it himself, there is nothing doing.
Suppose he does it. Suppose he keeps on ex
purgating himself Suppose he succeeds in pleas
ing the Untarians. Suppose he succeeds in re-
placing monkey-shines with spirituality and gets
away with it. Suppose he gets his audiences on
new basis of serious evangeistic power. Well,
then the Boston-and-' Billy Sunday boot will be
on exactly the other foot. He will be influenced
more than he will influence. This town will re-
main the same, but Billy will be different.
Mnstead of Billy Sunday converting Boston,
it will be Boston that will have converted Billy
Sunday.
"One thing about Billy Sundays preaching
may go less easy with the Boston bleachers than
it has gone with others. 1t is the electric trick of
the man. Original discourse has always been
characteristic thing about Boston. Boston got
out of habit of echoing long ago. The other day
Sunday said that theologically he stands about
where Cotton Mather stood. That is evil
dent But Cotton Mather, one of the earliest of
Boston's preachers, was an eminently original
man; Boston began, that way and kept on the
original tack right along. 1t even accepted flor
a time) in the earliest days, a woman preacher,
Anne Hutchinson, because she was so original