Billy Sunday

“ In many homes they have no conversation. There is no affectionate greeting in the morning when the children start for school, no little kiss to linger on their lips, and when they come home at noon, hungry, there is no kind greeting. The old man never says a word unless he growls for you to pass something, and so far as anyone would know, you would be in a deaf and dumb asylum. No fireside chats with the children.
You are down at some fool club, some lodge; you are off to some literary social, beer and wine-drinking hell, and you let your children go to the devil. ”

“ With everything wicked men can do today they try to check religion. Yet religion never will be stopped. You might as well try to dam Niagara Falls with toothpicks.
For twenty-seven and a half years I have been a Christian. I defy the devil or anyone else on earth or in hell to prove that I don’t live what I preach.
A motorman might as well try to run his car up yonder hill by blowing his breath against the front vestibule as to expect salvation without Jesus Christ.
You can’t stop religion by making fun of it.
If it’s wrong for me to hit the booze, it’s wrong for you. ”

“ A mother’s love must be like God’s love. How God could ever tell the world that He loved it without a mother’s help has often puzzled me. If the devils in hell ever turned pale, it was the day when mother’s love flamed up for the first time in a woman’s heart. If the devil ever got ‘cold feet,’ it was that day, in my judgment. ”

“ We’re not trying to offer an excuse for not doing things as perhaps we might have done. But our voice is hoarse, we feel the strain of his campaign, our health is not the best, and we pray to Thee for more strength with which to battle down the forces of sin and hell. But Jesus, we’re willing to fight for you, no matter how bad we feel. We’ll stick to it, Jesus as long as you will let us. But, Jesus, don’t you think for a minute we’re trying to give some excuse. We’re tired, but on the job, and we want to stick to it, so help us all and give us strength for Your sake. ”

“ Girls not actuated by the noblest of human feeling, but simply willing to pay the price for a good time. They are not moved by the nobler desires of manhood and womanhood. Maternity is the highest possible gift of God to woman. The up-to-date women pride themselves on their criminal knowledge. Some girls marry for society, some marry for home, some marry for ease, some marry to reform man; he wouldn’t marry you to reform you—you little fool. It is no easier to make a kingly husband out of a beer-soaked, cigaret-smoking specimen of a man than a prostitute can make a queenly wife. ”

“ It is almost impossible to find in the theater decency and purity.
The church and the theater have nothing in common.
The only way to reform the theater is to turn it into something else.
The rogue and scoundrelism and man’s infidelity form the groundwork of most plays.
The day is long past when any number of serious-minded citizens look to the theater for inspiration or instruction.
If it were not for the leg shows the theater would go bankrupt.
Booth and Garrick would not allow their own children to go to the theater.
Smiling religion—that’s what we want.
The devil can’t laugh—poor devil. ”

“ WHAT BILLY SAID ON MOTHERHOOD.
“I don’t believe there is an angel in heaven that would not come to earth and be honored with motherhood if God would grant them that privilege. Like produces like in animals and in human beings. Blood will tell in horses, sheep, quadruped and in human beings. A consumptive mother will produce a consumptive child, and the same is true of its paternity. It is time to lay aside mock modesty. You can’t trifle with God’s rules. Society has just about put maternity out of fashion. ”

“ Lo, there is the battlefield.
“No marshaling troops, no bivouac song,
No banner to gleam and wave;
But oh! these battles, they last so long—
From babyhood to the grave.”
“There is a mighty power in a mother’s kiss—inspiration, courage, hope, ambition. One kiss made Benjamin West a painter, and the memory of it clung to him through life. One kiss will drive away the fear in the dark and make the little one brave. It will give strength where there is weakness.” ”

“ The theater, as conducted today, is one of the rottenest institutions outside of hell.
It is upon the charred souls of women that most of the men who are a power in the theatrical world have climbed to their height. ”

“ If a church runs a lottery, then it’s a thief.
There are three ways of spreading news, telephone, telegraph and tell-a-woman. But that’s really an insult, for some of these old he-gossipers have got the women backed off the boards.
I pity the woman who’ll slap Jesus in the face to please some miserable society gang.
The dance hall has proved to be the biggest graveyard this side of hell for young girls.
The fellow who lives purely for the gratification of his lust, is so low down he’d have to take an airship to reach hell.
The most useless woman on God’s dirt is the society woman. ”

“ Then, when the revival is over and the routine of everyday life begins, they slip gradually back into their former ways. They are like the groundhog. When spring comes the groundhog awakes from his winter’s sleep and emerges into the sunlight and lives an active life until the storms of winter come again. Then he crawls into his hole of hibernation and falls into a sleep of months. Oh, it is easy to think of things divine when the revival is on and there is inspiration on every side and the bands are playing and the crowds are marching. ”

“ Our homes are on the level with women. Towns are on the level with homes. Nations are on the level with towns. What our women are, the towns will be. What the town is the men will be. The devil and women can damn this world, and Jesus and women can save this world. The womanhood of the world has to settle the destiny of the world. I believe there is something unfinished in the makeup of a girl with the absence of religion. The average girl of today no longer looks forward to motherhood as the crowning glory of womanhood. ”

“ And I think the blackest, darkest picture ever looked upon is to see a father without the religion of Jesus Christ in his heart, and a be-frizzled society woman without the religion of Jesus Christ in her heart, and the next oldest child, and on down until the baby in the cradle, and to see that father and mother lock arms and all start to hell, like many of them are doing today. ”

“ I believe the downfall of most men and women can be traced to some defect in the home.
A home must be something more than four walls and a roof.
The biggest monstrosity God ever looked at is the mother with her children playing about her feet and they not getting an inspiration of Jesus.
We’re neglecting the home for the club, the lodge, the card party, the literary society and the social function.
If a firm advertised for a bookkeeper it would expect something else than just a man on legs; something else than just a slot machine to shove its salary into every Saturday night. ”

“ What would you care for an angel’s song if there is no mother’s song? The song of a mother is sweeter than that ever sung by minstrel or written by poet. Talk about sonnets! You ought to hear the mother sing when her babe is on her breast, when her heart is filled with emotion. Her voice may not please an artist, but it will please any one who has a heart in him. The songs that have moved the world are not the songs written by the great masters. I think when we reach heaven it will be found that some of the best songs we will sing there will be those we learned at mother’s knee. ”

“ If you worked for God as hard as you do for the devil, you wouldn’t be up against it.
If you’re a backslider, you’re a liar, a perjurer and you’ve broken your marriage vows with God.
Many men may be true to their business, to their lodge and to their wives, but dirty liars to God.
You can graduate from the best university on God’s dirt and make a cold storage plant out of your brain, but without Jesus you aren’t worth a cent.
There is as much connection between some church members and Jesus as there is between a wooden leg and the man that wears it.
Life is just chuck full of half-done things. ”

“ Every child is put in a mother’s arms as a trust from God, and she has to answer to God for the way she deals with that child. No mother on God’s earth has any right to raise her children for pleasure. She has no right to send them to dancing school and haunts of sin. You have no right to do those things that will curse your children. That babe is put in your arms to train for the Lord. No mother has any more right to raise her children for pleasure than I have to pick your pockets or throw red pepper in your eyes. ”

“ Dancing is not an innocent amusement. It has caused the downfall of more girls than anything else.
Three-fourths of the fallen women in big cities, fell because of the dance.
You’d just as soon husk corn by moonlight as to dance with your own wife. It’s the other fellow’s wife, some other fellow’s sister that you want to dance with.
A man will wallow and get so low he’ll have to climb a hill to get into hell, then make a bluff at reforming and society takes him in. Then at the dance he’ll breathe promises into the ears of some innocent young girl, gain her confidence and then ruin her. ”

“ When you come staggering home, cussing right and left and spewing and spitting, your wife suffers, your children suffer, you infernal old devil. Don’t think that you are the only one that suffers. You’re placing a stain on your wife and your children. If you’re a dirty, low-down, filthy, drunken, whisky-soaked bum you’ll affect all with whom you come in contact. If you’re a God-fearing man you will influence all with whom you come in contact. You can’t live by yourself.
“Personal liberty is not personal license. ”

“ You say religion causes insanity; I say you’re a liar!
You tell the doctor, who says you need beer for your health that he’s a liar.
Knowledge is of no benefit unless you use it.
The world is being born into sin 20 to 1 faster than into the spirit of God.
Religion doesn’t make anybody mad; it’s hell that makes men mad.
Any fool can criticise; it needs neither brains nor heart to find fault.
Churches in New York City have 50,000 less members today than a year ago.
All denominations are failing to reach the multitude.
You’re either a patriot or a traitor to God’s cause in this revival. ”

“ The biggest coward in America today, the biggest coward we have in the profession of Christian religion, who is afraid to come out and declare himself in a campaign like this is the business man. He is afraid of some saloon keeper, some brewer, some gambler and others of that kind—they’re afraid they will lose their trade by it, and by the eternal God they ought to be punished before the moon changes. ”

“ Emerson said: ‘Men are what their mothers make them.’ They are what their mothers make them, and if the mothers of today were true to their trust, then they could send their boys to college and need not be afraid of them coming back infidels, like many of them do. There is no power on earth that can lift to heaven or shove to hell like the touch of a mother’s hand. ”

“ SUNDAY ADVISES SOCIETY WOMEN TO SAVE SOULS.
“No doubt you women have a retinue of servants and haven’t dirtied your hands in dishwater for so long that you have forgotten how it feels. But you have souls to save, and don’t wait until just before the undertaker backs up to your door.” ”

“ It is the work of the devil to make it hard for us. It is the devil’s work to make us weak physically, so that it will be hard to bear the strain of God’s work. Oh, devil, why do you strike us when we’re down? ”

“ You say you need exercise and that’s why you dance. All right, then, let women dance with women, and men with men.
The dance brings vice and virtue into such close contact that virtue loses.
Any church that encourages dancing is too low down to deserve the name of church.
If there are variations of hell, the dancer will crack brimstone in the hottest spot.
If there was nothing but card players and dancers in the church, how it would stink and rot! ”

“ Being a king, an emperor or a president is mighty small business compared to being a mother, or the teacher of [26] children, whether in a public school or in a Sunday school, and they fill places so great that there isn’t an angel in heaven that wouldn’t be glad to give a bushel of diamonds to boot to come down here and take their place. Commanding an army is little more than sweeping a street or pounding an anvil compared with the training of a boy or girl.” ”

“ The biggest fool today is the man who sneers at the word of God.
God’s word can’t be overthrown. It is too hard for the tooth of time and will last forever.
God’s plan in the beginning was that man should never die and that no man should ever work. Now, because of sin, white or black, Christian or skeptic, civilized or savage, it’s work for you or over the hills to the poor house. ”

“ When you stop to consider the average society woman I do not think maternity has lost anything. The child of affluence is turned over to nurses at birth and is fed on prepared foods and knows nothing of its mother. The children of humbler homes are raised by their mothers, instead of being turned over to governesses. These mothers spend their time in bridge parties, gadding, and fondling pet [32] dogs; no wonder men go to the clubs. No man wants to play second fiddle to a bow-legged bulldog. ”

“ It makes no difference whether you kneel before God as a millionaire or a hobo—it’s a case of sin and salvation.
I don’t care whether you hot-footed it to the Tabernacle tonight or rode in an auto.
God puts no premium on laziness. You can bank on that—Jesus Christ is the center, circumference and nucleus of the Old and New Testament.
I believe that no man disbelieves in hell unless he finds himself on the straight road to hell.
I wonder God is doing as well as He is with the bunch He has to work with. ”