Former professional baseball player-turned urban evangelist. Follow this daily blog that chronicles the life and ministry of revivalist preacher William Ashley "Billy" Sunday (1862-1935)
This image was likely take around 1902 because the oldest boy, George was born in 1892. He looks around 8-9 years old here. The other child must be Billy, Jr., born in 1901. The older woman is Helen’s mother. I colorized the image.
Part of his sermon, Revival Methods Defended.
What is a revival?
It is a campaign in the name of God against the world, the flesh and the devil, and against a revival you will find every brewer …. every whiskey seller in this valley; every blackleg gambler in this valley; every sham madame of the red-light district; every man and woman that feeds and fattens and gormandizes upon the virtue of men and women, so if you want to line up with a bunch like that, God pity you; that is the best compliment on God’s earth.
Men say the day of the revival is over. Fellows harp on that in the Methodist conference, in the Presbyterian meetings, in the Baptist associations, in the Congregational associations—the day of the revival is over. No, it is not. No, only with the fellow who vomits out the sentiment; but it is not over with God. The day of the revival is over. God Almighty leaned over the battlements of heaven and looked down into the coal mines of Wales and said, “Oh. Roberts!” and out of the depths of the coal mine came that grimy, soiled man, with dirty face, with a little lamp in his cap, and he said, “What is it, God?” And God said, “I want you to go and shake up Wales,” and he gave Wales the greatest revival that ever swept over that land since the days of Pentecost. There was not a college professor or preacher in Wales that God would trust with the job.
The Tribune-Republican. Wed, Mar 04, 1914 ·Page 10
You’ve got to work in harmony with God, or you can’t eat a potato. Try to plant your crop in the winter time.
A revival is the return of the church from her backsliding. Judgment must begin in the House of God.
There is as much sense in talking of a worldly Christian as there is in talking about a heavenly devil.
What would you say of the members of a fire company who kept playing cards and gossiping instead of answering the alarm.
We have so many denominations now that it gives a man brain fever to keep track of them. Somebody gets a new idea of truth, founds a new sect, and takes refuge under the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. There is as much need of more denominations as there is for a cat with more tails.
The average preacher stakes his claim on Jupiter and talks on—God knows what, I don’t.
The slaves would not be free men today if men had not gone on the firing line for $13 a month.
An Iowa preacher asked me: “Why don’t you preach the way I do?” “If I did,” I told him, “I wouldn’t be worth any more than you are.”
Some preachers would rather have people go to hell than preach anything except their sixteenth century religion. My mother used to wear hoops, but she doesn’t now, because there’s a different style.
Too many people windjam with their lips, but they don’t deliver the goods.
No wonder children of today grow up like asses’ colts!
You allow your daughters to go around with fellows whose character
would make a black mark on a piece of tar paper.
If you are not living to stir the devil, then you are a cipher and a
nonentity.
The church hasn’t smelled gunpowder for 150 years. It would do her
good. When she has grown rich, she has become independent of God
Almighty.
Some people think the more they look like a hedgehog the more pious
they are. They’d get to heaven a great deal quicker if they went to the
barber and dentist more often.
If you can’t own an automobile, take a trolley ride for a nickel. Ain’t it
fierce?
If some of you devils were to go a whole day without cussing your wife,
she’d think you were sick and send for the doctor, although she’d rather
send for the undertaker.
If there is any one person in this world that I despise with every atom
of my being, it is the weasel-eyed, lantern-jawed, knock-kneed, stiff-necked,
cadaverous, crooked-nosed, old neighborhood gossip, who can see more
through a keyhole seven blocks away than a decent woman could through
an open door right at her elbow.
The Tribune-Republican. Wed, Mar 04, 1914 ·Page 10
Despite one of the worst storms in recent memory for Scrantonites (March 1, 1914), 4,000 people showed up at the tabernacle, Unfortunately, about 1,500 could not get home. Over 100 trains were delayed or stopped running.
On the evening of March 1, 1914, a fierce winter storm swept into Scranton, Pennsylvania, just as evangelist Billy Sunday opened his long-anticipated revival campaign. Snow began falling heavily and, by night’s end, roughly 14 inches blanketed the city. Winds howled at nearly 45 miles per hour, rattling the enormous wooden tabernacle built for the meetings and at times drowning out Sunday’s booming voice.
Outside, the storm piled drifts as high as ten feet, choking off roads and halting the streetcars that normally ferried worshipers home. Inside the tabernacle, about 2,500 attendees quickly realized they were stranded. With travel impossible, they settled in for the night, huddling around pot-bellied stoves, brewing coffee, sharing whatever food they had carried, and making the best of their unexpected vigil.
By the next morning, Scranton lay silent under a white barricade. Billy Sunday canceled Monday’s services so people could rest and dig out. Local volunteers soon arrived with wagons and supplies, helping the weary congregation back to their homes.
The episode became known as the “Billy Sunday Snowstorm,” a dramatic blend of nature’s power and religious fervor that locals remembered for years as the night a revival meeting turned into an impromptu winter encampment.
The Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) · Mon, Mar 2, 1914 · Page 1.
May 4 1914 Scranton paper
In October 1906 Billy preached to a crowd of roughly 800 people in Salida, Colorado, at First Presbyterian Church. During his message he exhorted the crowd…..
Read good books and keep good company. Every gambler and drunkard became so by imitating the gang he went with. Good books and good companions are to character what water is to the fruit trees, the grasses and the vegetables in this beautiful valley.
There are a few hundred books in the present Winona Lake home that Billy lived in for the last 30 years of his ministry. On the shelf, one can find A History of the American People, by Wodrow Wilson in the first edition (1902).
While Sunday’s authority came from Scripture, A History of the American People offered a grand, moral narrative of the United States that fit seamlessly with his revivalistic call: a chosen nation needing repentance and reform to fulfill its destiny. Wilson’s combination of national mission, moral urgency, and literary flair reinforced Sunday’s belief that evangelism and patriotism were inseparable in early-20th-century America.
Morgan Library at Grace College (Winona Lake) has several cards or notes in which Sunday and Wilson communicated together. They seemed to have liked each other.
Morgan Library at Grace College has a wonderful artifact that appears to be a notebook with various (mostly) handwritten notes, undoubetdly by Billy himself, that resemble the raw materials and resources Billy used in his earliest ministry days, perhaps as early as the 1890s. It is chalked full with handwritten notes, stats, illustrations, and what appears to be outlines for messages. It is personally inscribed by W.A. Sunday with an address of 64 Throop St. Chicago. The address is interesting because across the street from the home (now gone) is Jefferson Park Church (see Bruns:47).
This Google Earth views shows the site of the previous Park Jefferson Church (8-story red building today). 64 Throop would have been right across today, where a long distribution or warehouse sits today.
“STRIKING OUT” SATAN.
BILLY SUNDAY, THE NOTED BALL TOSSER, TURNS EVANGELIST.
The Famous Centre-Fielder Addresses a Large Crowd at Farwell Hall – He Didn’t Even Allow the “Father of Sin” to Reach First Base – Advising His Hearers to Watch Their “Error Columns” – Forty-eight Converts Made.
Centre Fielder Billy Sunday made a three-base hit at Farwell Hall last night. There is no other way of expressing the success that accompanied his first appearance in Chicago as an evangelist.
Young men who dodged the boys distributing pamphlets at the door of the hall were confronted with these words blazing in scarlet letters on the big bulletin board:
“William A. Sunday, the base-ball player.”
And about 500 of them who didn’t know much about Billy’s talents as an evangelist, but could remember him galloping to second base with his cap in his hand, went inside. They heard a rattling fifteen minutes’ talk.
Mr. Sunday, who has grown a red mustache since his marriage, appeared in a becoming black suit and looked a little shy. It was his first public appearance here as an evangelist. In private he had often tried to do quiet work among the ball players, but, after dulling his weapons on the adamantine surface of “Silver” Flint’s moral character, he gave up the task, and for several winters has been preparing for a public trial of his skill in saving souls.
His talk last night was the most successful of the year. He aimed straight at the young men in front of him, giving them the truth in plain, earnest language, and when he finished forty-eight youths raised their hands to show that they had been converted. Sunday looked as pleased as a man who has stolen third.
AT THE BAT.
His talk was from the text: “Is the Young Man Safe?”
“Is he safe?” said Mr. Sunday. “Do you think he is safe, boys – do you think he is safe? I answer no. This is a big city. It is full of temptations. No young man is safe in it without Christ. With Him there is security. Without Him – O! think of the pitfalls and iniquity that drag young men down to sin and death.”
The little ball player walked across the stage with the springing gait of an athlete, and turned suddenly on his audience: “There are a great many questions of vast importance to us as individuals and as a Nation—questions that call for men of keen intellect and for thought—such questions as the tariff and labor. Vast and important as these are, they sink to oblivion when compared to the question of your soul’s future home. Ah! my boy, that is the big question. Christ calls across a chasm of 1,800 years: ‘Son, give me thine heart.’ Today the seat of war is confined to no one nation or battlefield. It rages all over this earth, on the Hudson, on the Mississippi, on the Nile, on the Danube. It is the battle against sin. Ever since Cain slew Abel in the Garden of Eden that battle has been raging, and it will rage so long as the earth stands. What side are you on?
“Think of the thousands that fall in the battle of life, no hope, no home, no heaven. Look at it right, boys. Satan doesn’t want to get a young man who after a while may dispute with him the realm of everlasting meanness. You bet he doesn’t. It is the generous young man, the warm-hearted young man, the ardent young man, the sociable young man who is in danger, my friends. He’s the fellow that Satan behind the bat wants to catch napping. He’s the chap that the Devil in the box wants to pull on with a snake curve. Hold your base. Wait for your ball.”
“WATCH THE ERROR COLUMN.”
Sunday was in earnest. He grew eloquent. “Say to yourself, O my friends, God helping me, I will take my Bible, light for all darkness, balm for all wounds, grand, glorious, the best book you ever owned. If you haven’t got a Bible now, my lads, get one. It will show you the paths of safety and warn you of the danger of the paths of sin: ‘Whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.’
“Is there a voice within you saying: ‘What did you do that for? Why did you go there? What did you mean by that?’ Is there a memory in your soul that makes you tremble—is there such a memory, fellows? God only knows all our hearts. He is familiar with the catalogues of our sins. How many hits have you made and where do you stand in the error column?”
Mr. Sunday then led the audience in singing the hymn:
Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe from corroding care,
Safe from the world’s temptation,
Sin cannot harm me there.
Forty-eight persons acknowledged the effect of Mr. Sunday’s manly and earnest talk—the best showing made at a Farwell Hall Sunday night service in a year. After the regular meeting an experience meeting was held in the rear of the hall, where Mr. Sunday led in prayer and shook hands with the converts.
“I wish Anson were here,” he said. “What an evangelist the old man would make. No, I’m glad I didn’t take the long trip. I can do more good here bringing souls to Christ. I will play in Pittsburg next summer.”
“Say, how he did line old Satan’s delivery out of the lot,” said a young man at the door. “He hit the ball on the nose every time.”
Here’s what Billy Sunday personally wrote in a sermon note about a churchless community.
“A churchless community is a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious belief. It is a community on the rapid down grade. Church work and attendance means a cultivation of the habit of feeling the responsibility for others.” – not dated but likely 1934. Grace College. Morgan Library.
Billy’s words to the people at Philadelphia, farewell:
“And this is only the beginning. The revival is a failure that comes to a close when the tabernacle is torn down; we have enlisted –not for a campaign—but for the war. “There remains much land yet to be possessed”. Not in many years has a large city been so generally permeated by the Spirit of God. But only in part has the harvest been gathered; the convicted should be converted; the lives of those who have taken their first step must be linked to the church of Christ; the young convert must be taught; These thousands of men “whose hearts God has touched” must be kept true by being kept
busy for the Master”. – Morgan Library
Evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935) 