Spectacular career of Rev. Billy Sunday, famous baseball evangelist

Introduction

TN offering to the world the first comprehensive biography of Rev. W. A. Sunday, the famous evangelist, it is necessary at the very outset to absolve Mr. Sunday from any responsibility for the venture or any interest in it.

Mr. Sunday has been repeatedly and unjustly accused of petty machinations for profit and gain, therefore, this statement is justly due him.

Mr. Sunday derives no revenue from any of the several publications which are sold during his campaigns, with the exception of pamphlet formed editions of four of his sermons, and all of this money he gives to charity. It is true, that Mr. Sunday did consider at the outset being interested in the present publication, but as it began to grow and take form with the gathering of data; and as the importance of the work, and its wide-spread demand became more and more apparent, it was felt that proper delicacy on the evangelist's part would not permit of his connection with the enterprise. It became obviously necessary to say so many things of an extremely laudatory nature, that any participation of the evangelist in the work, would have been subjected to gross misconstruction.

On the other hand, fidelity to the public demanded the incorporation of certain things upon which the public's view and the evangelist's have not

4 INTRODUCTION

always coincided. Mr. Sunday has been for sometime compiling data concerning his work, and this will probably at some time appear in book form.

The necessary autobiographical nature of his work will have an interest from which no other book can detract, but which will hardly have the degree of self-laudation, which a large reflex of his life and work must possess.

The author is under many obligations to dozens, and even hundreds of persons who' have contributed facts and information herein incorporated. He has, so far as possible, studiously avoided any expression or editorial opinion; confining himself to facts or to quotations directly from persons informed, or from official records.

An important part of this work is a list of names and addresses of all those who have furnished information, incorporated in this work, and whose testimony is a sufficient index to the truth and reliability of the present undertaking.

In a work of this kind it is too much to hope that errors have not crept in. They are, however, the errors which arise from differences of opinion or the occasional necessity of accepting a report which could not be verified definitely. The list of authorities cited in the back of the book will enable those who are interested, to pursue further investigation of Rev. Mr. Sunday's career on their own account.

To all these, and others who may not be directly quoted, the author makes heartfelt acknowledgment. Assured by the many kindly indications of interest

INTRODUCTION O

which have come from all parts of the country that the book will have a considerable welcome, the author commends it to the attention of the thousands of admirers of Rev. Billy Sunday everywhere in the United States.

Theodore Thomas Frankenberg, Columbus, Ohio, November, 191 3.

Se

Photo by Baker.

\PMAN.

FOREWARD

1HAVE the very greatest possible joy and delight in the successful ministry of the Rev. W. A. Sunday. I consider him one of the most genuine, true-hearted men I have ever known and believe that he has almost in perfection what every minister must have if he is to be a success in his preaching, namely, a consuming passion, that all who do not know Christ should accept Him as a Saviour. It is, of course, not possible for everyone to possess the remarkable gifts with which Mr. Sunday has been naturally endowed, but it is possible to be dead in earnest, and without in any way detracting from Mr. Sunday's mental, physical and spiritual equipment, I shall not be misunderstood when I say that much of his phenomenal success is to be traced to his downright earnestness. A half-hearted minister has never yet done much in the cause of Christ, and Mr. Sunday is setting the ministers of the United States and the world a noble example in thus throwing himself into his great work with such tremendous zeal. I do not know how long he can last if he continues working under such heavy pressure, but I have no doubt that he has counted the cost and that he has fully decided that it will be far better for him to preach for a limited time as he is now preaching and have the consciousness that he is being blessed of God in his work, and turning mul-

8 THE FOREWORD

titudes to Christ rather than to live a less strenuous life and see a fewer number come to the Savior.

If a fair proportion of the ministers of the Church would preach with the same spirit of abandonment which possesses Mr. Sunday I believe all the world would hear of Christ in a generation. It is one of my great joys to realize that I may have had some influence in determining Mr. Sunday's life work. He came to me many years ago to help in my services. He was ready to do anything if only he could be of assistance to me, to sell books, to direct the ushers, to look after the inquirers, to make my burdens lighter in every way, and he had the same hearty enthusiasm in doing such ordinary things as he has since displayed in his most remarkable work.

One day in Urbana, Ohio, I had a request from someone out of town for a speaker, and I asked Mr. Sunday to accept the invitation. He seemed greatly frightened, said that he could not speak and that he was not the man for the place. Finally it was determined that he should tell the story of his conversion. Following that day's services the most interesting reports were made to me of the impression which he had made upon his audience, and I then had the conviction that he ought to do more of this sort of work, and I suggested to him that he ought to go to a number of places and stay for a week's meetings. When he told me that he did not have sermons I asked him to make use of anything that he had heard me say, and told him that I should feel highly honored at his doing so. It was thus that he started, so far as I can remember. His successful work from that day to this needs no descriptive word of mine for how-

THE FOREWORD V

ever much men may differ with him as regards method, all will agree if they know him at all that he is absolutely honest and sincere as well as being a truly great man. 1 consider Mr. Sunday very generous. I cannot think of any time that he has met me and had opportunity for conversation that he has not said to me — "Do you need any money?" And that he has not told me that if I did need it he would gladly give it to me. Fortunately for me and possibly for him I have not found it necessary to accept his kind offers of monetary gifts, but he has never made the suggestion that I have not had a glimpse of his great and generout heart.

It is a matter of small concern to me as to what methods Mr. Sunday may use. I am not at all disturbed that he should be working plans which are exactly the opposite of my own. Sam Jones never said a better thing than when he said, "God never made two men alike without making one of them a fool." I am filled with rejoicing that Mr. Sunday is just himself, honest, sincere, noble, devoted to Christ and filled with an intense longing to see others accept Him as their Saviour, and I shall ever pray that God may long spare him for his work, and that his career of usefulness may be greater and greater as the days pass by.

It has been my privilege to influence a number of men to enter the ministry, and my great joy to encourage not a few to take up evangelistic work, and insofar as I have been able to do so I have sought to encourage them in their efforts, and give to them unsparingly of my influence that their work might be owned and blessed of God, but of all with whom I

10 THE FOREWORD

have come in contact I must say that I am more grateful to God for Mr. Sunday and for his ministry than I can ever express in words. God bless him, and more and more mightily use him is my prayer.

J. Wilbur Chapman.

October, 1913. 3 Park Gardens, W., Glasgow, Scotland.

Contents

Chapter Page

Foreword — By Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman . . 7

I. The Man — Who He Is 13

Chapter I The Man — Who He Is

How evangelists come by their ranking — Motives that operate, standards that change — Dr. Green in Hampton's Magazine — Lindsay Denison in the American Magazine — Bruce Barton gives views in Collier's — Quotations from the daily and from the religious press.

CHAPTER I

•yy ■ HAT does it mean to be ranked with Wesley A C I and with Luther ; Savonarola and with ^^r Peter the Hermit? Yes, to be coupled with the Twelve who walked with the lowly Nazarene?

Either it means a Wonder Man marked through all the ages, or it means a greatly exaggerated and distorted vision, due to proximity to the object admired.

At fifty the world's judgment of a man usually is the one that will endure. The stroke oar of Harvard fades into the inconspicuous haunts of a small town high school, or the Princeton half-back is forgotten in the petty politics of a western country. The winner of the Marathon — who recalls his name after the lapse of the first Olympiad? The fame that comes in youth is more often than not of a transitory nature. The man of fifty, who is beginning to receive the acclaim of his fellows, and serious commendation, as well a vituperative opposition, is one who has built on a sure foundation, and has come from little to more, and from great to greater through a natural method and evolution, which has given the strength and stamina that will endure in the way of reputation after the life itself has gone out.

How far it is fitting and correct to consider Rev. William Ashley Sunday, familiarly known as "Billy" Sunday, the base-ball evangelist, the greatest living evangelist and possibly the greatest since the days of

Pentecost, is a question well worthy of serious consideration in the light of all the facts that can be adduced.

The merest statement of his accredited accomplishments is startling. More than loo series of meetings held throughout the length and breadth of the land, resulting in the professed conversion of more than 200,000 souls, is a record which, on its face, will challenge comparison with the most conspicuous in ancient or modern history. To establish the justice of comparison, it is not necessary to go into the merit of the methods employed, nor the motives that have operated — to do this, would be to vitiate all standards and compel history to be rewritten from the time when Constantine swung an empire into the Christian fold and became an object of suspicion for all succeeding generations.

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 Christian faith. Yet, it is admitted history that in many instances, a tribe or clan followed blindly in the wake of its leader and religious observances were laid on and off like a mantle. Neither will the history of the modern church stand scrutiny if the inner motives that prompted all of the leaders 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

THE MAN — WHO IS HE 17

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 compels the conclusion that there are at the present time no recognized standards whereby the work of various men in various ages may be measured honestly.

It is only possible, therefore, to estimate Rev. Mr. Sunday by comparing his admitted achievements with the accredited achievements of the great historical evangelists, and with these it would seem that he ranks in every way a peer. Coming from the comparative obscurity of what is generally known as the Middle West, he has in late years challenged the attention of the entire country, and there has been devoted to him recently a considerable amount of disinterested attention from which a consensus of judgment can be established.

As early as June 19 lo Dr. Thomas E. Green, writing in Hampton's magazine, said, after an extended description of the man's manners:

That's Billy Sunday, America's great evangelist. On the platform he "plays ball." Attitude, gestures, methods — he crouches, rushes, whirls, bangs his message out, as if he were at the bat in the last inning, with 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 300,000 people have been "converted" under his preaching — and he says, ninety per cent of them stick.

Even earlier than that Lindsay Denison writing in the September 1907 number of the American Magazine, without making a pretense to direct interest in religion, nor posing as an authority on that subject, said:

I have seen many a university foot-ball victory celebration ; I have seen several riots of joy after a Yale-Harvard boat race; I was in the headquarters of District 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 tabernacle when the meeting was over. The noise was inchoate until Fred Fischer took charge and organized it. There were a hundred dangerous rushes by people at the back to reach the platform and Bill Sunday. Fischer got them singing. When they were tired of singing a tune, he asked them to whistle it and then to hum it. Now and then somebody got up and interrupted by calling for three cheers for Billy Sunday ! And when it was announced that altogether Sunday had won 1,118 Fairfield souls from the Devil for Christ it seemed as though the roof was tugging at the rafters.

After the remarkable work in Columbus the larger magazines began to give more and more attention to the career of this evangelist. Bruce Barton was assigned by Collier's to make a close study of the man and his method, and in the spring of 1913 he made this summing up :

THE MAN WHO IS HE 19

It's fourteenth-century theology, you say, and perhaps that's true. But there is no cant in it. It is the hard-hitting message of a strong man, stirred to the depths of his soul by the spectacle of puny, impotent, mortal men setting themselves in revolt against the purpose of Almighty God. And men respond to it — the leading men of the city — editors, merchants, 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 his convert rolls.

You must hear him more than once to know his power ; indeed it takes 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 Illinois — a rainy night, when he spoke with difficulty and, to my mind, poorly. "Surely," I said to myself, "this is an off night for Billy; there'll be no response to a sermon like that." And yet he had hardly concluded when the converts came trooping toward the platform, and the first man among them the president of the local gas company.

It is the hammer, hammer, hammer of six or seven weeks of man-to-man talk that compels results.

And the results — what are they?

In Decatur, 111., he labored six weeks, and more than 5,000 persons pressed forward to take his hand — the sign of their intention to begin another life. The meetings closed on the eve of a local option election. On the morning after the election, when the result of the overwhelming vote was known, there appeared this sign in the front window of one of the most prominent saloons :

Closed Until Further Notice,

By order of

Billy Sunday.

The Herald, a newspaper in Decatur, had for years served the interests of the local Republican machine with a fidelity that was as unswerving as it was conscienceless. For the stars to reverse themselves in their orbits would have caused no greater surprise in Decatur than for the Herald to bolt the machine ticket. Yet after the meetings the Herald did bolt, and declared itself in favor of the Democratic candidate for Mayor, nominated on a reform platform. "The influence of that paper, conducted as it is," said one of the thoughtful men of Decatur, "is worth $500,- 000 to this town; and Sunday did it."

In the same article occurs another paragraph that refers to a paper in the City of Columbus :

The Ohio State Journal was compelled to deny editorially that its first-page columns, which were given over every morning to the meetings, as well as the whole second page, had been purchased by the Sunday organization. "We never received a cent," it said, "never expect to ; would not take it if it were offered. Devoting so much space to Billy Sunday is newspaper business, pure and simple. The people want to read what he says. In all our experience we never knew of such universal desire to read something as there is to read Mr. Sunday's sermons. Therefore we print them."

THE MAN WHO IS HE 21

Think of that from a leading newspaper in a city of nearly 200,000, with all its thousand conflicting interests.

Mr. Barton seems to lay particular stress upon the importance of newspapers when it comes to estimating the work of a revivalist, as he is at some pains to quote a third instance of the same general type, reproducing the following publisher's notice which appeared on the front page of the McKeesport, Pa. Times when the Sunday campaign closed there in the fall of 1912:

From this date forward the Evening Times will not accept the advertisement of any distiller, brewer, or wholesale or retail liquor dealer. This rule is made a part of the policy of the advertising department of this newspaper.

From this date forward the Evening Times will not accept the advertisement of any manufacturer or seller of remedies for diseases caused by vice, appliances or preparations that are against morality and good public policy, of practitioners who prey upon the credulity and fear of youth, or of compounds of the "make beer at home" sort. A few advertisements that come under these last headings are now running in the Evening Times under contract, but such arrangements will be discontinued at the earhest possible day.

It is the desire of the management of this newspaper that it shall be a force for the betterment of its city and district, and no effort will be spared to make and keep its columns so clean that it may be read every day with entire safety and real benefit by persons of all ages and both sexes.

McKeesport Times Company, By William B. Kay,

General Manager.

So much for the secular press. In conclusion, it is interesting to quote from the well known Congregationalist which because of the attitude of certain ministers in that denomination was popularly supposed to be opposed to I\Ir. Sunday. In an editorial of its issue in April 1913, it said:

Who can help rejoicing when the inertia and indifference of years gives w^ly to love for God and the service of others, when men who have lived long in the under-world and have become besotted and brutal are totally reconstructed. Humanly speaking, Mr. Sunday effects such results in countless cases and, humanly speaking, these changes would not be likeh^ to come about without him. And who can doubt that along with increasing reliance upon cultural methods we need also to preach and to stand for a gospel that radically and often changes the inner life. Many men and women in middle life today are far beyond the reach of cultural methods. The}- need the sounding of a trumpet which will awaken them from their sleep. It is significant that, as a rule, those who work with Mr. Sunday from the beginning to the end of a campaign reach a point where they are more inclined to appreciation than to criticism or condemnation.

No eftort is here made to cite unnumbered commendations from the press of the cities in which Mr. Sunday has labored, for the purpose of establishing his standing as an evangelist. They would be open to criticism of possible bias. National magazines, edited with a view of giving truth as nearly as they can by securing authentic information for thousands who have no opportunity for first-hand observation, have seen fit to endorse this man in no unmeasured terms,

THE MAN WHO IS HE 23

and to verify for themselves the statements of the daily press in the various communities where Mr. Sunday has labored. Students of history will know the accomplishments of the great evangelist of all ages, and those who are not thus informed will be content with the statement from these persons as authority, that never in the history of the Christian faith have more men and women been moved to make an expression of their faith in the gospel teachings, than have resulted from the ministrations of this remarkable man.

These are the fruits of his labors as he completes the cycle of a half century of life. They are not sudden or spasmodic expression of opinion ; rather in some instances they seem to have been grudgingly given, or seem to indicate that the person making them had first to be persuaded of their truth himself.

Concerning such a man, it may be worth while to question further of his life and work.

Chapter II

Ancestry of the Sunday family — Born in Iowa — Father dies without seeing his son — Life in an orphan asylum — What the superintendent says — Early childish escapades — Caring for ponies and going to school — What Billy's mother has to say about her famous son.

CHAPTER II

^y OD makes few exceptions to the general rule in m^k preparing His great men for the world. VJi Almost invariably they come from the soil and from humble origin — yet the stock is always good. The seclusion of the Kentucky mountains, and the grinding poverty of a small cabin, could not hide the blood that flowed in Abraham Lincoln's veins. Garfield on a tow-path was a true descendant of the Revolution. The rule holds with most of the truly great who have preached the Inspired Word, and Rev. W. A. Sunday is no exception.

Ames, Iowa, still a very little place after more than seventy-five years of municipal existence, claims the birthplace of the evangelist, and so hard pressed and lacking in comfort were those early days, that Mr. Sunday seldom refers to them except in general terms, or to point some pertinent lessons in the discourse he has in hand.

The Sunday family is an old one, even in this country. Before the days of its residency in Pennsylvania the family lived in Germany. The German form of the name was Sonntag, and this was literally translated into "Sunday" before the Revolutionary days. This, in itself, explains and refutes the scurrilous charge sometimes made, that the evangelist masquerades under an assumed name. The Pennsylvania archives show that several of the Sunday family served in the Revolutionary war.

In an address delivered at a meeting in Pennsylvania Mr. Sunday took occasion to refer to his ancestry in these words:

My grandmother on my mother's side was Welsh; my father was a German, born near Chambersburg — and you can't find a triumvirate of ancestors for any man to be more proud of than that.

Some years before the outbreak of the civil war William Sunday, father of the evangelist, moved with his family from Chambersburg, Pa., and settled in Iowa. Father and grandfather were farmers and tilled the soil. It is the frequent boast of Rev. Mr. Sunday that at the age of nine, he held a man's place in the harvest field and did a full day's work with the rest of the hands.

With the outbreak of the civil war William Sunday, the evangelist's father, like so many other Iowa patriots answered the early call for troops. Quoting from the records of the United States Department of War Adjutant General H. O. S. Heistand, says:

The records show that William Sunday was enrolled August 14, 1862, at Des Moines, Iowa, and was mustered into service September 19, 1862, as a private in Company E, 23d Iowa Infantry Volunteers, to serve three years, and that he died of disease December 22, 1862, at Patterson, Missouri.

Mr. Sunday never saw his father. On the 19th of November, 1862 he was born, the third of three boys. Before he was two months old he was an orphan. The other Children were Albert and Edward. Just how much the evangelist values these things in his estimate of life, is shown in one of his well known sermons in which he says :

I have as much to be proud of as to lineage as any one ; my great-grandfather was in the revolutionary war, and my daughter is eligible to the D. A. R. General U. S. Grant was a fourth cousin of mine. My grandfather and he played together, ate out of the same tin pans. When he was elected president he wrote a letter to my grandfather asking him to go down to Washington for a three weeks' visit. I've seen the letter. That don't get me anything, though.

This grandfather was one of the guiding influences of the boy's life, and was possibly second to his mother, to whom, in common with most great men, he ascribes practically all that he is. The grandfather was an orchardist, and also a worker in wood — very frequently referred to in Mr. Sunday's sermons, as a maker of caskets.

How hard the first few years were, probably even the evangelist does not know. The meager pension which the government allowed was not sufficient for the maintenance of a family of four and, accordingly, at an early age the mother decided that she would have to send the two younger boys to an orphan asylum. Nothing could be more effective than the evangelist's own description of the parting, which he uses frequently in his sermons, and which seems, naturally enough, to have made a very deep impression on his young mind.

At Ames, Iowa, he says, we had to wait for the train and we went to a little hotel and they came about one o'clock and said : ''Get ready for the train." I looked into mother's face, and her eyes were red, her hair was disheveled. I said : "What's the matter mother?" All the time Ed and I slept. Mother had been praying.

We went to the train; she put one arm about me and the other about Ed and sobbed as if her heart would break. People walked by and looked at us, but they didn't say a word. Why? They didn't know, and if they did, they wouldn't have cared. Mother knew. She knew that for five years she wouldn't see her boys. We got into the train and said "Good-bye mother," as the train pulled out.

We reached Council Bluffs. It was cold and we turned our little thin coats around our necks and shivered. We saw a hotel and went up and asked a lady for something to eat. She said : "What's your name?"

"My name is Willie Sunday and this is my brother Ed."

"Where are you going?"

"Going to the Soldiers' Orphans' home at Glenwood," I said.

She wiped her tears and said : "My husband was a soldier and never came back. He wouldn't turn anyone away, and I wouldn't turn you boys away." She threv^ her arms about us and said: "Come on in." She gave us our breakfast and our dinner, too. There wasn't any train going out on the "Q" until afternoon. We played around the freight yards. We saw a freight train standing there, so we climbed into the caboose.