BILLY SUNDAY "GOES ACROSS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 307, 28 December 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

BILLY SUNDAY "GOES ACROSS."

BASEBALL PLAYER AND PREACHER.

Famous Purveyor of Sporting Slang in Evangelistic Campaigns.

The cables announce the death of Billy Sunday, the converted baseball player who took to the evangelistic platform and blazed for a time in the fierce white light of American publicity. His rampageous oratory and picturesque baseball slang drew millions of people to his woodtn tabernacles. One of his pungent sayings was that "there 'were fashionable women walking about New York who were not wearing enough clothes to make a pair of running pants for a humming bird."

So Billy Sunday is dead! That puzzling personality, variously estimated as mountebank, profiteer in profanity, and prophet of righteousness, has run his race, writes the Rev. C. Irving Ben-

son. He' claimed to have preached to over 50,000,000 people, apart from broadcasting, a greater multitude than any other man in the Christian centuries.

Back in the days when the brewers were laughing loudest at temperance and the W.C.T.U., and pitying the poor fools who thought they could send America dry, Billy sank his teeth deep in the throat of the liquor industry, shut hid eyes and held on. They shook him and pounded him, threatened and blustered, but Billy hung on, and the country went dry. Many an old veteran of that long campaign confesses that Billy Sunday was the greatest single influence in arousing American sentiment to overthrow the old saloon. William Ashley Sunday was born in November, ISG2, four months after his father died in the Civil War. His mother reared him in a cwo-roomed log cabin. • * Sent to an Orphanage. At 12 the wolf growled loudly at the cabin door and William, with his brother Edward, had to go to the Orphanage for Soldiers' Children. Time went on and Billy became a distinguished baseball player with a terrific speed, who could run 100 yds from a standing start in 14s. Hard play and hard drinking prepared Billy for the day of his conversion. It was a Sunday afternoon and he had just "tanked up" in a saloon with other professional baseball players. They sat together on a kerb. A band was playing hymns and a'group of people were singing. Billy listened and his tender heart was carried back to the lowa log cabin and his mother. He began to cry. Someone invited him to the meeting, and Billy arose and said to "the boys," "I'm through. lam going to Jesus Christ. We've come to the parting of the ways."

The story of his courtship and marriage is so illuminating that it must be given in his own words: "One Sunday evening I went to Jefferson Park Presbyterian Church to attend Christian Endeavour meeting, and was introduced to a black-eyed, black-haired young lady, 18 years old, named Helen Amelia Thompson. Her father was William Thompson, who at that time nad the largest milk dairy and ice-cream establishment in' the city. "The first time I saw those flashing black eyes and dark hair and white teeth, I said to myself: 'There's a swell girl.' After several weeks I braced up one evening and asked Miss Thompson if I could see her home. She shied off for a minute, then smiled and said, 'Yes/ and from that time on I was hooked.

'T used to attend prayer meeting, and always sat on • a row of seats along the wall where I could keep one eye on Nell, as everybody called her, and the other on the preacher. She had a fellow, and tried to 'team me up' with a girl chum of hers; but I didn't like the other girl. She had a camel-like neck, and humped over when she walked, liquid gazelle-like eyes, was flat-footed, and had a drawling, croony voice, and I passed her up as a pay car does a tramp. "Finally, one time I went to see her — it was New Year's night, 1888. . She had on an ox-blood cashmere dress, and a natural coloured lynx neckpiece thrown about her shoulders, which her parents had given her for Christmas, and which I had never seen before. Oh, boy! She was a knock-out! She looked like I imagine the Queen of Sheba did when she visited Solomon. She had ditched her beau, and I had given the gate to a girl I had out in lowa. So I braced right up, just before midnight, and asked: 'Nell, will you marry me?' She came back at me so quick it almost floored me: 'Yes, with all my heart'." A Gift of Seven Sermons. He gave up 5000 dollars a year as a baseball player to work for the Y.M.C.A. at a fifth of that salary. Then the Bev. J. Wilbur Chapman was looking for a man as an assistant to erect tents, sell books in his meetings, organise committees, and speak to overflow meetings. Sunday was entrusted with- the task. When Chapman gave up evangelistic work and settled in a pastorate, Sunday was stranded with a wife and two children, and no money. However, Chapman set him up by giving him seven of his own sermons, and away he went to start an evangelistic campaign of his own in lowa. His fame spread through the Middle West, and it was not long before he became a national figure. No ouildings were adequate to hold the crowds that surged to hear him. Wherever he went vast wooden tabernacles kad to be built for his evangelistic campaigns. He had something to say, and the way he said it was a shock. He brought the rich flavour.of his baseball slang and all the intense action of the game into his evangelistic method. Ho called upon that devil to come up out of his odorous, dark hell and fight it out, man to man, right there on his tabernacle platform; he swung uppercuts and jabs to a ghostly Satan's jaw; he ripped off coat, tie and vest, and staged a baseball game against the angels of darkness, knocking a home run against pitcher Satan, tearing around the bases with a broad grin on his face and sliding "home" with the winning run for the team of righteousness, while his thousands of listeners stared, laughed and applauded. It was estimated that he travelled a mile to and fro over the platform in the course of every sermon. Picturesque Slang. Slang was natural to him. "I talk as the people talk," he said. "The average man in the street uses a vocabulary of about 500 words, at least a third of which is slang or set phrases. So I put the Gospel in his language, the language of to-day. . . I want to preach the Gospel so plainly that men can come from the factories and the streets and not have to bring along a dictionary to understand what I am trying to tell them. ... I am preaching for the age in ■which I live. I am just recasting my Vocabulary to suit the people of my. age. • . ■.. i

Sunday's style can better be illustrated than described. Take the story of David and Goliath as he told it: "All the sons of Jgsse, except David, went off to war; they left David at home because he was only a kid.' After a while David's ma got worried. She wondered what had become of his brothers because they hadn't telephoned to her or sent word. So she said to David: 'Dave, you go down there and see .whether they are all right.'

"So David pikes off to where the war is, and the first morning he was there out comes this big Goliath, a big, strapping fellow, about lift tall, who commenced to sho.it out his mouth as to what he was going to do. "Who's that big stiff putting up that game of talk?" asked David of his brothers. "Oh, he's tho whole works; he's the big cheese of the Philistines. He does that little stunt every day." David "Soaked" Goliath. "'Say,' said David, 'you guys make me sick. Why don't some of you go and soak that guy? You let him get away with that stuff.' He decided to go out and tell Goliath where to head in.

"So Saulsajd: 'You'd better take my armour and sword.' David put them on, but ho felt like a fellow with a hand-me-down suit .about four times too big for him, so he took them off and went down to the brook and picked up half a dozen stones. He put one of them in his sling and soaked Goliath in the coco between the lamps, and he went down for the count. David drew his sword and chopped off his block, and the rest of the gang beat it." Take again his version of Herod and John the Baptist: "When old Herod was all soused up one night, and had a bunch of high rollers to come up to the Temple, out came that God-forsaken, licentious dancing woman, Salome, and began to wriggle and hootchy-kootchy around. I cansee that old whisky-soaked scoundrel laugh and say, 'Sis, you're a peach. You can have anything in my kingdom your little heart desires.' She spun 'around' on her toe like this—(here the preacher gave a fantastic imitation of a toedancer), and spread her foot to a quarter to six. When .Salome demanded the head of John the Baptist,' Herod didn't want to do it, but she had- given him a solar-plexus blow. He had to make good for his path's sake." In his wooden tabernacles, made according to the blue prints which he sent in advance, there was always a trap-door from the platform to the floor, and after his appeal he urged converts to "strike the trail"—the sawdust covered aisle—and come to shake hands with him. With that his responsibility ended. He explained: "T come to a city, I awaken the people, I get them thinking about religion, I head them But when I get through I absolutely refuse to assume any responsibility for what takes place afterward. 100,000 Conversions.

He claimed to have swept in over 100,000 converts. That a large percentage of those who "hit the sawdust trail ' went back to their old habits of life is undeniable, but it is equally undeniable that some fine characters were brought into the Kingdom through his unconventional ministry. ,1 say nothing against his sincerity* but he would appear to have been a most* unlikely person to win intelligent people to the experience and practice of religion. There have been at various stages in Christian history some very queer personal phenomena —men of low intellect, of very" poor piety —some of them suffering from diseased vanity, who have yet won people for God. Howbeit, a man like Billy Sunday is a challenge to preachers—better be as ridiculous as he was on occasion and change lives than ; be precise and decorous without chang-ing-them. _ t . ■*„, „

Not "Hitlerised."

OLYMPIC GAMES

Ideal to Remain Irrespective Of Creed Or Colour.

When Heir Hitler became dictator of Germany there was o slight bitch in the organisation of the Olympic Games to bo held in Berlin in 1930, writes J. Sigfiid Edstrom, of the International Amateur Athletic Olympic Committee. He wanted to "Hitlerite" the Olympiad to prevent the Jews from competing or taking an active part in the games. But the governing body put its foot down with the result that Hitler agreed to ideals of the games being strictly adhered to —that the contests must be open to all irrespective of creed, colour oi- class.

It is with much regret that I note that political propaganda in America —emanating from Jewish, Catholic and other organisations —nearly stampeded the Amateur Athletic Union of. America last week in placing a boycott on the Berlin Games. The International Olympic Committee and the International Amateur Athletic Federation will not allow politics to be insidiously introduced into ' the Games movement. If any attempt is made in this direction, drastic action will have to be taken. Because of the Great War in 1914, the l!)l(i Olympiad, which had been allocated to Germany, had to be abandoned. Consequently four years ago, when the Olympic authorities decided to vest the control of the 1930 contests in Germany, it was agreed on all sides that the Fatherland would make a supreme effort to make the Olympic festival the biggest and best to date.

Benefiting from the experience of the 1032 Los Angeles Games, the German authorities set to work with characteristic thoroughness, and mapped out a four vears' plan, which is Hearing completion. Approximately £1,200,000 has been expended in preparations, including the erection of several modern stadia—the

the calibre of competition at the Olympiads has reached almost saturation point.

main stadium will seat more than 150,000 people —which are the Very last thing in sports arenas.

The Olympic 'village will accommodate more than 5000 athletes from every corner of the globe. They are to he housed under ideal conditions, with every comfort for the visitors.

For a modest sum of 7/6 per day athletes will be provided with accommodation, food and transport to and from the "village" and track. And what is more, an Australian chef will be engaged to cook Australian food for the team. The- same applies to other nations. With the march of time and with scientific and intensive training methods,

To win an Olympic title these days one lias not only to be an outstanding champion—one has to be a superman.

And because of this it behoves those who desire their country to be fittingly represented to move with the times and to sec that their teams are properly prepared. Half-hearted methods can only be fraught with failure.

Wonderful though the contests were at Los Angeles, I believe that in Berlin they will be even greater. Germany has more or less thrown out a great challenge to the world, and with expert coaches athletes and others have been preparing for the past two years.

But it "is Japan who will prove a powerful factor. Gradually the land of the Rising Sun has forged to the front. She has captured swimming titles, and now threatens to invade the athletic arena with as much success.

Japan, with .a desire to press her chums over Italy for the 1940 (lames at .Tokyo, will field an army of 300, covering all branches of sport.