Billy Sunday The Man and His Message

"You cannot fool a great body of students. They get a man's measure. If he is genuine, they know it, and if he is not, they quickly find it out. Their devotion to Mr. Sunday is very significant."
This man, who meets life on all levels, and proves that the gospel message is for no one particular class, is a dis- tinctively American type. Somebody has said that the circus is the most democratic of American institutions: it brings all sorts and conditions of people together on a common plane and for a common purpose. The Sunday evangelistic meetings are more democratic than a circus. They are a singular exhibit of American life perhaps the most dis- tinctive gathering to be found in our land today. His appeal is to the great mass of the people. The housekeepers who seldom venture away from their homes, the mechanics who do not go to church, the "men about town" who profess a cynical disdain for religion, the "down and outs," the millionaires, the society women, the business and pro- fessional men, the young fellows who feel "too big" to go to Sunday school all these, and scores of other types, may be found night after night in the barn-like wooden tabernacles which are always erected for the Sunday meet- ings. Our common American life seems to meet and merge in this base-ball evangelist, who once erected tents for another evangelist, and now has to have special auditoriums built to hold his own crowds; and who has risen from a log cabin to a place of national power and honor. Nowhere else but in America could one find such an unconventional figure as Billy Sunday.