A HIGH TRIBUTE TO THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER OF GEN. LEE.
Billy Sunday paid the following tribute to the Christian character of General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate forces in the Civil War:
“There is no man I so delight to honor as the man who is true. There is no woman I so delight to honor as the woman who is true. There is no one I so abhor as a man or woman whose words are untruth and whose promises are as vapor. I may differ from a man in politics or religion, and if he is living up to his highest ideals, even if I think those ideals wrong, I respect him and I will do my best to clear up his errors and lead him to the sunlit hills of God’s pardon.
“At the beginning of the Civil War General Robert E. Lee said to General Scott that he was a Union man at heart, but that his native state of Virginia had seceded and that as a loyal son he felt he must cast his fortunes with the Confederacy. As the war proceeded, Lee saw the bright hopes of the Confederacy fade, saw its government overturned and broken at his feet. When the end came he was a prematurely old man, his health fled, his fortune gone, his property at Arlington confiscated. At that time of despair there came to him the officers of the Louisiana Lottery company, offering to make him its president.
“‘But, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I don’t know anything about the lottery business.’
“‘That makes no difference,’ they said, ‘we do. We want the use of your name, and we will give you $10,000 a year.’
“General Lee buttoned his coat over his sunken breast, brushed back his gray hair from his forehead, and said: ‘Gentlemen, my good name and my self respect are all that is saved from the wreck, and they are not for sale. You cannot buy Robert E. Lee.’
“My father was a Union soldier. I am a loyal American, but I say that Robert E. Lee was one of the noblest Christian characters this country has ever produced, and that Stonewall Jackson was another.”