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Burning truths from Billy's bat

Chapter 5: HARD TO KEEP A GOOD MAN DOWN.
By Billy Sunday
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About This Book

A compact collection of sermons, anecdotes, prayers, and terse sayings built around a dramatic conversion account and practical moral instruction. The pieces address family and motherhood, courtship and marriage, social amusements such as dancing, gambling, and theatre, and critiques of hypocrisy, spiritualism, and nominal religion. Interwoven are vivid recollections, Bible exposition, exhortations to repentance and steadfast faith, and homiletic advice for personal conduct and public testimony. The material favors direct, anecdotal argumentation intended to move listeners toward moral reform and committed Christian practice.

HARD TO KEEP A GOOD MAN DOWN.

“Somebody says: ‘But you don’t know my circumstances, Mr. Sunday. I’m handicapped by my parents. I’m handicapped by poverty.’ Listen! Go down tonight and get down your books and read of the men of history who have crept and crawled from the sewers of poverty and the quagmires of squalor. Obscurity never kept Benjamin Franklin walking the streets of Philadelphia gnawing at his loaf. Obscurity didn’t keep Edison working as a telegraph operator at $60.00 a month. Obscurity didn’t keep David herding sheep. If gold and diamonds weren’t so hard to get they wouldn’t be worth so much. Obscurity didn’t keep Grant in a tannery. Obscurity didn’t keep Garfield on the towpath of a canal. If you’ve got it in you, squalor and want can’t keep you down.”

“If you are going to win out you must have grit. That means you must be able to say “no” when asked to do wrong, so loud it will stagger hell. Or “yes” so loud it will gladden the angels of God. Put up your dukes and fight the devil.”