Billy Sunday Lashes Syracuse Women in Tabernacle

Syracuse, New York, 1915

BILLY SUNDAY LASHES WOMEN IN TABERNACLE

BUT HE TELLS SYRACUSE MEN ARE MUCH WORSE THAN WOMANKIND

"YOU WOMEN CAN MAKE HOME A HELL OR HEAVEN," SAYS EVANGELIST

SYRACUSE, N. Y., Nov. 12. — Syracuse is smarting today under the vigorous lashing for card playing, beer drinking and unGodliness administered by Rev. "Billy" Sunday, who is holding revival meetings here.

"Broken homes and broken lives seem to go hand in hand. They are inseparably connected," shouted Sunday, in an excoriation of vice.

"Many sons and daughters are brought up in idleness. The women are silly, frivolous, extravagant. They allow themselves to be flattered, cajoled and bamboozled by a lot of jilted jays with cracked characters.

"You women can make a hell of a home or a heaven of a home.

MOTHERS NEGLECT HOMES

"I tell you what's the matter with you mothers: You are neglecting your home for the lodge, for your clubs, for your literaries and your societies.

"I don't want to advocate that you should lick your children all the time, but when it's needed. There are homes in which the switch should hang on the wall and underneath it the motto: 'I Need Thee Every Hour.'

"I believe that if the motherhood of this country were no better than the manhood, God would dump the whole thing in hell.

"You'll never save Syracuse from intemperance if you run a booze joint in your home and keep beer and wine in your cellar.

"You can put a library on every corner and let every church member be a college graduate, but that will never save you from hell.

SCRUB THE HOBO — BAH!

"You can have your clubs, your literary societies and your Keeley cures; you can go into the red light districts and have a girl add a few ruffles to her dress to lengthen it; you can scrub the hobo, but that will never save anyone.

"Do you suppose that God wants to work with a hand that is lifting a beer glass one minute and a deck of cards or a novel the next?

"If a church member plays cards he ought to be expelled from church.

"Many a life knows no song. They seem to say: Where is the joy that once I knew when first I loved the Lord?

"It's back where you left it — back there where you sidestepped your virtue and winked at another woman.

"I have known boys who made a success of life who had an old materialistic, irreligious father, but I never knew of anyone to succeed who had a Godless, card playing mother.

"When Napoleon Bonaparte was asked, 'What do you regard as the greatest need of France?' he replied, 'Mothers, mothers, mothers.'

LAUDS TRUE MOTHERS

"I believe that the greatest work done in this world is done by true mothers. The last thing the devil robs a boy of is what he learned at mother's knee."

"Once when my wife was ill, the doctor said she should have some beer. I ordered a case, then thought better of it and said:

"'Wife, I'll see you in your coffin before I'll give you beer.'

"I think the doctor was a liar, and the doctor who prescribes beer is nothing but a jackass."

—The Lima Daily News, Lima, Ohio, November 12, 1915, page 9.