•JEST, Andrew F. 
 17079 4r. Sunday and Princeton 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/mrsundayprincetoOOwest 
 
^ 
 
 NOTE 
 
 APR 1 1915 ^ 
 
 The subjoined article was mailed April 6tli to the PliiladelpT 
 Presbyterian, the Pittsburgh Presbyterian Banner and the Cin- 
 cinnati Herald and Presbyter and a few other papers, y^ 
 
 AxDREW F. Wkst. 
 
 MR. SUNDAY AND PRINCETON 
 
 As a member of the Presbyterian Church and a teacher in 
 Princeton University for over thirty years may I ask, in 
 view of recently published criticisms, that you will print this 
 statement giving some of the reasons why Mr. Sunday was 
 not invited to hold his meetings here under the auspices and 
 with the endorsement of the University. 
 
 Let me say emphatically that it was not because Mr. Sun- 
 day's teachings are evangelical. Far from it. Princeton 
 was founded and has lived on the fundamental, historical, 
 evangelical Christian faith, and with few exceptions no other 
 gospel has been heard here. The attitude of President Hib- 
 ben and the authorities is in accord with this, no matter what 
 passing difficulties may arise. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are grave reasons why Princeton Uni 
 versity should not favor Mr. Sunday's methods as likely to 
 do good to orfr students. He has been free to come, as he 
 did, and our students have been entirely free to hear him, 
 as they did in large numbers, — but not on invitation nor 
 with the encouragement of the authorities of the University. 
 Why not ? Let me state some of the reasons : 
 
 I. In matters of religion there is only one standard far 
 Christians and that standard is our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ. I gladly admit that Mr. Sunday means to be evan- 
 gelical in his statements. But many of his utterances are. 
 to put it mildly, not Christlike, and some of them are 
 travesties of the teaching of Christ. Take the following 
 sample, less vulgar than many others, v/hich is both a 
 caricature and a perversion of one of the most sacred 
 scenes in the New Testament : 
 
 "Mary was one of these sort of uneeda biscuit, peanut 
 butter, gelatin and pimento sort of women. 
 
"Martha was a beefsteak, baked potato, apple sauce 
 with lemon and nutmeg, coffee and whipped cream, 
 apple pie and cheese sort of women. 
 
 "So you can have your pick, but I speak for Martha. 
 So the churches have a lot of Marthas and a lot of 
 Marys — merely bench warmers. Hurrah for Martha !"' 
 
 "So Martha was getting dinner and poked her head 
 in the door where Mary was sitting and said : 
 
 " 'Mary, carest thou not that I serve alone ?' 
 
 "Wouldn't it make you tired if you were doing all 
 the work and had your hands all over dough and the 
 sweat rolling off as you cooked the potatoes, if your 
 big lazy sister was sitting doing nothing? Then Jesus 
 said: 
 
 " 'Tut, tut, Martha, thou carest for too many little 
 things.' 
 
 "And there was Mary — remember Mary — loafing on 
 the job, When I tell you a good thing don't loaf on the 
 job." 
 
 What excuse can be offered for this? It was Christ who 
 said of Mary on that occasion that "one thing is needful: 
 and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be 
 taken away from her." Mr. Sunday knows better, and has 
 taken it away. And if this is not trifling with the one vital 
 essential of Christian faith, what is? Let us leave aside 
 here the cheap wit by which the holy scene has been de- 
 graded. Would not the vulgarity have been enough without 
 falsifying the teaching of Christ? 
 
 Moreover, the ease and apparent satisfaction with which 
 Mr. Sunday consigns to perdition those he denounces is 
 not becoming. There are plenty of coarse quotations to 
 be had on this point, such as "rotting in hell." When a 
 man "preaches hell," at least let him do it with awe and 
 pity, and not with words of jesting and contempt. Yet 
 here is one of Mr. Sunday's milder statements, unhesitat- 
 ingly sending to hell one-half of the members of the 
 Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian communions : 
 
 "You Methodists can talk about infant baptism, and 
 the Presbyterians can howl about perseverence and 
 
half of the members will persevere in hell, and the 
 Baptists can howl about water and half of your mem- 
 bers go where you can't get a drop." 
 
 Do you approve of this? 
 
 Then take these remarks about the Holy Spirit : 
 
 "Do you think the Holy Spirit wants to look through 
 eyes bloated and red from last night's revelry ? Do you 
 think the Holy Spirit wants to speak through a breath 
 stinking with limburger cheese and beer ? 
 
 "Do you think it wants to walk in a pair of feet that 
 walk out of the church one day and into the saloon the 
 next? 
 
 "Do you think the Holy Spirit wants to see out of 
 eyes that gaze into the Bible one day and the next day 
 into a little cheap-skate theatre to see a w^oman dance 
 around on her toes without enough clothes on to flag 
 a hand-car? 
 
 "You must clean up. Don't you think the Holy Spirit 
 wants to dwell in clean men and women? The Holy 
 Spirit don't want to take a bath in beer and swim around 
 in a pool of booze. Not on your life it don't. Not on 
 your tin-type." 
 
 I pass over the description of the Holy Spirit as "it." 
 But what about the gross coarseness of parts of this pas- 
 sage ! Is such low and flashy language or anything like 
 it ever found in the mouth of Christ and his Apostles? 
 
 Take another and worse instance where Christ in prayer 
 is turned to a jesting use: 
 
 " 'And as He prayed the fashion of His countenance 
 was altered.' Ladies, do you want to look pretty? li 
 some of you women would spend less on dope, pazaza 
 and cold cream, and get down on your knees and pray, 
 God would make you prettier." 
 Very funny, no doubt ; and very blasphemous. 
 Take anotlier passage, lively and revolting: 
 
 "I've always had a great deal of sympathy with the 
 Irishman who went to the priest and confessed that he 
 had committed a murder. 
 
"'Terrible!' said the priest. 'How was it? Who 
 was it?' 
 
 "The Irishman said that he had gone out in a boat 
 with a Jew, and that presently they began to discuss 
 religion, and that presently they dropped the 'dis'. 
 Finally the Irishman in his anger overturned the boat 
 and drowned the Jew. 
 
 " 'Your reverence', said the Irishman, 'as the Jew came 
 up, I grabbed him by the neck and said : Now will you 
 be a good Catholic? and he said No. Then I held his 
 head under for a long time and when I let him up 
 again I said: Now will you be a good Catholic? and 
 he said Yes. 
 
 " 'Then, your reverence, I ducked his head under and 
 kept it there till he was drowned. I wanted to make 
 sure of him while I had him.' 
 
 "I've sometimes thought, almost, that it might be a 
 Godsend to many a community if it could only be swept 
 by typhoid fever or pneumonia or scarlet fever just 
 after a good revival and before the people had a chance 
 to slide back." 
 
 "Almost" thinking it "might be a Godsend" if God would 
 sweep away by a plague those who had just professed their 
 faith in Christ! and telling with "a great deal of sympathy" 
 the horrible story of an Irishman murdering a Jew ! Do 
 you approve of this ? 
 
 2. At times Mr. Sunday is irreverently familiar toward 
 God. This appears clearly in the scene at his Philadelphia 
 meeting on January 8th : 
 
 "Why if I thought I could get any nearer God by 
 kneeling, or get nearer to Him by taking ofif my coat, 
 I'd do it." 
 
 Here Sunday suited the action to the word and tore 
 his coat from his back. Seizing it by the collar in his 
 right hand, he flung it around to lend emphasis to his 
 utterances. 
 
 "If God Almighty can't bless a man in his shirt 
 sleeves," he shouted, "He's a mighty queer sort of a 
 God." 
 
Billy slipped into his coat again and grinned at his 
 audience, who responded with laughter and applause. 
 
 And in this remark: 
 
 "Well, Jesus, I don't know why I should talk until 
 my clothes are wringing wet trying to tell people what 
 they should know if they had a scintilla of brains." 
 
 Here is another sample : 
 
 "When I am at heaven's gates, I'll be free from old 
 Philly's blood. I can see now the Day of Judgment 
 when the question of Philadelphia and of me is taken 
 up by God. 
 
 " 'You were down in Philly, weren't you, Billy?' the 
 Lord will ask me. 
 
 "And ril say to Him, Yes sir, Lord, I was there. 
 
 " 'Did you give them my message of salvation, Billy?' 
 
 "I gave them your message. Lord. I gave it to them 
 the best way I could and as I understood it. You go 
 get the files of the Philadelphia papers. They printed 
 my sermons, Lord. You'll see in them what I preached, 
 will be my answer. 
 
 "And the Lord will say, 'Come on in, Bill ; you're free 
 from Philadelphia's blood.' " 
 
 Is this the way the Bible speaks? There is no place in 
 that book for swaggering impiety. "Enter not into judg- 
 ment with thy servant, O Lord" is the right attitude of soul 
 in the presence of God. Mr. Sunday is speaking impudently 
 in the presence of "the King eternal, immortal and invisible" 
 to whom alone is due "honor and glory forever" — even 
 now, even at Mr. Sunday's performances. It was Jonathan 
 Edwards, an early President of Princeton, who wrote of 
 these sublime words in hushed awe as he gazed from his 
 window one autumn day : "As I read them the whole forest 
 seemed to glow." No irreverence there. Is not the devout 
 fear of God the "beginning of wisdom" still, and is it not 
 deeply needed in American life today? 
 
 3. Many of Mr. Sunday's remarks are personally abusive 
 or disgusting or slanderous. Take without comment the 
 following series : 
 
 "Do you think God wants you to walk down the 
 
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aisle Sunday morning in the rotten feet that had been 
 out dancing the dirty tango the night before? No! 
 Then get your rotten carcass out of the church." 
 
 "If a woman on the avenue plays a game of cards 
 in her home, she is worse than any blackleg gambler in 
 the slums." 
 
 "If a minister believes and teaches evolution, he is 
 a stinking skunk, a hypocrite and a liar." 
 
 "If I were the wife of some of you men, I'd refuse 
 to clean their old spittoons. I say, let every hog clean 
 his own trough." 
 
 "They talk about the excitement of a revival meet- 
 ing being bad in any community. If you say that, then 
 you are a dirty, rotten, stinking liar! Did you get it? 
 They never did anything for Christ in their lives. Pea- 
 nut-headed fools, that's what they are." 
 
 "A drunkard makes me sick. It makes me sick to see 
 in a community like this dirty, stinking hell holes of 
 corruption, vomiting, puking, spewing out damnation." 
 
 "Your wife has as good a right to line up before a 
 bar and fill up her skin with the hog-gut you do, as 
 you have." 
 
 "Don't you think that because you wear whiskers 
 and breeches that you are privileged by God. She has as 
 good a right as you have to walk down the street with 
 half a plug of tobacco sticking out of her mouth and 
 spitting enough to drown a jackrabbit as you have." 
 
 "I wouldn't clean out your old spittoon for you. I'd 
 throw it at your head. Yes, sir." 
 Do we need more of the same sort? 
 
 4. There are also some statements, fortunately few — but 
 enough — which are plainly indecent. Take the following 
 instances and remember they are the words of a professed 
 minister of the Gospel of Christ spoken at a so-called re- 
 ligious service. See if you approve of them. 
 
 "I can understand why young bloods go in for danc- 
 ing, but some of you old ginks — good night." 
 
 "Ma and I stopped in to look at a ball at an inaugura- 
 
tion ceremony. Well, I will be horn-swaggled if I 
 didn't see a woman there dancing with all the men, 
 and she wore a collar of her gown around her waist. 
 She had a little corset on — Oh, I can't describe it." 
 
 "You stand there, and watch man after man as he 
 claims her hand and puts his name on her list. Per- 
 haps that fellow was her lover and you won her hand 
 and you stand there and watch your wife folded in his 
 long, voluptuous, sensual embrace, their bodies swaying 
 one against the other, their limbs twining and entwin- 
 ing, her head resting on his breast, they breathe the vi- 
 tiated air beneath the glittering candelabra, and the spell 
 of the music, and you stand there and tell me that there 
 is no harm in it ! You're too low down for me. 
 
 I want to see the color of some buck's hair that can 
 dance with my wife! I'm going to monopolize that 
 hugging myself." 
 
 "Then Herodias came in, and danced with her foot 
 stuck out to a quarter to 12, and old Herod said, 'Sis, 
 you're a peach. You can have anything you want, even 
 to the half of my kingdom.' She hiked ofif to her 
 licentious mother." 
 
 "Why a man with red blood in his veins can't look 
 at half the women on the streets now and not have 
 impure thoughts. 
 
 Little girl, you look so small, 
 
 Don't you wear no clothes at all? 
 
 Don't you wear no chemise shirt? 
 
 Don't you wear no petty skirt? 
 
 Don't you wear no underclothes? 
 
 But your corset and your hose?" 
 
 No decent person can read these quotations without 
 shame. 
 
 Every passage quoted in this article is taken from the 
 official copyrighted report of Mr. Sunday's Philadelphia ad- 
 dresses, published with his sanction in the Philadelphia 
 Evening Telegraph during January and February. Their 
 accuracy cannot be questioned. It is true that these quota- 
 tions are not the main stock and substance of his addresses, 
 but some of the occasional ornaments, giving what is called 
 
"punch" to his discourses. They are things of the son 
 singled out fur special separate printing in the Evening 
 Telegraph, often in large type, as "jolts." So they are. 
 
 On March 12th at the close of ^Ir. Sunday's "campaign" 
 in Philadelphia the Public Ledger of that city, a journal 
 which has never been unfriendly to the Christian faith, 
 editorially reviews the aspects and results of his teaching 
 as follows : 
 
 ''Without minimizing in the slightest the good that 
 may result from the 'Billy' Sunday campaign in awaken- 
 ing a new religious interest in the community, it can be 
 said beyond a doubt that he has done incalculable harm 
 in certain directions. 
 
 "Here are some aspects of his teaching that are worse 
 than pagan: 'It's a good thing I'm not God for fifteen 
 minutes. If I were, I'd fill your papers with obituaries 
 and fill freight cars with the dead.' Xo one who knows 
 the history of Jesus Christ can accept such a statement 
 as representative of the One Who came 'not to de- 
 stroy, but to save,' Who taught the parable of the 
 prodigal son, Who refused the aid of 'ten legions 
 of angels' when His enemies were hounding Him to 
 death. Who prayed while dying 'Father, forgive them ; 
 they know what they do.' " 
 
 So in the name of decency and of the purity and sanctity 
 of our Christian faith Princeton University positively re- 
 fuses to approve Mr. Sunday's performances as suitable for 
 the edification of our students. In times of hysterical ex- 
 citement we think it our right and duty to stand firm 
 against all inflammatory mob-oratory in whatever field it 
 may appear. For his quiet and sensible stand in this matter 
 President Hibben deserves the thanks of all friends of 
 education and religion. 
 
 Andrew F. We5t, 
 
 Dean of the Graduate School, 
 
 Princeton University. 
 Princeton, 
 April 6, 1913. 
 
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