The talk covers a lot of ground – the earliest missionary activity in the area, church beginnings, the impact of such groups as the Sisters of Mercy and the Immanuel Deaconess Institute, Christian radio, notable events and persons, and much more. And since that review included the 6-week revival crusade in 1915 led by baseball player/evangelist Billy Sunday as well as the founding of Boys Town by Fr. Edward Flanagan, we handed out a double-sided sheet of quotations from those two leaders. We thought you might find those quotations of value too so…here they are.
“The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.”
“Some homes need a hickory switch a good deal more than they do a piano.”
“Better die an old maid, sister, than marry the wrong man.”
“If there is no hell, a good many preachers are obtaining money under false pretenses.”
“Hypocrites in the Church? Yes, and in the lodge and at the home. Don't hunt through the Church for a hypocrite. Go home and look in the mirror. Hypocrites? Yes. See that you make the number one less.”
“I believe that a long step toward public morality will have been taken when sins are called by their right names.”
“Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.”
“Religion needs a baptism of horse sense.”
“Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.”
“I believe the Bible is the word of God from cover to cover.”
“God likes a little humor, as is evidence by the fact that he made the monkeys, the parrot -- and some of you people.”
“Some persons think that they have to look like a hedgehog to be pious.”
“The inconsistency is not in the Bible, but in your life.”
“If you live wrong you can't die right.”
“Churches don't need new members half so much as they need the old bunch made over.”
“Try praising your wife, even if it does frighten her at first.”
“If you don't do your part, don't blame God.”
“When I hit the devil square in the face some people go away as mad as if I had slapped them in the mouth.”
“To train a boy in the way he should go you must go that way yourself.”
“It is not necessary to be in a big place to do big things.”
“Yank some of the groans out of your prayers, and shove in some shouts.”
“The Bible will always be full of things you cannot understand, as long as you will not live according to those you can understand.”
“The work will continue, you see, whether I am there or not, because it is God’s work, not mine.”
“When parents fail to do their job, when they allow their children to run the streets and keep bad company, when they fail to provide them with good examples in the home, then the parents, and not the children, are delinquent.”
“Without God at the beginning, there can be only confusion at the end.”
“A true religious training for children is most essential if we are to expect to develop them into good men and good women — worthy citizens of our great country.”
“No race that does not take care of its young can hope to survive — or deserves to survive.”
“Our country needs good men and good women who have learned to love God above all things, and their fellow man for the love of God.”
