The man with a message

              The Man With a Message

Figure

W. Matthew Holderby

LECTURER, EDITOR, PUBLICIST, PRISON WORKER A CRUSADER FOR CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP


Engagements Made By THE HOLBROOK TALENT MANAGEMENT
607 SECURITY BUILDING, 189 W. MADISON STREET CHICAGO




A Character Sketch
By FRED HIGH

S
O you're Fred High; are you?
  That was the first question a hustling, breezy business man sort of a chap shot at me as he entered The Billboard office when I was at that time Editor of the Lyceum and Chautauqua Department of that world famous publication known and affectionately referred to by thousands and thousands of theatrical and circus folk as 
The Showman's Bible.



Continuing, he said, 
My name is Holderby.  I am an old-fashioned Christian and believe in Hell and everything.  I get my religion out of the Bible, but the way I preach it out of The Billboard.  I am pastor of a Presbyterian Church at Dallas, Texas.  I have just been appointed to represent my church as a speaker to the soldiers in the southern army camps.  The ministers are talking to a little hand full of soldiers.  I know no showman would be satisfied with a drag of 300 out of a possible 30,000.  I have been reading your stuff in The Billboard and I have come to Chicago to get you to help me.



The result was that we recommended an outfit for him of an electric noise-maker that some say was meant to be a musical instrument and within two weeks we saw by the papers that Holderby was talking to thousands of soldiers in camps in Texas.  Major General George Bell, Jr., Commanding the 33rd Division, was so impressed with this preacher's effort that he ordered the entire 35,000 of Camp Logan to parade, a regiment at a time, to a big tabernacle Holderby built at Houston, Texas, to hear a religious message before going over seas.



This story is characteristic of all this man undertakes.  He is different in the way he does things.  He throws himself into any cause that he champions with a zeal and enthusiasm that is next to reckless abandon.  Whether you agree with him or not you will have to admire his earnestness.  He is a regular John The Baptist preaching in a modern wilderness.  He is as fearless as the ancient preacher whose head was chopped off because he told a King where to get off and I won't be surprised some day if we see some cabaret Salome jazzin' around with a new cocoanut on a tray, for Holderby talks straight from the shoulder and he often hits where we live.  He even fires a few TNT hot-shot done up in the language of the everyday man when he has to penetrate a rhinoceros hide in order to reach the heart.



He is as eloquently forceful as Paul was at Mar's Hill when he faced the Roman Legions and the Pagan Religionists.  Holderby believes that the salvation of this country depends upon the reestablishment of a family worship life in the homes of the people.  He presents this with such a thorough earnestness that he electrifies his great audiences made up of every character, for he knows how to adapt his message to the different classes and ages to move them to an acceptance of his pleas as the measure of their responsibility to their family.  His plea for a place for God in the Home and in the hearts of men wins attention, compels serious thought and results in better living.



This man is a scholar of the universities and seminaries, yet with a record of human contacts with the lowly and outcasts that reveals his intentions of never being a mere mystic.  At once, a lecturer to college audiences or inter-national groups and then out on a corner in the whirl of State Street, Chicago, preaching at midnight hours to the derelicts of a great city's life, reveals his passion to reach men of every kind.  Sponsored by Presidents of the United States, especially by Calvin Coolidge, for this great national appeal in behalf of the American family, Holderby yet is willing to go to a remote village or country church to make sure he is worthy of this high confidence from national leaders.  No campaign speaker of the Republican National Committee received higher encomiums of praise for his literary and oratorical abilities than Holderby, and he proves his Christian statesmanship by going to the grade and grammar and high schools across the land to plead with the children, who will be the future citizens, to cultivate obedience to law by obeying parents now, that a generation of law-obeying people rather than social anarchists shall be the fruit of their training.



The biography of this man would read like a romance of human achievement and would thrill those who could come to know of his fight to achieve a distinction that places him among those registered in Who Is Who In America, the country's men of attainment.  A president of the University of Illinois said, his record at that institution of learning to secure his education, should be preserved in the archives of the university.  His acceptance of a pulpit in Philadelphia in its downtown district with all the sordid vice and crime, and the accomplishing of a record there through Christian service, unsurpassed by any religious effort of its kind in America, became the boast of the Quaker City and the admiration of students of social effort throughout the nation.



Holderby was one of the committee of one thousand who marched on the Capitol at Washington to present to Congress the petition for the submission of the eighteenth amendment.  Always he has expressed his antagonism to evil in the militant way that has constituted him a real crusader.  It was while a student for the ministry at Princeton, while Woodrow Wilson was President of the University, that Holderby made an open challenge of social conditions and drunkenness at that institution of learning.  The press nationally discussed the issue and the outstanding personality of the then youth who openly had dared to hurl his missiles of moral detonation, that made revelation of social conditions in the colleges of America.  It was out of his pulpit at Dallas, Texas, that he stepped to do the service in the World War in behalf of our American soldiers.  No contribution of moral and spiritual helpfulness for the soldiers in the army camps preparing the A. E. F. for their service overseas surpassed that worked by this soldier preacher in the Southern Cantonments.  The Salvation Army conferred on him the Commission of Honorary Colonel, the only such title in America, for his help to the work they did for the soldiers after they went overseas and their home service campaign for the men on their return.



As President and General Director of The Christian Family Crusade, that is being conducted in America for God and Home and Native Land, Holderby now is standing as leader.  He clearly sees that home and church and nation are endangered because America's family life has disintegrated.  With the weapons of the Bible and prayer he battles the religious apostasy of the Church, the political deterioration of the nation and the social chaos that envelopes the home.  Into the family life he wants to bring God as an abiding presence and spirit.  If America will not recognize the family as the organizing unit of its social, political and religious life, rather than the individual, the one generation that forgets God will bring the wreckage of everything around its head, for one generation can destroy a nation.



Holderby is a man with a message.  He believes in his cause.  He recently has been called America's truest religious leader, for he seems to have found both the cause and the remedy for church and national ills.  He feels that it is the illumination and inspiration of the spirit of God that leads him and urges him to his efforts.  For this reason he speaks as a man with conviction.  Every age and question, that presents its own developed crisis, calls for men who can lead the people out of the hazes and mazes into which they drift.  Holderby is a man who clearly sees the direction the nation must take if the values of past days shall be preserved for present use and these be transmitted to a future untarnished.



No man in America today on the lecture platform is appreciated more than Holderby, judged by the expressions of those who know him best and have heard his voice in ringing pleas for social, civic and personal righteousness.  I have watched him as he has gone up and down this country addressing great gatherings and feel that no one among the many speakers whom I have the pleasure of knowing has developed more power in expressing his thoughts, grown more eloquent in delivery and delved deeper into the souls of men.  It is a pleasure to recommend him to those who are in a position to profit by his unusual gifts and consecrated services, for he has a real purpose and he is a real man.





A letter received at an annual meeting of The Christian Family Crusade



THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON




November 1st, 1924.




My dear Mr. Holderby:




I am glad to have this opportunity of sending to your annual meeting a word of greeting and goodwill.  With the rapid growth of community activities, we are perhaps prone to forget that the American home is the true civic center, and that the source of our strength lies there rather than in organizations and movements for the public welfare.  The foundation of all these things is religion.  If the home has the benefit of its teachings, not only the home will prosper but we can be assured the country will be secure.  I hope and believe that such a gathering as yours can be a very real help, and I wish you every success.




Yours is a movement which I deem worthy of all commendation, and for which I hope the broadest support may be enlisted.




Very truly yours,



Rev. Wm. Matthew Holderby, Hamilton Club, Chicago, Ill.




FIVE GREAT LECTURES BY WM. MATTHEW HOLDERBY



THE AMERICAN FAMILY THE NATION'S GREATEST ASSET


THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY AND THE HOME


THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY AND THE CHURCH


THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY AND THE NATION


AMERICA'S FOUR-FACED DANGER