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.

Billy Sunday (1862–1935), the former professional baseball player turned evangelist, became famous in the early 1900s for mass revival campaigns marked by blunt, colloquial rhetoric and moral exhortation. This line reflects a recurring theme in his preaching: rebutting the common objection that “the church is full of hypocrites” by insisting hypocrisy is a universal human problem, not a uniquely ecclesiastical one. Sunday often aimed such remarks at nominal Christians and skeptics alike, redirecting attention from institutional criticism to personal repentance and self-examination—an approach consistent with revivalist preaching that sought immediate, individual moral decision.

The quote turns an accusation against the church into a demand for self-scrutiny. By listing “the lodge” and “the home,” Sunday argues that hypocrisy is not confined to religious communities; it is a human failing present in every social sphere. The mirror image sharpens the point: the most urgent hypocrite to confront is oneself. The closing imperative—“See that you make the number one less”—frames moral reform as personal responsibility rather than public fault-finding. Its force lies in shifting the conversation from judging institutions to practicing integrity, aligning with revivalism’s emphasis on individual conversion and ethical consistency.