A Month of Sunday

Leaping and snarling like a small, vivacious cougar, Rev. William A. Sunday preached at the Coliseum, in St. Louis. It was the fifth week of the projected seven-week revival meeting; Billy Sunday had signed up about 4,000 converts and he wanted some more. He gave a "sermon" on "The Three Crosses" and talked about the opera Faust, in which Marguerite, a pregnant girl, dies of broken-heart. Said Billy Sunday:

"How would this dame feel, this dame in the box, with the accordion chin, all dressed up in silk and diamonds, if ... she found her path obstructed by a real Marguerite? . . . She can shed crocodile tears over the false Marguerite on the stage--Shed some real tears over the real ones, you big fraud!"

In his next rodomontade, Evangelist Sunday became emphatic. "The Bible is a bloody book," he roared, "It is a bloody Gospel. It is a bloody world. . . . You can argue against the Bible but you can't argue against sin. ... I can take you out into the streets of St. Louis and show you thousands of cases of substitution. . . ."*

Billy Sunday announced for the closing day of his seven-week revivalism a program of four preachments. "Oh, I can do it if you come and hear it," he said, "and I think you will."

* Despite its context, this word was not, as many of Billy Sunday's listeners no doubt imagined, a malaprop description of St. Louis vice. Nor was "bloody" used in its colloquial connotation. The new testament promulgates the theory that one person may atone for the sins of another; even, by great suffering and great holiness, for the sins of many. Monasteries, contrary to common supposition, are founded upon this principle of substitution. Perhaps the most strikingly emotional element of Christianity, it often finds expression in urgent hymns such as "Washed in the Blood of the Lamb."