"Billy" Sunday, the Man and His Message / With his own words which have won thousands for Christ

by William T. Ellis

An old infidel said to me once, "But I don't believe in atonement by blood. It doesn't come up to my ideas of what is right."

I said, "To perdition with your ideas of what is right. Do you think God is coming down here to consult you with your great intellect and wonderful brain, and find out what you think is right before he does it?" My, but you make me sick. You think that because you don't believe it that it isn't true.

I have read a great deal—not everything, mind you, for a man would go crazy if he tried to read everything—but I have read a great deal that has been written against the atonement from the infidel standpoint—Voltaire, Huxley, Spencer, Diderot, Bradlaugh, Paine, on down to Bob Ingersoll—and I have never found an argument that would stand the test of common sense and common reasoning. And if anyone tells me he has tossed on the scrap heap the plan of atonement by blood I say, "What have you to offer that is better?" and until he can show me something that is better I'll nail my hopes to the cross.

Suffering for the Guilty

You say you don't believe in the innocent suffering for the guilty. Then I say to you, you haven't seen life as I have seen it up and down the country. The innocent suffer with the guilty, by the guilty and for the guilty. Look at that old mother waiting with trembling heart for the son she has brought into the world. And see him come staggering in and reeling and staggering to bed while his mother prays and weeps and soaks the pillow with her tears over her godless boy. Who suffers most? The mother or that godless, maudlin bum? You have only to be the mother of a boy like that to know who suffers most. Then you won't say anything about the plan of redemption and of Jesus Christ suffering for the guilty.

Look at that young wife, waiting for the man whose name she bears, and whose face is woven in the fiber of her heart, the man she loves. She waits for him in fright and when he comes, reeking from the stench of the breaking of his marriage vows, from the arms of infamy, who suffers most? That poor, dirty, triple extract of vice and sin? You have only to be the wife of a husband like that to know whether the innocent suffers for the guilty or not. I have the sympathy of those who know right now.

This happened in Chicago in a police court. A letter was introduced as evidence for a criminal there for vagrancy. It read, "I hope you won't have to hunt long to find work. Tom is sick and baby is sick. Lucy has no shoes and we have no money for the doctor or to buy any clothes. I manage to make a little taking in washing, but we are living in one room in a basement. I hope you won't have to look long for work," and so on, just the kind of a letter a wife would write to her husband. And before it was finished men cried and policemen with hearts of adamant were crying and fled from the room. The judge wiped the tears from his eyes and said: "You see, no man lives to himself alone. If he sins others suffer. I have no alternative. I sympathize with them, as does every one of you, but I have no alternative. I must send this man to Bridewell." Who suffers most, that woman manicuring her nails over a washboard to keep the little brood together or that drunken bum in Bridewell getting his just deserts from his acts? You have only to be the wife of a man like that to know whether or not the innocent suffer with the guilty.

So when you don't like the plan of redemption because the innocent suffer with the guilty, I say you don't know what is going on. It's the plan of life everywhere.

From the fall of Adam and Eve till now it has always been the rule that the innocent suffer with the guilty. It's the plan of all and unless you are an idiot, an imbecile and a jackass, and gross flatterer at that, you'll see it.

Jesus' Atoning Blood