JNGERSOLL, BEECHER 
 
 AND 
 
 DOGMA, 
 
 OR 
 
 A FEW SIMPLE TRUTHS 
 
 AND THEIR LOGICAL DEDUCTIONS, 
 
 IN WHICH THE POSITIONS OF 
 
 MR. INGERSOLL AND MR. BEECHER 
 
 ARE CONSIDERED IN TWO LECTURES, 
 
 ENTITLED 
 
 MEPHISTO-MINOTAURUS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 r.v 
 
 R: S. DEMENT. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 
 
 1878.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1878, 
 BY S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFATORY REMARKS. 
 
 THE wonders of the kaleidoscope are but the reflec- 
 tions of numerous pieces of colored glass, rough, without 
 symmetry, unsightly in themselves, having no connection 
 with each other, and but very trifling value. If we take 
 these little pieces out of the case that is artfully arranged 
 for them, and examine them, each upon its own individu- 
 al merits, or collectively as a whole, we shall be surprised 
 that any art could have succeeded in causing us to think 
 them of beauty or of value. The author well remem- 
 bers the feeling when, a child, he solved the mystery of 
 his first kaleidoscope. He felt that he had been imposed 
 upon deceived into believing that what he saw was at 
 least the shadow of something real and beautiful, when in 
 truth it was only a delusion ; and he has been skeptical of 
 appearances ever since. And so, when Mr. Ingersoll put 
 his bits of painted words, bits of highly-colored thoughts, 
 and bits of Infidel philosophy, and a great variety of 
 nondescript bits and broken fragments of all kinds, into 
 his kaleidoscopic lecture of " The Gods," and placed it 
 on sale in almost all the shops of the land, the author se- 
 cured a copy, and true to his early lesson, set about solv- 
 ing its mysteries. In the lecture, " Mephisto-Minotaurus," 
 will be found the result of his investigation. 
 
 What Mr. Ingersoll has put together in the work referred 
 to is, no doubt, to many minds, of very questionable value, 
 unless some of it be classed with the antiquities, and with
 
 4 AUTHOR'S PREFATORY REMARKS. 
 
 this part the market is already glutted ; but when he puts it 
 between the polished glasses of his wit, his satire and his 
 eloquence, and whirls it round with magic swiftness, there 
 is to one's eyes, bewildered by his art, a wonderful and 
 entrancing vision. 
 
 In reviewing Mr. Beecher's philosophy, the author has 
 not confined himself so exclusively to the text. He has 
 sought rather to consider what appeared to him the irrec- 
 oncilable dogmas of many of our religious -societies, and 
 in the treatment of this subject he has sought to be gov- 
 erned solely by the merits of the ideas themselves, without 
 attaching any importance to the sources from which they 
 may have emanated. In the lecture entitled "The Abso- 
 lute Necessities," will be found the offering he brings to 
 the altar of thought, trusting that at least some incense 
 will arise from it to join the " pillar of cloud by day and 
 the pillar of fire by night," which shall lead us on in 
 the march of soul to the Infinite. 
 
 The author expressly desires to be understood that in 
 the title of his work he intends no disrespect to either of 
 the illustrious names with which he adorns it, and trusts 
 that neither Mr. Ingersoll nor Mr. Beecher will feel com- 
 promised by being associated together. 
 
 R. S. DEMENT. 
 CHICAGO, March, 1878.
 
 MEPHISTO-MINOTAURUS.
 
 The conflict of faith and unbelief remains the proper, the 
 only, the deepest theme of the history of the world and man- 
 kind, to which all others are subordinate. 
 
 GOETHE. 
 
 With the vulgar and the learned, Names have great weight; 
 the wise use a writ of inquiry into their legitimacy v/hen they 
 
 are advanced as authorities. 
 
 ZIMMERMAN. 
 
 For 'tis the sport to have the engineer 
 
 Hoist with his own petar. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE.
 
 MEPHISTO-MINOTAURUS.* 
 
 EVERY age has produced remarkable men. 
 Occasional ages have shown us men who were 
 truly great. It has seldom been the case, how- 
 ever, that a man was correctly measured by 
 the age in which he lived. Indeed, it has not 
 always been the case that men have been 
 rightly judged by subsequent ages. And how 
 seldom have been the instances where the 
 career of a man has been foretold to any de- 
 gree of accuracy ! And how very seldom that 
 a master has succeeded to that prophetic art 
 which has produced an accurate portrait of a 
 man who was yet to be born ! Indeed I know 
 of but one such instance. It stands out in re- 
 
 * It is not intended to reflect upon Mr. Ingersoll personally in 
 anything that is offered in these pages. It is only so far as he is 
 identified with his theories, by his manner of putting them, that 
 \ve allude to him, here, as a sort of personation of his philosophy.
 
 8 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 lief, solitary and alone. I desire to speak of 
 it. It is, really, quite remarkable. 
 
 The portrait to which I refer may be found 
 in an essay, written half a century ago, by an 
 eminent and distinguished author. I will show 
 it you, only reserving the name of the hero. 
 The likeness will at once be recognized. Here 
 it is : 
 
 " Our hero is a cultivated personage, and 
 acquainted with the modern sciences ; sneers 
 at witchcraft and the black art, even while em- 
 ploying them as heartily as any member of the 
 French Institute; for he is a philosopke, and 
 doubts most things, nay, half disbelieves even 
 his own existence. 
 
 " It is not without cunning effort that all this 
 is managed ; but managed in a considerable 
 degree, it is ; for a world is opened to us which, 
 we might almost say, we feel to be at once true 
 and not true. . . . Doubtless our hero has 
 the manners of a gentleman ; he knows the 
 world ; nothing can exceed the easy tact with 
 which he manages himself; his wit and sar- 
 casm are unlimited ; the cool, heartfelt con-
 
 OARLTLE^S ESS AT. 9 
 
 tempt with which he despises all things, human 
 and divine, might make the fortune of half a 
 dozen fellows about town. . . . He is some- 
 times called the Denier, and this truly is his 
 name ; for as Voltaire did with historical doubt, 
 so does he with all moral appearances settles 
 them with a N'en croyez rien. 
 
 " The shrewd, all-informed intellect he has, 
 is an attorney intellect ; it can contradict but 
 it cannot affirm. With lynx vision he descries 
 at a glance the ridiculous, the unsuitable, the 
 bad ; but for the solemn, the noble, the worthy, 
 he is blind. 
 
 "Thus does he go along, qualifying, confut- 
 ing, despising; on all hands detecting the false, 
 but without force to bring forth, or even to 
 discern, any glimpse of the true. 
 
 " Poor fellow ; what truth should there be 
 for him ? To see falsehood is his only truth ; 
 falsehood and evil are the rule ; truth and 
 good, the exception which confirms it. He 
 can believe in nothing but his own self-conceit 
 and in the indestructible baseness, folly, and 
 hypocrisy of men. ... At humanity he
 
 I o MEPHIS TO-MIXO TA UR US. 
 
 has no grudge ; he merely operates by way of 
 experiment, to pass the time scientifically. 
 
 " Such a combination of logical Life and 
 moral Death, so universal a Denier, both in 
 heart and head, is undoubtedly a child of Dark- 
 ness, an emissary of the Primeval Nothing ; 
 and coming forward, as he does, like a person 
 of breeding, and without any flavor of brim- 
 stone, may stand here, in his merely spiritual 
 deformity, at once potent, dangerous and con- 
 temptible." 
 
 This is an extract from an essay by Thomas 
 Carlyle, contributed to the Foreign Review, in 
 1828. It had, at the time, a world-wide fame 
 as a pen-portrait of Mephistopheles. Indeed, 
 Mr. Carlyle humored this interpretation him- 
 self; it served as a mask for his hero. A mad 
 rogue for a jest was Carlyle in those days, and 
 how cleverly did he play this one on his critics 
 and reviewers ; and how capitally did he con- 
 ceal his desisfn ! How he must have chuckled 
 
 o 
 
 and laughed to himself as he realized that in 
 less than half a century the true hero of his 
 portraiture should be recognized ! When his
 
 7A r BRACKETS. I I 
 
 "picture of Mephistopheles " should be re- 
 garded in its true light as a prophetic vision 
 of Ingersollism. 
 
 This much as an introduction, merely, to the 
 first half of our heading the Mephisto. 
 
 A word or two only will be necessary as an 
 introduction to the second part the Mino- 
 taurus. It will be found eminently fitting 
 when brought in direct application to the 
 hero of this paper. 
 
 Now, the Minotaur of the Grecians was the 
 result of a liaison, the -history of which is fa- 
 miliar to readers. Our Ingersoll is the result 
 of a liaison between what he is, himself, pleased 
 to name, respectively, " Reason " and " Philos- 
 ophy." 
 
 [It may be as well, right here, to borrow a 
 brace of Dr. Holmes' brackets, and drop in an 
 item in reference to a peculiarity of our hero 
 as contradistinguished from his fellow Ameri- 
 cans, and from those with whom he has sought 
 fellowship, his cousins-german. 
 
 The distinction is a marked one, for while 
 with the former, titles such as " Hon." etc.,
 
 I 2 MEPHfS TO-MINO T. \ I '/,' C .V. 
 
 and with the latter, those of " Von," etc., are 
 seldom if ever omitted, our Ingersoll, invari- 
 ably, when mentioning the names of his illus- 
 trious parentage referred to (Reason and Phi- 
 losophy), omits a prefix which belongs to both 
 alike, and applies directly to both with as pos- 
 itive significance. I refer to the little Greek 
 word Pseudo. 
 
 Since Mr. Ingersoll has omitted to mention 
 so important an ear-mark of his progenitors, 
 and in order that we may not become confused 
 in tracing the descent of species, it will, per- 
 haps, be well to take a cue from Mr. Darwin, 
 and compound a word to suit the emergency ; 
 and since our hero presumes to the ermine 
 of his class, what more appropriate title than 
 His Pseudolency ? This will avoid the neces- 
 sity of frequent references to his great origi- 
 nals, False Reason and False Philosophy.] 
 
 With this understanding we will proceed. 
 Now, the analogy before us becomes all the 
 more striking when we realize that the result 
 of the liaison in the one instance was the pro- 
 duction of as great a monstrosity as in the
 
 THE MINOTAUR. 13 
 
 other, for His Pseudolency is, surely, as Mino- 
 taurian a specimen of humanity as our ancient 
 Grecian brethren, with all the wealth of their 
 fertile imaginations, could have possibly con- 
 ceived of. Unlike the iconoclasts of a more 
 refined order, he disdains the hammer of argu- 
 ment, but plunges in among the idols of 
 antiquity, and, with a bellowing and roaring 
 that all but shakes the foundations of Olym- 
 'pus, more than an ocean's breadth away, gores 
 and smashes things indiscriminately. 
 
 In more direct reference to our analogue 
 we will now proceed to consider his works, 
 with a touch at the life and character of our 
 hero, wherein the further aptitude of our 
 nomen omen will, no doubt, appear. 
 
 Of course Mr. Ingersoll, the citizen, and 
 Mr. Ingersoll, the philosopher, are two very 
 different persons. We make no allusion to 
 citizen Ingersoll. He may be a very esti- 
 mable friend and gentleman for aught I 
 know. It is with Mr. Ingersoll, the Pseudo- 
 philosopher, that we have to do. 
 
 We will open his book.
 
 1 4 ME I' II IS 7V )-M/NO TA UR US. 
 
 "THE GODS 
 
 "AND o T 11 E R L E c T u R E s , 
 
 " BY 
 
 " ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 
 
 "Give me the storm and tempest of thought 
 
 " and action, rather than the dead calm 
 
 " of ignorance and faith. Banish me 
 
 " from Eden when you will ; but 
 
 " first let me eat of the 
 
 " tree of Knowledge. 
 
 " PEORIA, ILLINOIS : 
 
 " 1874-" 
 
 Let us begin with the very title-page. To 
 the first of the two sentences with which this 
 page is ornamented, I have simply to say : 
 Bravo ! Give me the storm and tempest of 
 thought and action, rather than the dead 
 calm of ignorance and faith. 
 
 But in passing to the second, one is convulsed 
 with laughter! The idea of His Pseudolency, 
 Mephisto-Minotaurus, running about loose in 
 Eden, refusing to be put out until he shall 
 first be permitted to breakfast from the tree
 
 MEPHISTO IN EDEN. 15 
 
 of Knowledge, is too much for one's midriff. 
 The figure employed would not be quite so 
 bad were it not for His Pseudolency's dual 
 character. Now, were he simply Mephisto, he 
 might set up a sort of claim to a temporary 
 lien on the aforesaid garden, by virtue of a 
 former title of occupancy vested in an early 
 and- somewhat illustrious member of the Me- 
 phistophelian family. But it is highly prob- 
 able that his Snakeship has already taken the 
 double nature of his immediate heir into ac- 
 count and made other provision for him pos- 
 sibly, somewhere near Tartarus, down below 
 Avernus, and so even the shadow of title re- 
 ferred to fades from our vision. But to think 
 of his roaring and bellowing and pawing 
 through that beautiful garden, throwing up a 
 great cloud of dust to blind us from his true 
 purpose, is altogether too funny to be endur- 
 able. 
 
 Turning a leaf, we find the " preface," which 
 we discover to be an illustrated one ; and per- 
 haps there never was a preface that so com- 
 pletely represented what was to follow it as
 
 I 6 MEPHISTO-MINOTA r/,V.V. 
 
 this. It is at the same time a sort of frontis- 
 piece, representing at the top of the page three 
 crosses, on two of which are suspended human 
 forms as in crucifixion, and at the foot of the 
 third cross, which stands between the other 
 two, are a number of women and children being 
 burned as heretics. Beneath this remarkable 
 conception are the words : 
 
 " FOR THE LOVE OF GOD." 
 At the bottom of the page there is a repre- 
 sentation of three telegraph poles, resembling 
 somewhat the three crosses, with wires 
 stretched from each to each, and at the 
 bottom of this picture are the words : 
 
 " FOR THE USE OF MAN." 
 Now, in justice to His Pseudolency, the 
 author of this remarkable cartoon (I take 
 for granted that the author of the book is the 
 author of its preface in this instance), it 
 should be stated that he is not really so stupid, 
 - for he is a man of rare genius and acknowl- 
 edged ability as to put an estimate upon it 
 above the most transparent and inconceivably 
 ridiculous clap-trap. He appreciates that it
 
 A REMARKABLE "PREFACED \"J 
 
 is no more than this, quite as well as you or I. 
 We must not lose sight of what Mr. Carlyle 
 said of ..him before he was born, in the essay 
 we have quoted: " At humanity he has no 
 grudge ; he merely operates by way of experi- 
 ment, to pass the time scientifically." 
 
 No doubt, were he to express himself 
 frankly in regard to this cartoon, he would 
 admit, for he is very candid at times, that 
 cartoons, as a rule, are low, very low, in fact. 
 That should such a master as Nast under- 
 take a job upon him and the disciples of 
 " Reason " he could cartoon them beyond all 
 endurance. 
 
 Take the history of Infidelity in France, 
 for instance, where they ran so wild after 
 " Reason " and " Liberty " that they positively 
 paraded a common courtesan at the head of 
 one of their grandest processions, and hailed 
 her as the " Goddess of Reason." 
 
 Or right here in the United States of Amer- 
 ica, where thousands pin their souls to Mr. 
 Ingersoll's coat-tails, just imagine a whole 
 herd of souls tied on as Nast could tie them
 
 I 8 MEPHIS TO-M/XO TA UP US. 
 
 as a sort of caudal appendage to His Pseu- 
 dolency, Mephisto-Minotaurus ! 
 
 And Mr. Ingersoll appreciates a well as 
 anybody else that the only possible point in 
 the picture, that might otherwise indirectly 
 seem to favor his side of the question, is lost 
 in the fact that the telegraph is pre-eminently 
 a Christian institution, and is indebted to 
 Christianity and to Christian enlightenment 
 for every stage of its continually advancing 
 improvement. 
 
 He ought to be capable of appreciating 
 another fact : that neither the genius nor the 
 spirit of Christianity is responsible for the 
 crimes that have been perpetrated under the 
 banner of the Cross. 
 
 Still less is it an argument against Chris- 
 tianity that wicked men have stolen her liv- 
 ery to cloak their infamy, or that misguided 
 zealots, in her name, have done such deeds as 
 have all earth and heaven turned thought-sick 
 and all hell amazed. 
 
 Why did not Mr. Ingersoll append to his 
 picture the representation of a steamboat,
 
 THE PL UMBD KNIGHT. \ g 
 
 railroad, telescope, spectroscope, telephone, 
 church, college, or indeed any of the advance 
 couriers of Christian enlightenment, and claim 
 them for Infidelity, as well as the telegraph? 
 O, plumed knight of the brazen cheek ! verily 
 thou hast almost compromised thyself right 
 in the beginning ! 
 
 We come now to the first of the remarkable 
 lectures of this remarkable book. 
 
 THE GODS. 
 
 " An honest God is the noblest work of man'.' 
 By the little line in italics, "An honest God 
 is the noblest work of man" it is presumed 
 that His Pseudolency simply intended a little 
 witticism, or pun, as it were merely ex- 
 perimenting, you know for the intensity of 
 thought, the tension of nerve and brain, the 
 heavy labor, so to speak, of His Pseudo- 
 lency, that is evident throughout the lecture 
 that follows to prove that the most damnable 
 and ridiculous of all work that humanity can 
 engage in is that of making gods, precludes 
 the possibility that he could have attached 
 any meaning to the little line in italics.
 
 2O MEPHISTO-M1XOTAURUS. 
 
 Following this is the lecture proper and 
 of all the anomalies of English literature it 
 is surely the most remarkable ! Walt Whit- 
 man's " Leaves of Grass " is nowhere in com- 
 parison. 
 
 Where to commence or how to commence 
 a review is puzzling. If there were any de- 
 fined line of argument any firstlys, second- 
 lys and thirdlys, the mile-posts of the old 
 school any landmarks, so to speak, of any 
 kind but so far from there being any defined 
 line of argument, there is no argument at all. 
 His Pseudolency has no argument to make ; 
 he is simply a Denier, without argument ; this 
 is the Mephisto part of him. 
 
 His pace cannot be measured, for he has 
 neither regular gait, nor does he move in any 
 prescribed direction he simply plunges, now 
 forward, now backward, now to either side 
 pawing and bellowing and raising a wonderful 
 dust all the while ; this is the Minotaur part of 
 him. 
 
 The only practical way that I can discern 
 is to follow wherever there is a dust.
 
 A WONDERFUL DUST. 21 
 
 Mr. Ingersoll opens his lecture by stating 
 that " Each nation has created a God." 
 
 This, I take it, was intended as a sort of 
 poetic expression intended to convey the idea 
 that all nations have had some sort of natural, 
 instinctive or intuitional conception of an au- 
 thority or power beyond their own an over- 
 ruling Deity. It either means this or it means 
 nothing, and in the light of this interpretation 
 I most heartily indorse it. 
 
 Mr. Ingersoll might, however, have been 
 less obscure and more forcible by carrying the 
 thought into all the existencies of the universe. 
 
 He could have begun with the vegetable 
 world wherein he would have found : 
 
 First, Everything dependent upon a su- 
 perior power. 
 
 Second, All things acting as if, seemingly, 
 conscioiis of that superior power. 
 
 He would have found the First evinced in 
 every state of development. He would have 
 found the Second evinced in the progress of 
 that development. 
 
 To be plainer: Had he gone to the ivy that
 
 2 2 MEPIIIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 decks the tree in the forest, he had found 
 its delicate tendrils reaching out for help and 
 support to the bark and the twigs of its pow- 
 erful friend ; had he tried to unclasp its tiny 
 arms, he had found them clinging to their 
 stately protector with the tenacity of life itself. 
 Then had he stooped to the fern or the flower 
 at his feet, he had found them as seemingly 
 conscious of their dependence upon the Earth, 
 and resisting with all their puny strength his 
 efforts to tear them from her bosom. Then, 
 could he have listened to the voices of these, 
 the soft wave of sound that attends the unfold- 
 ing of the tiniest germ, he had heard a sweet 
 song, as of thankfulness, a song that rises up 
 from each infinitesimal stage of life, in the pro 
 gress of its development. And he had found 
 all these, the stately oak, the tendriled ivy, 
 the delicate fern, and the fragrant flower, all 
 reaching their arms to the sun the Divinity 
 of matter. 
 
 Then had he pfone to the orders of ani- 
 
 o 
 
 mal life, he had found the same fact of de- 
 pendence. He had found every living thing,
 
 A THOUGHT FROM NATURE. 23 
 
 from the dawn of its being on to the end of its 
 latest breath, imbued with the instinct or in- 
 tuition of a Superior Power a power beyond 
 itself. The young that looks to the mother, 
 the mother that looks to the sire, the sire that 
 looks to its nobler brother in the species above 
 it, and this brother to one still above it, on 
 till the highest and noblest of animals that 
 stands in awe of the child ; and the child looks 
 up to the humblest man, and this man to the 
 man who is great, and he to the Divinity of 
 men. 
 
 And then, had he lifted his face to the 
 stars, he might have learned that those innu- 
 merable systems of worlds revolve round their 
 central suns, and that all these are dependent 
 on law. And in these he would have found a 
 design, and the design dependent upon a de- 
 signer, and that that designer was the Divinity 
 of worlds. 
 
 And then, had he opened the book of 
 thought, he could have found a volume of 
 Unities, and this would have taught him that 
 the divinity of matter, and the divinity of
 
 2 4 MKPH/S TO-MINO r^ UR i .s . 
 
 men, and the divinity of worlds, were one 
 the trinity of perfection ; He whom the Chris- 
 tians call God. 
 
 And then he would, no doubt, have made 
 his opening sentence more accurately saying-; 
 " Each nation has created an image of God." 
 And then, instead of his second sentence read- 
 ing as it does : "And the god has always re- 
 sembled his creators," he would have made it 
 read as follows : " And that image of God has 
 conformed to the conceptions of its creators." 
 I say he would have done this ; of course this 
 is upon the hypothesis that he is an honest 
 man ; I accord to all men honesty. 
 
 Had he then have permitted a commendable 
 zeal for the truth, he would have added : " This 
 fact of dependence which we find throughout 
 the material world, and this instinct of a su- 
 perior power which we find throughout all 
 orders of animals, and this intuition of a God 
 which we find throughout all conditions of hu- 
 manity and all the ages of the world, these 
 three absolute truths are a very conclusive 
 argument that there is One on whom all things 
 
 o o
 
 FACT, INSTINCT, INTUITION. 25 
 
 depend, a power beyond all animal life, a God 
 who touches every soul through this intuitional 
 link of Himself." 
 
 After the two sentences we have o-iven, the 
 
 o 
 
 first twelve pages appear to be devoted to an 
 irregular dissertation on the gods of history. 
 It is here that the Minotaur part takes entire 
 control. He roars and bellows, and charges 
 in among the idols of the past with all the 
 fury of the most illustrious sires of his species. 
 And yet he is altogether harmless, in these 
 paroxysms, save to himself. The objects of 
 his rage being simply myths, he charges 
 through these in a cloud of dust to his own 
 exhaustion. Meeting no opposition save here 
 and there from the rocks of truth that lie in 
 his way, over these he but stumbles and falls 
 to rise again in redoubled fury, foaming and 
 roaring and lashing his sides for another at- 
 tack. And so he returns again and again to 
 his fight with the gods. He is safer, it would 
 appear, from personal harm than was poor old 
 Don Quixote, in his attack upon the wind- 
 mills ; and yet it may be but for a time, for,
 
 2 6 MEPHIS TO-M/XO TA I -If US. 
 
 we are told, "though the mills of the gods 
 grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small," 
 and if they do nothing else, they may still 
 keep their spectral shadows dancing before 
 His Pseudolency on the heights of Olympus 
 till he shall butt his brains out at its base. 
 
 But in the name of reason, philosophy, com- 
 mon sense and uncommon sense, what has all 
 this tirade of abuse, heaped upon the myths 
 of the benighted ages of the past, to do 
 with the negations of the Infidels of to-day? 
 Wherein does all this historical slush and 
 cheap wit affect the philosophy of the Chris- 
 tian religion ? What relation has Christianity 
 to Pagan idolatry ? I thought that it was to 
 cure all these ills, heal all these wounds, and 
 lift humanity to a higher, nobler being, that 
 the Christian philosophy was instituted. Sup- 
 pose that all you have charged to the gods of 
 antiquity be admitted then what ? Stuff and 
 nonsense ! Do you think your readers are a 
 lot of idiots ? 
 
 After this, my dear sir, do not address us 
 as though we were so many consummate
 
 INDISCREET HYPOTHESIS. 27 
 
 fools, or the sting of our self-respect will be 
 apt to beget prejudice. 
 
 I trust my readers will pardon me for thus 
 stepping aside occasionally to address His 
 Pseudolency in person. 
 
 With the last half of page twelve (12) our 
 author begins his comments upon the inhuman 
 wars of the Old Testament. 
 
 " We are asked to justify these frightful pas- 
 sages, these infamous laws of war, because the 
 bible is the word of God," says this apostle of 
 reason. You are asked to do no such thing. 
 You never were asked, and you never will be 
 asked, to do any such thing by anybody with 
 as much intelligence as it takes to put a pro- 
 position into simple English. 
 
 What you are asked is to take into consider- 
 ation the stages of development through which 
 the human race has passed since the wars of 
 the Old Testament to reach what it now is, 
 and then to recognize in the tribes of barbari- 
 ans of those days the " people " against whom 
 the "armies of invasion" were moving. 
 
 It would be a terrible chapter to read, two
 
 28 MEPllISTO-MINOTA URUS. 
 
 thousand years from now, that the United 
 States forces had cut down Sitting Bull and 
 his people, and yet it may be doubted if even 
 the god of reason would paralyze the uplifted 
 arm of the government if Mr. Sitting Bull 
 could only be gotten hold of. 
 
 I am free to admit that there is much in the 
 Old Testament history which, looked at from 
 our distant perspective, is horrible and revolt- 
 ing ; but we must not forget that ?nuc/i of the 
 Old Testament is simple history, setting up no 
 claim to divine inspiration, except as to a faith- 
 ful narration of facts, events with which God 
 had nothing to do, or for which he was no 
 more responsible than He is for the present 
 war in the East. 
 
 Were the history of the present Russo- 
 Turkish war to be read two thousand years 
 from now, it would, no doubt, stand recorded 
 as a Christian war on the part of Russia, and 
 the historian could offer abundant evidence 
 for his statement, false as it would be. 
 
 So, no doubt, is much of the Old Testament 
 history. There are many rulers who claim the
 
 OLD TESTAMENT WARS. 29 
 
 authority of God who are really directed by 
 the devil. 
 
 Because the United States is a Christian 
 nation it does not follow that every ruler of 
 the United States is a Christian, nor that 
 if he gets into a drunken brawl or wages an 
 unholy war that his acts are sanctioned by the 
 Christians 1 God. 
 
 And, aside from all this, does Mr. Ingersoll 
 find anything in the teachings of Christ that 
 countenances war, or violence of any kind ? 
 Does he not know that the old law, that was 
 made for the barbarous ages of the past, is 
 repealed in the new? 
 
 How a lawyer of his excellent sagacity, not 
 to speak of honesty, could make such a plea 
 as he makes here is, certainly, very remarkable. 
 But a personal acquaintance with Mr. Ingersoll 
 makes his feigned horror of war extremely 
 astonishing to put it mildly. 
 
 To return to the text : " The instant that 
 we admit that a book is too sacred to be rea- 
 soned about, we are mental serfs," says this 
 politico-philosophic. Well, who disputes it ?
 
 30 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 Again : "It is infinitely absurd to suppose that 
 a god would address a communication to in- 
 telligent beings, and yet make it a crime to be 
 punished in eternal flames for them to use 
 their intelligence for the purpose of under- 
 standing his communication." Who disputes 
 it? Who ever heard of a god of that kind? 
 O, Prince of Pettifoggers ! 
 
 These are only samples of the sentences 
 with which he crams his book. His favorite 
 method seems to be to make a statement that 
 nobody disputes, and then proceed to argue 
 as though everybody that is not an Infidel 
 does dispute it. 
 
 Here is a brace of them that he has stand- 
 ing out by themselves, as a sort of couplet 
 a pair of metaphysical twins, as it were : 
 
 " Salvation though slavery is worthless. 
 Salvation from slavery is inestimable." 
 
 A question might arise, just here, as to 
 whether His Pseudolency is a less slave to the 
 teachings of Voltaire, Paine and Co., than the 
 Church to the teachings of Christ but we 
 will not raise it.
 
 THE DEVILS OF HIS TORT. 31 
 
 After a number of such ultimatums as those 
 we have quoted, His Pseudolency devotes 
 some pages to the devils of history. It is 
 here that the Mephisto part of him takes 
 the reins. 
 
 Through these pages there is the most 
 eloquent, powerful and, as I may say, exhaust- 
 ive defense of " the devils " that has ever 
 been made this side of their place of general 
 rendezvous the lecturer seems to make this 
 a sort of peroration to his former discourse, 
 and hence its eloquence ; he speaks as a minis- 
 ter and envoy with full authority, and hence 
 its power; he makes a personal matter of it, 
 and hence it is entirely exhaustive. It has 
 been said : a man is never so strong as when 
 fighting for his own fireside ; never so eloquent 
 as when defending his family history. 
 
 It is here that he utters those remarkable 
 words with which he adorns his title-page : 
 " Banish me from Eden when you will," etc. 
 But they do not stand alone here, as there 
 he prefaces them paves the way to their 
 acceptance, as it were. Hear what an elo-
 
 32 MEPHJSTO-MINOTAURUS. 
 
 quent and touching appeal he makes in this 
 glowing picture of the elder Mephisto. 
 
 " If the account given in Genesis is really 
 true, ought we not, after all, to thank this ser- 
 pent ? He was the first schoolmaster, the first 
 advocate of learning, the first enemy of igno- 
 rance, the first to whisper in human ears the 
 sacred word of liberty, the creator of ambition, 
 the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of 
 investigation, of progress, and of civilization." 
 
 It is just after he has delivered himself of 
 this, while standing off and regarding the 
 masterpiece of his art this matchless pen- 
 portrait of his patron and hero, that he 
 breaks loose from himself, lets go all holds, so 
 to speak, and gives vent to the " Give me the 
 storm and tempest " business. 
 
 Ah, " what a piece of work is man ! " - but 
 here we must end the quotation we might, 
 however, add the "how infinite in faculties" 
 part of it, for if there ever was an evidence 
 of wonderful " faculties," we have it here. 
 O temporal O mores! Oh, pshaw! 
 
 After this Herculean effort, His Pseudo-
 
 POT-POURRI. 33 
 
 lency takes up the thought with which he 
 opened his lecture. Why he dropped it so 
 suddenly before, can only be accounted for, 
 perhaps, (as a like style of procedure pre- 
 vails all through the book,) from the fact 
 that he has no regular gait simply plungeth 
 where he listeth and thou seest the dust 
 thereof but canst not tell whence he cometh 
 or whither he goeth, and, may we not con- 
 clude, " so is every one that is born of the " 
 devil ? 
 
 The first sentence of his lecture, which 
 we have already given, it will be remembered, 
 was as follows : " Each nation has created a 
 god," etc. The one with which he renews the 
 thought on page twenty-six (26) runs after 
 this fashion : " Nothing can be plainer than 
 that each nation gives to its god its peculiar 
 characteristics, and that every individual gives 
 to his god his personal peculiarities." He con- 
 tinues : " Man has no ideas and can have none, 
 except those suggested by his surroundings. 
 He cannot conceive of anything utterly unlike 
 what he has seen or felt," etc. And so he
 
 3 4 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 goes on in his philosophical semi-plagiarisms. 
 But I have less fault to find with these bor- 
 rowed scraps of wisdom than the ultimatum 
 with which he follows them. It is, surely, as 
 illogical a sequence as he could have possibly 
 blundered into. Here it is: 
 
 " Beyond nature man cannot go even in 
 thought ; above nature he cannot rise ; below 
 nature he cannot fall." 
 
 Now suppose that instead of this pot-pourri 
 we should substitute the following: 
 
 Man has no ideas, and can have none, ex- 
 cept those that are founded in fact, (this is, 
 virtually, the boiling down of His Pseudo- 
 lency's pot, after the impurities have been 
 skimmed off,) which, once admitted, this 
 follows : 
 
 Man can, therefore, conceive of nothing 
 which does not, in some form or degree, exist. 
 Again : 
 
 Man can aspire to nothing of which he has 
 no conception. The existence of aspiration, 
 therefore, necessarily implies conception ; con- 
 ception necessarily implies being fact.
 
 THE LOGICAL SEQUENCE. 35 
 
 Man's one supreme aspiration is immortality 
 and eternal life heaven ; therefore the ex- 
 istence of heaven is a fact. 
 
 So, as I say, I have little fault to find with 
 Mr. Ingersoll's apparent plagiarisms; it is to 
 his sequences that I object. 
 
 The author, next, takes occasion to offer 
 an abridged commentary on the fourth chapter 
 of St. Matthew, which I will give, as it is quite 
 brief, quotation included : 
 
 " Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into 
 the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 
 And when the tempter came to Him, he said: 
 If thou be the Son of God command that these 
 stones be made bread. But he answered and 
 said : It is written, Man shall not live by bread 
 alone, but by every word that proceedeth out 
 of the mouth of God ! 
 
 " Then the devil taketh Him up into the 
 holy city, and setteth Him upon a pinnacle of 
 the temple, and saith unto Him: If thou be 
 the Son of God, cast thyself down, for it is 
 written, He shall give His angels charge con- 
 cerning thee, lest at any time thou dash thy
 
 3 6 MEPH/S TO-M1NO TA UR US. 
 
 foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him : 
 It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the 
 Lord thy God. Again the devil taketh him 
 up into an exceeding high mountain and show- 
 eth him all the kingdoms of the world and the 
 glory of them, and saith unto him : All these 
 will I o-Jve thee if thou wilt fall down and wor- 
 
 o 
 
 ship me." 
 
 Here are Mr. Ingersoll's comments: 
 " The Christians now claim that Jesus was 
 God. If he was God, of course the devil 
 knew that fact, and yet according to this 
 account, the devil took the omnipotent God 
 and placed Him upon a pinnacle of the temple, 
 and endeavored to induce Him to dash Him- 
 self against the earth. Failing in that, he 
 
 o o 
 
 took the Creator, owner and governor of the 
 universe, up into an exceeding high mountain 
 and offered him this world this grain of sand 
 -if He, the God of all the worlds, would fall 
 down and worship him, a poor devil, without 
 even a tax title to one foot of dirt ! Is it pos- 
 sible the devil was such an idiot? Should any 
 great credit be given to this Deity for not
 
 PALPABLE PETTIFOGGING. 37 
 
 being caught with such chaff? Think of it ! 
 The devil, the prince of sharpers, the king of 
 cunning, the master of finesse, trying to bribe 
 God with a grain of sand that belonged to 
 God ! Is there in all the religious literature 
 of the world anything more grossly absurd 
 than this?" 
 
 Again, I say, oh, Prince of Pusillanimous 
 Pettifoggers ! that could put in print such a 
 construction as this ; for how can it be possi- 
 ble that so brilliant.a man could have been so 
 stupid ? 
 
 Yet, with that charity for ignorance which I 
 have often demanded, no doubt, on my own 
 behalf, I will proceed for the time being upon 
 the presumption that His Pseudolency was 
 innocently in earnest, and give what I have 
 always supposed to* be the very common-sense 
 acceptance of the passage in question. 
 
 Christ allegorically represents, here, human- 
 ity in three different stages or conditions, each 
 subject to the temptations of evil according to 
 his place or condition. 
 
 In the first, He personates that unfortunate
 
 3 8 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 class who, unprovided with the necessities of 
 life, are tempted to seek the means of physical 
 existence through other than the proper chan- 
 nels. To these the lesson is found in the 
 answer He gives : " Man shall not live by 
 bread alone, but by every word that proceed- 
 
 eth out of the mouth of God." 
 
 / 
 
 In the second, Christ symbolizes those who 
 are tempted to test, as a matter of simple 
 experiment, the promises of God. To these 
 He would say, " Thou shalt not tempt the 
 Lord thy God." 
 
 In the third, He typifies those who, by vir- 
 tue of superior abilities, are capable of rising 
 to power and place, and who are tempted to 
 secure these ends even at the cost of their own 
 souls. The lesson is a very suggestive one. 
 To these He would say, " Entertain the thought 
 not for a single moment ; there is more danger 
 of your falling than all others" ; or, in the 
 words of the answer given, to such a tempter 
 say, " Get thee hence, Satan ! " 
 
 That this entire passage is simply figurative, 
 and was intended as nothing else, is demon-
 
 A THOUGHT FOR MR. TTNDALL. 
 
 39 
 
 strated in the thought of seeing all the king- 
 doms of the world from an exceeding high 
 mountain. Literally considered, it would have 
 required an exceeding high mountain, sure 
 enough, from which to take in so extensive a 
 view. 
 
 Now, I am not a preacher (this is, however, 
 no doubt, quite evident), nor have I oppor- 
 tunity, perhaps I should say inclination, to 
 consult the commentators, and so I don't 
 know whether this is an orthodox version or 
 not, nor do I care ; but it strikes me as being 
 pre-eminently common -sense -odox, and I'll 
 chance it. 
 
 [I am tempted here to borrow another brace 
 of Dr. Holmes' brackets, and as the good Doc- 
 tor has plenty to spare, I think I shall do so, 
 .just to drop in two little items apropos of two 
 of the three answers given by Christ in the 
 quotations we have cited. Here they are: 
 
 I think that the one I have numbered " se- 
 cond " has especial application to, and includes 
 excellent advice for, Mr. Tyndall in relation to 
 his " prayer test,"
 
 4O MEPI/IS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 The " third " may be studied with possible 
 good effect by the gifted and accomplished 
 hero of this paper, j 
 
 Immediately following this dissertation on 
 the temptation, our author favors us with the 
 following : 
 
 " These devils, according to the Bible, were 
 of various kinds ; some could speak and hear, 
 others were deaf and dumb. All could not be 
 cast out in the same way. The deaf and dumb 
 spirits were quite difficult to deal with. St. 
 Mark tells us of a gentleman who brought his 
 son to Christ. The boy, it seems, was pos- 
 sessed of a dumb spirit, over which the disciples 
 had no control. Jesus said unto the spirit, I 
 charge thee come out of him, and enter no 
 more into him ! Whereupon the deaf spirit 
 (having heard what was said) cried out (being 
 dumb) and immediately vacated the premises." 
 
 Now, for profoundness of stupidity, and ab- 
 solute metaphysical idiocy, I challenge the 
 world to show anything that will compare with 
 that ! It is, positively, a disgrace and slander 
 upon the intelligence of Infidelity (for Mr.
 
 OH, PRINCE OF COMMENTATORS. 41 
 
 Ingersoll holds a position as the greatest In- 
 fidel of his country) that such a construction 
 as this should get into print. Need I explain 
 the text? Yes, for His Pseudolency's sake, 
 for I see by my morning's paper that he re- 
 peats it in his lecture in New York. I would 
 not insult an intelligent reader by deeming it 
 necessary. 
 
 Know, then, oh, Prince of commentators, 
 that it was simply the boy who was dumb, not 
 the spirit that caused the affliction. For all 
 we know, that evil spirit may have had the 
 power of hearing and speaking, even to as 
 subtle purpose as yourself. We may be as- 
 sured of this much : that he knew who was 
 talking to him, and obeyed, as any sensible 
 devil would do under the circumstances, did 
 not lift up his puny strength in rebellion. Let 
 this serve us all as a valuable lesson ! 
 
 But even granting, as you put it, that it was 
 the evil spirit that was deaf and dumb, and 
 not the boy, do you not realize that the power 
 that was able to deliver the boy of his in- 
 firmity, i. e., cast out the devil, was sufficient to 
 
 2*
 
 42 MEPHISTO-MINOT. \ I /,'/ '.s. 
 
 give hearing and speech to the devil He cast 
 out ? Oh, what a precious mess you have 
 made of it ! 
 
 Our author devotes the next twenty pages 
 of his work to a discussion of cause and effect. 
 All readers are conversant with what he offers 
 here, and have been for many years ; he brings 
 nothing- new. 
 
 o 
 
 It would be tedious to follow him through 
 the throes of his struggle his plunging and 
 bellowing as he starts off at full speed, first 
 in the beaten track of one herd, then in 
 another, then, retracing his steps to start on a 
 third, then breaking across paths ; crashing 
 through forests, and pawing the beautiful 
 grasses and flowers that have been gathering 
 their strength and glory for years. No ; we 
 will not try to follow him where he loses him- 
 self again and again in the jungles where 
 many sincere and earnest men have been for- 
 ever lost in the dark and gloomy and end- 
 less caverns of doubt the unfathomable 
 depths of the mysterious the limitless 
 heights of the unknown ! We will wait, and
 
 suus CUI^UE MOS. 43 
 
 he will soon return to the place whence he 
 started; for he is lost, and goes ever round 
 and round ! 
 
 Ah ! he is already here ! And now we shall 
 hear what he says, for though it is not new 
 it is unique. 
 
 " Thought is a form of force. We walk with 
 the same force with which we think. Man is 
 an organism, that changes several forms of 
 force into thought force. Man is a machine, 
 into which we put what we call food, and pro- 
 duce what we call thought. Think of that 
 wonderful chemistry by which bread was 
 changed into the divine tragedy of Hamlet." 
 
 It will be observed in this passage, as in all 
 that His Pseudolency is pleased to write or 
 speak, there is no apparent evidence of hu- 
 mility. He deals entirely in ultimatums. 
 Suus cuique mos, and this is his. It is to be 
 hoped that he will outgrow this, but the pros- 
 pect is, certainly, not flattering. 
 
 The question which he disposes of here so 
 summarily, I need hardly state, is one with 
 which the greatest minds have been struggling
 
 44 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 for centuries ; the brightest lights of his own 
 philosophical household his very household 
 gods, as it were have trembled in the pres- 
 ence of the awful responsibility of pronouncing 
 upon it ; and yet, with all the assurance of a 
 mountebank, this man simply waves his quill 
 in air, it poises but a moment, descends, traces 
 a few brief lines on the page, and lo ! the mys- 
 tery of mysteries is solved ! 
 
 Through all the years of the past, in which 
 scientists have wrestled with fact and phi- 
 losophy, the principle involved here has ex- 
 hausted the highest resources of all schools. 
 In this struggle have been numbered the 
 brightest geniuses and most profound phi- 
 losophers, the astute scholars of the world. 
 Honest, sincere, noble, genuine men have 
 devoted their lives to the solution of this one 
 great problem that underlies all others. 
 
 It has appeared in a multitude of forms, 
 and has been considered from as many differ- 
 ent standpoints. 
 
 It is presented here in its latest form, which 
 resolves itself into this :
 
 MATERIALISM VERSUS SCIENCE. 45 
 
 Whether the action of the brain causes 
 thought, or whether thought, an extraneous 
 something which we cannot comprehend, 
 causes the action of the brain. 
 
 But the clouds which so long obscured the 
 horizon of faith have, at last, been dispelled 
 by the sunlight of science, thank God, and now 
 we may walk out in the morning of the glori- 
 ous day ! The path is very plain and very 
 simple. We have only to start right, and 
 then keep straight ahead. Truths that are 
 of most value are usually expressed in sim- 
 plest form ; they are seldom found in the 
 labyrinthine depths of indefinite metaphysics. 
 
 Now, had Mr. Ingersoll even consulted 
 the very primer of science, he would have 
 found, standing out prominently, as the first 
 letter of its alphabet, this incontrovertible 
 truth Matter is inert. 
 
 Had he taken the trouble to consult Prof. 
 Bain, who is the acknowledged leader of 
 the most recent school of materialists, a 
 school which embraces the acute scholars and 
 brightest minds of that philosophy he would
 
 46 MEPHIS TO-M1NO TA UR US. 
 
 have found even him admitting that matter 
 is inert and cannot originate force. 
 
 Had he read a little farther in his primer 
 he would have found that there are but two 
 things in the universe matter and mind. 
 
 It would have .required but a very gentle 
 exercise of his reasoning faculties to show him 
 that since matter is inert and cannot originate 
 force or motion, and mind is the only other 
 existence in the universe, force or motion 
 must emanate from mind. 
 
 And then he could, surely, have endured the 
 further mental effort necessary to show him 
 that (as he had already committed himself to 
 the proposition that thought is a form of force) 
 thought must emanate from mind, not matter, 
 or bread, as he puts it. 
 
 And all this without going beyond the very 
 primer of science. 
 
 It is by no means sure, however, that he 
 would have had the honesty to confess to the 
 truth of that which we have shown here, simple 
 as it is. Now, as I have already stated, I usu- 
 ally accord to all men honesty of purpose, but
 
 CAUSE AND EFFECT, "/^." 47 
 
 I fear we must make an exception here, and also 
 in the veryn ext point he seeks to make, for it 
 could not have been a lack of mental acumen 
 (for Mr. Ingersoll is as brilliant a man as there 
 is on the continent) which prompted him, on 
 the page following the quotation I have given, 
 to start out to prove that " matter, force, law, 
 order, cause and effect, exist without a being 
 superior to nature " in the way that he does. 
 Here are his words: 
 
 " Now, suppose that two atoms should come 
 together, would there be an effect ? Yes." 
 From this he makes to follow, law, order, etc. 
 It will be observed that his "suppose" brings 
 about an effect without a caiise, which is scien- 
 tifically impossible. Of course if two atoms 
 should come together, all else that he claims 
 would follow ; but that which is embraced in 
 the little word if, or his " suppose," is just what 
 is in controversy. 
 
 It were easy to demolish the entire super- 
 structure which he so artfully puts together in 
 the pages that follow here, for it all stands 
 upon the same foundation, this same " sup-
 
 48 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 pose," this same little if with which he start- 
 ed, by the application of the two simple 
 lessons we have referred to from the little 
 first primer of Science; for scientific truth 
 is as relentless as it is merciless and power- 
 ful, and the two little dynamic atoms in our 
 possession would reduce his rickety old mu- 
 seum of nondescript curiosities to a mass of 
 worthless debris in short order. 
 
 To those who have not had the honor of a 
 personal acquaintance with Mr. Ingersoll, the 
 wonder is, no doubt, that a man of his appar- 
 ent erudition in other directions should be so 
 grossly ignorant of the very first principles of 
 science, and still have the audacity to send 
 out a volume involving so many scientific 
 theories. Not so, however, with any one who 
 may know him. 
 
 He is a nineteenth century Lawyer and the 
 paragon of Advocates ; of massive brain, of 
 brilliant wit, of incomparable repartee. He is 
 acute but not accurate, wise but not learned, 
 great but not god-like ; with an entire absence 
 of special knowledge he dons the garb of a
 
 A PLEA FOR CRAMMING. 49 
 
 pkilosoplic with admirable skill, for he possess- 
 es tact, talent and tenacity, and is unfettered 
 by men, methods, or modesty. He is more 
 powerful on the rostrum than on paper, 
 better suited to the arena than the library or 
 boudoir. He is a master of trick and of ora- 
 tory ; indeed, in this, I think he is without a 
 peer in America. He has a quaint style of 
 putting his sentences, which gives them a pe- 
 culiar attraction ;" and so he is quite popular 
 with the masses, particularly so with those 
 who would live without the restraint of law 
 his very audacity, with this class, is a commen- 
 dation. 
 
 But, really, I must beg pardon I did 
 not intend to become his biographer. I am 
 rather disposed to laughter, and when I 
 find him urging with so much eloquence that 
 " Man is a machine into which we put what 
 we call food and produce what we call 
 thought," I cannot help the reflection, what a 
 great pity it is that we were not all crammed 
 in our youth. 
 
 We have but to turn a page or two farther
 
 50 .!//, YY/AV TO-MINOTA UK US. 
 
 to find that Mr. Ingersoll makes an admission 
 that is fatal to his entire philosophy. I will 
 quote the verse complete, for I desire to give 
 him the full force of connections. 
 
 " Nature, so far as we can discern, without 
 passion and without intuition, forms, trans- 
 forms, and retransforms forever. She neither 
 weeps nor rejoices. She produces man with- 
 out purpose, and obliterates him without re- 
 gret. She knows no distinction between the 
 beneficial and the hurtful. Poison and nutri- 
 tion, pain and joy, life and death, smiles and 
 tears are alike to her. She is neither merci- 
 ful nor cruel. She cannot be flattered by 
 worship nor melted by tears. She does not 
 know even the attitude of prayer. She ap- 
 preciates no difference between poison in the 
 fangs of snakes and mercy in the hearts of 
 men. Only tJirougk Man does natiire take 
 cognizance of the good, the true, and tJie beau- 
 tiful ; and, so far as we know, man is the 
 highest intelligence." 
 
 The sentence I have put in italics only 
 through Man does nat^tre take cognizance of
 
 A FATAL ADMISSION. 51 
 
 the good, the true, and the beautiful is not 
 italicised in the original. With this exception 
 I have given it just as it appears there. Now 
 I propose to let it remain, just as it is, with- 
 out comment, or analysis, or any wotd of 
 mine whatever. 
 
 And there it stands! a monument of truth, 
 
 \ 
 
 looking down upon the debris of error that 
 is all about it ! There it stands ! Kissing the 
 sunlight of its higher, purer atmosphere, while 
 malarious contagion broods round its base ! 
 There it stands ! in solitary grandeur, hero 
 and conqueror, in the very midst of the battle- 
 field, while the self-slain legions of error strew, 
 everywhere, the plain ! 
 
 Let us carve an inscription upon it an in- 
 scription that has graced the monuments of 
 many battle-fields before. 
 
 " Truth crushed to earth will rise again, 
 
 The immortal years of God are hers! 
 But Error, wounded, writhes in pain 
 And dies amid her worshipers." 
 
 A careful observer will notice that it is 
 seldom the case but that in every contro- 
 versy Truth will assert herself, Was there
 
 5 2 ME PHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 ever an instance where she was more sig- 
 nally successful than here ? I have never 
 known one. It was easily done the means 
 of Truth are usually simple. His Pseudo- 
 lency was merely allowed to proceed, and 
 the Minotaur part of him got the advantage 
 of the Mephisto part of him, and as he 
 went plunging and bellowing and roaring 
 through the fields of philosophy, he fell 
 over one of the corner-stones of science that 
 I spoke of a while ago. 
 
 Hie jacet Ingersoll His Pseudolency has 
 more lives than a cat. Before we can finish 
 his epitaph, we find him up again and lashing 
 his sides with redoubled fury. How he roars, 
 as he pronounces the following : 
 
 " Would an infinite, wise, good and power- 
 ful God, intending to produce man, commence 
 with the lowest possible forms of life, with the 
 simplest organisms that can be imagined, and 
 during innumerable periods of time, slowly 
 and almost imperceptibly improve upon the 
 rude beginning, until man was evolved? 
 Would countless ages thus be wasted in the
 
 ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE FENCE. 
 
 53 
 
 production of awkward forms, afterward aban- 
 doned ? " 
 
 Well, what would Mr. Ingersoll say to this? 
 It strikes me that these questions would be 
 more pertinent if directed to an Infidel. I am 
 unacquainted with any form of Christianity 
 that holds to the evolution theory of creation, 
 so far as man is concerned. 
 
 The god which His Pseudolency paws and 
 bellows around so threateningly is not the 
 Christian's God ; it is the boasted god of the 
 Infidels. It will be discovered, here, that our 
 Minotaur has simply lost all control of him- 
 self, in his rage, and, not observing that he has 
 got on the wrong side of the philosophical 
 fence, he is goring his own god and tearing 
 up his own plantation. 
 
 Hear him. again ; he is becoming very fero- 
 cious : 
 
 " What would we think of a father who 
 should give a farm to his children, and, before 
 giving them possession, should plant upon it 
 thousands of deadly shrubs and vines ; should 
 stock it with ferocious beasts and poisonous
 
 54 
 
 MEPHISTO-MINOTA URUS. 
 
 reptiles ; should take pains to put a few 
 swamps in the neighborhood to breed ma- 
 laria ; should so arrange matters that the 
 
 ' O 
 
 ground would occasionally open and swallow 
 a few of his darlings, and besides all this, 
 should establish a few volcanoes in the im- 
 mediate vicinity, that might at any moment 
 overwhelm his children with rivers of fire. 
 Suppose that this father neglected to tell 
 his children which of the beasts were deadly ; 
 that the reptiles were poisonous ; and kept 
 the volcano business a profound secret ; would 
 we pronounce him angel, or fiend ? " 
 
 Now, let us admit, for the while, that His 
 Pseudolency is right in maintaining that there 
 is no such a being as the Christian God the 
 natural state of the world, which he has very 
 accurately pictured as a farm, is still the same. 
 This is no catch-logic, it is a fair proposition. 
 
 Mr. In^ersoll's entire effort in his lecture is 
 
 o 
 
 to prove that the Christian Gocl is a myth ; or, 
 in other words, that there is no such a being, 
 and sets up, instead, his god of Reason, what- 
 ever that may be, as the author and finisher
 
 THE MI NO TAUR AT BA T. 5 5 
 
 of all things. He then gives a very graphic 
 and correct description of the world as we find 
 it; it follows, therefore, that the "infinite 
 fiend" who created the world is Mr. Ingersoll's 
 god of Reason. This is the only logical de- 
 duction. 
 
 There is but one way by which Mr. Inger- 
 soll can save his god from the anathema he 
 hurls here, and that is in the theory that the 
 world was created by chance. He will hardly 
 espouse this ; the Mephisto part of him is too 
 cunning to permit it. 
 
 Behold, then, our Minotaur at bay ! Noth- 
 ing is left to him now but to lash his sides 
 and paw the dust and foam in impotent rage. 
 While he is thus employed, let us have a little 
 talk to ourselves, for while Mr. Ingersoll is 
 silenced he is not answered. 
 
 The world is full of " deadly shrubs and 
 vines, and ferocious beasts, and poisonous rep- 
 tiles, and malarious swamps, and volcanoes/' 
 and millions of other agents of death that Mr. 
 Ingersoll does not name. Nay, even we are 
 ourselves destroyers.
 
 5 6 MEP///S TO-)f/.\'() T. \ I 'It US. 
 
 Every moment of our existence is at the 
 expense of myriads of other existences. 
 
 A million lives are sacrificed that I may 
 finish this line. 
 
 And yet we call our God a God of infinite 
 mercy, tenderness and love. 
 
 How shall we reconcile this? 
 
 This is the great stumbling-block of Chris- 
 tians Christians who think just enough to 
 get into a mystery without thinking enough 
 to get out. 
 
 And this is the perpetual sneer of Skeptics, 
 and the taunt of the Infidels. Let us see if 
 we may not meet the issue fairly, and dispose 
 of it fairly and conclusively. If we do this 
 we are consistent Christians; if we do not, we 
 are inconsistent. A man is worse than a cow- 
 ard who w r ould dodge this question 'he is a 
 suicide. There is no one so contemptible as 
 he who willingly deceives himself. Oh, what 
 a hollow mockery is that faith that is founded 
 upon a lie ! 
 
 I desire to say, right here, that no society, 
 religious or otherwise, or any person or per-
 
 THE LOGIC OF POSSIBILITIES. 
 
 57 
 
 sons whomsoever, save and except myself, are 
 either directly or indirectly responsible for the 
 position I am about to assume. 
 
 I hold then : 
 
 First. The laws of the physical universe, just 
 as they exist, are the only possible laws to 
 the physical. 
 
 Second. The laws of the spiritual universe, 
 just as they exist, are the only possible laws 
 to the spiritual. 
 
 Third. The conditions of life and death, 
 pleasure and pain, etc., as pertaining to the 
 physical, and the conditions of happiness 
 and grief, etc., as pertaining to the spiritual, 
 are the positive and negative poles, abso- 
 lutely necessary, respectively to physical 
 and spiritual existence. 
 I shall endeavor to sustain these three 
 propositions from a purely scientific stand- 
 point, and by strict, logical method. 
 
 In relation, then, to our first proposition, 
 that the laws of the physical universe, just as 
 they exist, are the only possible laws to the 
 physical, I desire to offer :
 
 5 8 MEPIIfS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 First. That bed-rock of scientific truth, Mat- 
 ter, is indestructible. 
 
 Second. If matter is indestructible, it follows 
 that matter must always exist. 
 
 Third. If matter must always exist, it fol- 
 lows that matter can have no end. 
 
 Fourth. If matter can have no end, it follows 
 that matter could have had no beginning. 
 Since that which has a beginning must have 
 an end. Since that which has no beginning 
 can have no end. An axiom. 
 
 Fifth. If matter had no beginning and can 
 have no end, it follows that the laws which 
 govern matter had no beginning and can have 
 no end. Since the law which governs must 
 be co-existent with the thing governed. 
 
 Sixth. If the laws which govern matter had 
 no beginning and can have no end, it fol- 
 lows that the laws which govern matter (or 
 the physical), are the only laws possible to 
 the physical, as claimed in our First propo- 
 sition. 
 
 In relation to our second proposition, re- 
 specting the spiritual universe, the same
 
 THE LOGIC CONTIVI'ED- 59 
 
 method need only be pursued in order to 
 establish it. 
 
 We will beo-in with that other bed-rock of 
 
 o 
 
 scientific truth : Mind is indestructible. 
 
 You know the scientists tell us that there 
 are but two things that exist in the universe, 
 matter and mind that the first is inert, but 
 that both are indestructible. That is why I 
 call the two principles I have given the bed- 
 rock principles or the two principles that 
 underlie all others. 
 
 To establish then, our second proposition, 
 we will begin : 
 
 First. Mind is indestructible. 
 Second. If mind is indestructible, it follows 
 
 that mind (by which we mean the spiritual) 
 
 must always exist. 
 Third. If mind must always exist, it follows 
 
 that mind can have no end. 
 Fourth. If mind can have no end, it follows 
 
 that mind could have had no beginning, 
 
 since that which has a beginning must have 
 
 an end, since that which has no beginning 
 
 can have no end. An axiom.
 
 60 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UP US. 
 
 Fifth. If mind had no beginning, and can 
 have no end, it follows that the laws which 
 govern mind ( or the spiritual) had no be- 
 ginning, and can have no end, since the 
 law which governs must be co-existent with 
 the thing governed. 
 
 Sixth. If the laws which govern mind (or 
 the spiritual) had no beginning, and can 
 have no end, it follows that the laws which 
 govern mind (or the spiritual) are the only 
 laws possible to the spiritual, as claimed in 
 our second proposition. 
 
 I think we may reach these two conclusions 
 from another standpoint rthe idea of God- 
 ship. By God we mean the Supreme Being, 
 and, as in the Persian Go da or Khoda, we im- 
 ply by the word God the idea of lord, master, 
 ruler. The qualities absolutely necessary to 
 Godship are those of omniscience, omnipres- 
 ence, and omnipotence. No doubt we shall 
 all agree in this. 
 
 Well, if God existed prior to matter or the 
 identity of other existences, of what could he 
 have been omniscient ? Wherein could he
 
 GOD AND MATTER CO-EXISTENT. 6 I 
 
 have been omnipresent ? Over whom or 
 what could he have been omnipotent ? Or, in 
 other words, how could he have been omni- 
 scient of nothing, omnipresent nowhere, om- 
 nipotent over nobody ? Or, with the simple 
 meaning of the very word God, how could he 
 be lord, master, or ruler over nothingness ? 
 
 Clearly, then, since God had no beginning, 
 and can have no end, mind had no beginning, 
 and can have no end, and matter had no be- 
 ginning, and can have no end ; and therefore 
 the laws that govern mind and matter had no 
 beginning, and can have no end. Since the 
 laws that govern must be co-existent with the 
 
 O 
 
 thing governed, they are, therefore, the only 
 possible laws to Spiritual and Physical exist- 
 ence. 
 
 It may be well to drop in, right here, an 
 additional scientific truth, lest our Pseudo- 
 Divinity-Doctors shall throw up their hands 
 in holy horror, realizing that if everything 
 that has a beginning must have an end, man 
 having had a beginning, according to their 
 theology, must have an end. Here it is
 
 6 2 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 Man was made of the two already existing 
 materials matter, which the Bible speaks of 
 as " dust of the earth," and mind, which the 
 Bible calls " breath of life " ; these two had no 
 beginning, and can have no end ; therefore 
 man had no beginning, and can have no end, 
 the body being a part of matter, and the 
 soul being a part of God. 
 
 [We cannot pause to discuss the distinc- 
 tions of mind and soul or spirit, the relations 
 of body and soul, or the relations of soul to 
 God after the soul has been granted a sepa- 
 rate, individual identity by God ; that must re- 
 main for another time ; though all this may be 
 logically demonstrated.] 
 
 Before passing to our tJiird proposition, I 
 wish to apply the first two to the subject be- 
 fore us. 
 
 Now, if we have established those two pro- 
 positions, it will be seen that responsibility for 
 the laws of physical and spiritual existence 
 rests not with God, but in the very necessities 
 to physical and spiritual existence. Or, to be 
 plainer, what Mr. Ingersoll refers to as deadly
 
 THE LA W OF OPPOSITES. 6l 
 
 \J 
 
 shrubs and vines, and ferocious beasts, and 
 poisonous reptiles, and malarious swamps, and 
 the millions of other agents of death, are not 
 chargeable to the malignity of a creator, but 
 to the absolute necessities. 
 
 The truth of this will become only the more 
 apparent after the consideration of our third 
 proposition, which was as follows : 
 
 The conditions of life and death, pleasure 
 and pain, etc., as pertaining to the physical, 
 and the conditions of happiness and grief, etc., 
 as pertaining to the spiritual, are the positive 
 and negative poles, absolutely necessary re- 
 spectively to physical and spiritual existence. 
 
 Now the poverty of our language compels 
 me to explain what I mean by the positive and 
 negative poles a figure I have taken from 
 electrics and in the explanation I think I 
 shall establish our proposition. 
 
 I shall endeavor to be very plain and 
 simple, for the plainest, simplest language is 
 always the strongest and most convincing. 
 And we may also be very brief in this. By 
 positive and negative poles, then, in the con-
 
 64 MEPHISTO-MINOTAURUS. 
 
 nection I have used them, as absolute neces- 
 sities, I mean what geometricians imply when 
 they speak of two lines as necessary to a paral- 
 lel ; what Prof. Cook implies when he says 
 that there cannot be an over without an 
 under, a higher without a lower, an inner 
 
 o 
 
 without an outer, a hither without a yonder. 
 It is as inconceivable that pleasure should 
 exist without the possibility of pain, or that 
 happiness should exist without the possibility 
 of grief, as that a parallel should exist without 
 the second line ; or that you can have an over 
 without an under, a higher without a lower, 
 an inner without an outer, a hither without a 
 yonder. Each takes its place in the list of 
 absohtte necessities. And so we might con- 
 tinue in the realms of matter and mind, 
 throughout which we can find nothing without 
 its opposite. And MAN, compelled to move in 
 a given direction, would simply be propelled 
 as an inanimate. In other words : if it were 
 impossible for man to move except in the 
 straight line of good, he would be, and could 
 
 o o 
 
 be, no more than the- tree that springs up
 
 THE LOGICAL SEQUENCE. 65 
 
 from the earth as a blade of grass, grows 
 to the perfection of maturity buds, blooms 
 bears its fruit, and then dies, to go back 
 to the elements. 
 
 Now, we may lay down two broad principles 
 here as the logical sequence of our former 
 propositions ; and while we need hold no 
 school of physicists and no school of philoso- 
 phers responsible, we, at the same time, may 
 challenge disproval. Here they are : 
 First. There is not an atom in the physical 
 universe which is absolute, i. e., entirely in- 
 dependent of all other atoms. 
 Second. There is not a condition in the spirit- 
 ual universe which is absolute, i. e., entirely 
 independent of all other conditions. 
 It will be observed that I have not yet dis- 
 posed of the conditions of life and death to 
 the physical, of our third proposition and 
 it will be remembered that I numbered these 
 as with the absolute necessities. Let us con- 
 sider them : 
 
 From the standpoint of science, life and 
 death are but the processes of re-creation in
 
 66 ME PHIS TO-MIXO TA UK US. 
 
 which death is as absolutely necessary as the 
 first line of a parallel ; consequently, from a 
 scientific point of view, there is no loss, the 
 new life compensating for the old death. 
 
 This pertains to the animal, vegetable, and 
 mineral kingdoms, and, according to science, 
 has always done so the law being co-existent 
 with the thing governed. The responsibility, 
 therefore, rests not with God, but with the 
 necessities to being. 
 
 Besides, I challenge the possibility of a con- 
 ception of being other than this. For that 
 would involve the making of something out of 
 nothing, and, as Mr. Ingersoll has pertinently 
 remarked, " Nothing, considered in the light of 
 a raw material, is a most decided failure." 
 
 But you will say here, how do you reconcile 
 this with the Bible account of creation ? I 
 answer, by the Bible itself. You will reply that 
 the Bible says: "In the beginning God cre- 
 ated the heavens and the earth." (Now bear 
 in mind it is you who have opened the Bible, 
 not I.) I reply, the Bible says no such thing. 
 You contend that it does, and show me the
 
 FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 67 
 
 text of a King James translation. I then re 
 fer you to the original, if you are a Hebrew 
 scholar ; if not, I commend you to any He- 
 brew scholar in whom you may have confi 
 dence. Ask him to translate the Hebrew 
 text for you into simple English. He will 
 tell you that the first verse is very difficult to 
 translate accurately into our language, and 
 show you the peculiarities of the Hebrew. 
 He will tell you that the Anglo-Saxon words 
 which most correctly embody the meaning are 
 as follows : 
 First verse : In this beginning God rearranged 
 
 the heavens and the earth. 
 Second verse : For the earth had been wrecked 
 
 and desolated. 
 
 Now you may ask, Why was it not trans- 
 lated so in the King James text? Probably 
 for the same reason that they were so in- 
 accurate in many other places. You know 
 that they translated from the Greek, which 
 was itself a translation from the Hebrew. 
 And you will perhaps remember the experi- 
 ment that was tried a few years ago, of
 
 68 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 passing a simple English sentence through 
 half a dozen different languages, and then 
 back into English. Its author would have 
 never recognized it. 
 
 This that is given here is the correct 
 translation, and it is as old as Polycarp and 
 St. Augustine. 
 
 But you will say : Back of this beginning 
 there must have been the former earth and 
 other worlds. Very correct ! Matter has 
 always existed, and God has always existed, 
 and as He put this world together from 
 already existing material, so has He put 
 other worlds together. 
 
 The best way is, I think, to make it a 
 principle to accept a fact wherever it may 
 come from ; and if, like a streak of lightning, 
 it crashes into our " metin'-house," go to work 
 to repair the damages, and make things light- 
 ning-proof for the future. 
 
 Now I do not consider that I am called upon 
 to believe anything simply because it is in the 
 Bible, but because it is true. It is not true 
 merely because it is in the Bible, but it is in
 
 BIBLE AND SCIENCE IN HARMONT. 69 
 
 
 
 the Bible because it is true ; and that is 
 why there is nothing in the Bible that is not 
 true. 
 
 By substituting this for the King James 
 version, the first chapter of Genesis correctly 
 understood will be found to be in entire har- 
 mony with the teachings of Science, and the 
 most accurate and wonderful piece of epit- 
 omized history that can be found in the 
 literature of the world. 
 
 When Mr. Ingersoll proclaims that there is 
 an irrepressible conflict between Science and 
 Christianity, he is but repeating a declara- 
 tion that was made years ago when ignorance, 
 like a pall of universal right, enveloped the 
 world. There is yet a sort of conflict which 
 is kept up between certain scientists and a 
 few ignorant, though, no doubt, well-meaning 
 theologians ; but there is no conflict between 
 Science and Christianity, and the day is not 
 far distant when science will be universally 
 recognized, as it is already in the higher 
 schools of philosophy and advanced theology, 
 as the hand-maid of Christianity.
 
 70 Mi:i>iiis-i-o-Mi.\o r.\ntrs. 
 
 
 This is no idle boast, but as sure as that 
 
 to morrow's dawn will supersede the night. 
 
 But now our Minotaur is ready for another 
 charge ; he has partially recovered from his 
 recent defeat, and is preparing to renew the 
 attack. Listen to him : 
 
 " Here empires may be overthrown ; dynas- 
 ties may be extinguished in blood ; millions 
 of slaves may toil 'neath the fierce rays of 
 the sun and the cruel strokes of the lash ; 
 yet all is happiness in heaven. Pestilences 
 may strew the earth with corpses of the 
 loved ; the survivors may bend above them 
 in agony, yet the placid bosom of heaven is 
 unruffled. Children may expire vainly asking 
 for bread ; babes may be devoured by ser- 
 pents, while gods sit smiling in the clouds. 
 The innocent may languish unto death in ob- 
 scurity of dungeons ; brave men and heroic 
 women may be changed to ashes at the 
 bigot's stake, while heaven is filled with 
 songs of joy. Out on the wild sea, in dark- 
 ness and in storm, the shipwrecked struggle 
 with the cruel waves, while angels play upon 

 
 THE INFIDEL HE A YEN. 7 I 
 
 * 
 
 their golden harps. ... In heaven they 
 are too happy to have sympathy, too busy 
 singing to aid the imploring and destitute. 
 Their eyes are blinded ; their ears are stop- 
 ped, and their hearts are turned to stone by 
 the infinite selfishness of joy. . . . The 
 smiles of the deities are unacquainted with 
 the tears of men. The shouts of heaven 
 drown the sobs of earth." 
 
 What there is here of fact, so far as the 
 laws of nature are concerned, I have already 
 answered at some length in the preceding 
 pages ; what remains of fiction I will now 
 notice briefly. 
 
 It will be observed that our Minotaur is 
 still so blinded by his impotent rage that he 
 knows not his own. He charges here through 
 the Infidel heaven, paws up its Infidel streets, 
 and butts down its Infidel walls ; makes war 
 upon the Infidel angels, and gores the Infidel 
 god. 
 
 For the Christian heaven is a heaven 
 wherein there is more joy over one that is 
 saved than over ninety and nine that went
 
 7 2 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 not astray. For the Christian angels are 
 they that minister continually unto the chil- 
 dren of men. For the Christian God is One 
 who so loved the world that He gave His 
 only begotten Son that whosoever believeth 
 in Him should not perish but have everlast- 
 ing life. 
 
 Mr. Ingersoll devotes the remainder of 
 his lecture to prophecy, in which he predicts 
 the downfall of the Christian system, and 
 supports his position by arguing that as all 
 the religions of the barbarous ages have 
 fallen into ruin, so must the religion of the 
 Christian age. 
 
 Now, this may be good enough Infidel 
 logic, but it is not the logic of common 
 sense, not even of very common sense. . 
 
 Because systems founded in error and ig- 
 norance have failed, therefore, a system found- 
 ed in truth and knowledge must fail ? Surely, 
 the Mephisto part has retired ; this is too 
 stupid to be cunning; it is entirely Mino- 
 taurian. 
 
 Oh, massive-fronted Ingersoll ! Verily, and
 
 WANTED, A NEW MIRACLE ! 7$ 
 
 of a truth, great is Reason, and great is Inger- 
 soll, her prophet ! Selah ! 
 
 We come now to the peroration. But His 
 Pseudolency makes an entire new departure 
 in the way of rhetorical construction. He 
 puts his peroration right in the middle of 
 his discourse, and so we must go back to 
 consider it. Of course he has both the legal 
 and constitutional right, if he chooses, to do 
 so. I simply make the allusion as a sort of 
 landmark in my survey. 
 
 Here is the passage referred to : 
 " The church wishes us to believe. Let the 
 church, or one of its intellectual saints, per- 
 form a miracle, and we will believe. . . . 
 We have had talk enough. We have listened 
 to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that 
 we wish to hear. We have read your Bible 
 and the works of your best minds; We have 
 heard your prayers, your solemn groans, and 
 your reverential amens. All these amount 
 to less than nothing. We want one fact ; 
 we beg at the doors of your churches for 
 just one little fact. We pass our hats along
 
 74 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 your pews and under your pulpits, and im- 
 plore you for just one fact. We know all 
 about your mouldy wonders and your stale 
 miracles. We want a this year's fact. We 
 want only one. Give us one fact for charity." 
 
 Now, notwithstanding the ludicrous spec- 
 tacle of an Infidel calling for a fact, while the 
 entire system of infidelity is founded in 
 negation, still, as " it is the breathing time of 
 day with me," I will endeavor to satisfy His 
 Pseudolency, and give him that for which he 
 so melodramatically pleads. 
 
 As I before remarked, this perorative appeal 
 was made in the middle of his lecture, before 
 he had lashed himself into such a fury, when 
 the Minotaur part took entire control, so 
 that it is the Mephisto part that suggests this 
 it is not without cunning. 
 
 No doubt His Pseudolency communed with 
 himself something after this fashion : Now 
 facts are as old as creation itself. I will call 
 for a new fact which is at once impossible. 
 Again, the Christian God has expressly for- 
 bidden that His children should test Him, for
 
 THE WANT SUPPLIED. 75 
 
 the test's sake. I will, therefore, demand of 
 them a miracle. They can comply with 
 neither and I shall have made my point. 
 
 So this appeal is not altogether without 
 subtlety, and Mr. Ingersoll, no doubt, felt that 
 it was profoundly cunning. Yet, I think, in the 
 hypothesis we have just offered of the cerebral 
 activity of its author, he is fully answered. 
 
 But I shall, nevertheless, endeavor to sup- 
 ply what seems so necessary to our hero's hap- 
 piness. And, since a new fact must be attend- 
 ed with a miracle, I shall offer evidence of the 
 existence of both at the same time. Indeed 
 the nineteenth century fact and miracle that I 
 am about to refer to, form a sort of mystic 
 dualty a one in two and two in one, as it 
 were. And here it is : His Pseudolency him- 
 self Mephisto-Minotaurus. 
 
 That the continued existence of this man is 
 %.fact, no one will deny. That the continua- 
 tion of that existence is the result of nothing 
 less than a miracle, I will now demonstrate 
 scientifically, by special method. 
 
 ~> 
 
 7tpdyfj.a.Tos. 
 Give me leave to be merry on a merry subject.
 
 76 MEPHfS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 If we will turn, in the French Dictionaire 
 de Medicine, to the article entitled Combustion 
 hiimaine, and in Dr. Apjon's Cyclopedia of 
 Practical Medicine, to the article entitled Spon- 
 taneous human combustion, we can at once sat- 
 isfy ourselves that the human body may under- 
 go such excesses that, in process of time, de- 
 composition will begin of a peculiar character, 
 and to such an extent as to produce spon- 
 taneous combustion, and this, too, in the midst 
 of life. 
 
 Now, I desire to make no allusion here to 
 His Pseudolency's corporeal part I am not 
 his physician and could not, therefore, speak 
 with accuracy but to his spiritual part his 
 moral and mental being. 
 
 It is a principle in science that wherever 
 there is a close affinity between matter and 
 mind, the laws pertaining to each bear an in- 
 timate sympathy. This being the case, and 
 our scientists having already discovered a law 
 of spontaneous human combustion, it only 
 remains a matter of time until they shall dis- 
 cover a law of spontaneous mental and moral
 
 ANTICIPATING THE SCIENTISTS. 77 
 
 combustion. I do not mean that there may 
 be a total destruction of the moral and mental 
 faculties, but a sort of disintegration, as it 
 were, in which the impure parts will destroy 
 themselves. what little there is of any value 
 taking its flight to the source from whence 
 it came. 
 
 We should not be compelled, in a case of 
 emergency of this kind, to await the slow, plod- 
 ding progress of the scientists, when so plain 
 a deduction as this is before us, and it is just 
 as well right here, that we anticipate the con- 
 clusion to which they must inevitably come 
 at last. 
 
 It will readily be seen, then, that all that 
 keeps the moral and mental parts of His Pseu- 
 dolency from spontaneous combustion is a 
 continual working miracle. 
 
 For, as Mr. Carlyle said of him before he 
 was born, " Such a combination of logical life 
 with moral death, so universal a denier, both 
 in head and heart, is undoubtedly an emissary 
 of the Primeval Nothing," and we may add, 
 must be for some wise and inscrutable purpose
 
 78 MRP JUS TO-MTNO TA UR UK. 
 
 miraculously permitted an existence from day 
 to day, since his continued intellectual life is 
 in violation of every law in the reach of the 
 scientists. 
 
 Such an amalgamation of strength and stu- 
 pidity, sense and sophistry, axiom and absurd- 
 ity, intelligence and idiocy, acumen and arro- 
 gance, genius and drivel, reason and ridicu- 
 lousness, and then, notwithstanding his royal 
 good-fellowship, such a compound of unblush- 
 ing pretension, swaggering insolence, and blas- 
 phemous sacrilege, as is evinced in the lecture 
 before us ; in a word, such a mass of intellect- 
 ual contradictions and moral corruption is an 
 anomaly in the universe, beyond the pales of 
 law, and can only be kept together -saved 
 from spontaneous combustion by the direct, 
 daily, hourly interposition of miraculous 
 power. 
 
 His Pseudolency has, therefore, " a this 
 year's fact," a walking, living, present evi- 
 dence of " miracle." Requiescat in pace ! 
 
 Why he is thus permitted, were a difficult 
 problem ; I cannot solve it, unless the solu-
 
 A TALK TO OURSELVES. 
 
 79 
 
 tion be that it is for a similar purpose to 
 that for which we put a light-house on a 
 dangerous coast ; that he is permitted to 
 warn others of that moral and mental de- 
 struction that lurks beneath the waves of 
 Infidelity. 
 
 I have endeavored to give a faithful review 
 of every intended point in the lecture of " the 
 gods," and this is the epitome of Mr. Inger- 
 soll's philosophy. 
 
 If anything has been omitted it is because 
 it was too obscure for my comprehension. I 
 have endeavored to say nothing to excite 
 your prejudice, or to take advantage of the 
 prejudice already existing against Infidels. I 
 have sought to make an honorable fight of it, 
 and if I may have used a little Greek-fire to 
 meet the poisoned arrows of the enemy, I 
 trust that the exigencies of war will justify 
 me. 
 
 And now let us have a little talk to our- 
 selves. 
 
 It is a sad truth that many professed Chris- 
 tians come very far from being Christians.
 
 8o ME PHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 Do you think that if every professed follower 
 of Christ had been, indeed, a true and faith- 
 ful follower of Christ, such a lecture as the 
 one we have just reviewed would have ever 
 been written ? 
 
 Now, the Infidels watch the life of Chris- 
 tians, and they say, that's Christianity; and 
 they listen to our ministers, and say, that's 
 Christian doctrine ; and they .are often com- 
 pelled to add : We don't want to emulate 
 that kind of life, and it is impossible to be- 
 lieve that kind of doctrine. 
 
 Mr. Ingersoll makes some telling hits on 
 many of our practices and much of our 
 preaching, and there is no use of shutting 
 our eyes to the fact, and trying to drive 
 away the remembrance by singing psalms. 
 
 / defy Infidelity to find a single fault in 
 the teachings of Christ! They have been 
 trying to do so for two thousand years and 
 have not succeeded. It is in the practices 
 and preaching of those who claim to be Chris- 
 tians that they find the fault. 
 
 If there were nothing given to the Infidels
 
 THE CHRISTIAN WARFARE. gl 
 
 to believe but the pure word of Christ, there 
 would soon be no Infidels in the world. 
 
 Now, the great trouble with many of our 
 ministers is that the moment they take up a 
 subject of theology, they lay down the practi- 
 cal common-sense that governs them in every- 
 day life, and the result is, their philosophy 
 flies off in a thousand tangents. And they 
 call this orthodoxy, and the Infidels say they 
 don't want that sort of orthodoxy. 
 
 And another trouble is, that when they be- 
 come identified with some particular sect, 
 they think they ought to cling to the ancient 
 landmarks, no matter how inconsistent they 
 may be, with the tenacity of life itself. Sup- 
 pose our fathers had acted upon the same 
 principle ! 
 
 The Christian warfare will always be at- 
 tended with difficulties so long as we furnish 
 the cudgels for Infidels to batter us over the 
 heads with. 
 
 I can recognize no excuse for poor preach- 
 ing. Oh, what a theme is Christianity * What 
 has it not done for this world ?
 
 8 2 MEPlirS TO-MINO TA UK US. 
 
 It found anarchy and barbarism ; it has be- 
 stowed order and enlightenment. 
 
 It found groveling ignorance and supersti- 
 tion ; it has bestowed knowledge and philos- 
 ophy. 
 
 It found man a vassal and slave; it has 
 lifted him to a peerage with gods ! 
 
 It found woman a menial and concubine ; 
 it has lifted her to the sphere of angels ! 
 
 Do you point me to the achievements of 
 the nations before Christ ; their wondrous 
 proficiency in the arts and sciences ? 
 
 I will point you to the wreck and ruin of 
 it all. Do you ask why ? Time has written 
 the answer. 
 
 Christianity found the human race unable 
 to rise from the miry clay, staggering and 
 blinded and bewildered, through the horror- 
 strewn gorges of Polytheism ; through the 
 caverns of Doubt and Denial ; through the 
 uriillumined defiles of a terrible Dread, grop- 
 ing, groping in the deep, dark valley, sur- 
 rounded by the ghastly specters of the skel- 
 etoned past, while Death, brooding like a
 
 THE MARCH OF ENLIGHTENMENT. 83 
 
 monster vampire over the world, cast every- 
 where its terrible shadow ! 
 
 But when the chorus rang out on the world 
 -" Peace ! peace on earth, good will to men," 
 our poor humanity took heart. 
 
 Slowly and steadily we have marched 
 through all the centuries ; slowly but surely, 
 step by step, mounting the stair of Christ's 
 enlightenment. 
 
 And now, where once the trackless ocean 
 rolled, and unknown seas kissed back the sun, 
 commerce sits smiling in a million sails ! 
 
 And now, where once was howling wilder- 
 ness and waste, a million fields glow with the 
 golden grain ! a million homes crown life with 
 happiness ! 
 
 And now, where once were unknown haunts 
 of savage beasts, railroads, the swift arteries 
 of trade, like a broad net-work spread, and the 
 chained lightnings, girt about the globe, serve 
 everywhere men's purposes ! The, land is 
 decked with cities, and the land is jeweled 
 over with churches and with schools ! 
 
 Nay, we have mounted far beyond these
 
 84 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 scenes ! Behold ! where gleam the countless 
 stars, there stretch the highways of all-con - 
 quering science ! 
 
 And now, where once were unknown heights, 
 and depths profound, are paths wherein we 
 stroll as erstwhile through our gardens ! 
 
 Where once were grotesque shapes and 
 heathen deities, now, through the illimitable 
 space, roll worlds innumerable ! And these 
 we measure, weigh and analyze, delve in their 
 mines, explore their mountains and plains, 
 bask in the light of their resplendent suns, 
 and dally with their gorgeous, tinted beams ! 
 
 And soon our souls shall listen to their 
 sweet, celestial harmonies ! 
 
 For in the center of this universe is throned 
 our God, whence time, as a gentle effluence, is 
 shed through all the worlds ! 
 
 'Twas He who sent to us His Son-, that He 
 might lift us up unto Himself. And He has 
 sworn, even by Himself, since He could by no 
 greater swear, with His great arm uplifted, 
 that He will do it ! Hie et ubique ! Yes, 
 here and everywhere ! Here, on this beautiful
 
 THE LAUGHTER OF THE SOUL. 85 
 
 bright earth, or in the Pleiades ! Here, with 
 the loved ones of our hearts, or there, where 
 they shall come to us ! 
 
 Stand out, oh Infidel, beneath the stars ! 
 Look up ! and when your soul throbs wildly 
 to be free, throbs till your heart leaps madly 
 in your breast, throbs till your brain reels, 
 and your whole being quakes, stifle all 
 thought, quell every impulse, confront your 
 soul, declare to it there is no God, then 
 hear its swift, wild screaming laughter, 
 endure its loathing, mocking, terrible recoil 
 as it shall answer back, " Thou Fool ! " 
 
 To your knees, and crawl for pardon ! For 
 I tell thee now, thou rash destroyer of thy 
 soul's dear peace, unless thou shalt its quick 
 forgiveness gain, 'twill hunt thee down ! 
 
 With sting of thousand scorpions thy con- 
 science will so lash thee through the world, 
 thou shalt seek refuge in the very jaws of 
 death ! Aye, and beyond the tomb ; for there, 
 all dwarfed and maimed, it shall confront 
 thee ! Even as thou hast dwarfed and 
 maimed it here, 'twill meet thee there,- con-
 
 86 MEPHIS TO-MINO TA UR US. 
 
 front thee face to face ! Thou shalt stand 
 self-accused, self-judged, and go self-haunted 
 through eternity ! 
 
 For who can escape the presence of his 
 soul ?
 
 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES.
 
 The man who in this life can keep the whiteness of his soul 
 is not likely to lose it in any other. 
 
 ALEXANDER SMITH. 
 
 Truth came once into the world with her Divine Master, 
 and was a perfect shape, most glorious to look on ; but when 
 He ascended, and His Apostles after him were laid asleep, then 
 straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as the story goes 
 of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt 
 with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely 
 form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four 
 winds. .From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, 
 such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis 
 made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down 
 gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We 
 have not yet found them all, nor ever shall do, till her Master's 
 second coming: He shall bring together every joint and mem- 
 ber, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of Loveli- 
 ness and Perfection. 
 
 MILTON.
 
 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 IT shall be my endeavor in the present pa- 
 per to confine what shall be offered to very 
 simple, plain, old-fashioned, hard-fisted facts, 
 and their logical deductions. And if, in doing 
 so, we shall let a little light into the labyrinth- 
 ine mysteries of some of the popular the- 
 ologies, and, by that light, discover that those 
 dark passages rhay, after all, be explored, and 
 even by very ordinary people like ourselves, 
 let us evermore hold in higher regard those 
 simple truths that are in the reach of all, though 
 it should be at the expense of that reverence 
 which we may have hitherto borne for the in- 
 fallibility of some of our teachers. 
 
 And now let us try to divest ourselves of all 
 preconceived ideas that may have become a 
 part of our mental being through early train- 
 ing or*past associations, all prejudices, so to 
 speak, that may enswathe us, and upon truths
 
 9 o 
 
 THE A fiSOL I ' '!']: .\1.( 'ESSITIES. 
 
 that we know to be truths plain, practicable, 
 common-sense principles of every-day life 
 consider the grave question before us, for 
 " to this complexion must we come at last'.' 
 
 Were we to seek for the cause of the un- 
 fortunate tendency of the human mind, partic- 
 ularly as applied to Christians, to veil every- 
 thing in mystery, we should, no doubt, find it 
 very largely attributable to a misconstruction 
 of the idea that lingers around those words 
 of Holy Writ, " Great are the mysteries of 
 godliness." The inspired writer might have 
 added, " Great are the mysteries of germinal 
 life," but it is, no doubt, well he did not do so, 
 else who knows but that our agriculturists 
 would now be exhausting themselves in an ef- 
 fort to raise corn in the hot sands of Arabia, 
 or on the snow-capped summits of the Alps. 
 
 Because there are great mysteries connected 
 with the raising of corn, it does not follow that 
 there are not many simple, practical truths 
 leading to the raising of corn. And because 
 there are great mysteries connected with god- 
 liness, it does not follow that there are not 

 
 TRUTHS WITHIN THE REACH OF ALL. gi 
 
 many simple, practical truths leading to god- 
 liness. Nor does it follow that because there 
 must forever remain many unsolved problems 
 in eternity, that there are not many simple, 
 practical truths in connection with that future 
 state that are within the reach of every rational 
 mind. 
 
 Now, for some little time let us confine our 
 arguments to limits that will not touch the 
 Christian system, or the relationship of Christ 
 to humanity. Let us advance to the consider- 
 ation of that thought, that sublime climax of 
 philosophy, by gradual approach, each step of 
 which shall be as sure as the very foundation 
 of science. We should do this for two rea- 
 sons : 
 
 First. That we may throw some light upon 
 that part of our question which seems to per- 
 plex some of our theologians, and that so 
 greatly disturbed Mr. Beecher : the condition 
 of the millions who lived and died before the 
 Christian era. 
 
 Second. That what we shall offer may reach 
 those who do not accept Christ.
 
 92 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 Before taking up our subject from a purely 
 scientific standpoint, let us seek to reduce it 
 to practical proportions, and consider it from 
 a practical standpoint by making a personal 
 application of it. 
 
 We will for the present use the words, 
 Heaven, Hell, Saved and Lost, in their popu- 
 lar significance, reserving the privilege of sup- 
 plying what we conceive to be their proper 
 definitions after a while. 
 
 I desire now to address the one reader 
 whose eye may be resting upon this page, for 
 it is not probable that there is a single indi- 
 vidual on the habitable globe but who feels 
 that by some means he or she will be saved. 
 Indeed it is hardly possible that there could 
 be found a single instance of one so devoid 
 of hope as to believe that he would be lost 
 that would be despair. Though unable to 
 give a reason for the faith that is within, all 
 feel that, by some means, a way will be pro- 
 vided through which they will be led to a final 
 state of happiness. 
 
 It is not proposed, at this point, to discuss
 
 WHAT SORT OF HEA YEN. 93 
 
 any doctrines as to qualifications for, or to dic- 
 tate any peculiar individual conception of, 
 heaven. But accepting, in order to pursue 
 the argument, any rational conception you 
 may have of heaven, and accepting the idea 
 of that unbounded goodness of God which 
 presupposes that He would draw all men unto 
 Himself, all this conceded, is your case a 
 possible one ? What sort of a heaven would 
 be required to make you happy ? You can- 
 not conceive of heaven as other than a state 
 of purity of soul, where only the highest, holi- 
 est aspirations may exist, no matter what 
 other peculiarities you may ally to it, would 
 such surroundings make you happy ? Were 
 you at once translated from your present 
 abode into the presence of God and His 
 holy angels, could you even endure it ? 
 
 What sort of a heaven would it take to 
 satisfy that man whose soul only knows the 
 greed of gain ? 
 
 What sort of a heaven would it be wherein 
 one could feel at home whose chief delight is 
 in telling or listening to obscene jests ?
 
 94 Tlir - ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 What sort of a heaven would be required 
 for one whose life is given to the continual 
 gratification of lust ? 
 
 You will say, at once, that no one embraced 
 in these extreme cases is a fit subject for 
 the presence of God. And a question arises : 
 What sort of a presence is he fitted for ? 
 
 How a man can hope for even respectable 
 existence in eternity who allows all manner of 
 unworthy thoughts to take possession of his 
 being ; who permits impurity, with its loath- 
 some associates, to hold a continual high car- 
 nival in his soul, is certainly a mystery. 
 
 But there are those who believe in a sort of 
 purgatorial repair shop, to work souls over. 
 I do not refer to the Roman Catholics, who 
 have reduced the idea of Purgatory to some- 
 thing less than a science, but to those who 
 have a feeling that there will be some kind of 
 purifying process between death and eternity. 
 We will be as generous to these as we were 
 to the others by conceding their premise as 
 a starting-point. It will, then, be admitted, 
 in return, that there are souls so utterly de-
 
 LOSS OF 1DENTITT IS .ANNIHILATION. 
 
 95 
 
 praved, whom to fit for any rational view of 
 heaven would require an entire destruction 
 of identity. Would not this be equivalent to 
 annihilation? If, to fit you for God's pres- 
 ence, it becomes necessary to make an en- 
 tirely new being, it would not be you who 
 would enjoy the heaven, but another the 
 one newly created. 
 
 Well, if this is true in an entire destruction 
 of identity, it must still remain true in a par- 
 tial destruction of identity ; for since entire 
 destruction of identity would be equivalent 
 to annihilation, partial destruction of identity 
 would be equivalent to partial annihilation, 
 which is one of the impossibilities. 
 
 Let us see if this cannot be made plainer. 
 
 Suppose that, in disobedience to physical 
 law, I should thrust my arm under the wheels 
 of a railway engine while it is in motion, my 
 arm would be crushed ; suppose a surgeon, 
 to save the rest of my body, should cut the 
 arm off; suppose I should supply its place 
 with a cork arm ; I should not then be the 
 same man physically, but something more
 
 96 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 than three-fourths of my original self. Sup- 
 pose, then, I should lose a leg in a similar 
 way, and I should supply its place in a like 
 manner ; I should then be a little more than 
 half of my former self, physically. Where 
 would the parts be that were cut away ? De- 
 stroyed ? No ; but returned to the elements 
 whence they came originally, for they are 
 indestructible. 
 
 Suppose that this process should go on ; 
 you can see that I should be all cork, or an 
 entirely new physical being. 
 
 Well, after the process was over, which 
 would be the man with which we started ? 
 The cork, or those parts that had returned 
 to the elements ? 
 
 Now the purgatorial repair shop theory is 
 founded upon an idea that the soul may be 
 worked over until it shall be fitted for heaven. 
 Granting the premise and conclusion, I should 
 like to know what becomes of the parts that 
 are cut away. Remember they are indestruc- 
 tible. And if a soul quit this life all dwarfed 
 to the proportions of the hideous deformity
 
 A THOUGHT FROM NATURE. 97 
 
 of sin, by what process could it be developed 
 into an acceptable guest at the court of angels 
 except by cutting away the deformed parts so 
 as to have purity to build upon ? 
 
 Let us see if this part of the issue may not 
 be met by pure, scientific method, confining 
 ourselves to the simplest possible thoughts 
 and language, and the purest metaphysics. 
 
 We will consider a thought from the ma- 
 terial world, the world of matter, and one that 
 we may demonstrate without the aid of the 
 scientists or theologians. Indeed, we shall be 
 quite as well off without the assistance of 
 either of these in this, for the former might 
 lose us in the labyrinthine depths of their 
 philosophies, and the latter well, they are in 
 a very unsteady state of mind just at present. 
 
 Take a piece of polished marble, but-scratch 
 it with a needle and you will have affected it 
 forever. All the ages of time to come, all the 
 cycles of eternity, cannot ^indo what you have 
 done. 
 
 True, the scratch may be cut away, and the 
 
 surface of the stone may be polished again 
 5
 
 98 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 until it shall again become beautiful, but it is 
 at the cost of material ! The stone can never 
 be restored to its original proportions. And 
 just in proportion as that piece of marble is 
 affected, whether by the scratch of a needle, 
 the chisel of the sculptor, or the upheaval of 
 a volcano, just to that degree will the effect 
 that is wrought upon it attend it through " the 
 wreck of matter and the crush of worlds." 
 
 Now, I hold that a sin, absolute, however 
 small, makes an impress on the soul that is 
 eternal in its consequences. 
 
 It may be cut away, through forgiveness, 
 and the soul may be perfected by after-life, 
 but there is a loss that may never be re- 
 covered. And I think this is incontrovertible. 
 Why? Because there are two things which 
 no one will deny, and which no one can deny ; 
 and those two things are : 
 First. No one will deny, or can deny, that a 
 
 life of continual sin dwarfs the soul until 
 
 its possibilities in the future state must be 
 
 greatly limited. 
 Second. No one will deny, or can deny, that
 
 THE J.OGfCAL DEDUCTION. 99 
 
 this comes not in the continuation, for that 
 is without quality, but in the sin. ^ By con- 
 tinuation comes that enormity of proportion 
 which makes the effect possible to our per- 
 ception the sin of a moment being the 
 same in its effect upon the soul with the 
 difference only of degree ; and just in pro- 
 portion as a soul is dwarfed by sin in this 
 life, just to that degree are its possibilities 
 limited in the life to come. 
 (A stain or soil upon the marble, to con- 
 tinue the figure, may be washed away without 
 impairing the proportions of the stone, and 
 there are some offenses ofttimes reckoned sins 
 because of their sinful nature, which but stain 
 or soil the soul, and of these may the soul be 
 cleansed.) 
 
 That the future existence of the soul will be 
 surrounded by scenes subject to conditions 
 and capable of possibilities immeasurably be- 
 yond its present highest conceptions, is, to 
 my mind, as certain as that the infinite is be- 
 yond the finite ; but that it will be in the precise 
 line, or direction, of its aspirations here, seems
 
 IOO THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 to me necessary to the deduction, if it remain 
 logical. 
 
 Now, I desire to call your attention to the 
 following universally accepted truth : 
 
 There are but two states of existence the 
 here and the hereafter, of time and eternity. 
 And I think that we have demonstrated that 
 just as we quit this life we shall begin the next. 
 I say I think we have demonstrated this to be 
 one of the absolute necessities, for any con- 
 clusion different from this must be upon the 
 theory of annihilation, which is one of the im- 
 possibilities. 
 
 There is another conclusion in connection 
 with the future state that follows from the 
 foregoing arrangement of very simple truths, 
 it is this: There are grades or degrees in the 
 future state. Besides, this is clearly taught in 
 the Bible, and is, I believe, almost universally 
 acknowledged. Now, just one item more, 
 right here : Nothing can be surer than that 
 where there is no law there can be no trans- 
 gression. 
 
 The nations, therefore, that lived before the
 
 BEECHER-MA NIA . I O I 
 
 coming of Christ could 4iot be amenable to 
 the law of Christ which was made by Christ, 
 and of necessity, after His coming. 
 
 It will require no very great amount of 
 mental acumen to see, therefore, that the in- 
 habitants of the world, prior to the Christian 
 era, were only subject to the conditions we 
 have already mentioned, i. e., they began the 
 new life in eternity at the precise point that 
 they ended the old, on earth, save that there 
 possibilities became infinite^ while here they 
 were finite. 
 
 How Mr. Beecher could become so greatly 
 excited, as will appear from the quotation we 
 will give here, over a question that is so en- 
 tirely beyond all rational controversy is, in- 
 deed, remarkable to an extent that becomes 
 incomprehensible to me, upon any hypothesis 
 that would be creditable to a master. 
 
 Surely there has been nothing very pro- 
 found in the simple thoughts we have offered 
 so far, and yet, had they been comprehended 
 in their simplicity by Mr. Beecher, he could 
 have lifted the veil from the great mystery,
 
 IO2 THE A /ISO LUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 the very contemplation of which almost de- 
 throned his reason, and threw him into such 
 paroxysms of rhetorical inaccuracy. 
 
 It becomes necessary to quote him here, 
 that we may not be misunderstood. We shall 
 take occasion to refer to a passage that comes 
 before this, after a while ; why I do not take 
 them as they come is because Mr. Beecher's 
 erraticisms are secondary considerations to the 
 argument. I am trying to solve the problem 
 which is popularly denominated Heaven and 
 Hell, or the future state, simply disposing 
 of Beecher-mania as a sort of unknown 
 quantity wherever it presents itself. 
 
 In quoting from Mr. Beecher we are but 
 quoting the words of a large element of relig- 
 ious and irreligious society, and the thoughts 
 they suggest are, therefore, by no means 
 ephemeral. 
 
 Referring to the nations before the coming 
 of Christ, he says : 
 
 "If now you tell me that this great mass of 
 men, because they had not the knowledge of 
 God, went to heaven, I say the inroad of such
 
 MR. BEECH ER VERSUS HELL. 103 
 
 a vast amount of mud swept into heaven 
 would be destructive of its purity, and I can- 
 not accept that view. 
 
 " If, on the other hand, you say they went to 
 hell, then you make an Infidel of me. For I 
 do swear" (we will omit the oaths, Mr. 
 Beecher says the reporters were guilty of a - 
 mistake here, that he did not swear. At all 
 events Mr. Beecher shall be allowed to 
 amend). Suffice it that the sentence which 
 follows makes Mr. Beecher very emphatically 
 reject the idea that they went to hell. He 
 fails, however, to tell us where they did go to. 
 Perhaps, according to Beecher-mania, they just 
 went out vanished, you know, evaporated, 
 so to speak that is, they were not, as it 
 were. 
 
 He continues : " Tell me that back of 
 Christ there is a God, who for unnumbered 
 centuries has gone on creating men and sweep- 
 ing them like dead flies nay, living ones 
 into hell, is to ask me to worship a being as 
 much worse than the conception of any 
 mediaeval devil as can be imagined, but I will
 
 1 04 THE ABSOL UTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 not worship the devil though he should come 
 and sit on the throne of Jehovah." 
 
 Well, who tells him of such a God ? Or 
 who asks him to worship such a being? Not 
 the Bible! Not Christ! Not Christianity! 
 Who then ? 
 
 Ever since one brave soldier hurled his 
 battle flag right into the midst of the pha- 
 lanxes of the enemy, and then, leading on his 
 comrades to the rescue, overthrew the armies 
 opposed to him, quite a number of other brave 
 fellows have tried the same experiment and 
 come out minus a flag. And though no one 
 will dispute the dauntless courage of the Gen- 
 eral of the Plymouth forces, and even accord 
 to him all the qualities of a brave soldier, 
 which I am told sometimes includes profanity 
 in the heat of action, still there will, no doubt, 
 be found many who will question his qualities 
 as a commander, for we find that, having 
 hurled his banner into the ranks of the enemy, 
 his battalions were not equal to the emergen- 
 cy of rescuing it. W T hat he may accomplish 
 when he brings up his reserves remains a
 
 TWO ERRORS. 105 
 
 question of the future, and in the meantime 
 the flag is with the enemy. 
 
 If Col. Ingersoll does not flaunt that ban- 
 ner from the flagstaff of Infidelity for some 
 time to come, I shall be greatly surprised. 
 
 Mr. Beecher and Mr. Ingersoll and the host 
 of other sympathetic natures whom Mr. 
 Beecher's words here represent, are possessed 
 of two errors that have been quite common to 
 such noble natures for more than a century. 
 They are these : 
 
 First. Accepting what the commentators 
 say of the. Bible instead of what the Bible 
 says itself. And 
 
 Second. Permitting their imaginations in- 
 stead of their judgments to take command 
 of their sympathies. 
 
 The first argues much for their faith in 
 humanity, the second for their goodness of 
 heart ; and yet it is hardly safe to say that 
 either is an evidence of those qualities we 
 should expect to find in the leaders of a great 
 people. 
 
 As I have said, a complete solution of Mr.
 
 106 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 Beecher's problem may be had by substituting 
 the known for his unknown quantity. So far 
 I have sought to confine the argument to the 
 plainest truths and purest logic. 
 
 The peoples who lived and died before the 
 Christian era went into the same eternity 
 that we are destined to enter, and subject to 
 the only possible difference of condition which 
 has been wrought by and through Christ. 
 
 But leaving the relation which Christ bears 
 to the question until it shall take its place, 
 we will consider humanity as subject to the 
 law of the absolute necessities : a law co- 
 existent with every atom of matter, or pulse 
 of mental being. 
 
 And now, under this law, let us follow the 
 primitive races into eternity; let us see what 
 disposition was made of them there, and we 
 shall learn something, though not entirely, of 
 the disposition that will be made of all who 
 refuse to accept Christ. 
 
 Was there any hell awaiting them there ? 
 Was there any heaven awaiting them there ? 
 Yes, both ! What kind of hell and what
 
 HEAVEN AND HELL CO-EXISTENT. \Q>j 
 
 kind of heaven ? The same kinds that await 
 you and me. But must hell exist eternally ? 
 As surely as heaven shall. Do you mean to 
 say that a sin committed in this life will be 
 punished throughout eternity? As surely as 
 that a righteous act will be rewarded through- 
 out eternity. Is this the law of a God of love ? 
 Yes, for it is the law of being the law neces- 
 sary to being the only law by which being 
 could be made possible ! It is the law of the 
 absolute necessities ! 
 
 Let us see if this can be demonstrated. 
 In my review of Mr. Ingersoll it was con- 
 ceded that we established two propositions, 
 which were as follows : 
 
 First, There is not an atom in the physical 
 universe which is absolute, i. e., entirely in- 
 dependent of all other atoms. 
 Second, There is not a condition in the spirit- 
 ual universe which is absolute, i. e., entirely 
 independent of all other conditions. 
 Now if those two propositions are true 
 (and, as I say, it was admitted that we proved 
 them to be true), it matters little whether
 
 IO8 Till-. ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 heaven or hell be places or conditions, so 
 far as the argument to prove their eternal 
 duration is concerned, since, in either case, 
 neither is absolute. And so, though I cannot 
 do violence to my sense of consistent logic by 
 discussing either heaven or hell as a place, 
 still it will be seen that what I may offer 
 touching both, considered as conditions, will 
 apply as forcibly to both, considered as places. 
 
 I think it will be admitted, without argu- 
 ment, that there are but two conditions in 
 the spiritual universe Heaven and Hell- 
 though there may be some difference of opin 
 ion as to degrees pertaining to each, possibly 
 of climate, etc. ; but there can be no discus- 
 sion on the original proposition, that there are 
 but the two conditions. 
 
 The correct definitions of the words heaven 
 and hell or, perhaps, I should say what I 
 conceive to be the correct definitions may 
 serve us here. ""By heaven, then, I would im- 
 ply the degrees of happiness, and by hell the 
 degrees of unhappiness, that pertain to eter- 
 nitv.
 
 HOMER, PLATO, PAUL, BEECH ER. 109 
 
 Well, if there are but two conditions in the 
 spiritual universe, Heaven and Hell, and if, as 
 we have shown, there is no such possibility as 
 an absolute condition ; or, in other words, an 
 entirely independent condition, each must bear 
 a relation to the other, since there is nothing 
 else to which it can bear a relation. 
 
 What, then, follows from this? 
 
 Why, that all souls must go into the same 
 eternity ; that each soul must be subject to 
 one of the two conditions of that eternity, and, 
 if subject to one, its possibilities must reach 
 to the other ; or, in other words, every soul 
 must begin the new life at just that step on 
 the stair of development for which it has 
 fitted itself in this life ; whether it be the soul 
 of Homer, of Plato, of the Apostle Paul, or of 
 Henry Ward Beecher ; whether it was fitted 
 through the genius of poetry, of philosophy, 
 or of Christianity, or of two of these, or of all 
 combined. And this includes all who have 
 lived, or ever will live, on the globe. 
 
 Well, after they begin the eternal life, then 
 what ?
 
 I 10 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 A little while ago, the question was asked : 
 "Must hell exist eternally?" and answered, 
 " As surely as that heaven shall." 
 
 Immediately after, another question was 
 asked : " Do you mean to say that a sin 
 committed in this life will be punished 
 throughout eternity ? " and answered : " As 
 surely as that a righteous act will be reward- 
 ed throughout eternity." 
 
 Now, while I hold that we have already 
 sustained those answers, or, rather, that they 
 become axiomatic in the light of the princi- 
 ples we have established, I will proceed, not- 
 withstanding, to make them plainer. 
 
 We will begin by asking, What is sin ? and 
 all will at once answer: Sin is the transores- 
 
 o 
 
 sion of moral law. Another question : Why 
 do men sin in this life? We shall, no doubt, 
 agree that the answer to this is : Because they 
 do not rightly estimate the terrible conse- 
 quences of sin. It is entirely safe to assume 
 that if men could foresee the terrible conse- 
 quences of sin they would shun every form of 
 sin, as they now shun every form of plague.
 
 MORAL AND PHYSICAL LAW. Ill 
 
 To illustrate : a man does not transgress 
 the law of physical being by putting his hand 
 in the fire, because he knows, if he does, his 
 hand will burn. And it would be just so in 
 regard to the law of moral being if he as fully 
 realized the certain effects that are sure to 
 follow certain causes. 
 
 Another thought here. It is through sin 
 that we sink down on the stair of moral be- 
 ing, and it is through righteousness that we 
 rise up on the stair of moral being. All this, 
 so far, will be conceded. 
 
 Well, in eternity we shall know the effect 
 of every moral law, just as well as we know 
 the effect here of that physical law that if we 
 put our hand in the fire the hand must burn. 
 Consequently, no one will sin, all will gradu- 
 ally rise higher on the stair of development 
 in proportion to his moral capacity. 
 
 One more thought : Nothing can be surer 
 than that there can be no final landing to the 
 stair of development in eternity it must be 
 an eternal development it must be infinite 
 in its possibilities. There is no level of
 
 I I 2 THE ADSOL UTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 achieved pre-eminence here, and there can 
 be nqne there. A fixed state or condition of 
 happiness, however exalted, would be destruc- 
 tive of the very idea of happiness. Confine a 
 man to the limits of a palace, though it be 
 ever so grand, and it would soon become a 
 prison ; confine a soul to the limits of a single 
 star, though it be the greatest of the constel- 
 lations, and existence would soon become un- 
 endurable. 
 
 The words heaven and hell, as usually 
 defined, must inevitably confuse us. There 
 can be no such possibility as a fixed state in 
 eternity ; and, as we have shown, the soul in 
 eternity can only be subject to the possibili- 
 ties of a higher development. 
 
 The doctrine that all will finally be " saved," 
 or go to heaven, is as illogical as that all 
 will finally be " lost," or go to hell. Either 
 is impossible. 
 
 No doubt, we should all agree were it not 
 for the confusion of words ! 
 
 Let us now select from the illustrious names 
 of the past, Milton, Procrustes and Caligula,
 
 MILTON, PROCRUSTES, CALIGULA. 113 
 
 three characters with whom we are all fa- 
 miliar. 
 
 And let us, for convenience, illustrate the 
 moral differences between them as so much 
 time. We will suppose that these began their 
 earth lives with equal opportunities for moral 
 development ; and that each was, therefore, 
 alike responsible for his status when he 
 passed into eternity. 
 
 We will say that Milton's moral attainments 
 were such that when he passed the portals of 
 death and entered into eternal life, he was a 
 thousand years beyond Procrustes on the stair 
 of development, and that, for like reasons, Pro- 
 crustes was a thousand years beyond Caligula. 
 
 Now, none of us believe that the future 
 state will be an idle, do-nothing one : no 
 doubt we shall all agree that it must be an 
 
 o 
 
 active, progressive one. 
 
 Well, these three begin in eternity with these 
 relative differences between them. 
 
 You will at once see the justice that puts 
 Milton beyond Procrustes, and Procrustes be- 
 yond such a man as Caligula. You will say 
 
 5*
 
 I 14 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 it is but a mete reward an equitable adjust- 
 ment the justice of which each will himseM" 
 acknowledge. You will say that anything 
 less than this would not be in keeping with 
 the eternal love and justice of God. You will 
 say that anything less than this would be an 
 outrage upon the simplest principles of equity. 
 Everybody would say so ; Christians, Infidels, 
 Pagans, the very savages of the deserts and 
 wildernesses, would say so ; the sunbeam that 
 quickens the perfect before the imperfect grain 
 of corn would say so ; the dew that kisses 
 the one before the other has peeped above its 
 earth-bed would say so ; the zephyr that plays 
 through its brighter, stronger, nobler blades 
 would say so ; and the husbandman who 
 gathers the fruit of the one into his garner, 
 and casts the other away, would say so ; all 
 heaven and earth, and the things that are 
 under the earth, would say so. 
 
 And all these would say that it was but just 
 and equitable that each should occupy his 
 position of relative superiority throughout 
 eternity ; since, whenever that should cease,
 
 REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. \ 15 
 
 equity would cease and justice would cease, 
 and, consequently, love, that rewards the 
 good, would cease. 
 
 Surely we can all agree in this. But do 
 you not see that what is Milton's reward 
 becomes Procrustes' punishment? and that 
 what is Procrustes' reward becomes Calig- 
 ula's punishment, and so on down the scale 
 of being ? 
 
 It is Milton's punishment that he is a thou- 
 sand years beneath what he might have been, 
 and it is Procrustes' punishment that he is a 
 thousand years beneath Milton, and it is Ca- 
 ligula's punishment that he is a thousand years 
 beneath Procrustes ; and if there is any poor 
 wretch lower in the scale of being than Ca- 
 ligula he must be near the utterly deepest 
 bottom of perdition. 
 
 And since those relative positions must be 
 maintained throughout eternity, as each rises 
 up on the stair of development, rewards and 
 punishments must continue throughout eter- 
 nity, and it is simply impossible that one can 
 continue without the continuance of the other.
 
 I I 6 TIIK ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 T/ie absolute necessities demand that it must 
 be so! For the only possible difference be- 
 tween Good and Bad, Pure and Impure, Wise 
 and Unwise, Strength and Weakness, Day and 
 Night, Happiness and Unhappiness, Heaven 
 and Hell, and everything in God's universe, 
 is a comparative difference ! 
 
 But do you make heaven and hell to oc- 
 cupy the same space ? Yes and No. Yes, 
 since they will occupy the same eternity. No, 
 since the pure and the impure will not be 
 found together. And this law is in harmony 
 with the moral law of society on our own 
 little planet. 
 
 In regard to our first answer, "Yes," let me 
 ask the question : Is there more than one 
 eternity ? Surely not. Well, where would 
 you draw a line through space? How build 
 a wall in ether? 
 
 Again : Is not God omnipresent ? The Bible 
 and your catechisms, and the scientists and 
 everybody else says He is, and you will have 
 to answer yes along with them. Now, do you 
 not see that you cannot have a separate place
 
 BIBLE PICTURE OF HELL. \ \ 
 
 for hell ? for God must be there and every- 
 where if He is omnipresent. 
 
 What, then, follows from this ? Why, that 
 heaven and hell are but conditions of the 
 same eternity. 
 
 Now, in regard to our second answer, " No," 
 let me ask the question : What is more repel- 
 lent to a good and pure man or woman than 
 the society of the corrupt and wicked ? or 
 what is more repellent to a corrupt and 
 wicked man or woman than the society of 
 the good and pure ? Here, in Chicago, you 
 have your churches and a society of pure 
 men and women ; you have also your slums 
 of vice and their pitiable inmates, do these 
 divisions of society mix together? 
 
 In eternity, every soul that is dwarfed or 
 maimed by sin or impurity will be recognized 
 as readily as a dwarfed or maimed body is rec- 
 ognized on earth, and they will shrink from 
 the eye of the pure, and call upon the moun- 
 tains to bury them from the eye of God. 
 
 But will the sorrows of hell be as terrible as 
 the Bible depicts them ? This is a horrible
 
 J I 8 THE . \ liSOf. UTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 thought, and yet one that every man can 
 answer for himself. 
 
 The scientists and philosophers will tell 
 you that the suffering of the body is slight 
 when compared to the suffering of the mind. 
 - A strong willed soldier, once, amputated 
 his own limb, and then seared the bleeding, 
 sensitive wound with a red hot gun barrel, 
 and so stopped the effusion of blood and 
 recovered. Years after, he struck down his 
 brother, in anger, and the brother died and 
 the soldier died of remorse ! He could en- 
 dure the amputation of his own limb, and 
 endure the torture of the seething iron, 
 burning into his quivering flesh, but he 
 could not endure the remorse that followed 
 his sin. 
 
 Show me the Bible's picture of hell, and I 
 will show you a soul haunted by itself through 
 eternity with remorse proportioned to its 
 crimes. What is lost through sin, though it 
 be but a loss of time, can never be recovered. 
 
 When Mr. Beecher talks about " the inroad 
 of that vast amount of mud swept into
 
 P ULP1 T ME TAPHOR. I I g , 
 
 heaven as destructive of its purity," and when 
 he talks about " sweeping them like dead flies 
 -nay living ones into hell," he indulges 
 in a metaphor that out-Ingersolls Ingersoll, 
 nay out-Beechers Beecher. It is without 
 parallel even in the long record of Plymouth's 
 erratic pastor, or in the annals of our primi- 
 tive western eloquence, or yet in the pristine 
 purity of plantation pulpit philology. 
 
 It becomes necessary to quote from Mr. 
 Beecher, again, for he again represents a 
 large element of society in the position he 
 assumes. But it is hard to believe that a 
 man who has stood at the head and front 
 of American moral philosophers so long, 
 could say what he does, even with the record 
 before us. He says : 
 
 " Now, that the race should be put in this 
 world at so low a point would not be strange, 
 any more than it is strange that a man cuts a 
 little twig off from a rose-bush, and puts it 
 in a thumb-pot one inch across, and sets it on 
 a table in a propagating house, with bottom 
 heat, if the moral problem were the same as
 
 I2O TIIE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 the physical one where there is the instru- 
 mentality for germfnating the twig, where 
 there is a gardener to care for it, to shift it, to 
 develop it, to give it room and opportunity 
 for growth and maturity. 
 
 " But that has not been the history of the 
 human race. Mankind are thrown abroad on 
 this continent in myriads, and we know that 
 not only their happiness but their morality 
 largely depends on their knowledge of how to 
 use their bodies, and how to control the nat- 
 ural laws that surround them ; but on these 
 subjects not a word nor a syllable is told 
 them." 
 
 If the old Testament tells us anything, it 
 tells us that from the time man was cut from 
 the original bush and placed in the thumb- 
 pot of Eden, to the dawn of the Christian era, 
 the great Gardener of the universe took the 
 tenderest care of him, shifted him, straight- 
 ened him, and gave him every opportunity for 
 growth and development. And you know 
 this is so, and I know this is so, and every 
 reader of that Old Testament knows it is so.
 
 MR. B EEC HERS MA THEM A TICS. \ 2 I 
 
 And we know, besides, that, perhaps, there 
 never was a plant that gave a gardener so 
 much trouble. And we are inclined to think 
 that we have a forcible illustration of what 
 
 that original plant was in the erratic pastor of 
 
 
 
 Plymouth Church. 
 
 Mr. Beecher continues : 
 
 " The sweep of the populations that have 
 swarmed on the globe is simply inconceiv- 
 able. ... Not all the waves of the ocean 
 that have beaten on its shores during all. the 
 centuries of time contained drops enough. 
 . . . Not all the sands of the sea-shore, all 
 the stars of heaven and all the figures of 
 arithmetic." Well, we haven't time to com- 
 pute it, you know, " and during three fourths 
 of its history the race was without an altar, 
 or a church, or an authorized priest, a reve- 
 lation, or anything but the light of nature." 
 
 Now, when Mr. Beecher antedates so, in 
 order to sustain his mathematics, what can 
 he know about "three-fourths" of. those pre- 
 historic times ? or one-fourth, or, indeed, any 
 part except what the Old Testament speaks
 
 122 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 of? He is dealing here very vigorously in 
 assertions. There is a bound even to poetic 
 pastures, beyond which are the fields called 
 pure fiction. 
 
 "Ever to that truth, 
 
 Which but the semblance*of a falsehood wears, 
 A man, if possible, should bar his lip." 
 
 Dante x III//TIIO, Canto A"/"/. 
 
 Well, how does Mr. Beecher reconcile the 
 terrible state of things he depicts here ? 
 
 Why, after sleepless nights and throes of 
 agony, amidst grave doubts and graver re- 
 sponsibilities, and visions of reformers pelted 
 and beaten, and visions of the persecutions of 
 advanced thinkers, after all this and much 
 more of like character, descriptive of the labor 
 of the mountain, behold the twin thoughts 
 that are brought forth : " God's ways are not 
 our ways," and, " What is time with us is not 
 time with God, "--two old theological saws 
 that have ruined work wherever they have 
 been used ; two answers that have made 
 more infidels than Mr. Beecher has hairs in 
 his venerable head. And yet if you will boil 
 down Mr. Beecher's answers, and let the
 
 FROM A SCIENTIFIC STANDPOINT. 
 
 123 
 
 rhetorical steam evaporate, this is all you 
 will have left. And I quote these answers 
 not in irreverence to their great author, but 
 because they are fair samples of many of 
 the answers that have been given on one 
 side of this question, and are only matched, 
 I think, by the entire negation of the infidels 
 on the other side. 
 
 If you please, we will now take up the 
 theory of creation, the law of being, and dis- 
 cuss it from the scientific standpoint. I de- 
 sire, as the first step, to lay down what I 
 conceive to be three incontrovertible prop- 
 ositions ; three propositions that become ax- 
 iomatic when viewed in the light of pure 
 philosophy and reason. They are as follows : 
 First. There is but one, and there could by 
 
 no possibility be more than one, universe. 
 Second. There is but one, and there could by 
 
 no possibility be more than one, set of 
 
 laws for that one universe. 
 Third. Every law of that one universe must 
 
 be in perfect harmony with every other 
 
 law of that one universe.
 
 . 124 7/// ' ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 Here, then, we have struck three bed-rock 
 truths of both science and philosophy. In- 
 fidels, Christians, everybody, Huxley, Tyn- 
 dall, Baine, Ingersoll, Beecher, Prof. Swing, 
 the Apostle Paul, everybody, will indorse 
 these. So far we are all agreed. And now let 
 us keep our minds free from all entangling 
 alliances, and all special theories, for a little 
 while. And please do not anticipate what is 
 coming ! 
 
 I shall not lead you into any of the old 
 paths. I am wedded to no sect, no school of 
 metaphysics or theology, and I shall only ask 
 that you shall not be for the little while that 
 remains to us. I am merely an earnest, and, 
 I trust, honest seeker for truth, and I propose 
 to follow the straight path of pure logic wher- 
 ever it shall lead me, beginning with these 
 three facts we have before us these three 
 incontrovertible truths. And if we do this 
 it is impossible that we should go wrong. 
 But we must not swerve from the straight 
 line, no, not the breadth of ahair. Though 
 old familiar forms and faces, that have been
 
 THE LOGICAL PATH. 125 
 
 the companions of other days, shall beckon 
 us from either side, aye, though they may 
 have been our school-fellows, or may have 
 knelt with us at the altar through three-score 
 years and ten, yet must we not swerve from 
 the straight path of logic the millionth part of 
 a point, or every step will but lead us farther 
 away. 
 
 The only reason that all men do not reach 
 the same conclusion is that they train their 
 logic to subserve some pet idea, instead of 
 letting it take its own pure logical path. We 
 can all agree upon the foundation facts as a 
 starting point ; but we are apt to fly the track 
 when we discover that it doesn't lead to " our 
 meetin'-house." 
 
 Well, if there is but one universe, and if 
 there could by no possibility be more than one 
 universe, as claimed in our first proposition, 
 and if every law of that one universe must be 
 in harmony with every other law of that one 
 universe as claimed in our two subsequent 
 propositions, it follows that if we find one 
 single law that is absolutely necessary to that
 
 I 2 6 THE A BSOL U TE NECESSITIES. 
 
 one universe we have found a law with which 
 all other laws must work in harmony. 
 
 We are still agreed. 
 
 Now I affirm that the law of development 
 is one of those laws. Don't anticipate ! 
 
 Let us see if we can find that law in exist- 
 ence, and then let us see if it is one of the pri- 
 mary laws, or fundamental laws ; or, in other 
 words, one of the laws absolutely necessary to 
 existence. If we find that it is, we will have 
 found a law with which all other laws must 
 work in harmony. 
 
 We will seek, first, in the world of matter. 
 We will take a grain of corn. 
 
 In the order of its being, corn must proceed 
 from the germ of life that is in the grain ; 
 must receive nutrition from the earth, and 
 warmth from the sun's rays, before it can burst 
 its shell ; these are the first operations that 
 link it to the earth, and link it to solar heat. 
 Then it leaps up from the earth, and is em- 
 braced by the arms of the light, and kissed by 
 the zephyrs of morning, to be received, amid 
 the perfume of grasses and the song of
 
 THE LA W OF DE VELOPMENT. 12J 
 
 flowers, upon the loving breast of the glori- 
 ous day. Thus is it taken into fellowship, 
 and thus does it become a part of the world ; 
 thus is it allied to the physical universe, and 
 thus is it put in possession of its identity. 
 This is the law of its being, which, we shall 
 find, is in harmony with the laws, of all phys- 
 ical being. 
 
 But, at this point, the question arises, Why 
 this arbitrary law, this gradual process? Why 
 could it not have been different, so that other 
 laws should be different in conformity to it ? 
 This would, no doubt, be Mr. Ingersoll's 
 inquiry, were he here. Why f Because any- 
 thing else were impossible! This is another 
 one of the absolute necessities. I think we 
 can demonstrate this. 
 
 Suppose I wish to bring my hands together 
 - they are now some distance apart I bring 
 them together ; it was a gradual movement, 
 requiring a full second of time. Suppose I 
 bring them together with the greatest possible 
 speed ; it was a less gradual movement than 
 before, but gradual, nevertheless.
 
 128 'I'UK ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 The electric flash of the lightning is very 
 quick; it seems to cleave the air in an in- 
 stant ; but it is a gradual movement. The 
 first strata of air are pierced before the 
 second, and the second before the third, and 
 the first stratum, or wave of the first strata, 
 of air is divided before the second wave of 
 the first strata is divided. 
 
 Now, in order that the grand harmony of 
 the universe should be maintained, it was 
 necessary that there should be a relationship, 
 or fellowship, of all things, animate and inani- 
 mate. And so if we take up the orders of the 
 lower animals, we find them closely allied to 
 the little grain of corn. We find similar and 
 harmonious laws applying to them that apply 
 to vegetable life. We find them proceeding 
 from a germ, and by a gradual movement un- 
 dergoing the process of development. And 
 we find them linked to the physical universe, 
 not only by the laws by which they have 
 reached the full stature of maturity, but by 
 the very composition of their nerves and 
 fibers and tissues. All this was necessary if
 
 THE POSSIBILITIES OF EXISTENCE. I 29 
 
 the grand harmony of the universe be main- 
 tained. 
 
 Let us follow the logical path a little far- 
 ther. 
 
 Now, if there is but one, and if there could 
 by no possibility be more than one, universe, 
 and if there can be but one set of laws for the 
 one universe, and if those laws must work in 
 perfect harmony, it follows that the only ^os- 
 sibility of existence must be in the one uni- 
 verse, since there is no other ; and every ex- 
 istence in the one universe must be subject 
 to the one set of laws in the one universe, 
 and every law in the one universe must be 
 in perfect harmony with every other law in 
 the one universe. 
 
 Well, if the only possibility of existence is in 
 the one universe, it follows that the existence 
 of man must be in the one universe ; and since 
 there can be but one set of laws in the one 
 universe, it follows that man must be subject 
 to that one set of laws ; and since every law 
 in the one universe must work in perfect har- 
 mony with every other law in the one universe,
 
 1 3 o 
 
 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 it follows that the law of man's physical being 
 must be in harmony with all other laws of 
 physical being. And so we find man, as in the 
 case of the vegetables, and the different orders 
 of animals, linked to the physical universe, not 
 only by the laws by which he has reached the 
 full stature of maturity, but by the very com- 
 position of his body. All this was necessary 
 to preserve the sublime harmony of the uni- 
 verse. 
 
 We come now to speak of man's immortal 
 part, his spiritual nature ; for this, too, must be 
 a part of the grand harmony of all things. 
 
 What is the scientific bed-rock? Why, that 
 there are but two things in the universe - 
 matter and mind. What does science tell us 
 that man is composed of? Matter and mind. 
 What does the Bible tell us that man is com- 
 posed of? " Dust of the earth," or matter, and 
 " breath of life," or mind. Man, then, becomes 
 the great connecting link between matter and 
 God. Of all things, man alone is composed 
 of the two materials matter and mind ; so if 
 there were such a condition as a double neces-
 
 SOUL, MIND AND THOUGHT. 131 
 
 sity, we should say that it becomes doubly 
 necessary that man should be in perfect har 
 mony with the universe, should we not, since 
 he occupies the relation he does to both ele- 
 ments of the universe ? 
 
 Let us see if we cannot demonstrate that 
 man not only is, but that the law of spiritual 
 existence demands, nay, makes it the con- 
 dition of, the absolute necessity to his being, 
 that he be in perfect harmony with this law 
 of development. 
 
 Now, if we show that there are necessities 
 to thought, it follows that we have shown 
 necessities to mind. 
 
 So, if we find that the law absolutely neces- 
 sary to thought is the same law which we 
 found necessary to matter, i. e., the law of 
 development, of gradual movement, we shall 
 have found a law as necessary to mind and 
 soul. 
 
 (We cannot pause here to discuss the differ- 
 ence between mind and soul, but must reserve 
 that for another time. In a word, I hold that 
 mind is the connecting link between the body
 
 1^2 '/'///: ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 and the soul, and that thought is that extra- 
 neous, indefinable something which is com- 
 municated by the soul, through the mind, to 
 the body.) 
 
 Well, you will admit that, though a thought 
 is very quick in its movement (and hence we 
 sometimes say, as quick as thought),- that a 
 thought may not pass through the mind in 
 an instant. I think we can realize this when 
 we recall our personal experience, wherein it 
 has required quite a little while to get some 
 thoughts through our minds. Possibly the 
 present may be one of those instances. Let 
 us try to make it plainer : a thought must 
 first enter the brain, and the brain becomes the 
 medium through which it is communicated 
 to the body, and then the body acts in 
 obedience to the thought. 
 
 Or, to recall the figure we took from the 
 material world, a flash of lightning is very 
 quick in its action, but it must cleave the air, 
 strata by strata ; the stratum or wave that 
 is nearest it must always be pierced first, 
 before it can reach the second wave, and it is
 
 THE HARMON T OF THE UNIVERSE. 133 
 
 just so with a thought ; it must enter the 
 first wave of mind, if you will permit the 
 figure, before it can enter the second wave 
 of mind, and the second before it can enter 
 the third, and so on till it has passed through 
 the mind. 
 
 This illustration serves us in understand- 
 ing that the law is universal, and applies to 
 small thoughts as well as great ; and that 
 the development of a thought is the process 
 of a movement to an idea, or that thought 
 is a process of development, and conse- 
 quently subject to the law of development. 
 Therefore the law of development is abso- 
 lutely necessary to thought, and if to thought, 
 to mind and soul. 
 
 V 
 
 What, then, is the deduction ? it is very 
 plain, and it is very sure, why, this : 
 
 The condition of man's being, the absolute 
 necessity to man's being, demands that he be 
 in perfect harmony with the universe the 
 laws and conditions of the universe. And 
 since there is and could be but one universe, 
 and there is and could be but one set of laws,
 
 134 
 
 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 therefore the laws and conditions to which 
 the human race is subject are the only laws 
 and conditions, physical and spiritual, by 
 which existence in the absolute could be 
 made possible. 
 
 From this very simple arrangement of very 
 simple truths it follows that man was not 
 placed on this earth by the caprice of a 
 Creator, but in harmony with immutable law. 
 Immutable, because it were impossible that 
 it should be different from just what it is. 
 And this is just as sure as that there is and 
 could by no possibility be but one universe; 
 and that there is and could by no possibility 
 be but one set of laws for that one universe; 
 and that there is and could by no possibility 
 be but one God of that one universe ! 
 
 Philosophies here center / Upon this moun~ 
 tain top that overlooks the world, this ever- 
 lasting rock on which is set the azimuth stair 
 of God, lo, we may challenge every school 
 of science and of thought^ for the conception 
 of a law of being other than this ! It is 
 absolutely inconceivable !
 
 FREE, UN TRAMMELED WILL. 135 
 
 When Mr. Beecher and Mr. Ingersoll fret 
 and scold about the slow and plodding 
 progress of humanity, they are but fretful 
 children, whining of the winter's cold, or 
 scolding: the bright sunbeams in the sum- 
 
 o o 
 
 mer's noon. 
 
 The slow and plodding progress of human- 
 ity is but the gradual though sure develop- 
 ment of man. And when Mr. Beecher and 
 Mr. Ingersoll and Mr. Thomas Paine, and 
 the little army of little philosophical guer- 
 rillas that train under them, fret and scold 
 because He, whom they call an " omnipotent 
 God of love," did not force knowledge and 
 enlightenment upon the human race, instead 
 of leaving it to the freedom of an untram- 
 meled will and its own development, they are 
 not less children or less deserving of our pity. 
 
 It was upon the foundation of free, un- 
 trammeled will that the superstructure of the 
 mind was built. It was through the prin- 
 ciple of free ^^,ntrammeled will that Attain- 
 ment reached down from her sublime heights 
 
 O 
 
 and clasped the hand of Endeavor. It is
 
 136 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 by the talismanic power of free, untrammeled 
 will that man leaps from earth to heavn, 
 knocks at its door and is admitted to the 
 court of angels. 
 
 A story is told of a North American Indian 
 chief, who stood watching an engine and its 
 train of cars as it came rushing into a station 
 of the Pacific railroad. An expression of stoic 
 dignity set every line of his bronzed features. 
 He walked up to the engine and regarded it 
 closely. It did not move now. The engineer 
 had leaped off the opposite side unobserved 
 by the savage, and so no one was about it. 
 He watched it to see if it would give any 
 signs of life, but it did not move. Presently 
 the engineer sprang up to his place ; he pulled 
 a bar, and it screamed ; he pulled another bar, 
 and it breathed heavily ; he pulled another 
 bar, it trembled, it moved ; and as it rushed 
 away the Indian turned, and, grunting his 
 contempt, strode proudly over the plain. 
 
 A man is a wonderful piece of machinery, 
 but it is the freedom of his will that makes 
 him a demigod. Man is a wonderful piece of
 
 THE ADVENT OF CHRIST. 137 
 
 machinery, but take away from him the free- 
 dom of his will and he would be no more 
 than that engine that was the contempt of a 
 savage. 
 
 This brings us to the advent of Christ. It 
 will not be expected that we can, at this time, 
 enter into a lengthy discussion of the relation 
 of Christ to humanity, or of His peculiar rela- 
 tion to those who accept, believe and obey 
 Him. And yet I hold that even these may 
 be scientifically demonstrated by axiomatic 
 truths and their purest logical deductions. 
 
 We can only, at present, pass through so 
 much as becomes, at this point, necessary to 
 the immediate question before us. 
 
 It would not do to draw a comparison be- 
 tween nations in cffscussing a subject so cos- 
 mical in its character as the one before us, or 
 it were easy to show that Christianity and 
 Enlightenment go hand in hand. Should I 
 compare the nations of earth, I should speak 
 of my own America. I should hail her as the 
 land beyond all others ! I should crown her 
 Queen of Nations ! 
 
 6*
 
 138 Till-: A HSOL UTE NECESSITIES, 
 
 "My country ! Oh, of thee, 
 Sweet land of Liberty, 
 
 Of thee 1\1 sin<r; 
 Till from thy rocks and rills, 
 Thy woods and templed hills, 
 Wherever rapture thrills, 
 
 Thy name should ring." 
 
 But, now, our song must not be confined to 
 a national soprano, it must be attuned to the 
 sublime chorus that is joined wherever man 
 is free, wherever woman is pure, wherever 
 knowledge is triumphant, wherever virtue is 
 rewarded, wherever the chimes of sabbath 
 bells are heard, and the children are triad on 
 
 fj 
 
 Christmas morn. 
 
 The effect of the Christian system, as seen 
 in the enlightenment of the human race, is 
 evident to all; Christianity needs no en- 
 comium at my hands. I will only drop in 
 one item here, and one which, I think, may 
 be clearly demonstrated. It is this: 
 
 As advanced thought is the food necessary 
 to the higher development of the mind, so 
 is Christianity the food necessary to the 
 highest development of the soul ; and as the 
 mind must be developed to a certain point
 
 Wlir HE DID NOT COME SOONER. 
 
 139 
 
 before it can receive advanced thought, so must 
 the soul be developed to a certain point before 
 it can receive Christianity. From this it will 
 be seen that Christianity, considered from a 
 scientific standpoint, is a system of psycho- 
 logical development. But considered from a 
 theological standpoint, there is a question of 
 atonement, which we must leave for another 
 time. 
 
 It is sometimes asked: Why was not Christ 
 sent into the world at an earlier period ? 
 Christ was sent into the world just as soon 
 as the human race was ready to receive Him. 
 But you will say there were times prior to 
 His coming when the world was farther ad- 
 vanced in the arts and sciences than at the 
 time He did come. Very true ; but not on 
 the stair of moral being. Though we may not 
 be able to mark the distinction between the 
 intellectual and the moral, God is, and He 
 did it. 
 
 The enlightened of the human race had 
 Moses just as soon as they were ready to re- 
 ceive him, and they had the prophets just as
 
 140 
 
 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 soon as they were ready to receive them ; and 
 then came John the Baptist, and then Christ, 
 in fulfillment of the great law of being. Well, 
 what is that law of being? Why, this: that 
 just as fast as humanity is capable of devel- 
 opment, just that fast are the means of devel- 
 opment given. This is a law as universal as 
 the love of God ; it is a law that permeates 
 every atom of matter and every condition of 
 mind. As fast as the blade of grass requires 
 nutrition of the earth it is supplied through 
 its roots, and as oft as it thirsts it may drink 
 of the dew, and as oft as it calls for the sun- 
 beam, as oft does it feel the sunbeam's kiss. 
 When a babe is born into the world it re- 
 quires the daintiest thoughts, and these are 
 supplied through its delicate mind. When 
 the babe is grown to a child, it is given the 
 birds and the flowers. When the child is a 
 maiden, or youth, it has music, and twilight, 
 and stars, and love and sighs ; and when 
 the full stature of manhood and womanhood 
 comes, we have thought we have thought - 
 and communion with God ! And these are
 
 THE LAW OF SACRIFICE. 
 
 141 
 
 inexhaustible ! And these shall endure for- 
 ever ! 
 
 And this leads us to another point the 
 Sacrifice of Christ. Why was it necessary 
 that He should be sacrificed? He, the Pure, 
 the Immaculate One? 
 
 The answer is simple and plain In obedi- 
 ence to law ! the law of the eternal neces- 
 sities! the law that sits on the throne of 
 Jehovah, touches the harp of the universe, and 
 attunes the sweet song of the stars ! 
 
 Why, there is nothing that is not subject to 
 the law of sacrifice ! The flower that blooms 
 in your garden, exhaling its rare perfumes, 
 was only produced through sacrifice of earth, 
 and air, and sunlight, and dew. The pebble 
 that lies in the brooklet, the granite that 
 stands by the sea-shore, were only produced 
 through sacrifice, and the labor of years and 
 years ! And man is produced through sacri- 
 fice, and travail, and groans, and is only sus- 
 tained through sacrifice of millions and mill- 
 ions of atoms, of millions and millions of 
 lives !
 
 142 
 
 ////; ABSOLUTE .VAV/-;.S.S7y//;.V. 
 
 And when that great, grand work was at 
 hand the higher development and redemp- 
 tion of man no less a sacrifice was de- 
 manded than Christ, the Son of God. 
 
 This brings us to the closing thought 
 Miracles. 
 
 We have reached the dangerous pass in 
 our logical path ; but let us not falter ! Our 
 path is along a narrow ledge, but it is straight 
 ahead ; let us not falter now ! It is very nar- 
 row, but it is firm, it is sure, it is God's own 
 granite, its base is deep in the earth ! It is 
 narrow, but it is plain, it stands out clean cut 
 through the ether ; let us not falter ! We 
 have reached its dizziest height ; as you are 
 a man, do not falter ! as you are a man, press 
 on ! 
 
 Is not every miracle a violation of law ? 
 No ! There never was a miracle in violation 
 of law ! God never broke a single law of the 
 universe ! What, then is miracle ? The ex- 
 ercise of God's reserve power, in obedience 
 to law. 
 
 What do you mean ? Why, this : Professor
 
 MIRACLES. 143 
 
 Morse knew the law of electrical currents, and 
 the laws of atmosphere, and of light, and of 
 heat, and of metals; and he had the power to 
 use these as other people did. But back of 
 this he had a reserve power. What was that? 
 Why, to manipulate those different laws, and 
 without disturbing their harmony, so as to 
 produce the telegraph ; and ignorant men 
 called that a miracle. 
 
 Well, just so God holds a reserve power. 
 This is a quality of Hh omniscience that is 
 equal to any emergency. The absolute ne- 
 cessity to omniscience is that it be equal to all 
 emergencies. God has the power to use all 
 the laws of the universe just as we use them, 
 but back of this He has a reserve power by 
 which he can manipulate these, and without 
 disturbing their harmony, so as to produce 
 miracles. Men are performing miracles every 
 day to the extent of that power that their 
 limited wisdom contains and holds in reserve 
 for emergencies. But as God's wisdom is un- 
 limited, His reserve power is equal to all emer- 
 gencies.
 
 144 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 Science is fast bringing these things to the 
 light of human intelligence. 
 
 What scientists perform, now, every day, 
 were declared impossible a few years ago ; 
 and what we deem impossible, now, will, no 
 doubt, be simple and plain in a few years 
 hence. For just as fast as the mind calls for 
 food, just that fast is the mind supplied. And 
 as oft as the Soul shall call to its God, as oft 
 shall its God answer: Here am I. 
 
 Now, the miracles of the Apostles were 
 beyond the miracles of Franklin, and Morse, 
 and Fulton. Why ? Because they were not 
 performed by the Apostles, but by God. 
 Theirs was a delegated power, they wrought 
 through pure faith, not knowledge. Christ 
 told them, before He went away, that when 
 one of these difficult, scientific problems was 
 presented, to send it up to Him, and He 
 would solve it. And they followed His in- 
 structions, and He did solve every problem 
 that they sent up to the court of heaven. 
 He did not show the figures or the demon- 
 stration of how they were done, for they
 
 GOD'S RESERVE PO WER. I AC 
 
 7* v 
 
 could not have comprehended tfyem, but He 
 sent the correct " answer." every time. And 
 He is solving problems for us every day. 
 We get into trouble and we pray to Him, 
 and He helps us out of it. We don't know 
 how it is done, but when the load is lifted 
 from our hearts we know that it is done. 
 And every time this is done, a miracle is 
 performed. It may be only a very small 
 miracle, sometimes, small when compared 
 to the raising of Lazarus from the tomb, 
 but it is a miracle nevertheless. And when 
 we .come to put on immortality He will 
 solve that problem, and in obedience to law, 
 
 I said, a few moments ago : 
 
 " Science is fast bringing these things to 
 the light of human intelligence." Science is 
 doing it or God is doing it or both; 
 may be, after all, they are but one, if we only 
 knew what we were talking about. Science is 
 bringing great truths to light though some 
 of the scientists are submitting to the results 
 of their own experiments with very ill grace. 
 
 Why, a few years ago the Infidels said that
 
 146 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 the idea of. Christ's miraculous conception 
 was so opposed to all reason and law, that it, 
 in itself, overthrew the entire Christian phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 Well, Huxley and Bain, and a score of 
 other scientists and specialists, started out 
 to settle the whole question with the micro- 
 scope. 
 
 This was their last ditch, and they proposed 
 to rout us here. What is the result? If you 
 will turn to the recent ninth edition of the 
 " Encyclopedia Britannica," you will find, in 
 the article on Biology, by Professor Huxley, 
 page 687, these words : 
 
 " Generation by fission and gemmation are 
 not confined to the simplest forms of life. 
 Both modes are common, not only among 
 plants, but among animals of considerable 
 complexity." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " Through almost the whole series of living 
 beings we find agamo-genesis, or not-sexual 
 generation." 
 
 o 
 
 And Bain and the score of others who
 
 HUXLEY, BAIN AND LOGIC. 147 
 
 started out to crush Christianity, indorse 
 what Mr. Huxley says here. 
 
 Well, when they found this law existing 
 throughout the vegetable and throughout 
 the a-nimal kingdoms, except in tJie case of 
 man, then what did they say ? 
 
 Why, that what was called the miraculous 
 conception of Christ could only have been a 
 freak of nature an accident! 
 
 Oh, it is a pitiable sight when great men 
 are reduced to such straits as this ! It is a 
 sad commentary on the doctrine of universal 
 honesty. "It just happened so." Things 
 don't happen so in this universe of law. The 
 genus of Chance does not preside over this 
 little planet for, if it did, there would be 
 no end to the happenings. If it did, Mr. In- 
 gersoll might have been Pope Leo XIII, and 
 Mr. Beecher might have been less given to 
 sensations. 
 
 Now, what is the deduction from this great 
 truth that the microscope reveals to us, 
 or that God reveals to us through the micro- 
 scope, that the law of agamo-genesis, or not-
 
 I 48 THE 'ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 sexual generation exists? Why, if the law- 
 exists, then it must be in harmony with all 
 other laws of the universe, as we found a 
 while ago ; and if it applies to the vegetables 
 and the higher orders of animals, as the 
 scientists have demonstrated, it is in Gocfs 
 reserve power that it may be applied to man 
 without the infraction of any law of the uni- 
 verse. And, therefore, God only used His 
 reserve power when He did apply it in the 
 miraculous conception of Christ 
 
 But you will say: In the vegetables, and 
 animals below man, this law of not-sexual 
 generation invariably produces the same ef- 
 fects. Very true, there can be nothing 
 truer than that like causes produce like ef- 
 fects. That which became the cause in the 
 orders below man was simply the result of 
 the exercise of the ordinary power of the law 
 as applied to their several species, invariably 
 producing the same effects : that which be- 
 came the cause in the conception of Christ 
 was the result of the exercise of the reserve 
 power of God; and, to conclude logically,
 
 A HIGHER CONCEPTION OF GOD. 
 
 149 
 
 we must hold that a like effect could only 
 proceed from a like cause, and that, there- 
 fore, there has been but one Christ. 
 
 Now, does this idea of the reserve power 
 of God, as we have applied it, detract from 
 the omnipotence of Deity? Not at all. On 
 the contrary, to my mind, it exalts the 
 thought of Omnipotence by linking it to 
 Omniscience. To my mind, it introduces 
 us to a higher, nobler conception of God. 
 Why ? Upon the old theory, the laws of 
 the universe (of which it is held that God 
 was the author and maker) were such 
 that it became necessary, in order to meet 
 emergencies, that God should break them or 
 make new ones. In other words, these laws 
 which God made were so imperfect that the 
 Deity was constantly putting them through 
 a course of repairs. Upon the theory we 
 have endeavored to present in this paper, the 
 laws of the universe are perfect and equal to 
 all emergencies. In our ignorance we may 
 understand them only to the extent of finite 
 intelligence: in God's wisdom He under-
 
 150 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 stands them to the extent of infinite intelli- 
 gence Omniscience. 
 
 I am so constituted that I could not wor- 
 ship a God who ruled through imperfect laws. 
 If His laws were imperfect I should conclude 
 that He must be an imperfect God. The God 
 I worship is a perfect God. He is Omnis- 
 cient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent. He is 
 a perfect God, and He rules through perfect 
 laws. 
 
 Now, we must accept one of the two con- 
 clusions : Miracles are either wrought in obe- 
 dience to law or by the infraction of law. 
 No one can take exception to this proposi- 
 tion. Well, then, I accept the former upon 
 the theory of Reserve Power. Who accepts 
 the latter must be met by this incontroverti- 
 ble, scientific fact : The infraction of the least 
 possible law of the universe would bring con- 
 fusion and universal chaos; since there is 
 but one universe, but one set of laws for that 
 one universe, and every law in that one uni- 
 verse must work in perfect harmony with 
 every other law in that one universe; and,
 
 NO W MEE T THE E VIDENCE. \ 5 I 
 
 therefore, every law is dependent upon every 
 other law for the continuation of its own ex- 
 istence. 
 
 I think it will be conceded that we have 
 proven the possibility of what are called mira- 
 cles. The Infidels must now meet the evidence 
 of the records, which they never have done. 
 They have simply set the whole question of 
 miracles aside by declaring that they were im- 
 possible, as an infraction of law was an impos- 
 sibility. But we have found that miracles may 
 be wrought without the infraction of law, and, 
 as I say, now they must meet the evidence. 
 
 The question has often been asked, why 
 God did not send Christ direct from heaven, 
 in the full stature of physical and intellectual 
 development ; or, in other words, what was 
 the necessity of Christ's being born of a 
 woman, and that He should rest on the breast 
 of a mother, and listen to her gentle lullaby, 
 and dally with the sunbeams, as a child, and 
 drink in the sweet significance of the flowers ; 
 and that he should revel with youth in the 
 bird songs and the hymns of the Zephyrs at
 
 I 5 2 THE ABSOL UTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 eventide; that He should rise step by step to 
 manhood, as every man must on this earth ; 
 and that He should die, and be buried, and rise 
 again; was it that He should know our 
 condition here ? Yes, but more than this, 
 that He should know it as we know it ! Yes, 
 for He knew it as God before : but more 
 than this, that he should learn it as we learn 
 it, in obedience to law ! Christ was conceived 
 through God's reserve power that there should 
 be no infraction of law. He was born of 
 woman that there should be no infraction of 
 law. He passed through all the stages of 
 development that there should be no infrac- 
 tion of law. He died, was buried, and was 
 resurrected that there should be no infraction 
 of law. God never did break a law and He 
 never will break a law! Every law of the 
 universe is in harmony with the very law of 
 God's own being, and to break a law would 
 be to break Himself. And this is just as 
 sure as that there is but one universe, and 
 that there is but one God of that one 
 universe.
 
 CHRIS TIANITT A SCIENCE. 153 
 
 "The universe is governed by law / " says 
 Humboldt, and Ingersoll takes up the re- 
 frain and cries, " the universe is governed by 
 law f " " A second Daniel come to judg- 
 ment ! I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me 
 that word ! Now, Infidel, I have thee on 
 the hip!" 
 
 Christianity is a science, and the most ac- 
 curate of all the sciences. It is the founda- 
 tion of the purest philosophy. It is the 
 science of the soul. It is the science by 
 which God leads us up to Himself. And 
 its laws are as sure as the foundations of 
 the universe. 
 
 And as sure as good deeds will be rewarded, 
 just that sure must evil deeds be punished; 
 for this is the law 0/~ existence ; the law neces- 
 sary to existence; the law by which .existence 
 is made possible ; the only law by which ex- 
 istence could be made possible ; it is the law 
 of the Absolute Necessities. 
 
 And the Bible is the one book that con- 
 tains that part of that law which pertains to 
 the soul ; the one indestructible, immutable
 
 154 THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES. 
 
 temple that was built by God to contain the; 
 Sacred Treasures. 
 
 Let the storms of Infidelity rage, though 
 they be ever so loud ! Let thoughtless 
 youth and decaying old age sport as oft as 
 they may with the perilous winds ! The storm 
 shall roll on and be lost in the night, but the 
 temple shall stand as before ! 
 
 Be ye not deceived, for our Lord is not 
 mocked ! 
 
 The storm shall roll on and be lost in the 
 night, and the night it shall pass, and then 
 cometh the morn and the li^ht! and then we 
 
 o 
 
 shall see, and shall know, and our voices shall 
 sing a sweet song, attuned to the song of the 
 stars ! We shall join the grand chorus of 
 worlds ! 
 
 A chorus that began with the faint muffled 
 purl of nebulae was touched to measure 
 by His voice who said, " Let there be 
 light!" then joined by the resonant waves 
 of the deep ; and when the waters were to- 
 gether drawn, by cascade and rill, brook, river 
 and sea!
 
 THE CHORUS OF THE UNIVERSE. 155 
 
 A chorus that caught up the million- 
 voiced rhythm, the first sweet song of nature, 
 and the first wild rhapsody of universal life ! 
 
 A chorus whose reverberations melt into 
 oneness the harmonious cycles of the past, 
 and in whose echoes every moment finds a 
 perfect register ! 
 
 A chorus that now joins the melodious 
 voices of every sylvan bower and glen ! of 
 every bright, sun-kissed floral vale ! of the 
 vast fields, rich with their golden grain ! of 
 vaster plains run wild in liberty ! aye, of the 
 very deserts whose bright sands reflect the 
 marvelous music of the sunbeams ! 
 
 A chorus that unites both hemispheres, 
 whose mountains echo, and whose rivers bear, 
 the illimitable, grand refrain ! 
 
 A chorus that leaps into the clouds ! grasps 
 the thunder ! sweeps through the corridors of 
 the universe ! rises into the translucent 
 ether! mounts the azimuth stair of the In- 
 finite, and rests at last at the very throne of 
 the Eternal God !
 
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